Education is Politics

Blog #11 Education is Politics (Connections) 

In this article Ira Shor suggests a new method of approaching teaching. Shor describes the politics of teaching as not only being in the classroom. Teachers must educate to standards defined by the national, state, local and even school building level. Shor believes there is a better way to achieve the desired results than the status quo. Rather than teachers doing all the talking and students listening, taking notes, and blindly repeating what they’ve been taught, today’s students should be empowered to participate in creating the curriculum, question the validity of the materials presented, and become more informed, inquisitive, and educated members of society. 

In the article Aria by Richard Rodriguez the following two guidelines, when utilized, would help to achieve an empowered education for its students. 

Collier’s fifth guideline states, “Do not forbid young students from code switching in the classroom. Understand the functions that code switching serves.” Code switching occurs when bilingual people use both languages in speech and they alternate between the two languages. When code switching occurs it does not mean that students do not understand the difference between the two languages. In many ways it demonstrates that the children are making an effort to communicate using everything they have learned. 

As explained in guideline seven, “Providing a balanced and integrated approach to the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.” Children become aware very early of the importance of written language through books, the media, signs, printed containers, and endless forms of environmental print. The main goal of an ESL instructor is to teach her students to be able to communicate verbally and understand written words. Communication is of vital importance if foreign speaking parents and their children want to be successful. 

According to Shor it is the teachers job to get to know their students, their backgrounds, their intellectual abilities, and what matters to the students in their everyday life. Curriculum that addresses this criteria will be more beneficial to the students and more readily learned. 

According to McIntosh in the article White Privilege, “whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us”.  When the curriculum is geared towards strictly whites students, when all the examples pertain to only white culture then the minority students are at a disadvantage before they even begin the lesson. Theses lessons also make the minority students feel inferior. 

Shor suggests that “subject matter is best introduced as problems related to students experience, in language familiar to them.” Teacher’s who use the problem-posing method correctly will have a better learning environment for all students.