What’s trying have to do with anything?
Posted by mfuson in General entries, tags: Education, open educationWell, according to my personal beliefs and this article at http:/openeducation.net, pretty much everything. This is a view I have long espoused to my students and their parents, surprisingly to their chagrin. It has increasingly been my experience that people do not want to hear that they have control over what happens o them. They would prefer to chalk up their failures to the government, the schools, or mom and dad. Sometimes, when talking with these people, i feel like I am watching a bad reproduction of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo screams “Then I defy you stars….” implying fate has dealt him a dirty hand, all the while refusing to acknowledge the fact that he did, in fact, marry Juliet without their parents’ consent. Of course, this only skirts the real problem as it was Romeo’s choice to kill her cousin Tybalt even when the law would have taken care of the punishment on its own.
When I think of this issue in education, I always think back to Paul Koch’s brilliant book Doomed to Fail . It makes the extremely valid point that of all “enlightened” countries, only America seems to believe that the person most responsible for the learning of the child is…..the teacher. It may seem like I am putting into practice the exact trait that I am currently arguing against, a so-called passing of the buck. I can only disagree in the sense that a child’s failure to learn is partially my responsibility. I did not find the best method to help them learn or the correct motivational techniques, but then again, if the child set out to learn in the first place, would they really need motivated?
In considering this, I am once again inclined to think about the metaphor of the doctor from my previous post. There are professions where the professional can only do so much, but the onus for change and commitment rests solely with the patient. The sonner America comes to grips with that, the better off we will be.
Entries (RSS)