sited sorces

“At any rate my buoyant young poet was radiantly intrigued with this coincidence.”  (19).

Stand and deliver

“(These actions show) students a lack of evidence, an ideological agenda, and political motivation supersede students’ academic growth, identity, hope, and belief in a whole world” (21).

Dead Poets society   

“Our students are critical thinkers” counters Acosta (21).

“In an interview with Spank Rock … Mos Def states.” (59595959.

Kieth, Gilurd "Children, Arts, and Du Bois." The Counsel Chronicle.  National Council of Teachers of English. Sept 2012  Web 3 Dec. 2013.

Stand and Deliver. Dir. Ramón Menéndez. Perf. Ramón Menéndez, Tom Musca,. ?, 1988. Film. 

"Arizona Bans Mexican American Studies Program"by Deb Anderson (210.

draft thing

While all schools K-12 have bits and pieces that are not there, I believe that all K-12 schools should have a wide variety of during and after school programs that are part of their curriculum. Too many schools do not have all of the learning material needed for children to completely learn new things. To many schools have a set few extra courses that are the same things that the students are used to from previous years, thereby not learning anything new at all. The one thing that I would change about the current K-12 school curriculum is the amount of classes and after school activities offered at them from few, to many.

The lack of variety in classes can be seen in many different schools. Likewise the affects if not having a wide variety of classes, or taking away classes/extra-curricular activities. Such is the case in the article “Children, Arts, and Du Bois" by Keith Gilyard, (quote) this is the very reason why we need more classes and activities offered in all K-12 classes. Through this after school program the girl learned about poetry, she learned that she liked it, she learned that she could write it well, and she learned about a new author she had never heard of.  

“At any rate my buoyant young poet was radiantly intrigued with this coincidence.”  (19).

Stand and deliver

“(These actions show) students a lack of evidence, an ideological agenda, and political motivation supersede students’ academic growth, identity, hope, and belief in a whole world” (21).

Dead Poets society   

“Our students are critical thinkers” counters Acosta (21).

“In an interview with Spank Rock … Mos Def states.” (59595959.

Kieth, Gilurd "Children, Arts, and Du Bois." The Counsel Chronicle.  National Council of Teachers of English. Sept 2012  Web 3 Dec. 2013.

Stand and Deliver. Dir. Ramón Menéndez. Perf. Ramón Menéndez, Tom Musca,. ?, 1988. Film.  

"Arizona Bans Mexican American Studies Program"by Deb Anderson (210.

“Stand and Deliver” movie

“Dead Poet Society” movie

  

Gato and Freire compair and contrast.

In our reading of “Against School” by John Gatto, and “The Banking Method of Education” by Paulo Frier, you begin to see a comparison in-between the two articles. Although the comparison ends with both of them agreeing that students who are uninterested to learn will not learn. John Gatto states that “Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it.” Basically he is saying that his students were completely uninterested in their topics and were unwilling to do their work. He then only further displays this idea by writing “They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around.” This idea that students need to stay curious and want to learn is mirrored in “The Banking Method of Education” where Paulo Frier states that “The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the student's creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed.” By forcing students to learn new things that the already know and cramming it in their minds, the students begin to dislike learning and loose their imagination to education. Now in y opinion the comparison ends hear. From the rest of Gattos article he only berates teachers and puts the blaming them as the first step to bad students “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there.” He is basically saying that all teachers teach students to be bored and hate school. This is contradicted in Paulo Frier’s article where he states that the teachers and the students need to reach a mutual agreement on learning, “From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them.” So in the end both Frier and Gatto agreed on one thing, but they also have ideas that completely contradict each other.

ranked suggestion 1-5 and the reasoning behnd each article

At the top of the list we would have to give the suggestion of having many after school programs as suggested in "Children, Arts, and Du Bois" by Kieth Gilurd at the top of the list. At the beginning of the article it is explained how Kieth went to a school to observe the after school program, you learn the story of a child that gets interested in a poet that Kieth brings up. Then you learn that the program will be cut, and like Kieth suggests the children will loose their new interests and begin to fail. Think about all of the new ideas and learning opprotunites that will be given to children if they are able to find their interests in a after school program. The child mentioned in the article only finds out about De Bois only because of the after school program, and with the turn of a pen all of the potential knowledge that that child could have learned about poetry is taken away from them only to save some money. The more frightening thing is that after school programs all over the country are getting cut and more knowledge is being forcibly taken form children.

Next on the list is from Bell hooks article "Teaching critical thinking". in this article it is explained how critical thinking is not being taught at schools to young children at a young age and the repercussions of this, those repercussions being that children loose their wanting to think for themselves and loose the ability to think critically which could solve the problems of  children. Being able to think is a great tool, it helps children to grow up to want to think and actually use their brains instead of being pack mules where knowledge is forcibly piled on them and they are expected to keep it forever. Through the processes of not teaching critical thinking children loose the wanting to think and those loose the potential to learn on their own.

After this would come "Gift of Grit" by Jerry Large, in this article Large proposes the idea of teaching grit to students. He solidifies this by giving examples of different students in school form a rich school and a primarily poor and minority school. What he found is that the students who attended the rich school got better grades and test scores that the poorer school and sent more kids to college, but they soon would fail due to the lack of experience and choices that they did not get at their school due to them always being hand held by teachers and sheltered. While;e the poor school had worse test scores, and sent less students to college, yet the ones who did make it had an easier time because they were forced to learn on their own and the learned "Street smarts". I do agree with this idea, i belie that students do need to be taught the ability to persevere and get though school without having their hand held all of the time, so we can avoid the students from failing in the future.

In spot number four is "Arizona Bans Mexican American Studies Program"by Deb Anderson. This article is about how the state of Arizona gets rid of a extracurricular class on Hispanic american studies. The program was a success in that it inspired students of Hispanic american origins to do better in school and it had the numbers in graduation and college bound kids to back it up. "Ninety-seven percent of students participating in the program graduated from school, compared to the 44 percent nationally." While i do believe that having extra courses such ad this is important the reason behind why it is lower on the list is because that my first choice "Children, Arts, and Du Bois" by Kieth Gilurdtouches this topic on a more broad range saying that more of every kind of extracurricular class is needed unlike in this article where it only talks about the situation that happened not the topic it represents.

Lastly  would come Barry Boyce's article "A Real Education" where it is promoted that students should be able to have a class that calms them down and gives them peace of mind. He gives examples form Mark Greenberg, director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State University and his research which has yielded results and happiness to the students and parents who got involved in mind calming exercises. This helps people not get overheated or over frustrated on school and work. This in essence is a good thing, calm people are happy people and happy people do their work.   

What I think High School is for and What I would change

High School is a place where most people begin to mature and learn more about themselves along with what they truly are interested in. It is also a playground for teenagers to experiment with finding new or better friends along with what group they will put themselves with. But beyond most I believe high school is the place where we begin to understand what we want to learn and what we want to do as adults. Through the different classes that are offered at high schools teenagers get a wider pool of knowledge to pull from and learn from it and only if they so choose. It is through this idea that we learn what we want to study or do in life that I believe that we need to change the amount of after school or extracurricular activities we have from few or none, to many to choose from. If high school students are given a chance to experience different things and learn about new stuff they had never thought about, and through this they may figure out what they truly want to do. For an example have a poetry class so students can learn about poetry and learn how to write it, or have a technical class or separate school close by so students can learn what it is like to work in a mechanic shop. Offer multiple languages not just one or two but five or six other languages and teach how knowing more than just one or two languages can benefit in a business job setting for students who want to go into business, offer a business class. All in all the changes I would like would probably make most high schools look like a small public college, but this is good. Again I cannot stress how important I think it is to offer multiple different types of classes and after school activities to students so they can see the many things life has to offer.

Groups top two

At the top of the list we would have to give the suggestion of having many after school programs as suggested in "Children, Arts, and Du Bois" by Kieth Gilurd at the top of the list. At the beginning of the article it is explained how Kieth went to a school to observe the after school program, you learn the story of a child that gets interested in a poet that Kieth brings up. Then you learn that the program will be cut, and like Kieth suggests the children will loose their new interests and begin to fail. Think about all of the new ideas and learning opportunities  that will be given to children if they are able to find their interests in a after school program. The child mentioned in the article only finds out about De Bois only because of the after school program, and with the turn of a pen all of the potential knowledge that that child could have learned about poetry is taken away from them only to save some money. The more frightening thing is that after school programs all over the country are getting cut and more knowledge is being forcibly taken form children. Next on the list is from Bell hooks article "Teaching critical thinking". in this article it is explained how critical thinking is not being taught at schools to young children at a young age and the repercussions of this, those repercussions being that children loose their wanting to think for themselves and loose the ability to think critically which could solve the problems of  children. Being able to think is a great tool, it helps children to grow up to want to think and actually use their brains instead of being pack mules where knowledge is forcibly piled on them and they are expected to keep it forever. Through the processes of not teaching critical thinking children loose the wanting to think and those loose the potential to learn on their own.