I Don't Know About India

                The questions brought up this week seem to be, should media be incorporated in to school more? And, is the current education system the best we can do? I believe the answer to both of these is yes. The follow up question would be – how? The film Is This Enough tries to tackle this question by exploring four situations of different educational attempts. One was in a big inner city school, one in a smaller country school, one after school activity, and one self-driven education. It gave a really great look at a lot of different perspectives.

                In Giroux and Simon’s article it asks a question that all teachers should ponder, “What relationship do my students see between the work we do in class and the lives they live outside of class?” There is often a disconnect here, which is very obvious to see when students graduate college and struggle to get into the work force. The educational sphere and the working sphere are very different, but I don’t think we should focus more on careerism. Focusing on careerism is so ambiguous and causes many of the problems I think. Giroux and Simon don’t say career though; they are talking about life. This is where the focus of school is wrong. It is also why I think that the film making after school activity should stay an after school activity. If students only focus on one skill to make money with that would be a real disservice to them. School is about educating for life. It is about teaching a multitude of topics even if you don’t like them all. You should learn about math, science, English, and history if you want to be a upstanding and qualified citizen. There was a girl in the video that didn’t want to do the normal education system because she didn’t care about that; she cares about natural healing, yoga, and India. This type of education would not work for most people. There aren’t enough people for each student to be taught one on one, most students don’t know what they want so young or have enough drive to do it, and I worry that there will be areas of her education that will come up short of other students her age. Even if you don’t like math, it is very useful if you want to do any kind of finances, whether for yourself or for a business. I think that there is a way to make information more useful in daily life, but sometimes the base principles for higher learning are not useful in daily life (that doesn’t mean that they are unimportant).

                I really liked the two examples given that were set in school systems. I thought they fought against some of the stigmas of public school teaching. Leistyna stated, “the education system – obsessed with standardization, high stakes assessment, and careerism – often do little to help students or teachers understand how media influence our ideas and values and informs public opinion and debate.” I forget where the school was, but in the film they showed students in a large city school using a gaming platform to gather data on what changes students want in schools. I thought this was the perfect way to engage students, inform rule makers, and teach students how influential media can be. I really loved this idea, and I think it could be implemented in schools nation-wide. Not all students will get excited about it, but it gives them the chance to be heard if the school boards are willing to listen. I like to think that they would listen, that they would want to know, but you never know until you try.

                I don’t think that letting you kids do their own thing and travel to India is a good option, and I would never let my child do that, not that young! It’s drastic in my opinion. I think that have after school programs that teach sports or skills are great options. But I think that getting a general education is a good thing, and I think that students should have the option to help shape their education or at the very least shape how they are assessed.