Mind the Gap: Session II
1. Chapter one: In recounting her journey through many educational reforms, Diane Ravitch makes a number of provocative statements. Choose two, quote them, and personally respond.“Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like to teach reading or how to improve testing, one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions. One need not know anything about children or education. The lure of the market is the idea that freedom from government regulation is a solution all by itself. This is very appealing, especially when so many seemingly well-planned school reforms have failed to deliver on their promise.” (p11)
I think Ravitch makes a very strong point that in designing an educational system you must always keep one purpose in mind, the education of children, first. All other business philosophies must come second. If schools were businesses, they would have a difficult time because quantifying intellect is difficult and subjective.
“I came to believe that accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools as states and districts strived to meet unrealistic targets.” (p12-13)Schools have some tough choices to make. Schools that have high standards must be prepared to see some students fail or they must reevaluate their standards. Then to ensure all students pass, standards will be set very low. At some point, there is a limit to the amount of improvement a school or an individual student can make within time and limited resources.
It is unrealistic to believe that with high enough standards or accountability, all students will perform as they are expected to and we cannot punish schools for failing to have perfect students. I do not want to blame students but I feel that we cannot apply homogenized standards to all people and expect them to work for all people all of the time. There must be room for error.
2. Chapter two: On page 16, Ravitch gives a brief definition of a well-educated person. How would you characterize a well-educated person? What should any well-educated person know in today’s world?
Most people would require that a well-educated person attend post-secondary education for a period to acquire knowledge prescribed by professors. Mainly, I would characterize a well-educated person as someone who has acquired the ability to access knowledge. The ability to access knowledge can mean the ability to read, hear a lecture or performance or to speak with another person to draw out many possible meanings. It is not innate and it does not happen in a vacuum: it is the result of years of study and practice. I think there can be very few exceptions to the rule: some highly motivated individuals learn without attending colleges or universities.
What a well-educated person should know is subjective. General knowledge should current, topical and be useful in the work of well-educated person. General knowledge should include the awareness of the existence of major fields of knowledge, such as mathematics, literature or science, in order to specialize in a specific field of study or profession.
3. Thinking about the class discussion on the book, what stands out for you? What would you have liked to say that you did not say?
When I look at A Nation at Risk, I have the benefit of hindsight. I can compare the recommendations of ANAR to the mandatory NCLB policy implemented today and ask “Why don’t we just follow those recommendations now?” If we begin following those recommendations and they do not succeed, I lose nothing. I am not a politician. When the effort to establish national standards fell apart, it was because politicians were afraid to do what was unpopular, in essence, to work themselves out of a job. We cannot change the nature of politics, but how can we reform education in a democracy? Perhaps the question I should pose is: Who can reform educational policies without risking their own livelihood and who can do it effectively?
4. Choose one gap you listed from your subject area and identify 3 resources: a website, an article, and a book that can help you fill that gap. List these and discuss what you learned from one of these.
I am looking at the gap that I am hoping to learn more about in this program: How the Scientific Revolution affected our thinking today. (7.10 Students analyze the historical developments of the Scientific Revolution and its lasting effect on religious, political, and cultural institutions.)
California Learning Resources Network (http://www.clrn.org) had several links to related subject material. It included a website called smarthistory.khanacademy.org that had relivant information about the scientific revolution and why it changed the way we think today (as opposed to what people used to believe about the world). It opposed the status-quo supported by church, king and aristocracy and sought to investigate the world through thought and observation. This resource may never make it directly into the hands of students, but it will make me better at explaining the transition from a Europe centered around Christianity to Western nations (including the newly forming U.S.) and Humanist traditions.
I found an article titled “Making Science Vivid: Using a historical episodes map” that suggested many tools to include the history of science in the classroom. Often times science teachers teach with science textbooks that have a minimal historic background and there are so many concepts and ideas to teach that science history is a low priority. The hypothesis and result concluded that putting science into context improves learning about science.
I purchased a book online called “Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700” by Peter Dear. It’s in the mail. It’s description looks promising, hopefully it will help me fill in the gaps in knowledge about scientists during this period.
5. Your annotations of resources are meant to be both scholarly and brief. In the blog, discuss in detail why/how any two of these articles were useful to your topic/questions.
I found two completely different articles that, in some way, both had to do with my inquiry project. First I found a secondary source of historical information. It discusses the changing face of Europe between 1460-1559; divided into chapters by politics, economics, science and philosophy. This source helps to explain how these topics are interrelated and for my purposes: why scientists or inventors influence the future of nations and people. My second source is scientific research: It seeks to enhance a student's understanding of science by teaching the history of science. While it uses natural scientist Mendel to explain the evolution of genetics, I believe it could be adapted to explain the interconnectivity of physicists such as Copernicus and Newton.
6. Question to Joan:
If you knew then, that you know now about ANAR and NCLB, what would you have done differently in your classroom?
Blog comments made on: Katherine Asch, Andrew Eckloff, Jocelyn Brodeur and Jennifer Temple.
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