As far as our ED 561 class is concerned I too bask in the wonderful glow of Vygotsky. I had only heard of him mentioned briefly before and am glad that I was able to read about his philosophy further. I think it's a little difficult in class to compare him to Piaget in a way because Piaget wasn't really an educator and rather approached child development from a psychological and physiological angle. As his ideas were expanded upon and applied to education we get Vygotsky.
As far as the rest of my classes are concerned I have to say that my two favorite things have been reading "Schooled to Order" in Exposito's class, and discussing practical hands-on applications in Kip Ault's class. I agree with Rian when I say that I've learned so much about basic science concepts in the last two weeks than I had in my whole academic career in science. I love the way that I'm having a hard time distinguishing the different philosophies from each class from one another. Of course they are all interrelated and each class reinforces the discussions and readings in each other.
I enjoy "Schooled to Order" primarily because of the detailed historical analysis of education that rarely gets discussed. I am very much skeptical of the ways in which education has and can be used to pacify, neutralize and coerce the poor for the benefit of the elite. I have always been very cautious in regards to accepting the education system status quo. It is very broken and we need to change it. Why is it however, that every educator I know is opposed to standardized testing, opposed to No Child Left Behind, and constantly having to put up with rules and regulations that fly contrary in the face of our children and society's well-being, yet these policies continue to be handed down and thrust upon them? Do we really have no power at all as educators?
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I agree with Aron, Rian, and Lani (and others!) that small group and larger class discussions have been so much a part of school so far. Even this blog is kind of a discussion of ideas! It's so cool to bring up a question and talk about it with people. I've really liked all our discussions.
ReplyDeleteAt first I didn't enjoy "Schooled to Order" so much. It is dense with historical information. But now I really like it. It's so interesting how public education started, and what purposes it was used for. It seems like since public education started, there have been period where moral teaching, traditional book education, and skills training were more or less promoted. I feel like with all the testing that's going on in schools now, there's a movement, at least in our class, that we teach kids how to be critical thinkers and kind people.