Tag Archives: Education

Extrinsic Motivations: when the Ends Trump the Means.

Why are we fulfilling our roles at this moment? Society answers that we are going to be rewarded with money, social status, security, and [input what you want here]. It claims that these things make you happier while performing your tasks. These things are supposed to act as your motivators. Well, you might want to think again.

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Discourse on Experience

This will be a short blog compared to others, but it is a tho Continue reading

Lesson Learned

In 1968, a third grade teacher named Jane Elliott decided to take an unconventional approach to teaching about inequality. She divided her students into brown-eyed and blue-eyed groups. Each day, she told one group they were more superior than the other. The children learned an important, enduring lesson over those two days about the injustice of discrimination, which was documented by PBS Frontline.

This approach allowed the children to learn directly from experience, a type of education our philosophers touted. Continue reading

“Real World”

In class, we have discussed phrase working adults often say to younger students, “Once you enter the real world…” (see cartoon below). This phrase has made us ponder, are we as students not part of the “real world”? What is the “real world”? What skills are required in the “real world”? In my attempt to understand what the “real world” is, I remembered an idea we studied in Anthropology 101 which was “liminality”.Untitled Continue reading

Media Overlo(rds)ad…

“Discourses produce knowledge and knowledge is always a weapon of power” (Storey130).

I was quite impressed with the way Storey wrote on the relationship between discourse and power. Power, although not defined within Storey, was defined in Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality”. Power is not defined in terms of traditional physical domination, it is a force, much like wind currents, that cannot be pinpointed at any exact location, it moves from all angles to any common point. It does, however, seek to control in a form of categorizing (Storey130). With that in mind, it was interesting looking at the syllogism Storey used to explain the discourse-power relationship. If one examines the thoughts of sexuality in Victorian England that takes on the form of letters, works, paintings, medical texts, etc. one can see the overall opinion, or knowledge of sexuality. It is with this opinion that power is exerted over sexuality in Victorian English society, for the categorization of any thoughts or actions that bear resemblance to sexuality are then grouped, and society has a way of exerting control over its own thoughts.

In the way of education, this comes to be a limiting factor in acquiring knowledge. Paul Freire in his work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” would certainly agree, as, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention” (Friere72). Categorizing no doubt would make it easier to teach subjects, as concepts with common topics will be grouped together such as the STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The challenge lies in that these categorizations are only through the discourse at any given time, therefore knowledge and opinion in society at large are responsible for the education structure at any given time. What does that mean? It means that our education is contingent with the public opinion, therefore, could it be said that it is media that controls what we read and understand, since public opinion is transferred using mediums such as newspaper, reporters, radio, and any other such modes of communication?

It means that our education is contingent with the public opinion, therefore, could it be said that it is media that controls what we read and understand, since public opinion is transferred using mediums such as newspaper, reporters, radio, and any other such modes of communication?

It means that our education is contingent with the public opinion, therefore, could it be said that it is media that controls what we read and understand, since public opinion is transferred using mediums such as newspaper, reporters, radio, and any other such modes of communication?

Curiosity and diversity

Upon watching a Ted Talk hosted by Ken Robinson, I was further convinced that the current form of education is broken and must be fixed. The current system implores the banking system, which Robinson would surely find ineffective. Robinson talks about the driving principals of human beings: diversity and curiosity.

When Robinson says diversity, he is referring to both humans and the education system. It is true that not all are alike, even within families. As a result, how can there only be one way of teaching? It is rare that the banking system fits perfectly for the learning style of a student, and even rarer that it works for all student. We must diversify the way that we teach students, as one method may be better for one student than the other. Continue reading

Looking to the Future vs. End Goals

In John Dewey’s Experience and Education, he mainly discusses his ideas regarding progressive versus traditional education and how they both relate to experience. One section I found interesting was on page 76, and I thought it might be interesting to compare this example to standardized testing or AP classes.

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(Don’t) Bank on It

Reading Paulo Freire’s two cents on education reminds me a lot of any dystopian novel/movie I’ve ever read/watched. He says that the education nowadays is a type of “banking” education, where the job of the teacher is to deposit information into the student, much like anyone would deposit money into their bank accounts. Continue reading

holistic learning

One of the most provocative idea presented in this text is early in chapter
system promote the process of critical thinking, as it now promotes the cramming of information.

Any study will show you that the retention rate for memorization vs. true understanding is vast. As I read this part of the text and the article, I thought of a commercial that aired a while ago. It
was a Sullivan tutoring commercial where it showed a kid shaking out his ears, and, instead of water flowing from them, it was knowledge seeping out. It then states a statistic that students lose 70% of the knowledge that they learned over the summer. Continue reading

Not an Isolated Case

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire explains the issue with education presently is the concept he explains as “banking”.  “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive…” (72). In other words, no one is really learning anything from education, for the teacher teaches subjects that are hollow and have no relevancy, and the students eagerly take it, trusting in the knowledge of the teacher.

The problem with Education, Freire explains, is the polarization between the student-teacher relationships. He draws from Hegel in the bottom of page 72, stating that, “…students, alien Continue reading