Grewer Blog

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Conclusion: Systems of Control

May 1st, 2006 by · Comments Off · Tutoring Reflections

For my last comment of the year, I’d like to focus on an issue that is very important to me, a theme that played itself out over and over in my tutoring experiences.  I tutored three different students over the course of the semester, all three of them had something in common: they had been labeled “special education”, or “at-risk”, or both.  And this labeling crippled them.  It defined their reality.  It became a prison for their minds.

This bears a striking and disturbing resemblance to the system of control depicted in The Matrix.  The Matrix was also a prison for human minds, perhaps in a more tangible sense, but it worked the same way: by defining people’s reality and interfering with their perceptions.  However, in our world the control is wielded by other humans rather than machines, and it relies on verbal modification of people’s perceptions about themselves and the world.

We use labels like these to quickly communicate with other professionals about the general nature of a child’s problem or situation, but by doing this we modify our expectations for these kids.  And we communicate (inadvertently) our own low expectations for them.  This destroys their self-confidence and their motivation.  We are, in effect, creating the very conditions we describe.

We teachers have a tremendous responsibility for our charges.  We must take extra care to give our students the tools they need to succeed.  And the biggest tool students need is a dose of self-confidence. When we deny them that, everything else, all the technology, textbooks, and attention we give them, becomes irrelevant.  Without a bit of confidence, students can’t even begin to learn anything on their own, let alone with help.  Over and over, my experiences have demonstrated that, first with Kyle, then Kelly, then finally with Beatrice, and even with my peers here at college.  It will be difficult, but I set this as my primary goal: to give all my students the confidence they need to begin learning.

Flashback: Tutoring on March 3

May 1st, 2006 by · Comments Off · Tutoring Reflections

Looking back on some of my experiences, I’d like to comment on my trip to GMS on Friday, March 3.  On this day I found myself tutoring a student who needed some supervision finishing an old make-up exam.

Kelly (pseudonym) was having a bad day, but she livened up a bit during the session.  Occasionally she would ask me if this question or that was correct, and I would always have to respond, “I don’t know” or “What do you think?”, even though I did know, since I was not supposed to help her.  Kelly suffered from a debilitating lack of self-confidence; she didn’t believe herself capable of even completing the exam, let alone doing well.  I had to show her through a series of carefully prompting but non-divulging questions that she knew the information just fine.

In the ideal world, Kelly would have had the support she needed to begin with, but of course this was not the case.  Here I was forced to choose between allowing her to give up and risking the inadvertent divulgence of test information in order to reassure her and help build up her confidence, and I chose the latter.

Final Presentation Podcast

May 1st, 2006 by · Comments Off · Podcasts

Here is a link to my final presentation.  My feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/rgrewer

Repsonse to “Professor’s overpopulation views stir debate”

April 8th, 2006 by · 5 Comments · Personal Reflections

Wow.

I strongly suggest that you read this article before perusing my commentary. It’s short, but so many things trouble me about this article that I barely know where to start. So I’ll start at the beginning.

This news report pretends to be objective, but doesn’t come close to presenting an objective account of this news. For starters, if the professor’s remarks about overpopulation were taken out of context, can we at least get more direct quotation? It shouldn’t be for a news company to decide what is and isn’t important in this way. In the case of a hot debate over something like this, the public needs to have access to all the information. I’m insulted that some news company would snip small pieces of a professor’s speech and feed that to me like news. Thanks, CNN.

I suppose, as news consumers, the only thing we can do is to read between the lines to get the full story. From the last two paragraphs, one can surmise that the write of this article agrees with Forrest Minns, the person who said that “there was no mistaking Pianka’s disdain for humans and desire for their elimination”. The quotation from Don Hale in defense of Pianka was simply that, a defense. This indicates that the author is biased against Pianka. However, after rereading the article a few more times, I noticed that Mr. Forrest Minns is “an amateur scientist”. To me this suggests that I should take his remarks with a grain of salt.

There’s a reason why I don’t like reading/watching the news. It’s very very easy for writers to slip their own biases into supposedly “objective” news reports, and they do it all the time. If I wanted to read an editorial, I’d read an editorial; not the front page, or the education section. But maybe I ask too much of these human writers; after all, they’re only human. Maybe I’m missing the point of news completely, but I thought it was supposed to keep consumers informed and let them decide their own opinions rather than absorb someone else’s opinion subtly woven in with the facts.

Interesting: the LEAST important part of this news article to me was the NEWS it reported.

Response to Lisa Christensen’s Junk Food article

April 8th, 2006 by · Comments Off · Classmate Commentary

Reading Lisa’s response to the banning of junk food vending machines, it seems to me she raises a good point about personal responsibility. It’s very true that kids need to learn how to take care of their own bodies, especially considering that most adults do not seem to know how to do this. However, the teaching necessary for this learning to occur is not taking place in most schools; students are given no direct instruction about junk foods and their effect on the brain and body. It would be necessary for schools to incorporate this if they expected to see any improvement in students’ eating patterns.

However, I think there may be another more immediate reason for the lawmakers’ ban on junk food, one which has little to do with the students’ physical health. For it is well-known that eating sugary foods gives people a sugar high followed by a sugar crash, and both of these effects are very detrimental to students’ learning abilities. The sugar high will cause many students to disrupt class, or at least become antsy and distracted. The sugar crash will make many students very tired, and also impede the paying of attention to the teacher. These concerns are more immediate and relevant to teachers and lawmakers than long-term public health, so I suggest that this may be the lawmakers’ reason for banning junk food machines.

Response to Labaree “Public Education”

April 7th, 2006 by · Comments Off · Class Readings

I found Labaree’s article on educational goals to be quite provocative and critically analytical in a quite appealing way.  In TE250 we spend much time discussing how social efficiency is turning numerous lower-class students into manual labor rather than preparing them to compete for desirable social positions.  However, Labaree suggests that most of the problems in our society result from the social mobility goal taking over the agenda for schools.  Can this be reconciled with the problems we see with inner city schools and their propensity for sticking to discipline and not teaching critical thought?

Labaree does present a possible resolution to this contradiction.  He argues that

…..high levels of educational and social attainment are a real possibility for students, no matter what their social origins.  The educational system never absolutely precludes this possibility [emphasis mine] …Yet the probability of achieving significant social mobility through education is small, and this probability grows smaller at every step down the class scale.  (64)

In fact this concept, possibly closer to the truth than the idea that our system does preclude the possibility of social mobility, is much more threatening.  If we accept this then the blame for being stuck in poverty still rests on the poor person’s shoulders.

The American Dream: if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything in America.  This country has been the land of hope since the first colonists set foot here some 400 years ago.  This dream is held out to the rich and poor alike, but in reality the chance for a poor person to achieve it is much lower than for a middle class or rich person to achieve it.  This is in part due to the educational system.  And as long as we keep telling the poor that they’re poor because of their own ineptitude and nothing more, they will stay imprisoned by a falsehood.  And here we have the most dangerous kind of falsehood on our hands: a half-true falsehood.  (Is this sounding like a social commentary yet?)   It is true that no one is completely cut off from the path to success in America.  But we must look at the bigger picture here.  What’s important in all this is the overall trend.  In statistics we talk about the expected value of a variable; that’s the mean payoff from participating in many events.  The expected value of a poor person in this country is to stay poor his whole life.  Thus, I claim that Labaree, while highlighting a very real problem with our educational system, is neglecting the very real problem of social inequality in his discussion.

Response to Dansmathcast show #9

April 3rd, 2006 by · Comments Off · Personal Reflections

I listened to Dansmathcast, a program on “math for the masses”.

One thing about the technology of podcasts is that it allows teachers to break some of the standard rules of education.  For example, it feels to me that Dan went too fast, but one nifty feature of the technology is that you can simply pause the podcast and practice on your own, or take time to process the information presented.  For this reason, I find the podcast a very good alternative to conventional educational methods.

I found myself quite surprised when Dan snuck in a little cultural commentary to his podcast: “An example is the controversial IQ measurement…  The validity and cultural bias of this measurement is open to question…”  This was especially interesting to me considering that I had just read about the IQ test recently for a TE class.  It made me think about professionalism and what it means to be a teacher, and to examine my opinions and philosophy of education.  It seems to me that political commentary has no place in the classroom, especially a math classroom.  We teachers have substantial influence over our students, and thus we have a responsibility to not present them with ideas that they aren’t in a position to evaluate for themselves.  However, I also realize that this viewpoint is in dissonance with my previously voiced views on critical pedagogy, which states that critical thinking must be taught within the context of social injustice.  To resolve this dissonance, I suggest that political ideas shouldn’t be voiced by teachers unless they specifically qualify their ideas by explaining to the students that this is just their opinion.  The goal here is that students are made aware of the political ideas as they enter the students’ thoughts, rather than the ideas simply “sneaking” in through the students’ trust of the teachers.

Response to Gorman’s Podcast Experience

April 2nd, 2006 by · Comments Off · Classmate Commentary

After reading Amanda Gorman’s response to “Really Learn Spanish”, I was surprised to see what things she disagreed with.  For example, she disagreed with van Rooyen’s claim that by learning the pronunciation rules of Spanish you can pronounce any word even if you’ve never seen it.  Gorman claims that “Just knowing the rules does not guarantee you are going to pronounce the word correctly”.  In order to disprove a claim by counterexample, as Gorman seems to be attempting, it is necessary to provide a counterexample.  I was confused as to whether or not her statement about the word “libre” was supposed to be a counterexample or simply an example of a Spanish word and its pronunciation.

Also, Gorman disagrees with van Rooyen’s suggestion to read lots of Spanish literature.  She writes, “I know that if I just sat down and read book after book in Spanish I would not learn what was going on.”  This argument seems fallatious; first, Gorman gives the impression that she has not actually tried van Rooyen’s advice, and yet she critiques it as if she has.  How does she “know” that she would not learn what was going on?  Furthermore, she cites only her own experience and then overgeneralizes her experience, implying that van Rooyen’s advice is not suitable for any person trying to learn Spanish, which may or may not be true.  However, if we consider van Rooyen’s argument on its own merits, it seems to me that he may have a point.  Often, for a person who’s reading a book in English, it’s possible to figure out words from context.  It seems to me that this may have been what van Rooyen was getting at.  Obviously getting words from context is very difficult if you can’t even begin to understand the context.  However, Van Rooyen claims that his podcast was for persons who were familiar with Spanish, perhaps like a 10-year old native English speaker is familiar with English, so this assumption is warranted, considering his target audience.  Therefore, I conclude that perhaps van Rooyen’s “Really Learn Spanish” podcast deserves a closer look than indicated by Gorman.

Response to Student Protests against Immigration Laws

April 2nd, 2006 by · 1 Comment · Personal Reflections

This article reports on the school districts’ response to student walkout protests that occurred in response to some legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants.

Although I’m not completely familiar with the circumstances of this legislation and protest, I’m reminded of a protest that occurred in my high school.  A certain substitute teacher whom everyone really liked was fired in my senior year, and the school would not provide any details.  In response, the students organized and executed a walkout in the spring during the last few weeks of class.  However, the teachers all announced beforehand that anyone who left would receive a truancy, and for us seniors that meant having to take all of our final exams.  I opted to stay in the class (rather than walking out) for multiple reasons.

Civil disobediance may be a cornerstone of American culture, but in my case it wasn’t justified for a few reasons.  First, I wasn’t a conscientious objector.  In fact, I have the feeling that some students saw the protest simply as an excuse to leave class.  Or perhaps more deeply, some saw it as a way to declare their independence from authority.  I imagine that very few people truly objected to this teacher’s firing upon moral grounds.

Second, even if I had been a conscientious objector, there are other ways to voice my opinions.  For example, I could write a petition.  It might have been less destructive and “scary” to the administration if we’d simply petitioned them instead of walkout protesting.  To me, the key to civil disobedience is to not be destructive or physically threatening.  We want to create a situation that can’t be ignored, but we don’t want to threaten the stability of civilization or bring any sort of martial law down on ourselves.

Therefore, based on the information provided in the article, I conclude that the students didn’t protest in the optimal way.  Better methods would include going to the capitol building to speak with legislators, writing letters to the legislators and district officials.

On Burbules’ and Berk’s “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy”

April 2nd, 2006 by · Comments Off · Class Readings

After reading about critical thinking and critical pedagogy, I find myself very impressed with the critical pedagogy theories. They seem to take the concept of critical evaluation of belief and move to a deeper level by asking “Who benefits from the general acceptance of this claim?” This is really the most important thing for our society.

Critical thinking, although necessary, provides an incomplete analysis of most claims. With critical thinking, one would stop after determining that a particular statement about minorities scoring lower on standardized tests (for example) is true. However, the real matter of interest here is who benefits from the acceptance of this trend? People who accept this fact simply on the basis of its level of factuality are making unwarranted assumptions about the intelligence of minorities, essentially assuming that they are not capable of doing well on such a test. However, we must ask ourselves WHY such a tendency exists; WHY is it that minorities generally do more poorly on standardized tests? Only after we ask ourselves this question can we hope to identify and fight against the injustice perpetuated by such a claim. In the end, it seems to me that critical pedagogy is the deeper, more useful philosophy.

Burbules and Berk raise an interesting point about each philosophy’s perception of the other. They claim that, according to critical thinking, critical pedagogy is a process of indoctrination, which impedes the learning of true criticality. However, critical pedagogy sees this problem from the opposite side: that students are already being indoctrinated and a socio-analytical perspective is the only thing that will bring them to criticality. I find it difficult to reconcile these differences or uncover a fallatious argument in either perspective. First, my definition of critical thinking: “To objectively evaluate information and come to a conclusion.” On the one hand, critical thinking takes as its premise that “teaching students to think crically must include allowing them to come to their own conclusions”, and this I agree with fully, for to bring a student to your conclusions is to deny them practice at the second part of critical thinking: coming to conclusions. On the other hand, critical pedagogy takes as its premises that “indoctrination is the case already” (which I believe) and that bringing students to criticality “can only be done by alerting them to the social conditions that have brought this about”. I suppose in the end that it’s this final claim that I must disagree with. Dealing with social power structures and constraints may be the single most important thing we can do with our criticality, but it’s not the only way to learn criticality. I conclude that, even though critical pedagogy seems more applied and less abstract than critical thinking, it has its downfalls and traps as well.