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Sunday, April 19, 2015

Empowering Education ~ Shor

I think that this was a great article to wrap up the semester with. Not only did it really tie everything together but it left us all with so much to think about. 

Shor describes empowering education as "A critical democratic pedagogy herself and social change; it is a student centered program for multicultural democracy in school in society. It approaches individual growth as an active, cooperative, and social process, because the self and society create each other."

This relates to so many topics and authors we have already discussed. This makes me think of Rodrigues due to the multicultural democracy, as well as Christensens' Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us in the thought of seeing everything for how it truly is. Shor makes the point that students and teachers need to work together to make a curriculum and learning environment that benefits the students in the best way possible. I think that this is an amazing perspective and idea. Imagine a curriculum where students learn not only what they want to but what they feel will best suited to them. What could be better than a mutual understanding between teachers and students on why they are learning what they have to sit in class for everyday. 

I don't know about the rest of you but I do not feel prepared for the real world yet. I don't know how to handle insurance, file taxes, pay bills, get a mortgage, or any of that! Why didn't we learn these valuable life long skills in school? They say high school trains you for the real world but it doesn't. All it does is make you memorize (not learn) info for a short time to do well on standardized testing to make the school and the state look good. Pardon my language but its crap. The way that Shor says the education system should be set up is a fantastic idea in my opinion. I want my future students to excel in LIFE not just on their SATs. 


Talking Point: Did you feel/ do you feel ready for the real world yet? Or are we all just lost young adults who are going to have to struggle to find our own way? 

(Referring to the lack of knowledge gained in high school) 

4 comments:

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  2. I completely agreed with you Noah, schools in general does not prepare us for the real world, it is a very scary world out there.

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  3. I totally agree with you. I had a class in high school that made us do a project based on living in the adult world, where we had to find an actual apartment, job, and balance our budget, but I also agree that high school really doesn't prepare you for real world problems that we will all face one day. Great job!

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  4. You bring up such a good point about not being ready for the real world yet. It feels like there are so many things that we still need to learn! Why didn't we learn these things in school instead of learning about things that are both unimportant and uninteresting? I definitely agree that Shor's way of setting up education is a good one.

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