Kathy Santersero
9/30/xx
English 101
Professor Will Hochman
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When I sent my oldest son to school, I started paying more attention to the reports of problems in our educational system. Being old enough then to appreciate my motherıs wisdom, I asked her what she thought. My mother is a thirty-year veteran of our local school district. She made the point that up until about thirty years ago, schools could, and did, teach a body of knowledge to their students. Excluding professional specialties, a student could learn all the basic facts, and become aquainted with most of the major theoretical schools of thought in twelve years of public education. Since then, the sum total of manıs knowledge has doubled several times, and continues to increase exponentially. The most obvious course for our schools to take is to begin teaching students how to learn, how to seek the information they need, judge what they find and apply it to their lives. But this change in direction seems to be as difficult as changing our nation from a cold war economy to a peacetime one. Until the dust settles and some kind of workable system rises from the ashes, what can you do to ensure that you learn what you need to know? You need to become responsible for your own education. You need to become aware of your own needs, interests and motivations. Educators and experts can offer help and guidance, but the reigns are in your hands. By taking control, you gain authority and power in the world of learning.
A Personal Education
Education is a personal experience by its very nature. Every person has unique abilities and interests. A subject that you find thrilling may have the rest of the class winking at the sandman. Two students using the same study guide and devoting the same amount of time for study may end up with very different grades. Teachers and professors and daycare professionals could all be trained to recognize and adapt to the different learning styles of their students. But given the shear numbers of students these professionals have to deal with, how could they possibly fill in all the gaps and encourage all the potential for all the students in their classes? The best way for you to learn as much as you need, or desire, to know is by taking responsibility for your own education.
Taking Control
Children begin to recognize very early that there are things that they can do and things that they canıt do yet. These little wonders are adamant about what they like and what they donıt. Any parent can tell you that. So how do these early expressions of interest and ability generate self-directed learning? A few children do seem to have such strong desire (or will) to learn that they will persist alone by trial and error if they can not get support or attention from their parents or teachers. But other children and adults too, seem to resign themselves to their own perceived limits after a few false starts or failures. In her article ³The EQ Factor,² staff writer Nancy Gibbs explores the ideas from a new book, Emotional Intelligence, by New York Times science writer and Harvard psychology Ph.D. Daniel Goreman. He suggests that the emotional reaction that an individual has to these kinds of challenges can matter more to success in learning than IQ does (113). He describes worrying as a natural reaction, a rehearsal to deal with danger. This kind of fretting can focus a personıs mind on the problem priming it to search efficiently for the solution. Goreman states that, ³The danger comes when worrying blocks thinking, becoming an end in itself or a path to resignation instead of perseverance²(114). Educators and scientists are grappling with the implications and applications of these kinds of ideas and how they can be used to benefit children in the classroom. However these ideas eventually affect educational thinking, you can apply them here and now. Goreman suggests that ²self-awareness is perhaps the most crucial ability because it allows us to exercise self-control² (114). Examining your own feelings and motivations can impact enormously your ability to face your fears and take control of your own learning.
Turning on the Switch
I reached a turning point in my own education because a teacher encouraged me toward this kind of self-examination. I had always enjoyed reading. I occupied myself for hours and hours with my books from the time I was a child. As I grew older, my tastes matured. I graduated from the Oz series by L. Frank Baum to the Nancy Drew Mystery series by Carol Keene. In middle school I discovered the vicarious thrill of reading biographies of people like Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton and Frederick Douglass. In high school, my library haunting introduced me to Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. But it was not until I read an assigned book for a class that I got anything but the mere surface story (plot) from a book. From a faded, mimeographed book list, I chose Lord of the Flies by William Golding. And I received a huge shock. I hated it! I was accustomed to having an emotional reaction to books, but not like this. I could tell that the writer knew his craft; that was not the problem. He used language correctly. He gave the characters depth, and the plot was easy to follow. I could not figure out what my problem was. When I gave my report to the class, I finished by describing my reaction to the book, and the confusion that it caused. I know now why the teacher looked so pleased. He told me to try reading it again, paying attention this time to what the author might be saying about people and society. He suggested that I think about whether I agreed with what the author was saying, and if not, then why? So I tried it. It was unfamiliar territory, exciting and frightening at the same time, but I did discover why I hated that book. I was repulsed by the authorıs view of the world and the people in it. I held a very different view, one I had never spelled out. I had never had the need to do so before. A personal education was born.
Humble Beginnings
In ³Hidden Meaning, or, Disliking Books at an Early Age,² Gerald Graff says that ³the unintelligibility of [literary] criticism to [those who havenıt been socialized into an intellectual or literary community] has less to do with itıs jargon than with the unfamiliarity of the issues with which it deals²(81). I donıt know that I agree with the idea of being socialized into an intellectual community. The freedom I felt in high school judging Goldingıs work would probably have been curtailed by a shared class discussion. I yearned to fit in with my peers, and would probably have tailored my opinions to fit those of the group. I do not mean to suggest that there is no value in sharing ideas and communicating within a group. I do, however, believe an individual should think through an idea or literary work for him or herself and gain some confidence in expressing a differing opinion before venturing into a larger group discussion. Friends and family can offer a much more receptive beginning audience for new ideas. As for becoming aquainted with the issues raised by literature, many are already under discussion throughout society. They are debated so fiercely because they have meaning in the lives of so many people. And these people, even members of the intellectual community, bring to their reading of a text their own preconceptions, worldviews, and experiences. It is an important point that, though there are experts and specialists in every field under the sun, you could bring to the table a solution found outside of the familiar mode of looking at a particular issue. Your questions themselves may stretch the experts understanding of the issue. Author Carol Sigelman points out, ³often how you define a problem determines how you attempt to solve it² (49). Being unfamiliar with the usual definitions, you may come up with a definition of your own that puts the issue into a whole new light.
Ignorance on a Quest
After a few false starts at combining motherhood and college, I returned to school ten years ago still eager to continue my education. My first semester back at college turned on a whole new light for me. That Fall I took basic courses in Economics and Philosophy. Both were interesting enough that I decided to take another stab at a book that seemed to be coming from a combination of those two disciplines. I had tried several times to read Ayn Randıs Atlas Shrugged, but had always put it down quickly, mired in my own ignorance of the underlying issues. That semester I finally succeeded in reading it. I also found that my outside reading was reinforcing and expanding what I was learning in the classroom. Not only was I learning about economic and philosophical theories, but also about the political and ideological battles being fought over those theories in the world I was living in. I understood more of what I heard on the news and read in the newspaper. And that kind of knowledge is power. I agree with Gerald Graff when he says that
to command the discourse about what texts and other social phenomena mean, to control what has come to be called spinı - these are important forms of symbolic capital in a society where information is increasingly a key source of power (85).
Be Hungry for Power
No person is powerless to gain this kind of learning capital. No one need be stuck with simply accepting the views of their professor or the author of their textbook, or even with the idea that learning can only take place in a classroom with a teacher and seventeen other students. A personal education means exactly that. It requires you to take control over your own intellectual life. Take a look at the interests you have, take a class, read a book about it. Spend time in libraries reading the blurbs on books in a section you never go through. Think about interesting juxtapositions of classes in a semester the next time you fill out a course schedule. Talk to other students about which teachers really seem to have a passion for their subject. And most importantly get ready for a change - in yourself, in your life, in the way you see the world.
Problem-Solving
Paulo Freire talks about a mode of education he calls ³problem-posing.² He envisions a classroom where teachers and students, with equal power and dignity, teach each other through true communication and the exchange of ideas (Freire 347-351). He feels that, ³Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge²(Freire 355). I would suggest that his model be taken one step further, that students in and out of the classroom pose their own problems and find their own solutions to the problems they face. I envision a classroom like the one proposed by Mortimer Adler when he wrote, ³ The very best thing for our schools to do is to prepare the young for continued learning later in life by giving them the skills of learning and the love of it.² This would truly give students the help they need to begin the journey of a personal education. It would be like the difference between you sitting watching mountain climbers on a television show, and you strapping on the cold steel pitons and climbing to the giddy heights yourself.
Works Cited
Gibbs, Nancy. ³The EQ Factor.² Time (October 2, 1995): 60-66,68. Annual Editions - Human Development 98/99 (1998): 113 - 117.
Gerald Graff. ³Hidden Meaning, or, Disliking Books at an Early Age.² handout without source information. 64-85.
Sigelman, Carol. Lifespan Human Development. 3rd ed. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1999.
Freire, Paulo. ³The Bankingı Concept of Education.² Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (1970): Ways of Reading. Bartholomae, David, and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 347-362.
Adler, Mortimer J. ³Schooling Is Not Education.² from reproduction of newspaper article without source information.