Parents and teachers attempt to convince students that going to school is one of the most important things in their life, that without a traditional education they will be left with nothing and will go nowhere. Some theorist’s argue that school prepares you for life and we must focus on how to improve people’s preparation for the rest of their lives but does it even do that? The one thing traditional schooling does very well is dominate. Teachers dominate students, administrators dominate teachers and even politicians dominate administrators. Education claims to help one get a better life by making a person more conscious or intelligent but what it’s really good at is training people to accept control. There are two main types of educating: traditional and progressive. One is based on standardization and teacher dominating the ideas and knowledge of students and the other is student centered, developing a deeper level of understanding and insight into their own lives.
School has dominated us into where saying the right thing at the right time is all that matters, no individuality nor creativity is necessary. If you can recall a date, event in history or formula you get an “A” but that doesn’t mean you’re smart. School has turned us into sheep saying what someone else wants but not what we think. It in a lot of ways defeats individualism and personal interest. School numbs children into conformed boxes, in these boxes students are told they are learning but instead are memorizing things that they will either soon forget or never need.
Argument one
A prominent social theorist, Ted Sizer, has developed a new, more progressive style of learning, not based on testing and reciting facts but on gaining a deeper level of understanding of a topic. It is based on understanding why this topic matters, what it has to do with you and what can you take from it: “Students use their minds. Schools are to provoke young people to grow up intellectually, to think hard and resourcefully and imaginatively about important things.” Sizer is saying that school should not be about absorbing facts but about real, intricate understanding and comprehension. Students need almost more than anything else to be taught to think; they should be taught to examine their lives, experiences and the relationship to world events.
Sizer’s idea of deep comprehension relies heavily on individualism, something that is nearly impossible to do in a widespread standardized school system. One of the important parts needed to make a good school is student motivation. Where is the motivation in a school where students see no relevance between what they are learning and their lives? The students experience nothing personal and develop no interest, therefore no true learning is taking place and no intelligence or growth develops. And more importantly, the student doesn’t leave with a plan to continue personal growth. In the Sizer method the ability to develop an understanding is a transferable skill that can be replicated throughout life, something that doesn’t regularly take place in traditional schools.
The book How Children Fail by John Holt brings up some interesting points about modern schooling. The idea that there can only be one interpretation and only one answer creates a school based on fear. It instills a fear of failing in the students. Students are pushed to new heights just to get the right answer, because that is all they see when they add success and school; there is no critical thinking or examination. “Schools give every encouragement to producers, the kid whose idea is to get “right answers” by any and all means. In a system that runs on “right answers” they can hardly help it. And these schools are often very discouraging places for thinkers.” (Holt, 48.) Holt suggests that educational institutions commend students who find the right answer for being good re-hashers of information and condemn students who use creative, practical thinking. What kind of school system discourages thinking?
Holt also discusses the classroom participation forced upon the students by their well-intentioned teachers. He writes: “Maybe I thought the students were in my class because they were eager to learn what I was trying to teach, but they knew better. They were in school, because they had to be, and in my class either because they had to be or because otherwise they would have had to been in another class, which might be even worse.” (Holt 46.) This school system has created an environment where the students have been turned off because no learning materializes. They follow a system where the teacher is sole leader and the students must take it. Thus they feel no connection to the topic and interest is eliminated. This is why students only remember and use a small percentage of what they learn in school. Obviously, the teacher is convinced that if they are interested in the topic and have domineering control over the class the students must also be interested and intrinsically motivated to focus but that is not necessarily true. To this end Holt says “… A child who is learning naturally, following his curiosity where it leads him, adding to his metal model of reality whatever he needs and can find a place for, and rejecting without fear or guilt what he does not need, is growing – in knowledge, in the love of learning and the ability to learn.” (Holt 220.)
Argument 2
Another researcher who has corroborated with the information and ideas presented by Holt and Sizer is Pablo Freire. Freire’s main argument against traditional schooling is that it has become simply a banking method; information is just deposited from the “enlightened” teacher to the “helpless” student, and the intelligence and worth of the student is decided on his or her ability to retrieve that information. Freire writes in the second chapter of his book, Pedagogy of the oppressed:
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. (Freire)
Freire discusses traditional, widespread education as simple domination, teacher above student. The teacher makes announcements and the students unwittingly deposit them into their minds because that is all they know, it’s all they have been told. This is so wrong because it breeds students who can only do one thing, collect. A student’s intelligence is based on their ability to collect, keep, and restate. The student becomes so enthralled in being the perfect depository that they fail to expand their creative mind. The mind that helps them solve problems, learn from experiences and understand, and adapt to their lives. Freire shows that when you center twelve years of your life on being depositories you’re left with next to nothing of substance.
Argument 3
These conclusions about school domination and the problems in the traditional school system are supported by physiologists who study multiple intelligences. One psychologist who defends multiple intelligences is Howard Gardner. Gardner defends the notion that there are multiple subject matters to be skilled in. Not only are there multiple types of intelligences they are completely independent from one another. Gardner once said: “If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.” Schooling assumes that if you are a bad test taker, or you cannot repeat information you are not intelligent but that is completely false. A student can be have a hard time assimilating to school but that in no way predicts their true intelligence. Every type of intelligence is independent and exclusive and it is irresponsible for educators to ignore this concept.
Another physiologist who supports the theory that defining intelligence is more than just picking the right answer on a test is Robert Sternberg. Sternberg’s theory is that there are three main types of intelligence, analytical, creative, and practical. Sternberg once said: “The three parts of the theory are analytical ability, the ability to analyze things to judge, to criticize. Creative, the ability to create, to invent and discover and practical, the ability to apply and use what you know.” Sternberg says that intelligence cannot be defined simply as getting the single right answer to an irreverent question. Intelligence and success in school should include ones ability to form an opinion, artistry, and imagination and applied knowledge and know how. These theories support the conclusion that school domination would be lessened if not eliminated if the administrators and legislators taught to the strengths and interests of the students.
conclusion
In conclusion tradition schools are institutions where dominance is overly prevalent and real learning rarely takes place. Schools need to the concept that the skills of learning are transferable and once a child has been hooked on learning and the love of learning he will use those skills over and over rather than being dominated by the teacher or administrator.
Works cited
Sizer quote: http://www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/fforum/1997/speeches/sizer_speech.html
Holt quote 1: Holt, John. How Children Fail. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964. 48. Print.
Holt quote 2: Holt, John. How Children Fail. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964. 46. Print.
Holt quote 3: Holt, John. How Children Fail. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964. 220. Print.
Freire quote: Freire, Pablo. "Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed." anu.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr 2010.
Gardner quote: "Howard Gardner." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2010. 24 April. 2010. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/howardgard194101.html
Sternberg quote: "Robert Sternberg." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2010. 24 April. 2010. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/robertster296031.html
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