'Homeless' doll costs $95 (hairstyling extra)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/item_4Ic0hC7Lacpfo8HQbczsQM

I don't quite know how I feel about this.  There is a part of this story that is a cool idea and one part that is very flawed.  Like it said in the article, I think that a homeless American Girl Doll should have been used as a way to donate money to the homeless in America.

There are too many students in our country who are homeless for my taste.  There are huge effects on education for students who are homeless and I will talk about that in a later post that is dedicated solely to that.

But this idea of having an American Girl Doll having a homeless story has some very beneficial education elements.  I believe that it is important to show our students different parts of our world that are screwed up or disordered.  It is okay if you disagree with this, but I don't think that showing students the flaws of this world will turn them into cynics.  I believe that a fresh pair of eyes can help our world the best.  Many students have a naivete (used in a positive sense) that we lose as we grow up.  This naivete can change the world for the best.

If you look at the issue in regards to Bloom's Taxonomy, learning about the injustice in our world will be the first three steps.  If we only go that far, then I completely agree with you that students may very well become cynics of the world we live in.  But if you move up to analysis, synthesis (Creation), and evaluation, then students are using higher level thinking skills.  And don't we want students to go high in their thinking?

I believe that teaching our students to see the world from the top three higher level thinking skills is so important.  It will change our world.

I want to point out one thing before I end this post.  I hear a lot these days from fellow college students who complain about their professors.  If this is you, and that is okay to dislike aspects of your professors or teachers, I encourage you to go to the higher levels of thinking.  I invite you to think about what YOU would do differently if it were your classroom.  Thinking like this will help students who are future teachers figure out what works for them, what they would do differently than the teachers that they have.

If you haven't noticed, I like Bloom's Taxonomy because I believe that students who move to the higher levels of thinking are the ones who can make this world the best we can make it.