HW 51

School as domination - How do schools train us to be sheep, to be dull, to be dumb, to be absurd? Is it possible/preferable to escape, to transform, or to understand the institution? (Dead Poets Society, Freire, Sizer, Delpit, interviews, own thoughts)

Schools train us to be obedient by creating formalized and restricted institutions and it is possible to understand and transform the institution but rare to successfully escape it.

GATTO
Gatto discussed the main steps of school: school is a sorting machine, the students must be obedient, the teacher chooses the curriculum for the students, the student is only as good as the teacher determines they are, and the student is under constant surveillance. Basically, the six lessons are trying to form and mold the students to be students that are easy to teach and easy to sort into the appropriate places in society. If the student is cooperative in the classroom and treats the teacher as the authority figure who thinks for everyone, they can be easily sorted. Basically, the teacher has all the power in the classroom and the students are just there to absorb what is being taught without any individual thought or contribution. Gatto explains institutions train us to be sheep through these six steps.

Gatto does not agree with these steps, "This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis" the steps do not allow for the teachers to actually learn anything but to accept the authoritive figure and be obedient. "Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational" The steps create an inauthentic environment that is not natural for teacher or students. According to Gatto, it is possible to transform the institution into a more realistic learning environment where students do not all act in the same obedient manor and the teachers do not always act as the all knowing savior.

DELPIT:
Delpit discusses that traditional way of learning (the steps) are necessary but there should be opportunities for students to be aware of how they are learning and what they are learning. This can be seen as a transformation of the institution training us to be dull and dumb, "I suggest that students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills, but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own ‘expertness’ as well" students should take what the teachers teach as information to not just memorize and spit back out but to think about it for themselves as an alternative to being trained as a sheep.

MS. D
She says he had a good experience at her Brown, there were no core curriculums and it was a self motivated school. She specifically wanted to teach at a public school that was anti regents test prep. Ms. D discussed how difficult it was for her to find a school where her main focus in teaching was not preparing the students for the standardized tests. She purely cared about teaching students what she wanted to teach based on her own interests and allow for students to think and write independently based on their own opinions.

MR. MANLEY
When asked why Mr. Manley decided to become a teacher, he explained that teaching is a real humanistic job where you can really connect with people. He specifically wanted to shy away from the traditional way of teaching where the student teacher connection is minimal. He compared his experience teaching at SOF to a previous school he taught at where the teachers were not allowed to connect with the students at all. He had to teach grammar for a whole semester whereas at SOF he chose what to teach the students and he was able to have close relationships with the students. But a negative aspect of SOF that he mentioned was that students were more motivated to hand in homework at the previous school he taught at. The teacher is the authoritive figure in the institution training the students to be obedient and easy to sort especially in a traditional styled teaching environment. The progressive style, where the students are less obedient as witnessed by Manley, portrays a slight transformation and understanding that students have of the institution training them to be like a sheep as there seems to be more freedom in how to teach and how to learn.

Book: The End of Education by Neil Postman

Postman discusses the role of the authority and the "sin" of the student being too dependent on the authority figure. "The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong"(128). It seems that often times in schooling (at least from my own experience), students expect the teachers to spoon feed the information to us, it is their job to give us all the information as the authority figures, “Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth."(116). It is the student's responsibility to take what the teacher says and think about it for themselves instead of relying on the teacher to spell out the answers to everything. The student must prove they are thinking about the material. Students must think for themselves and make their own decisions but take the authority figures' information into consideration. Students being able to think for themselves is a transformation to students being trained to be dumb, dull,

According to Ted Sizer, The students and teachers should have the freedom to do what they need to fit their roles, and the curriculum should be able to fit for the teacher and the student. The set up seems to be planned out there's no room for uncertainties, "How do I teach toward deep understanding-the application of knowledge to an unfamiliar situation- when the syllabus allows no time for plumbing the unfamiliar?" What I found interesting was that he also says the students and teachers should "Get the incentives right," that the teachers and students should want to be in school for the right reason. Essentially, according to Sizer, the main reason student's learn and go to school, is to learn to think and ask questions, a slight alternative to the institutions training the students to be sheep. Although the students may be thinking and questioning based on Sizer's views on education, there is still a sense of control from the teacher to get the students easier to sort.

Hirsch's Article

Sizer has an imminent view on how schools should be, Hirsch has a transcendent view. Hirsch believes school curriculums should be aimed towards what the students will face in their lives such as literature (newspapers and books) and standardized tests (SATs), "Students who possess this knowledge are prepared to participate in civic life, move up career ladders, succeed in college, converse confidently with a wide variety of Americans with whom they work or socialize, and generally have the esteem that comes with being regarded as an educated person." Basically that in order to fit in with the American culture as an adult, there are things that one must be educated about, and they are educated about this in school with the curriculum provided. This goes along with the traditional way of teaching which allows students to be trained as sheep so they can be sorted into the real world as appropriate titles.

Intellectually, Sizer and Hirsch just have different ideas on what students should know. Sizer has a view which allows students to be on different levels of knowledge as long as there is progression in their development of thinking skills whereas Hirsch's view of a student's intellect should be based on the expectations of society. I believe that generally, in both views, the emotional state of the student would be similar, regardless of the curriculum there is still pressure from parents, peers, and society that should be accounted for. Hirsch's view of school seems to be more practical than Sizer's because Hirsch's goes along with society's view whereas Sizer's is a little more independent to that. Expectations of fitting the American culture are a norm that is difficult to avoid thus, Sizer's theory less practical. I think it would be very difficult for the two theories to be adapted to work together because they have different goals. Hirsch's goal is to get to the next level whereas Sizer's goal is to learn and improve. Hirsch's views on education allow for students to be trained whereas Sizer's views do not allow as much for students to be trained.

Obama's School Speech:
Obama talks about how no matter what you want to do in life, it requires an education "And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers." Students are expected by society to go to school and get a good education, it is a general expectation for students to be obedient and thus successful. It is frowned upon when students drop out of school, they are looked at as delinquents who do not follow the rules and are associated with failure, "You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it" but if in school students are only learning how to regurgitate information, does that successfully apply to going out into the real world and the work force?

Institutions:
This website talks about the benefits of institutions..."Institutions provide procedures through which human conduct is patterned, compelled to go, in grooves deemed desirable by society. And this trick is performed by making these grooves appear to the individual as the only possible ones." Basically that institutions allow for everyone to think the same way so that everyone has common knowledge. It seems to me a form of manipulation for people to understand each other and cooperate to keep society running through institutions. Institutions allow for students to be like a sheep and blend into society.

INTERVIEW
The female sophomore said "it is what it is" about the application process and it made me think about schools as a sorting machine. How we have to adapt to what society asks of us to be considered successful if that means going through a rigorous application process for the risk of denial or the relief of approval. Even though she does not agree with test taking she believes it is necessary. Her perspective seems to be that this is how society is and there is nothing we can do about it, we adapt to the level of work we think is suitable for ourselves. But what if expectations get so high that even the moderate levels are frowned upon? Should we push ourselves to risk stress and money? Or accept that we are not accepted? This point of view seems to be the dominant perspective of students about school, "It is what it is" and there's not much we can do about it, this is what the institutions train us to think so students do not question the authority and become harder to mold and sort into society. Going against the institutions and society is a way to escape the absurdity of students being trained as sheep.

Relating the concept of obedience and students being trained as sheep to the film, Dead Poets Society, The main characters go to a very traditional styled school where all their classes follow generally the same format. This entails reading out of the textbook; listening to the teacher lecture and having them determine the student's intelligence. But there is one teacher that teaches different from the rest. He teaches the students to think freely and hold their own opinions and ideas. I believe this is a fairly successful way of escaping obedience in students. The students in the film were able to live their life on their own standards.

An important aspect of education is the student's input and motivation to learn out of their own personal interest. "Nietzsche’s famous aphorism is relevant here: 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.' This applies as much to learning as to living"(Postman 4). If the student has a good reason for them to educate themselves, they will deal with many possible ways of doing so. If the student is motivated enough, they have the potential to learn in almost any situation. Additionally, the motivation should be for the right reason, relating to Manley's comparison between traditional and progressive learning environments, the traditional environment entailed motivation to get the work done, but is simply getting the work done allowing for the student to learn?