Blog 3: Education

I worked at a school in the Peoria Unified School District for 6 years.  From the time I was in 8^th grade up until my first year in college, I wanted to be a teacher.  It wasn’t until I was actually inside a school, seeing all of the different components and aspects that a teacher experiences that I decided there was no way in the world I could ever be a teacher.  Everything expressed in the two videos was exactly why I knew I could never be a teacher. Ken Robinson pointed out several major problems in the RSA Animate video. First, he says that we have created certain expectations and end goals for our children and our future, but we are doing so with old methods that are no longer relevant and successful.  Next, he also says that our school system was established in a different culture and period of time when the theory regarding the human mind was centered around two black and white forms of people, those who were smart and those who were not.  This model has led to another problem, which Robinson describes as the, “plague of ADHD” in which a fictional epidemic has been created regarding our kids.  The contrast between the stimulation kids are receiving outside of the classroom in the form of new technology, and the content of what they are learning inside the classroom is resulting in them being perceived as unfocused and inattentive.  The excerpts from the, “Waiting for Superman” video mostly details the problems facing children in poor, failing neighborhoods that reflect the failing schools surrounding them.  It’s mostly an issue among race and demographic where the poor kids stay poor, and the schools continue to support this cycle.  Neither videos really seem to offer concrete solutions to these problems, possibly because there really aren’t any.  At least, no realistic ones.  The system is a broken one, with major broken parts that would also need to be fixed in order for the system to work properly.  It’s a mess, and a more complex disaster than any President or politician or school board can easily fix.  In theory, having education run on a state level seems like a more effective and efficient way of running schools because then each state can determine and assess what needs their schools have, and then act accordingly.  However, I don’t think this works a majority of the time.  This way of handling curriculum, funding, etc. is putting a lot of good faith and trust into one person and in the case of Arizona with Jan Brewer, it doesn’t quite work out.  Arizona is one of the worst states in regards to prioritizing education, and for the past several years, serious budget cuts have been made to education resulting in first year teachers being laid-off, and special area programs being cut.  I do think a centralized form of education in regards to funding would be more beneficial, especially to schools in lower-income neighborhoods where kids are already at a disadvantage.  Every child deserves to have the same resources, tools, and materials necessary for them to be successful.  I think there also needs to be government programs that aim towards addressing issues within the family that pose roadblocks and obstacles to a child’s education.  However, I think if education becomes too centralized, there will be too much generalization and grouping among kids.  I’m still having a bit of trouble grasping the concept of paradigms, but think the point of Ken Robinson is that we need to stop standardizing kids and focus more on seeing them as individuals with their own individual strengths, weaknesses and styles of learning.  If I’m thinking of this correctly, then I do think changing paradigms would have a positive impact.  People are much more complex and individualistic than what we categorize them to be.  No one issue or problem can be solved with a simple step, and if we continue to address major issues, such as education, with this attitude then we will never fix this broken system.