Arthur Levine advocates and writes about how technology is beginning to transform the educational system in the United States. Most of the students of today grew with technology in their lives and it has greatly altered the way that education works and how the students learn. Levine states “What must change, however, is the mean s by which we educate the digital natives who are and will be sitting in our classrooms- employing calendars, locations pedagogies, and learning materials consistent with ways our students learn most effectively” (Fraser 380). Levine believed that there needed to be a change and that there needed to be education that was pointed towards the needs of the students, the curriculum needed to change. Common core standards “try to continues the movement to improve the academic content taught in schools” and for this very reason, Arthur Levine would be very keen on Common Core State Standards (Urban and Wagoner 356). Levine would see this as a step in the right direction that focuses on the needs of the students of today and take into account that students need a more in-depth learning experience. With the modern generation using the internet, Levine believed it was time for their to be changes and Common Core is changing just like this, “By focusing on the most essential elements of readiness for college and career, teachers and students will spend their time and efforts on the skills required to prepare for post secondary success” (Fraser 381). This is a sentence that Levine would agree with. Both Levine and Common Core advocate for preparedness of curriculum and teachers so as to lead the modern students to success.
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My critique of the other document that is opposite Nieto is that immigrant cultures should not be combined with American culture. The two should not be forced together because each one upholds its own importance to its culture. They are separate and although they can live side by side, they should not be forced together and combined. Schlesinger states “Our task is to combine due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western idea of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights. These are the ideas that define the American nationality— and that today empower the people of all continents, races and creeds” (Fraser 355). Schlesinger wanted to combine the two cultures, but Nieto was an advocate of keeping them separate. She writes, “The journey needs to begin with teachers, who themselves are frequently unaware of or uncomfortable with their own ethnicity. By going through a process of reeducation about their own backgrounds, their families’ pain and their rich legacy of stories, teachers can lay the ground work for students to reclaim their own histories and voices” (Fraser 346). By saying this Nieto was arguing that, in order for multicultural education to happen, it has to start with the teachers knowing about their own background and not forcing that on the students, but also respecting their background and one way of doing this was “vilingual educaiton” to help those that don’t have English as their first language (Urban and Wagoner 286). Nieto argued again Schlesinger’s belief that immigrants had to let go of their old backgrounds and make America their new one, instead she said that it should all be based on respect and educating and teaching each culture and learning from the students and teaching your own culture. It is the way multicultural teaching should function today, Nieto’s perspective is the one that we, as teachers, should strive to imitate.
President Lyndon Johnson saw a need for reform based on what he hoped for the future of America. He desired that the the government would help to strengthen the education system and believed that if this happen more students would stay in school and pursue their education and less students would end up on the streets or in prison. This overall was beneficial to America’s economy, he “sought to end poverty and transform American society” and “believed that education was the key to improved economic opportunity” (Fraser 308). Along with this he consistently repeated “‘Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance’” (Fraser 308). Johnson knew that education was the key to improving and furthering society and so this is why he so strongly advocated for school reform and saw it as essential. School reform is the foundation of this country in his opinion. Lyndon Johnson had a war against poverty and began the “Head Start program… as a way to prepare poor children for school” (Urban and Wagoner 294). With this program, he began school reform and started to make education much more obtainable for children in poverty. He knew the only way to get them out of poverty was to give them an education and so this is why he pushed this so very much. Johnson a.so brought up the point saying that it is much cheaper to give children an education, than it is to take care of them in delinquent youth detention homes (Fraser 308). He used this to show congress that there is only positivity that results from providing education because it saves money and greatly improves the economy. He was using education to try and America the land of opportunity it once was.
I agree with President Johnson. Education is the foundation of this country and one of the crucial ways to provide a hopeful path for someone in poverty. If children are just put in delinquent homes they will not go anywhere, it takes education that will really give them an opportunity to become successful and change their ways. This is the reason I want to be a teacher. I want to help lead children in the right direction and instill a love for learning in them. You can give children a whole new future by giving them an education, just as Lyndon Johnson advocated. The decision that resulted from the Supreme Court concerning Brown v Board of Education derived itself mostly from the view of segregation and schools at the time in 1954 when the court case occurred. Specifically, African Americans had little to no education and whites controlled most the private education, it wasn’t in the hands of the government.
The decision of Brown v. Board was that separate, but equal was not equal and so segregation in schools was to be eliminated and with this they “attack[ed] segregation directly by arguing that the practice itself was unconstitutional” (Urban and Wagoner 270).To support this reasoning, Chief Justice Warren referred back to the feeling of inferiority that was echoing in the blacks minds and hearts at that time. He said this was to “separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone” (Fraser 280). Separating the races was causing African Americans to see themselves as inferior and lose all sense or hope for any goals that they might have set for themselves beforehand. It effected their community and African Americans were beginning to reach a point where they were not furthering themselves, they were not progressing because they saw themselves as inferior to whites anyway. A court case in Kansas made this discovery, “A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of low, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system” (Fraser 280). This was the beginning of the ending of segregation, this allowed blacks to start to think more of themselves and become more equal to the white race. Herbert Kohl wrote Thirty Six Children, in his statement he had incredible progressive ideas and ones that I greatly agree with and ones that I will defend at any time because it’s the way that I want to become a teacher. Herbert Kohl talks to the students gently, but still does not loose his sense of authority or discipline. He wrote himself “Then I locked the record cards away in the closet. The children were who they were. Each child, each new school year, is potentially many things, only one of which the cumulative record card documents. It is amazing how "emotional" problems can disappear, how the dullest child can be transformed in the keenest, and the brightest into the most ordinary, when the prefabricated judgements of other teachers are forgotten.” (Fraser 256). By this, he encourages progressive educators to ignore what the children’s reputation is. He wants educators to view each year as a new year and to act as though the student’s all have a new opportunity to make new impressions. He noted depressingly that “innocent children were the victim of children bias and educational malpractice” (Urban and Wagoner 299). He wanted to change this and his ideals were greatly in favor of the student and not just the forwarding of teachers. Kohl also acknowledges something incredibly important, that children are restless, they can’t sit still for long or they get unfocused, so they need sometime to revamp and rejuvenate. He makes an intelligent recognition that they need a break. He was a kind of teacher that everyone should strive for because he located and recognized the true needs of the students. This is why his statement for the next generation of progressive educators is truly one the beat he could have offered. He relays how children were incredibly surprised to have freedom, but that in the end it really allowed children to find themselves and figure out who they are (Fraser 261). Kohl demonstrated that progressive educators must focus on what is best for the students and Kohl is one man that I will greatly admire and desire to imitate in my own way: by caring for children and specifically discovering their real needs.
James Jack Storrow fostered much change in schools in the twentieth century and hired a new committee for the school. He reformed schools so there would be a “chief executive officer of each school system” (Fraser 206). The schools became more like a business with a CEO type leader, more than this Storrow wanted to keep politics out of the school system. If he were to talk to John Dewey and Lewis M. Terman, he would stress the importance of removing politics and there would be a slight disagreement Lewis and James because Lewis desires testing which would have to go through the government and politics would be involved. This causes some spark of disagreement between the two ideals.
Lewis M. Terman believed very much in what I just mentioned. He was an advocate for the testing of children, he believed “the educational testing is the key to understanding students and improving their education” (Fraser 227). He brought forward standardized testing, including the ACT and SAT and Stanford-Binet Intelligence tests. Like I mentioned before, there would slight disagreement between James and Lewis because of the politics of testing, but even more than this, there would be disagreement between Lewis and John Dewey because Dewey would find testing focus too much on succeeding purely in education, but Dewey wants to encourage more on how students contribute to society. Dewey looked into more vocational learning. John Dewey “was remarkably influential on studies in the field of education” (Urban and Wagoner 200). He was a large advocate for learning in specific field of studies, he wanted students to be given schooling to make them better members of society. He believed that students should find what they are to pursue and greatly pursue it, sometimes in specific vocational schools. Dewey lines up more successfully and if he were to converse, would have more agreements with Storrow. He would disagree with the way Lewis did not have education to push them forward in the community, but just for succeeding with tests. Mary Antin talks about her living in America as a Russian, immigrant who is also a jew and relays how she ready to go to school. She says over and over that it really wasn't easy to learn in American schools. She did not have the same type of experiences as a regular student because of her being an immigrant, but she did have a teacher who knew Russian and helped her to keep up and continue to learn and further herself. She reached a point where she even thought in English. She began to love the language and she worked hard and "advanced from grade to grade" (Fraser 176). However, not everything was perfect. She was an outsider in many ways and was immediately pushed aside and were given the name "green pupils" (Fraser 176). She was an outsider and no matter how hard she worked, that was still evident.
Beatrice Griffith wrote a book called American Me, a story of Mexican American children in the United States. From this book, it became evident that they were not treated equal and they were not given much of an equal chance. By the end of the 1940s there was "a growing demand for equal educational opportunities", but it was not happening for Mexican Americans (Urban and Wagoner 254). These children were called dirty and stupid and dumb and classified as mentally disabled. Their lives were in extremely harsh environments when trying to learn and they were not being given equal education. The teachers they had were teachers that were being disciplined by being forced to teach not equal and lesser students. Opportunity for them was nearly impossible. The similarities of these two is that they were both outsiders and had to push farther and harder for their education, it wasn't handed to them because they were labeled as the lower and unintelligent students who are burden to the school. However, Mary Antin was able to have a teacher that poured into her and helped her learn, while the Mexican American students were not even given opportunity. Mary Antin was education for the sake of education, but the Mexican American students were taught based on what would be good for jobs and real life. I can see here that Mary Antin's education was the start of the push for equal education opportunity and that she was starting to have education for her success and love of learning. Although, for Mexican Americans, it was still unfair and solely for jobs, you can see through Mary Antin that something is beginning to change. Equal education opportunity is starting to become viable. James Conant was very adamant about the idea of a comprehensive school system. A comprehensive school was one that "provides education for all youth living in a town, city or district" (Fraser 167). James Conant went ahead and wrote a report about the American schools of his time, and he mostly believed that they were well supported, and many students were ready for post-graduation, although, he admits and pushes that there are schools that do not provide some students skills to prepare themselves for after graduation. He stated that schools needed to teach children everything that they would need to know beyond a specialized school. Along with this, he also wanted there to be opportunities to have classes that they would later specialize if that's what they later pursued. On the other side, there was a push for specialized or vocational schools which were "where students could learn the skills needed for industrial and manufacturing jobs" (Urban and Wagoner 186). If take a look at today's culture, we can clearly see that the winner is a "comprehensive" school system, one that provides a generalized education for all students and not one that just focuses on one special skill.
Looking at my own high school experience, I can say that a comprehensive school system, the one that Conant fought for, is really the winner and is still around. All students received a general education of many different topics and subjects of education so that after high school they were able to go on and discover what they truly wanted to continue to pursue. There are classes that offer a chance to truly find what a student wants to pursue as a major in college, but high school is now used a place to establish a general knowledge of many different subjects, even though some students choose more challenging or easier classes, in the end they are both receiving a non-specialized education. Overall, it can be said that compressive schools of John Conant truly "won" the debate. Frederick Doulgass did not have the opportunity to learn and become literate as a child because of slavery. It wasn't until he married his wife that he was able to become literate if he so chose. Not many slaves were able to read or write, but Douglass started working hard for it. His master found out about his working how he was trying to learn and read and write and he was infuriated. He forbade Douglass to learn anymore and so Douglass wrote, “These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that law slumbering, and called in existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficult — to wit, the white man’s power to enslaved the black man” (Fraser 97). This showed that Frederick valued literacy for a specific reason and it was the same reason as to why his master hated it. Becoming literate mean that he as equal to a free man. Education is what brought freedom because it brought equality.
Douglass began to discover something interesting as he was reading more and more. He discovered that white men did not let slaves read or learn or write because it would make the books could cause the slaves to hate their master and furthermore, for them to have an uprising against them. This made him value literacy more than anything, he saw the horrible treatment of the slaves and knew that they had to be educated in order to truly understand and earn their freedom. Literacy showed everyone the truth. Along with Frederick Douglass, many blacks were starting to realize the importance and "found route to education" (Urban and Wagoner 115). Douglass was influential in showing how valuable literacy is. Women moved west to teach for a group of different reasons. Firstly, “Teaching was regarded as respectable employment for a woman because it was consistent with the dominant view of women as innately nurturing.” (Fraser 74). This gave women an opportunity to be more than just in the house. They were able to be somewhat respectable, although still maintaining the nurturing motherly view that the nation had adapted for women. Women were also suddenly given a since of purpose they were given a "hope for the future" (Fraser74). This gave women two things that they had always seemed to lack in life: respect and a real purpose. They were becoming more than just hidden in the house, but now they were contributing to society and watching themselves grow with the nation. They moved West because that's truly where the land of opportunity was. Women suddenly made an impact and were able to impact these students lives, instead of only just their families. There was more to life than having children and watching them grow, which is not a bad thing, but these women were ready for something more. Finally, as Catherine Beecher points out, "women had begun adducing greater responsibility for home management and the early education of children", showing how qualifiable women truly are to move west and assume these positions (Urban and Wagoner 104).
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