Talking Points 10

Education is Politics
By: Ira Shor

1) "If the students' task is to memorize rules and existing knowledge, without questioning the subject matter or the learning process, their potential for critical thought and action will be restricted."
     -I liked this quote a lot and totally agree with it.  How can someone fully understand something if they do not question where it came from and why it is what it is.  By just taking notes and memorizing facts, students forget how to be creative and do not use their full capacity to learn because they are not questioning the material or forming ideas/opinions about it.  Students need to really take things apart and analyze them piece by piece and ask questions and share their thoughts because that is what learning really is.  Discovering answers through their own questions that they had formed all on their own.
2) "A curriculum that does not challenge the standard syllabus and conditions in society informs students that knowledge and the word are fixed and are fine the way they are, with no role for students to play in transforming them, and no need for change."
     - I loved this quote so much and it really stuck with me because I hadn't ever really thought about learning this way before, but it totally makes sense.  Education is not only about learning facts and the way life is, but it also is about what we can do as the upcoming generation to revise it where needed and add our own spice to things.  When discussing something in class, like a law for example, the students should be allowed to form opinions and decide whether or not that law is working and if it is not, then how can they fix it.  School is not just the vacuum effect where kids just go and suck up information to retain, but have no thoughts or questions about any of it.  Rather, school should be where kids CAN question things and form ideas on how to improve things in life.  Nothing is ever perfect and everyone has ideas and opinions and by sharing them in the classroom everyone benefits and gets to express creative thoughts and gain some from fellow classmates.
3) "People begin life as motivated learners, not as passive beings.  Children naturally join the world around them, and by using play to internalize the meaning of words and experience."
     -I am a firm believer in active learning and participation.  I think getting the kids up and thinking and questioning something that is a fact in life really helps them to learn how to create critical theories and ideas, which is so important in furthering education.  If someone just sits like a lump on a log and is absorbing all this information, but then does nothing with it is teaching the kids that they have no part in this world and that school is not preparing them for anything.  School and education should be about learning how to create ideas and how to argue a fact and sharing ideas with others.  These are the things that are needed in life, not what year the french and indian war was, but interactions with others and voicing and creating opinions.