Public Schools

Recently in INTE 5200 the topic of discussion  for the week focused on the idea of "un-schooling". The focus of the article was about a family who has forgone traditional employment and schooling, and now focuses on farming to create revenue and learn. The father of the family was also the writer of the article, and advocated for more families to follow their lead and ditch public schools. He even went as far as to compare public schools to prisons. While I think that public schools are certainly far from perfect. I think this is yet another in a long line of examples of blame being unfairly placed on schools and teachers for the educational shortcoming in our country. I am not going to sit here today and convince you of all of the reasons why the system is creating that "prison" like feeling that the author is referring to. However, as a teacher in a public school, I would like to share a few of the reasons why I feel like shedding public schools in such a negative light is flat out wrong.

 Schools allow students a variety of choices. While the parents in this article may believe that they are allowing their students a variety of choices in their development that otherwise wouldn't be available. I would argue to the contrary. Allowing students to choose from a small set of experiences may actually shelter them from interests that they didn't know they have, In our school we have a variety of career focused electives that allows students to fall into something they didn't know they were initially interested in. Some of these classes include, a publication class where students create daily announcements, and learn technical skills that are used by real broadcasters. An engineering class that exposes students to the field of engineering through hands on creative work. Students typically love this class and a typical day in this class looks something like this..































To me this looks like all kids are engaged in their learning. None of them look to be suffering too much.
    Schools expose students to dynamic personalities. This is a bit of an age old argument, that homeschooling limits kids socially. While I don't believe that this is an absolute truth. Typically the homeschooled kids that I have come across are lacking something socially. People are very different and have a wide variety of traits and skills. School exposes kids to this. Teachers are all very different and bring a variety of styles and expectations. I think that it is important for students to learn how to interact with this  variety. In the real world we constantly learn what we can get away with, or how we can relate to our superiors. Home-schooling only exposes you to one type of these types of personalities.
      I also know that at my school students are exposed to a large amount of diversity. The other day I was coaching football, and noticed that on my team we have Caucasian, Hispanic and African American players on our team. I also noticed that the cliques of players on our team had nothing to do with the race of our players, but rather who they are as people. I think this is something that home-schooling shelters kids from.

I am not saying that public schools are perfect, and I recognize that not all schools have the programs and initiatives that my school does. I think schools can focus a lot more on allowing students to be a part in picking their own path. I would also love to see the pressure placed on kids in standardized testing disappear because I think its counter productive. However, I think that the idea of home-schooling, or "un-schooling" as the author refers to it as, might only work for a very limited amount of students.

Are we too attached?

Recently I read an article in the New York Times outlining our use of technology and it's outcomes on our lives. The article focuses on an event that occurred recently, where an author named Scott Welch was on a flight that led to a mechanical malfunction filling the plane cabin with smoke and dropping the support masks from the ceiling. While other people on board cried or sat quietly to reflect. Mr. Welch began recording his last moments on video and took numerous selfies. This seems to be an interesting new phenomenon world wide. Life's moments are often times not lived, but rather recorded with videos or pictures. This article makes one defining statement that I think is worth investigating. 

"To live the moment or record the moment? It’s become a defining dilemma of the iPhone age"

To say that our culture has changed over the last 5 years is a vast understatement. The use of smartphones has gone through the rough, and honestly I am not sure that I currently know a single person that doesn't own an, I-phone, Galaxy, or some-other form of high end device. The benefits of these devices is tremendous. However, sometimes I wonder if the downside is equally great. I am from Boulder, and thus I spend my fair share of time outside, nature loving, and generally being a hippy. I truly love the quiet moments in life, where my phone doesn't work, and I can sit back and enjoy the tremendous beauty of earth. However, I have at times in my life found myself feeling like I need to take a picture of a moment to capture it and share with the rest of the people that I know. I think that from time to time that this is ok. However, I hope that people can find a way to be selfish in some moments and just enjoy the moment they are living for themselves. Rather than experience all moments figuring out what cute caption they are going to put under their selfie. I also wonder as an educator, how we teach our students to be able to put their devices down sometimes to sit back and enjoy our time on earth.