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As I read this book, I came across many different facets of what my teaching career should reflect. I found this book to resemble many of my thoughts and premonitions of what teaching and education should be, yet, I felt some examples and issues were incomplete.
I found the first chapter to really embody what education is all about. I look at education to be the basis of what world cultures need to be able to communicate and successfully progress the human race. In our current reality, the war in Iraq is the first example that came to mind after starting this book.
Our culture is so different from the culture in the Middle East, and it seems so silly to me to send the children of Iraq books and pencils for their new “Americanized school system,” when they do not even have running water or regular meals on a daily basis. Some may argue that these problems plague our own society here in the U.S. I feel it is presumptuous of our society to think that by sending school supplies to a war-torn country, those children will begin their educations with smiles on their faces because they have new pencils and books.
I also enjoyed the basic translation of Durkheim, Feinberg, and Soltis, who argue that education is a means to ensure that children grow up to function in manners that allow the continued survival of a particular society. (47)
Eventually, one must answer the question, whose society is it if children are taught to carry on what previous generations built? Will children be educated enough to understand when making self-serving, society-serving or morally-based decisions, or is today’s educational criteria a form of brainwashing to help our current government stay in power? “Conflict theorists argue that the real purpose of the public school system is to reproduce and maintain the existing class structure in our society.” (123) In several sections of the book, I disagreed with the notion that education best serves society; I believe...