Think peice 10 - Empowering Education

Jared Cormier

Ira shore – Empowering Education

1. “…the self and society create each other. Human beings do not invent themselves in a vacuum, and society cannot be made unless people create it together.”

                This is a point for empowering education explaining learning as a collective ongoing experience. Obviously people can’t learn if there is no society to learn from and in turn, there is no curriculum or knowledge to be passed if there is no one to teach. The point lies in that students need to be taught that it is not wrong to question information being conveyed. In fact, these days it is more important to consider the source of the information than the information itself.

2. “I cannot understand a school which makes kids sad about going to school. This school is bad. But I also don’t accept a school in which the kids spend all their time just playing. This school is also bad. The good school is one in which in studying I also get the pleasure of playing.”

                This stresses the importance of balancing empowering and traditional forms of education. Through high school (learning through traditional methods) I had always thought of school as a necessary burden; if you put up with the mental stress and strain and develop consistent work habits you will be successful. If you continued these work habits and burdened the mental stress in the workforce after school than you will be successful in life. It was never about having fun or expressing yourself; that was for failures and hippies. Empowering education not only allows for more of an open exchange of information, but allows students to feel the satisfaction of contributing to something positive. The aim is to have this positive feeling carry on to the workforce.

3. “ a syllabus without critical questions is not neutral or apolitical. In fact, it supports the status quo by not questioning it.”

                It’s refreshing to see critical thinking and the questioning of authority brought up by educators. I had always thought of traditional public education as paying attention, behaving, and absorbing what the teacher says. Any questioning of that seemed inappropriate and disruptive. This allows for a situation where those in power stay in power and nothing really changes. The push for empowering education is an example of some people in powerful positions taking big risks to try to change how society views education.

                I see clearly why this was the final reading we were assigned. It mentions many themes discussed through the semester such as race and social and economic background, but the main concentration lies in simply how to teach our students more effectively. It also explains the teaching method used in our own classroom. I had acknowledged throughout the semester that the class relied heavily on student’s ideas, interpretations, and opinions. The open class discussions were quite effective in terms of examining all sides of the issues brought up. Allowing the class to discuss freely gave the students more confidence. The method of Empowering Education gives students more of a sense of self-worth than traditional methods. I believe the earlier these methods can be used in a student’s academic life, the more excited they’ll be to learn and therefore achieve more success.