Poorly Funded Public Schools

From reading the book Savage Inequalities to researching the tier 1 and tier 2 schools across California, I have seen that many of the lowest achieving schools are predominately in poorly funded areas of the state.  The book has gone into great detail to express how poor the public schools are in the major cities such as Chicago, East St. Louis, New York, and New Jersey.  They go in depth about how these cities, mostly all in low income areas, have the highest percentage of dropout rates across the board.  Looking at the list of the lowest achieving schools in California, I can now see that most if not all of those schools are in areas of lower class and high crime.  Take a look at the tier 1 schools in California.  Oakland, Los Angeles, San Joaquin, Fresno and San Francisco are all schools on the list with some of the highest percentage for bad schools.  If you look at the correlation between the majority income in those school districts and the dropout rate, you can see that the educational advantage of living in a wealthier city is better than a poor city.

Response to TED Talk video

I just watched a video with a man named Sir Ken Robinson.  He mainly talks about how the education system is flawed.  What really caught my attention in the video is when he started talking about how some people don't need college at all, how it is a waste of time for some and good for others.  He talked about how he had met a fireman and the fireman going through school as a young boy.  I related greatly to this.  I never really felt the need for college, I thought that it was mainly just an excuse for kids getting out of high school to have.  By excuse I mean just another "bubble" for them to put themselves into for the next 4 years until they have to face the real world.  See, I never went to college until now. I joined the military straight out of high school with a very clear picture in my head about what I wanted to do, I wanted to serve and fight for my country.  And it may seem ironic that now I am in college, but don't let this fool you, I am in college to learn a certain skill.  I believe that much of college is what the fireman said as a young boy, just a waste.  Now I'm trying to become a welder, eventually an aircraft welder or even underwater welder, so what do I need to take english and psychology classes for?  Now I'm not saying that the reason I find these classes somewhat useless to me is due to the teachers or the class themselves, but if I have a specific skill I want to learn, why do I need to "waste my time" taking these classes versus taking more welding classes?  I don't know the answer to that question.  

Summary of the article I found on the web

I read an article found on Intime.com regarding teacher’s in depth content knowledge.  The article went on about the way teachers teach their students and the importance of the style of teaching.  Thinking along with the Passion Project, this article much relates to what the main topic of my essay is going to be, how teachers need to adapt their teaching style according to the students in the class.  Much of what will be writing about is going to be focused on how the students should set the tone for how the teacher gives out the material to be learned.  In the article, Allan A. Glatthorn “Described this as the process of fitting the represented material to the characteristics of the students.  The teacher must consider the relevant aspects of the students’ ability, gender, language, cutler, motivations, or prior knowledge and skills that will affect their responses to different forms of presentations and representations.” (Glatthorn, A. A. 1990 Supervisory leadership).  Glatthorn was a distinguished Research Professor of Education and I could not agree with his statement more.  He is saying that teachers should map their classrooms to the specific knowledge of their students and consider their background to determine the best way for them to learn.  A lot of what was said in the Passion Project had this same idea as well.  Students felt that this was true, that teacher should get to know the students in their class, and through this they can achieve the best way to teach them.  This backs up one of my arguments that the most popular ways of teaching are not always the best and that different students learn on different levels, so why not customize the teaching material specifically to the students.  “Through reflection, teachers focus on their concerns, come to better understand their own teaching behavior, and help themselves or colleagues improve as teachers”.  This is one quote from the article that struck me as one of the best.  Teachers must have some sort of feedback as to what they are doing correct and what they still have to improve on.  The only way to learn if their class is productive is to hear what the students and other teachers alike have to say.  The best way to learn that is through constructive criticism and this will only help further how the education system can improve.  Who better than the people in the class, who sit there and listen to every single word said, to reflect and review how the class is being taught and where there is room for improvement.

http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/teacher/teac2summary.html

We were told to read an article by Erich Fromm and then elaborate on the questions ask at the end of the article.  Well the story that I just read, surprisingly, had a lot in common with what I have gone through in the past 5 years of my life.  Fromm says that disobedience is the first step into independence and freedom.  What would society be like today if man hadn't stood up against dictators and extremist or openly voiced their own ideals and opinions towards their way of life.  We would probably be in a very strict and controlled world where you couldn't do anything unless told to do so.  Fromm was trying to say that your first step towards how you want to live your life is to disobey the teachings of others, that is, if you disagree with their ideology. He means for you to break away from the general public and try and make things run the way you want them to.  Everyone has a human right to do so.  

Fromm also thought that history began with an act of disobedience and will likely end with one too. He means to say that someone, somewhere, at some point in time, had to have disobey a law or rule.  I kind of think that this is like the butterfly effect, that someone's actions had drastically changed history, and without this person's disobedience that our society might be a lot different than it is today.  I think that the world will eventually come to an end, not as in an end to humanity, but an end to the civilized world we live in today, with an act of disobedience.  The great powers of the world struggle in an endless game to try and make the world a decent place to live in.  But there are always going to be people that disagree with the consensus of the general population.  So he means to say that there will be a time in which society will be hit with a life altering act, which is hard to say what that will be at this point, but Fromm does believe that it will happen at some point.   

The differences between heteronomous obedience and autonomous obedience is that one means to follow the ideals of others and the other is to revolt or be disobedient to the ideals of other.  I think that most of civilized society is heteronomously obedient because we all follow laws.  For the most part that is.  But we all stop at red lights and we don't go and steal things from stores.  There are laws.  We know what is right and what is wrong.  We follow a set of rules made by the opinions and thoughts of others high up in the food chain.  Now autonomous obedience is the opposite of that.  To be autonomous obedient means that you want to do things your way and your way only.  The rules don't apply to you.  You don't like the way things are functioning so you set your own set of rules to follow.