Links

Hey I have slowly been updating some links on the right. I am trying to start to enhance my educational link sections to both aid myself and others in thinking about the systems and values the government is instilling in education in American.

Peace.

Is the Educational System Moving Society from Learners to Achievers?

This is a recent study from the National Center for Education Statistics.

My wife and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about the difference between learners and achievers. Learners being the students that during the educational process, do not just learn bits of information and act on them, but seek understanding and transformation through the process. The result of the information is not just doing a job, but understanding how the information challenges their lives and their worldview.

Achievers are the students who you can challenge, and who without understanding the nature of the challenge, go out and correct the problem or behavior by the answer given. They do not strive to figure out why the problem happened, but simply solve the problem

Both of us agreed that we enjoy working with learners much more than achievers. I have worked with students who may not change the world, but wherever they are, will challenge the nature of the institutions and relationships that they are in. I have also worked with students who will change the world around them, but never fully understand why they do what they do. I would take a world of learners over achievers any day.

The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. Learners can often fall into understanding everything but achieving nothing, and achievers can do great things, but understand nothing. They can learn from each other.

What I see in the study may be the result of an ends oriented educational push. For the past few years, K-12 educations job (from the government) has been to "ensure that every student graduates with the skills needed to succeed in college and in a globally competitive workforce. This appears to give a strong push to achieving. Education needs people to achieve a certain level of understanding to do certain jobs. Learning seems to be more holistic to me, and the push is not necessarily to be the perfect worker for a job. I believe that a learner would be able to do almost any job, but they will understand the depths of it, as opposed to an achiever who will be able to plug in the equation to do the job, but not really understand why the equation works.

Think back to any of the No Child Left Behind purposes. Reading and math are extremely important, they are the foundations of learning. But they are rarely taught that they are good because reading and math are good, they are seen as good from a pragmatic focus of achieving more in the future. Something feels very wrong about this to me, and please feel free to discuss this with me or anyone else.

Peace,
DEW

My original letter to Christianity Today

As a campus minister trying to teach college students holistic
responsibility, I was somewhat disappointed with last months article
on Wal*Mart. Jeff M. Sellers covers three of the bigger issues, but
looks past many others. For example, he briefly mentions the trend in
America of increasing service sector jobs. This is in part due to
Wal*Mart's large demand for units, and the power that comes with
ordering millions of units from suppliers. They have a strangle hold
on the market. Suppliers are forced to take work overseas when their
costs increase due to an increased cost of production (Levi's is a
prime example). There have been many articles in other publications
written about this.

Also in the article, beauty in diversity is ignored. Wal*Mart is one
of the largest powers of homogenization in American, and soon global
culture. You can drive across the country and never really leave home
if you always eat at the same restaurants, go to the same stores, stay
at the same motels, etc. We learn alot from seeing different cultural
objects. Wal*Mart rarely changes from place to place.

Finally a nice complementary article would have been one on
consumerism, and the idol of wants. My wife and I have chosen to stop
shopping at Wal*Mart and other large chains so that we can support our
local economy,and not be deluged by every product we could possibly
want. This makes us spend more time discerning what we need, so we
buy less. It is easier to pay less for everything, but when I have to
pay more, it makes me wait and think, "do I really need this ____?"
More Christians need to ask this question before they buy, and teach
there children the same skill. The excuse of saving money may fade to
the background when we actually consume less (which also means less
waste).

Thank you for covering a big issue across America, and for beginning
to ask a good question. The next question is: "If I don't shop at
Wal*Mart as an ethical decision, where else shouldn't I shop?"

Letter to the editor printed in Christianity Today!

I received an email from a friend this morning saying it was good to see my thoughts in print, and I thought, huh? Last month, Christianity Today had an article on Wal-Mart, to which I wrote a letter to the editor.

Here is a link to the article.

Here is the printed response from yours truly:

"As a campus minister trying to teach college students holistic responsibility, I was somewhat disappointed with May's article on Wal-Mart.

Jeff M. Sellers covers three of the bigger issues, but looks past many others. For example, he only briefly mentions the trend in America of the increase in service-sector jobs. The article also ignores beauty in diversity. Wal-Mart is one of the largest powers of homogenization in American and global culture.

Finally, there is consumerism and the idol of wants. My wife and I have chosen to stop shopping at Wal-Mart and other large chains so that we can support our local economy and not be deluged by every product we could possibly want. When I have to pay more for something, it makes me wait and think, Do I really need this?

More Christians need to ask this question before they buy. The excuse of saving money may fade to the background when we actually consume less (which also means less waste). Thank you for covering a big issue across America and for beginning to ask a good question.

The next question is: "If I don't shop at Wal-Mart as an ethical decision, where else shouldn't I shop?"

Educational woes in the public schools

This article was posted on Newsweek Online recently.

I plan on studying education formally at the University of Virginia soon, and as I have talked to a few teachers and read new articles, it appears that there are more than a few problems with the school systems.

My wife and I visited a couple of friends in Virginia a couple of weeks ago. At some time, both of them had been teachers, and Tom, a friend from my undergraduate career, was finishing up his school year, and once the school year was over, he decided to leave teaching and go into sales. He spoke about a meeting where the teachers were all called into an office and given an update on their "Standards of Learning." From Tom's perspective, teachers felt locked into certain curriculum, and were unable to be creative in the classroom. If they didn't meet the standards, the end of the world might come soon. My friend's take was, I am going to keep teaching how I think is best, and I think the kids will pass the standards tests. Other teachers did not feel that freedom. There is some kind of disequilibrium here.

I have to inquire more, but another friend who has been teaching elementary school in the Bronx, has a Master's Degree from Teacher's College. She is more than qualified to teach almost anywhere in the US. Her vocabulary is ridiculously thorough (she scored in the high 700's on the GRE), and she is flat out amazing. My wife received an email recently where our friend said she was rethinking teaching in the public schools, because she was tired of testing. There are many other reasons she could get out: kids biting her, overbearing parents, underfunded buildings... but her reason is testing.

This seems to be a bigger problem nationally. This article vaguely points out the problems, but big questions come out of articles like this. Why can't these kids learn the MINIMUM standards? Is it teacher quality or is it student distraction or both? Are there any unbiased numbers that show the effectiveness of standardized testing? Has education been reduced to a mere means, and in doing so has sucked the life out of the art of teaching (I think the answer to this one is yes)?

As I start to move toward graduate school, more and more will be written on education. If you are a teacher, what are your experiences with standards of learning? If you are a student, are your teachers passionate? If you are a parent, what do you see and hear from the students and teachers regarding these issues?

My apologies! ... and more reading

Well, I have finished "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life", and have been enthralled by the thoughts proposed by it, both because of the quality of thought and the resonance with my spirit.

When I was reading back over putting some thoughts into a paper, I realized that I may have left out a significant chunk of Borgmann's thought.

Page 114ff. - "The sharp division in our lives between labor and leisure is a unique feature of modern existence. It is my thesis that this division reflects the split between machinery and commodity in the pattern of technology. Leisure consists in the unencumbered enjoyment of commodities whereas labor is devoted to the construction and maintenance of the machinery that procures the commodities. Labor is a mere means for the end of leisure... Human life is always full at any one time, and innovations can take place only by displacing some tradition. Thus, technology had to displace and destroy the traditional crafts... The division of labor makes work more reliable because the simplicity of divided labor eliminates the need of skill, thus enlarging the labor pool and making workers more freely substitutable for one another... But as I have suggested before, liberation has gradually given ay to disengagement, and distraction has displaced enrichment..."

Now this is significant for concerns of an oversight of the social ill of devalued work:.
- Page 121 - "Just as the broad middle class, being committed to technological progress, tolerates social injustice since it has become a motor and stabilizer of that progress, so it tolerated degraded work since at least until now it has been the necessary condition and counterpart of consumption. And indeed, the tie of degraded labor to technology has been more intimate and hence more disquieting than the tie of social injustice to technology. That may be the reason why the degradation of labor has been more hidden that social injustice. The unions always complain of the latter, but rarely the former."

These quotes hopefully help illuminate and strengthen my previous entry of quotes. Enjoy - DEW