Blog Post #10 - Education is Politics (Quotes)

          Several quotes stuck out to me as I read "Education is Politics: An Agenda for Empowerment" by Ira Shor. The first was "The teacher brings lesson plans, learning methods, personal experience, and academic knowledge to class but negotiates the curriculum with the students and begins with their language, themes and understandings." I believe this to be true because similar to "Literacy With An Attitude", education takes both the teacher and students to work together in order to learn. I though this quote summarized that idea pretty well. The teacher brings knowledge to the classroom but first starts on the same level as the students.

          "Only by active learning could students develop scientific methods and democratic habits rather than becoming passive pupils waiting to be told what things means and what to do." This quote summarized the article pretty well. This article has a political ideals in it, and this quote summarizes those ideas. In order for the student to grow into a successful citizen, they must first take charge in the classroom and become active there first. These will build life goals that will help them later in life.

          "To [Bowles and Gintis], schooling supports existing power and divisions in society by sorting students into a small elite destined for the top and a large mass destined for the middle and bottom - an educational policy also studied carefully by Spring (1989) and by Oakes (1985)." This too reminded me of "Literacy With An Attitude." One of the main ideas from that reading was the study that was taken to see how schools of different economic backgrounds treated their students differently. This statement coincides with their findings. The rich schools allow students to think for themselves and give them a great schooling experience while the poorer schools care less for their students and only accept the correct answer. This quote reinforces that ideal, that students' futures largely depend on where they go to school.

This article shows several strategies a teacher can use to become a more successful teacher.