Are you still obsessed with education?

In Grace Boggs’ article, “Education: The Great Obsession”, she argues the need for change in the public school system. The present education system is roughly two generations old, it's almost as if our society is afraid to change it because it “feels” like that has always been the way.  Originally, education was needed for worker children to gain basic skills to obtain a job, at the time, during the industrial revolution. Now, the idea of education or the way education is presented should change to avoid an unwanted possibility that schools are becoming “... babysitting institutions in which their children had been socially promoted year after year”. Generations later in the current education system, are our students being challenged? Are students being an active part of their own learning?

As educators, we should allow students to learn from their own experiences and as well as the experiences of others. Boggs states, “The experience of performance is necessary to learning. Only through doing things and evaluating what they have done can human beings learn the intrinsic relation between cause and effect,” I choose this quote because as human beings, no matter what race, age, or gender, we can learn through and from past experiences. I feel this should be a huge part of education. Hearing different stories. Everyone learns differently, so we share our learning.  Just as everyone experiences life differently, so why not share those experiences? It’s a skill our young learners should be able to express. Which reminded me of a quote from Adrienne Goss article, “A Simple, Revolutionary Idea”, “children need to know and understand their history and how it informs the work that they need to do in the future.”(62) Our students our the citizens of the future.

Essentially, we are teaching our students to be citizens of the world, citizens of our community and it starts in the classroom. In “Imagining futures: the public school and possibility” by Maxine Greene, “the creation of communities in classrooms may be one of the most difficult and yet the most essential undertakings in the schools of the future.” (273) We need to create communities of the current time, not communities of the past. Our past should be a part of creating those communities. Today, school can be seen as something you have to do. The obsession of knowledge is still present but how much of it is fueled by pure motivation? I think back to the new question Adrienne Goss would ask if she reworte her undergraduate social foundations position paper “What will make my students come alive?” I want my student to feel they have control in what they are learning. They may not know at first but I would like to be there and guide them to where they would succeed best. Discover what their passions will be, I want them to come alive.

After reading these articles I started thinking about the “American Dream” and how education is usually something that has to been done to succeed coming overseas or borders. As a product of immigrant parents, education is something I had to do because it was an opportunity given to me by my parents. I continued my education as a thank you to my parents but it was also something I wanted to continue to pursue. I was in control of my learning.
Here is Matt Beaudreau and his TedTalk “It's About to Get Uncomfortable: Education in America”. He talks about the “uncomfortable” ideas in the American education system and the idea of change and challenge. He says “...when you start to challenge tradition in education…people get upset.” One of the first pictures Beaudreau shows is a picture of students sitting in rows;  waiting for instructions, waiting to be told what to do and what to learn. He goes on to talk about students leading the way to what their learning looks like and on their schedule.