Oakes and Lipton, Chapter 4
I love the quote on p. 125 by progressive math teacher, Zeba Palomino, where she says that “mathematics is a beautiful cycle of connections; it is not a linear study of fragmented pieces.” When teachers simply take out an hour or so per day to teach math in a fragmented way, students have no idea for what purpose they are learning. In my opinion, in Palomino’e quote where the word “mathematics” is, one could substitute any subject. In other words, science is a “beautiful cycle of connections”, as is social studies, reading, writing, etc. Traditionalists try to convince the public that educators need to teach in a manner that is “back to the basics”. If they succeed in their quest, we’ll have students that learn in a shallow manner and never understand the connections between all of the subjects and how they apply to real life situations. We, as progressive educators, must show the links between topics and subjects, instead of teaching a topic for a certain period of time and then moving on to something else. In addition, students that are taught in a traditional fashion miss out on truly understanding social and political issues. I love the idea presented on page 145 of teaching students to view history from the perspective of those at the bottom of the social ladder. What better way to develop empathy in our children? On page 146, Oakes and Lipton write that critical multiculturalists think that “schools have an important activist role in challenging and improving society” and that “an objective pursuit of social justice does not require one to be dispassionate, passive, or neutral”. I couldn’t agree more. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but what a better world we would have if we all stopped being so selfish and started thinking about and putting others ahead of ourselves!
Pedagogy of the Absurd
This article reminded me once again that many educators, myself included, need to speak up for what we know to be the best teaching practices for our students. We can’t let politicians, lobbyists, and text book companies dictate to us what and how we need to teach our students! Goodman says that the conservative campaign had a simple message: “Tests show children are failing to learn to read. That’s because naïve and basically incompetent teachers have been duped into using whole language rather than phonics, which has been demonstrated by research to be one sure way to teach reading.” This makes me, as a teacher, feel terrible. To me, it says that teachers are just plain ignorant, and know nothing about teaching! How dare these conservatives treat us like a group of second class citizens that don’t know how to do our jobs. We, as teachers, say over and over again that if attorneys or doctors were treated this way, they wouldn’t stand for it, and in addition, the public would be outraged. How sad that the current era, in which we are teaching, may in the future be known as the “pedagogy of the absurd”. Goodman says that eventually, parents and the public will recognize that the absurdities are hurting our children. He also says that too many good educators have been silenced and are leaving the profession. How can we let this happen? We’ve really got to do something!!
