Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work
By: Jean Anyon
1)"During that week that two-digit division was introduced (or at any other time), the investigator did not observe any discussion of the idea of grouping involved in division, any use of manipules, or any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other mathematical process."
-this really bugged me because I hate that there is no room for creativity or deeper understanding of the materials being taught. I feel like a huge part of learning something new is knowing why it works and how it works, not just the fact that it works. There are no real world connections being made and no ideas are being formed. The students are being taught to not ask questions or make inferences, they are being taught to follow a system and to not veer from that system.
2) "One teacher explained to me, 'Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use."
-I was shocked when I read this. It made me so mad to see a teacher not expecting anything more from her students than for them to only ever use simple punctuation. Is it not the job of the teacher to expand a student's knowledge and help them grow as people so that they can become successful? The fact that this teacher was so convinced that her students would never amount to anything really made me mad, but the fact that she was okay with that was even worse.
3) "In the middle class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a good grade."
-I feel like too many schools do this, the goal of getting the right answer is the most important thing. I feel like understanding the concepts and being able to form conclusions is what should be important. Being able to identify C as the correct answer to a question that was from a book or lesson is so primitive and unprogressive in really pushing brain activity and forming ideas and creativity. These kids are not being shown how important it is to make ideas or formulate questions and that it is not always most important that the right answer is the absolute goal in life.
I just think that what good is it knowing that the answer is B or C if you can't explain why or go into a more deeper thought process. Is that really learning. Learning should be being able to apply concepts to real life situations, not just knowing that pie = 3.14 but why
ReplyDelete"this really bugged me because I hate that there is no room for creativity or deeper understanding of the materials being taught." I think MacLaren does a great job of trying to explain that this outrage is while well aroused through an examination of education, the basic premise applies to the social class as a whole. The lower class is never encouraged are practically allowed to be creative because creativity requires freedom and mental autonomy and that is some thing the managerial classes will not let happen without a struggle.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kevin. I think too often do we see the lower class being completely over looked in terms of their education. Everyone should be given the same oppertunity
ReplyDeleteI agree...we need to know why things are the way they are and not just memorizing answers. Teacher need to learn how to be creative and not just make the students act like robots.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Corinne. Becoming a teacher is all about creativity, and making learning fun for the children. The more fun it is, the more students are going to get the material and acknowledge it.
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