Monday, November 30, 2015

Shor- extended comments

The reading this week on Empowering Education by Ira Shor, I felt a bit confused about what the point was that Shor was trying to get across.  While deliberating on what type of blog I should post, I decided to read others to understand exactly what Shor's point was.  While reading Taylor's she really made the connections for me, and allowed me to fully understand what Shor was saying.  I decided to use her blog as the center of mine, because I could not say what she said better myself! Thanks Taylor!!

 
Finn:
Taylor made a great connection to Finn in her blog.  I agree that there main points are extremely similar between Shor and Finn.  They both advocate for the empowering styled education because they know this will allow a child to become a active part of society, instead another ant in the assembly line.  Finn and Shor both agree that the socialization of the classroom is the most important lesson to be taught.  In schools we are teaching people how to socialize and one day they will take those behaviors into our society, so lets teach them how to look at the world in ways that people in elite, or executive elite families are automatically taught to. 
 
Oakes:
Taylor also made a great connection between Oakes and Shor.  The connection is that both authors strive to create a comfortable classroom where fear of the teacher is not present.  If you set up the classroom in a way where students are able to freely move, and make independent choices, than their learning will do the same.  Students will be able to feel free to explore the text and even question it.  This confidence and comfort will allow for the deep thought and analysis that students should really be learning from school.  A more important lesson than the text itself, is being able to critically think, pull apart information, explore texts, and develop a sense of confidence that their opinions on the topic matter and are important.
 
I believe the government fears teaching children that don't have parents on the political boards, to explore and question what we are taught.  I believe they fear that one day everyone will finally be equal and that we will be able to make educated arguments against the type of system we have built! But in a way they should be fearful, because people will soon be able to read between the lines, and decode the truth to this society we live in.
 
Shor could also relate to the podcasts we listened to, because Shor is arguing for the empowering education in all classrooms, and this all relates to the educational gap we have between the working class schools and the executive elite, or elite ones.  This gap is due to many things, but one major thing is the style of teaching.  We are not teaching children in working class schools to grow, only to just try and make it through school and hopefully go to college.  How can there be no gap with two completely different hopes for different children?  We hope to breed the ones in the elite schools to be our future leaders, but everyone has the potential to do so if we educate them all the same.  And if we do educate all children the same, I promise you that gap will virtually close
  
 

3 comments:

  1. Oh wow thanks for using my blog as a center for yours! I really liked what you had to say and the pictures you used.

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  2. Your extended comments helped me to get the main idea. Thank you.

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