In the book, “Rereading America,” written by Toni Cade Bambara along with Gary Colombo and Robert Cullen, Bambara focuses on the challenges and desire to teach by contras of what you don’t have and what you can achieve. (Bambara, pg. 253-259) It is without doubt that even though a cookie cutter theory is used in most schools; there will be certain social economical neighborhoods in which a teacher or adult will have to vary the process of communication in order to get his or her point across with dedication and teach the love for learning. Ms. Moore had been a wise educated woman who did not avoid the challenging attitudes of children going up in a disadvantaged economical community.
Many topics concerning education and its institutions are discussed in Amanda Ripley’s book “The Smartest Kids in The World: and how they got that way,” however, one of the most interesting can be found in chapter five “An American in Utopia.” The introduction of Kim, an American exchange student studying at a high school in Pietarsarri, Finland opens the chapter. Using Kim’s experiences in the Finish school system, Ripley continues to make a comparison between the students' in Finland and the United States. This segment highlights Finish teachers and students viewing education as a legitimate pursuit, while the American students more often than now saw it as a forced activity.
The school system was not always the way it is now. It was not schools that were mixed with every race under one building sitting next to each other getting the same education. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for schools to be segregated, in the case of Brown v Board of Education. This paper will argue that the Little Rock nine played a pivotal moment in history by leading to desegregation and bringing into light the social injustices during that time for African American students. Terry Barrett describes that there are six categories that photographs can fall in that describes their external context.
In “The Sanctuary of School” Lynda applies her personal life to the fact that some people think cutting down budgets for public schools will benefit when times get tough. Also that art, music and the creative ideas will be the first to go when budgets are cut. Lynda had a rough childhood where her parents had money issues and family members that needed temporarily to stay at her home (Barry, 721). The lack of attention from her parents made her look for attention elsewhere in this case the school. Lynda saw her teacher Mrs. LeSane as a mother figure.
Her teach mistakes her asking classmate for help with a math problem for insubordinate behavior. The main symbol is the “monumental desk” of the teacher (Kenyon, 9). It gives the image of a throne as if it the divine right of a teacher to have absolute authority over classroom. The education system control our childhood starts to emerge as the underlying theme. The author remembers the image of the “furnace closet” where only the worst boys were put and how “the warmth, the gloom, the smell/of sweeping compound clinging to the broom/soothed” (Kenyon, 13, 16-18).
After the development of the railroad system, many different groups of people had the ability to travel to South Dakota more easily. Once settlers were able to reach South Dakota they began setting up towns with stores, churches, and schoolhouses. The book, One-Room Country School: South Dakota Stories, is a compilation of testimonies from the teachers and students who attended these schoolhouses spread across the state. The various teachers and students who shared their stories came from many different areas of the world throughout many eras.
Miss Rinner felt that all she could do was keep the children under control and no one would expect any more than that from her. “She regarded teaching them anything as a hopeless task, so she devoted most of the day to maintaining order and devising ingenious ways of keeping them occupied. Because the school was in Harlem she knew she wasn’t expected to do any more than this.” (Petry 330) Today many schools in impoverished areas have the same policies for poor ethnic children, these policies are hidden under the pretense of closing the education cap between wealthy and poor students. Poor Teaching for Poor Children …in the Name of Reform, by Alfie Kohn, is an article about the difference in the educating of wealthy, middle class and poor children.
The common school movement was very much rooted as a means for control and conformity for a budding nation with a growing diverse population. A few of the front-runners of the common school movement were Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, Calvin Stowe, and Calvin Wiley among others (Gutek, 84; Groen, 6). They were a part of the Whig party and shared the belief that public education system would prevent class divisions and it would be an institution key in assimilating immigrants to the “American” mainstream (Groen, 6). Through assimilation in the schools the education of all citizens would stabilize and sustain the “American” culture (Groen, 6; Perko).
The writer supports the efforts of Peabody to establish a kindergarten for early childhood education. Without the motivation and drive to reform the current practices of American education, there is no telling how that would have affected today’s current kindergarten education. REFERENCE
America’s educational institutions continue to evolve in order to provide “the one best system” that will benefit students in their present and future educational endeavors. The One Best System written by David B. Tyack, interprets the challenges and criticisms of America’s beginning formal education institutions as well as discusses how the solutions were used to perpetuate existing power structures and social classes to shape education entirely. As the idea of educating America’s children began to spread, schools were viewed as a community due to the tightly knit groups that were formed among individuals. Community members believed that educational institutions were an opportunity for social amusement as they provided social contact with
The first argument we are able to present is how child soldiers are being used to fight wars for rebel groups or the government of third world countries. The first example of this being shown in the text is when the article called “Armed & Underage” by Jeffrey Gettleman we can see this example when he tells us “According to human-rights groups and the United Nations, the Somali government is using hundreds of children, some as young as 9, on the front lines.” This piece of evidence is able to tell us how the Somali government is using children as soldiers on the front lines. Also the article states as young as 9 to fight in wars for them against rebel groups. In fact, we can clearly see how kids are being used as child soldiers as we can clearly tell, but it does show us the age group the kids are being picked up from but also what the government uses these kids to fight wars.
The idea of classroom causing problems for America’s society is elaborated when President Johnson explains that many children in America don’t have enough money to afford school. “There your children’s lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.” In order for a society to be great, education is the foundation; schools are where child learn about their world, and what it is they will do in the future to earn money to live a good life. And to better prove his idea Johnson states, “Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it,” then questions what will happen in years when time has become elapsed to conclude any efforts are needed to come into play for there to be a Great Society.
While common school reformers pushed the same program in every state, the movement was met with mixed reactions and results. Putting Mann’s vision into today’s world, his movement begets even more complexities with educational trends.
In her narrative essay “The Sanctuary of School,” Lynda Barry recounts a story from her childhood that illustrates her relationships at school vs her relationships at home. She tells us how public school was her sanctuary from her unstable home life. It was a stable environment that she depended on. She tells us this when she says ,"[F]or the next six hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and stable world." Unlike at home, her school was a place she was noticed and cared about.
Many people think that most American schools are satisfactory. That is far from what is actually happening. The harsh reality is that schools that are unsatisfactory do exist. In Jonathan Kozol’s “Fremont High School”, he points out the flaws of a high school located somewhere in Los Angeles. This helps shine light on differences in the quality of education in various areas of the country.
