Language arts is "simple grammar, what they need for everyday life." The language arts teacher says, "They should learn to speak properly, to write buisness letters and thank-you letters, and to understand what nouns and verbs and simple subjects are." .....Here, as well, actual work is to choose the right answers, to understand what is given. The teacher often says, "Please read the next sentence and then I'll question you about it." One teacher said in some exasperation to a boy who was fooling around in class, "If you don't know the answers to the questions I ask, then you can't stay in this class! You never know the answers to the questions I ask, and it's not fair to me-and certainly not to you!"
While I am unsure what class this teacher was from, I certainly hope that she quits her job and moves on to something more appropriate for herself. Working with children, talking to any child in this such manner is highly misfortunate. I beleive strongly in a constructivist theory of teaching and in an article I read by Lilian G. Katz called Curriculum Disputes in Early Childhood Education she talks a lot about some of the controversy involved with the curriculum and teaching methods in certain schools. The theory of constructivism is essentially that children can construct their own knowledge through many various ways focusing on the learning goals of social and emotional development, intellectual development and the acquisition of meaningful and useful academic skills. The article mentions an instructivist form of teaching, which seemed more like the ways of the teachers in this article. The intstructivist theory is that children are dependent on adults' instructions in the academic knowledge and skills necessary for a good start for later academic achievment. Studies have shown, and I truely beleive that this way can not be too effective as far as long terms go. I felt that this article related a lot to Anyons.
Anyon mentions that in one classroom in which long devision was being taught, some of the children were having troubles understanding it, and all the teacher did was reiterate the rules of long devision. I do not understand where or why she would think that this would be a more effective way of getting through to these children. I mean if something fails once do we just keep trying the same way? Is that not how we keep failing? Obviously there are all different types of learners, and clearly most of the children needed to see a new, different approach to this to understand. The old fashion copy and reiterate from a book technique is probably about as fun to a child as sitting in a white room for hours on end. We need to provide these children with open ended questions, with things that can let their creativity run wild, and use their own originality. As teachers we should be challenging every child, every day to go above and beyond what we may find capable for them.
"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice." The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance." Children need to have opportunitiy to ask questions, to keep their curiosity going. This reading also reminded me of the Shor reading, where he discussed the importance of socializing our youth. If we make our classroom a place where there are strictly followed rules everywhere how is it that the children are going to feel comfortable? It seems in this article that most of the concern with the working class schools is trying to have complete control of the students. While I do beleive that you need to have rules and follow them, I think a teacher needs to be able to have a healthy balance of control, yet be able to let the children have fun with learning and show their personalities to each other. Intellectual intelligence is important, but it can be done in many ways that can also involve social and emotional growth as well. We need our children to be well rounded, and enjoy coming to school every day to learn and grow. If we have these teachers who's only focus is to completly empower these children, then we are going to keep this aweful cycle going of children who hate school and don't want to learn, and that is something that needs to be changed.
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