Empowering Education

QUOTES:
1."Participation is the most important place to begin because students involvement is low in traditional classrooms and because action is essential to gain knowledge and develop intelligence." The author goes on to explain that people are naturla learners. They question the whys of things around them. School needs to be more of give and take between the teachers and the students; letting the students form the purpose of thier education. Instead education today teachs students to be pasive and non-parciptory about thier education
2. "To help move students away from passivity and cynism, a powerful signal has to be sent from the very start, a signal that learning is participatory, involving humor, hope, and curiosity. A strong participatory and affective opening broadcasts optimistic feelings about whose voices are worth listening to, whose minds can carry the wieght of serious intellectual works, whose thought and feeling can entertain transfoming self and society." Studnts need to FEEL good about school. They need to know that thier opinion is valued, that they are valued. This will lead to students particpating more, to them acually getting excited about thier education, and tho them carring.
3."Situated, multicultural pedagogy increases the chance that students will fell ownership in thier education and reduces the conditions that produce thier alienation." This qutoe is SO right. We have been talking about this all semester! Includeing everyone in education makes people feel like they belong and like they are part of the bigger whole. It helps them relate to the material. We all want to make sure no one is maginalized or alienated. Taking simple steps like having a multicultural curricualum and having students disscuass materials rather than memorize it will help.

Comments:
What a great read for the end of semester. I felt it summed up everything we have been taking about nicely. These last few weeks we have been really hitting this issue of critticall inquary in classrooms, with the Oaks, Anyon, and Kahne and Westheimer readings. We have been disscussing having these open classroom settings were students can learn and learn how to think for themselves. Learning the why's and how's of something is the transformantive part not just memorizing facts that you will later data dump.
I also liked the whole socialzation portion; how schools are not just places to aquire knowledge but a place to become socialized. To learn what is expected of you in sociaety and how to cope in that society. This could go back to Deplit; we need to learn the culture of power and the rules of that culture and how to use them.