Katie Scott
10/07/09
11:35
This article is about how children are born as explorers, discoverers, and adventures. We then send them to school to become followers, those who are forced to follow what the teachers says at exactly the time that the teacher says it. There is not time for them to think for themselves or to be able to explore or discover things for them selves. The author of the article states that teachers need to begin "un-teaching" students, by giving them freedoms to acquire their own knowledge about the world throught exploration. She says that techers can't help but to teach the way that we do because we have never been taught anything else. It is all a part of the cycle of learning. However, she believes that we owe it to our future to free out children's spirits by allowing them to become leaders, explorers, and ultimate adventurers.
I agree with what the article is saying about how we need to allow students to explore and discover their own learning more than just feeding them the answers. As teachers, we are taught how to teach students, and that is how it has been for centuries. However, the current teaching methods and practices do include a lot more freedom for students to explore and investigate concepts on their own, guided by the teacher. O believe that this is the best method, because students do learn by "doing" or taking part in hands- on experience for themselves. However, it is not realistic to think that students should not go to school, or should be able to go to school and run around freely as they please.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Linderman/dianne104.htm
1 comment:
I found this a bit goofy. I feel like the only valid point Linderman made was, "they (teachers) themselves don’t know that they have been trained to teach the rule without question," and even then, I don't think this is at all a universally-applicable statement. Yes, the "hidden curriculum" is a powerful and often unmentioned/unconsidered (hence, "hidden") part of primary education, but to claim that teachers "can only teach by the rule and keep the herd mentality alive" seems really, incredibly mistaken. Everything Linderman says also seems pretty self-contradictory on numerous levels. If kids are left to become "passionate entrepreneurs, explorers, and adventurers who teach themselves how to walk and talk," they won't get past practical motor function and babbling nonsense. Parents (who are apparently victimized by the incessant social tyranny that is the only current service teachers offer on a wide scale, according to Linderman) are the initial sources of information for all children - even the absence of a parent is one of the single most formative "teachers" of a person's entire life. These primary instructors provide the basis for the potential of a child's exploration and adventuring; without some sort of definition, there is no possibility for discovery beyond "show and tell," and without a defined structure of linguistics, there's not even anything to tell. It's not that I think any education system so far devised by man has already met perfection, but I do think that educational systems (including parental pampering) are necessary to provide that potential for children.
I think it's kind of funny that Linderman says, "teachers have not had the training to deal with a real explorer or real adventurer." I wonder if Linderman believes she has a formulaic basis, i.e. "rule," for "training" teachers to "liberate" their kids, and if so, who cares (nothing against Linderman)? On what authority is her persuasion then based?
I personally think the "dumbing down of America's children" occurs more through media like this (where all and none are teachers: MySpace, Facebook, etc. allow for just such "liberation," as every whim and fancy - no matter how objectively/realistically/factually/whateverly legitimate - that occurs within the minds of cyberspace users is immediately and limitlessly accessible) than in the classroom. That being said, you may now consider everything I've said to be completely nuts. So, the end.
(Just for chuckles: my roomate said he would disagree with Linderman just because I disagreed with her, thereby somewhat disproving systematic education's tyranny over the liberation of the mind.)
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