Since schools are dumbing students down for the sake of the economy, students are being compared to the products of a factory. School is like central factory that produces workers to function other factories that run the economy. Schools make things too easy for students, therefore not allowing the students to mature through struggle. This leads to longer years of education which continues to make things easy for students and the students still cannot mature. It is a cycle; an unbreakable cycle created to aid the economy. Parents are advised to have their kids "learn to enjoy their own company;" I feel that this will drive kids to seek company later on in life. Everyone needs attention so if kids do not get it early in life, I think they will seek the attention later. Even if one can stand being alone, one would have difficulty developing social skills; limiting the chance to learn from others.
The second chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire uses the analogy of banking to describe his view on schooling. The teachers deposits information into the students who are sitting there waiting for teachers to deposit something. Students who are so caught up in storing information leaves no room to think critically about the information handed to them. They are like "containers" or "receptacles" ready to be filled with information pouring from teachers. Because they are being "filled" with information, they do not get to process and really understand the information.
Students accept the idea that they are empty ones, thus giving purpose to the teachers so that the teachers think that they are the ones teaching. Teachers do not know everything; there are some things that teachers do not know and that students know. School, beside the fact that it is a place where kids meet and hang out, should be a place where people learn from each other. It should not be just about the teacher teaching because students also have insights to offer. "The more the oppressed can be led to adapt to [a] situation, the more easily they can be dominated." This makes me wonder why colleges and bosses require applicants to be able to adapt to changes. Is it because colleges can better control the students and it is easier for bosses to control the workers? Is being able to adapt a bad thing or do we want to be able to work things out?
Delpit does not fully agree with the progressive approaches to pedagogy but also does not fully agree with the simple "basic skills" approach. The progressive approach worked for some students but not for others and the "basic skills" approach do not encourage critical thinking. Delpit believes that basic knowledge is needed to learn how to pronounce words like "me." Her solution is for teachers to teach materials related to the students' lives and to explicitly explain the purpose of the lesson so students do not feel they are being lied to. In an institution, the ones in power are the ones benefited and everyone else do not matter.
In order to teach the materials related to the students' lives, Delpit suggest that "each classroom incorporate strategies appropriate for all the children." I find this difficult to achieve since everyone live a different lifestyle. For example in Freedom Writers, the teacher was unable to solve everyone's problems in one classroom sitting. The teacher needed to track every student down individually, figure out the problem, and then solve it. For a teacher to develop a curriculum that incorporated materials related to all students is nearly impossible.
Ms. D finds it very difficult to connect with every one of her students. Her curriculum consists of mixture of the standard curriculum and her opinion on the student's education. For example, the standard curriculum required her to teach the play Antigone but she also decided to teach world literature. She used to assign two essays a week and spent hours grading them, providing little feedback for students so she decided to decrease the frequency of essays, allowing her to write her feedbacks in the form of a letter. Ms. D feels obligated to care about her students but there is a limit; it is hard for her to be a counselor because she cannot have that deeper connection with students.
Ms. D is not able to save every one of her students because she cannot connect with all of her students. Even so, she tries to give the same chance of being saved by assigning less essays and analyzing students more. She cannot have that deeper connection with students without it looking like something else. If teachers cannot have that deeper connection with students, the student definitely cannot be saved by teachers. However, her ability to tweak the curriculum so that she can adjust it to fit her ideas will aid her students to save themselves and help them solve their own problems.
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