More Big Thoughts on Schools

Hirsch believes that students should know the fundamental information, which includes memorizing the presidents of the United States. In his opinion, education should be taken most seriously during elementary school, where most fundamental studies happen. Test scores are a more accurate method of assessing a student's knowledge and portfolios are too opinionated. Students need to know their basic information so that they are able to read college-level texts. Knowing how to read and tackle difficult passages are useless; students need to know the actual facts related to the subject.

Sizer, on the other hand, believes that education should be more focused during high school, or before the end of education so that students are prepared to critique if necessary. Succeeding, in Sizer's point of view, is to understand some of the basic knowledge but also to set their own realistic standards that they can achieve. Education should not be shaped by the state and federal administrators but by the students whom the education is being taught to. Test scores does not equate with his definition of serious education. In fact, he proposed to drop the system of test scores, grades, and categories based on age.

I feel that Hirsch and Sizer have a chance to work together. Look at Millennium High School in New York City; they offer AP classes, have their students take regents and write exhibitions on top of that. Hirsch suggest that "tests are far fairer than more subjective means of assessing student performance" while Sizer prefer "explore a single subject for several months and then present an ''exhibition'' of their work to demonstrate what they've learned"(Mosle). Millennium incorporates both ideas together to put loads of pressure on students and who knows, it might be better for their students.

In my experience, I think that SOF used to be one of Sizer's schools. Recently, it has become more of Hirsch's, with the division of math and science classes depending on student's speed. The only classes that remains loyal to Sizer are the social studies and English classes. We the students have a say in what we want to learn in the class and the English class is more open to discussions as oppose to in class essays that are treated as tests. Math and science classes require basic knowledge to understand the more complicated materials that appear in further studies.

Big Expectations for School

Obama's view on school is that schools can provide the opportunity to discover your talents. He delivers a great speech but his solution seems too easy. He says that we can have the best schools in the world; easy to say, but what are the steps he is willing to take to create the best schools in the world. What is the best school in the world, relative to him? Obama wants schools to prepare students for the future, to get good jobs and to get the economy going. Even if some students have the best education out there, there are other factors like racism that stop them from getting the job they want. And if everyone gets what they want, the economy is going to be in high demand for the jobs that people are skeptic about applying for. Obama names the people who were determined to finish high school and go to college. Sure, school can teach you to be persistent but is college necessary to get a good job? What do we learn in college that cannot be learned earlier in our lives?

The article about liberal arts also argue about career but at a personality level. Schools mold our ideas, help us learn to discover ideas, and teach us to think creatively. I don't think art is teaching students a necessary skill in the workplace. What corporations look for are practical solutions to problems and if studying art is enforcing imagination skills, then liberal arts may not be all that important. But other than the workplace, I think studying art is a nice personal hobby. Thomas Friedman implies that schools train us to become tools of corporations across the world like Intel. If corporations cannot get the best engineers in their own country, then they will get them out of other countries such as China. I think school is also encouraging students to compete; it has become sort of a battlefield among students not only in schools themselves but throughout the world. Friedman suggests to step up the education a notch and compete with the education around the world. Even schools within America are competing against each other to see whose students get into the best colleges.

Significance

What are the similarities and differences between schools in America and schools in China? How can schools in America learn from schools in China and what aspects should American schools promote to other schools? What elements affect the schooling system and how schools teach, what schools teach?

I want to compare how American schools and their education compare to other countries, especially China. What are we lacking in our schools and what is strong about our education system? I have heard stories about schools in Japan, how Japanese treat their schools like their second home. They wear no shoes, or shoes other than the ones they wear to go out, in school and clean the school as if it were their house. How does this affect their learning and does it affect their point of view on school so that they feel more motivated in school? Chinese immigrants come to America, risking the fact that their children might be less educated than if they had attended school in China. Is it better to send kids to other countries to better their education or is it worth it to have kids stay in America?

I hope my research will help others in the future make the better choice in their education. They have the choice to accelerate their knowledge and have it for future use or they can take their time to develop social skills. It also seems that some countries encourage competition, to see who is good enough to be hired by large corporations. I think it is also weird to have students compete against each other in communist countries like China, where everyone is on the same level. This competition is also parallel to Darwin's survival of the fittest theory; students are trying to better their education so they will not be the ones working at Duane Reade.

Initial Internet Research on Schooling

Heaton, Nora. "Proposed Bill Could Create Charter Schools." http://www.dailyiowan.com/2010/02/22/Metro/15773.html. The Daily Iowan. Web. 22 February 2010.
This state bill was proposed to create schools with an strong focus on the curriculum and more extracurricular opportunities. These schools will focus their education on particular subjects, so if the school will focus on performing arts, then the curriculum and extracurricular offerings will circle the subject.

With more of a focus and more opportunities to explore student's skills, charter schools may be able to do more than traditional public schools. They provide the motivation that some traditional public schools do not and may be a better option for those who have aleady discover their skills.

Ford, Peter. "In China, Kindergarten Costs More Than College." http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0223/In-China-kindergarten-costs-more-than-college. The Christian Science Monitor. 23 February 2010.

It costs $150 a month to send a kid to kindergarten and $105 a month to send a high school graduate to college. Kindergarten in China are highly competitive and because one parent want the child to get a head start in education, every other parent wants to too.

Every parent in China is having their child learn social skills at the age of 1 and learning another language at the age of 3. Even though it is expensive to pay for kindergarten, parents pay extra to have their child attend after-school for extracurricular classes. Chinese parents are putting emphasis on early education (kindergarten) rather than college education.

Park, Ju-min. "North Korea-Funded Schools In Japan Have an Image Problem." http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-japan-schools23-2010feb23,0,5983432.story. Los Angeles Times. 23 February 2010.

Some schools in Japan are run by Koreans so they require a picture of the leader of North Korea. Koreans attending and teaching at those schools in Japan face a huge identity crisis which include being attacked by the Japanese because of their nationality.

Some Japanese see the picture of North Korea's leader on school walls as an act of propaganda. Therefore, the picture was taken down, South Korea's and Japan's history were added to the curriculum, and students were not required to wear traditional Korean uniforms after-school (but they still wear it in school). Imagine what information are hidden from us and how limited we are in what we can do in or out of school.

Edit:

Fajen, Micholyn. "Chinese, Valley High Teens Speak the Same Language." http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100302/NEWS02/3020339/-1/AMES/Chinese-Valley-High-teens-speak-the-same-language. DesMoinesRegister. 2 March 2010.

Students in an exchange program from China were surprised that American schools are less about individual work and more about collaborative work. Although Chinese schools are more strict and individual, the students attending schools in China are better educated than Americans.

This article lays out the significance of balancing students' social life and their education. Chinese students do not even have the time to get distracted in class and are not able to communicate as much as Americans do. It seems that both American and Chinese schools are not able to find the balance between social and educational life so they focus on separate aspects.

Clare, John. "Can We Learn From Chinese Schools?" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/expateducation/4190692/Can-we-learn-from-Chinese-schools.html. Telegraph. 2 March 2010.

Schools in China are very structured; little kids sing a song they memorized to go along with their exercising routine without teacher's instructions. While school administrators in China are opposing their traditional way of teaching, the writer believes that other countries should learn a little from China's method of promoting good behavior.

This article describes some scenario of a typical Chinese school and it shows how well China controls their students. Students in China also dorm at the age of three and this might be as a way to strengthen the community. How does it oppose to living with family (the pros and the downside to it) and what results are produced from having kids live with other kids?

Additional Works Consulted:

• Wade, Stephen. "Teaching About the Beijing Olympics Reaches Deep Into China's Schools." http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2007-12-18-2096487223_x.htm. USAToday. 2 March 2010.
• Miller, Sunlen. "Obama Tackles High Dropout Rates, Targets "Chronically Troubled' Schools." http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/obama-tackles-high-dropout-rates-targets-chronically-troubled-schools-.html. ABC News. 2 March 2010.
• Ravitch, Diane. "First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/first-lets-fire-all-the-t_b_483074.html. The Huffington Post. 2 March 2010.

School Interviews x 5 & Synthesis

Part A:

Me: First reactions to school.

Brooklyn Tech Student: Boring and a lot of work.

Me: What you learn in school?

BTS: Whatever they teach?

Me: How are the information helpful?

BTS: Brings me to college.

Me: What are you going to learn in college?

BTS: Whatever I am majoring in.

Me: That's gonna help you get a job?

BTS: Yes yes.

Me: First reactions to school.

Baruch Student: Um... it's okay. Boring.

Me: What would you do if you did not have to go to school?

BS: I would have more time to hang out with my friends, sleep in.

Me: So what did you do during the break?

BS: Went to cousin's, went shopping, went to movies, did homework.

Me: You didn't hang out with friends?

BS: Yeah, I did.

Me: Now that vacation is coming to an end, how well did you spend your vacation?

BS: I don't know o_o

I started to ask her more about her vacation. She stayed home, on the computer, played video games, and watched drama. I wanted to know how well she spent her vacation so I asked if she wanted to respend a day during her vacation. She said after being finished with the dramas, "there wasn't much to do" for her. After drama, she started to do homework. She had wished that she went outside but since there was snow, she couldn't really go outside. In a circumstance in which there was no homework but it was snowing that day, she said she doesn't know what to do. She said that she would use her PC to check updates on dramas, chat on AIM, and check her email. If her neighbors had been home, she would have played board games with them. She also mentioned that she would catch up on her sleep. Homework sometimes take up her sleeping time, especially if there are projects. She starts homework at 6 or 7 and gets home at 6 and sometimes 4:30.

In my third interview, the person's (gender unknown but we will call him a he) first reaction to school is "sleeping time!" It is "pretty much" what he does at school because "school is boring." School is "kind of" a waste of time because his "teachers don't really teach [him] anything." He claims to have "bad teachers" who "get really off the subject and don't teach [them] anything. They can't teach for [$#!t]." The teachers talk about their life stories but the students do not learn anything from their stories.

Me: First reaction to school.

SOF Graduate: What school first?

Me: High School and College.

SOFG: For high school, it was quite an experience for me. Earlier on in my educational life, I didn 't go to such a diverse school. So for SOF, I wasn't use to the diversity there. It was pretty uncomfortable for me, but eventually I got use to it. It gave me an opportunity to learn about other cultures.

For college, I didn't really look forward to it. I was yet in another city-environment location, which I didn't really like. It wasn't a pleasant sight for me as I walk around the area of my college. I was worry about college when I first got in. I wasn't sure the difficulty of the things being taught and the pace that they were being taught. After taking courses for a while, I started being comfortable with it. I liked the small community that were formed because of the mandatory group project that needed to be done for the semester. It was a fun project to research on and my groupmates made it even more enjoyable in the process.

Me: What do you think is the point of school?

SOFG: To prepare you for the real world, educationally as well as maturity-wise.

Me: Both High School and College?

SOFG: I guess you can say that. But I feel like HS just prepares you for college. Not too much of what college is "all about."

Me: So what is the point of High School?

SOFG: Hmm...for our high school, I felt like it was just to prepare us for presentations and writing papers. It was also to prepare us for the lower level courses in college.

Me: First reactions to school.

High School Student: I like to learn but I feel like I don't learn enough in school.

Me: What is preventing you from learning?

HSS: Homework, and having to be forced to do so many things. I rather learn for fun.

Me: What is homework doing to us?

HSS: Sometimes, I think some homeworks are useless 'cause it doesn't help me and like I said before, I feel like it's forcing us to learn.

Me: What would you like to learn?

HSS: I like all the subjects but I just don't like the way teachers are teaching it. All they do is power-points and it's soo boring.

Me: How do you want the information presented to you?

HSS: I want to have more experience; like for science, more labs.

Me: What is wrong with the education system?

HSS: There's too much emphasis on testings and grades and students are getting so stressed out from stuff like that. I mean, it's important to test but sometimes, that's what it becomes all about. It's not even about learning anymore, it's about getting like a 5 on an AP exam or something. It's the wrong motivation for kids to learn.

Me: What can we do to eliminate this stress?

HSS: We could get teachers to talk more about learning instead of tests 'cause I know some teachers will be like, "if you don't do this or something, you will fail the test" or "if you guys don't pay attention, you won't be able to pass." They should stop saying stuff like that and they should have fun 'cause then the students have fun.

Part B:

The first snow-day of the year and the day we got back taught us that school is taking up so much of our time that we don't even know what to do without school. I decided to investigate that further and asked my friend about her vacation. When I asked her how she spent her vacation, she did not take the time to think and answered with an "I don't know." It seems that we do not reflect on our vacation, on the things we do in life including what we learn in school. We go to school, go home, and go back to school thinking that we only listen to garbage coming out of teacher's mouths. There is no room to rethink what we have been taught. She didn't know what to do without homework until I suggested board games and computer. What she said about her neighbor may be because I suggested board games or it may not; we won't know. She tries to use little things like checking for updates, email, and chatting on AIM to fill up her day but she does not realize the long day ahead of her.

The SOF Graduate caught me off guard with her first response. People have said boring and all these negative words that are short and simple but she gave me a full response of her experience in High School and her current College experience. I didn't really investigate her experience at school but I wanted her point of view on the purpose of school. She gave an almost-typical answer when she said that school prepares one for the real world but she added that school mature us. I think it is true that schools are meant to mature us but how well are American schools doing so? Colleges may be doing a fine job maturing us and High Schools are meant to prepare us for college. Is this step needed? Do we need to go to toddler school to be prepared for elementary school to be prepared for middle school to be prepared for high school? I believe that we have not learned anything in our past years and that schooling should be cut short and concise, teaching everything that is needed in less than 18 years.

First School Assignment

Powerful questions:

• What percent of students actually go to school to learn?
• Why is a college degree needed to become a bank teller?
• How does physical harm from teachers in school affect level of education?

Ideas:

• College is just another four years of our lives wasted.
• Some teachers at SOF are tired to see students after school because they are tired of playing nice in front of them.
• Maturity and the structure of school have a high correlation; therefore, students are unable to decide on a major at an early stage.

Experiences:

• I go to school to chill with friends.
• I do not know as much about social studies as I should know.
• I am brought up to think that college will teach me everything I need to know to get a career.

One reason why I look foward to school is because my friends are in school. This, I believe, is one of the reasons why some are unable to do well in school. Because their friends are in school, they focus on socializing with their friends rather than getting the most out of their education. On the other hand, some are positively affected by their friends in school. Because their friends are in school and working for their education, they are influenced by their friends so they work for their education. Others are led into a life in which education do not play a role.

This is not a good thing. Students are forced to sit in classrooms for more than six hours a day and all they focus on is relaxing with their friends. If students are able to redefine the purpose of school, then they will never get the most of their education. And if Obama wants to increase the time in school, the level of education would not increase because it would just be more time sitting at desks (and I could use those few hours sleeping).

I think this behavior starts at a young age. Some kids enjoy school because teachers have the time to take them to the park while their parents do not. They learn to connect with other kids at school during recess and look forward to seeing their friends the next day. As students, we all hate the thought of homework and approve the thought of lunch or break from classroom. And as this behavior continues, we will miss the important lessons and become troubled in the future. In order to break away from this behavior, I believe that we must change our point of view on school so that we can actually make room to learn new materials.

Art Project Cool

First, I would like to draw attention to the song lyrics.

"You ain't going nowhere as long as he is the driver."

If you follow him, you won't get anywhere.

"One look at him tells me you want to be taken higher."

He does not have what it takes to make you cooler.

"Why waste time when you know I got it. Come on baby you know you want it. You know it's possible to get what you're looking for."

I have what you are looking for so you should be following me if you want it.

"How many people can do it like me? Zero. Keep it so cool like me? Zero."

I am the only cool one; no one can be like me.

My video focuses particularly on skills; one of the main components that make one cool. There is the guy with motorcycle tricks, another with driving skills, one with dancing skills, and the other with skateboard tricks. The last part of my video is about this kid who gave into peer pressure, went against his "self," and dyed his hair. He said that dying his hair blonde is not cool, that doing so is not "him," and that it is not cool to give into peer pressure. But what he really means is that his culture will not approve of his hair color; his cultural map says that it is not cool to dye his hair blonde. There is no "me;" we are shaped by our cultural maps.

The first thing I needed to make this video was a "cool" song. I did not think this song was intended to portray cool but I thought the lyrics could be taken that way. Next, I had to find clips that looked cool on youtube. I showed my friend the clip of the motorcycle and she thought it was cool so I decided to use that clip. I thought the driving skills was awesome so I had that in my video. My brother thought the cwalk was cool so we decided to put that in the video. I found the clip of the guy with the blonde hair when I was surfing youtube and he mentioned cool so I had him in my video. I used a video editing program to put the clips together and the effects were done by my younger brother.

I think the video is pretty cool. The stuff in the video were cool, some of the effects went well with parts of the video, and the song is cool. But after watching the video several times, it gets old and boring, like any cool products. This is the emptiness that cannot be filled.

Credits:

theundergroundskater

kennichi89

peterdfl

pochuku

kevjumba

Varsity - Zero

my bro