Reaction to Packets

It was interesting to read all 3 packets and to see different perspectives on education. I agreed a lot with Dewey on how an educator should integrate the home and community life into the classroom. I would imagine that it would make things easier for the student to have the same type of responibilities and value of the student in both home and classroom. I think Giroux had a good idea about education but I'm not sure that I believe it full heartly. I think education should help you to learn things that will help you through your life, but education shouldn't focus on the future. It is important to teach things that can be applied right now but that can also be used for the future. For example, in elementary school teachers help to teach students how to build relationships and that is something that will be used throughout life, no matter what age. If we only focus on the future, we will only turn out machines and not people. Our schools have already been focusing on test scores way too much and that decreases the ability to develop a person and creativity. Test scores don't say much other than a child can memorize and spit information back out. What happens to all the common sense a student might know? What happens to skills such as sewing or baking? Just because a child may not score the highest on a standardized test doesn't mean that they aren't smart. There are mulitple intelligences and each should be regconized and valued just as much as the next one. Like Giroux said, "how can you speak to people if you don't celebrate their voices". As educators (or future educators) we should value the differences and celebrate the diversities in classrooms today. This idea semi relates to Friere's ideology on education. If we can celebrate the diversity, then maybe we can learn something along the way. The students get the chance to be the teacher and the teacher gets to become the student. By having the student teach something, it helps the student to initially feel special but it also helps to have a purpose behind the topic of discussion. It makes learning more enjoyable and therefore, more worthwhile. Teachers can learn just as much from the student. We should look forward to learning, otherwise you should not be an educator. If we can learn from the student, it will make the atmosphere better and it helps to make us better educators and isn't that what we are striving for? To be better teachers? Dewey, Giroux, and Friere all have ideas that intermingle with each other, it just depends on how much of each one we choose to include in our classroom. I hope I can become a better teacher every year as I learn from my mistakes and I learn from the students. Guess those are my views, see you guys later!