Monday February 18, 2013 Essay An Education Problem Author Mary Sherry In the Praise of the F Word The author Mary Sherry is a school teacher and mother who believes in flunking students that are not motivated to master the basic skills in reading, writing and math. She thinks many high school students are cheated by the educational system that graduates them, lacking these basic skills. Also, she feels students should have these basic academic skills before they enter into the real world of college or employment. The author states the lack of not having the basic skills can lead to many social, educational and financial problems later down the road. She understands that people come from different environments and everyone can learn; they just need to be motivated.
Also, if student’s only studies subjects that interest them then they are being ignorant to the world around them. Overall, students will be challenging themselves and they would not develop practical skills. Graff believes schools should integrate nonacademic interests as objects of academic study, such as street smart, to the traditional education system. He explains that kids who are street smart do not have interest in the traditional education system and therefore, do not do well in their academic studies. Graff uses his own experience as an example, “It was in … my reading of sports books and magazines, that I began to learn the rudiments of the intellectual life: how to make an argument” (201).
Gatto says that school diminishes creativity; if anything kids discover their hidden creativeness in class while at school. He also says that kids are not able to advance in higher learning. When clearly, kids are able to follow the teacher and be able to get A's while the subjects get more extreme. Gatto says, "teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect"(pg. 683) from personal experiences I can say that I have had great relationships with my teachers throughout elementary school and especially High school.
Empowering Students In the essay “Why Are Students Turned Off,” by Casey Banas, she tells us about a teacher named Ellen Glanz who pretends to be a student and sit on a few classes. Glanz found out while sitting in on these classes that they were manipulative and boring. She found students were doing little as possible to pass and get good grades. Found that the students even use poor excuses to avoid assignments. Ellen Glanz concluded that many students are turned off because they have little power and responsibility over their own education.
The derogatory term makes it hard to appropriately depict the true meaning of the book to a group of children without raising countless unspoken questions. On the other hand, we have those that believe that the removal of Twain’s vernacular of that time takes away from the contextual essence of the novel leaving the youth “unaware that their people have overcome centuries of oppression”. (Schneider 3) Furthermore, censorship of Huckleberry Finn could depend on many other factors: fear of uneducated or insensitive teachers leading student discussions, school administrators who wish to avoid controversy and discomfort with acknowledging our country's painful history. “It’s true that people might now be offended by the portrayal of Jim, or the use of “nigger”, but times have changed and we don’t portray them that way anymore. You can’t just ignore what happened and people
The teachers blamed the students but they were trapped in the same strict structures of the compulsory school program as the students. He then suggests that maybe that there is not a "problem" with the schools. That they were right when they designed the school to do just what they are doing. Designed not to teach us but to keep us from ever really “growing up.” With that thought the author asks, "Do we need school?" Gatto gives us examples of well-known people who have accomplished great things in their lifetime and were not educated through the school system.
The teachers unknowing pass the ideas that they learned as a child onto their students, who also do not realize that it is being done to them. <br> Peggy Orenstein very effectively tackles the question "are boys and girls treated differently in school?" (Italicized paragraphs 7). She concluded from her field studies in junior high schools that the teacher sometimes treats boys and girls differently in the classroom. She also admits that boys and girls do have many differences, which cause them to behave differently.
Solutions for problems like these are hard to come across, but if people took it upon themselves to try to educate them self by reading and writing more than they do it would help them in the long run. There was a table “From Reading at Risk” by Shea, Scanlon L., and Aufses presented that showed how many people actually take the intuitive to read for the purpose of educating their self. The people within the school systems should take a look at all of the problems with the Education system. It all starts with the adults in charge. Not every parent has the financial Stability to send their kids to schools with great education programs, as shown in waiting for Superman.
The thesis of Mary Sherry’s essay is that teachers and parents need to take further action to help their students earn their diplomas. The main points Sherry expresses in her essay are that students barely have any motivation to focus in school, how students are not satisfied with their academic skills, and ways that teachers can get their students to study. First, Sherry mentions in the essay, “…but, as I rediscover each time I walk into the classroom, before a teacher can expect students to concentrate, he has to get their attention, no matter what distractions may be at hand” (Sherry 515). I agree with what she said because I am a recent high school graduate who would always want to be everywhere but school. Another main
Jeremy Reed English 1101 Section 104 Jack Ehn October 29, 2014 Against School I can relate to John Taylor Gatto. "Against School" As I look at my kids as they do their homework it seems challenging at times, or I find them being bored with it and wanting to either do more work or not wanting to do any work at all. They seem to understand it’s just not challenging enough, or they may just be bored. Gatto says “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid,