Blog post #5

Preface and Introduction from Shalaby, TroubleMakers

Quotes

After reading Preface and Introduction from Shalaby, TroubleMakers, I decided to pick out a few quotes from the text that stood out to me and thought were important to talk about. First, "Kids learn the culture of school quickly. In a second-grade classroom I visited, children were tasked with drawing illustrations to accompany newly acquired vocabulary. For the word obedience, where I expected a picture of a dog, perhaps, I instead found a young artist who had drawn a row of pupils at their desks sitting straight, hands clasped, facing forward. It was a haunting image and, also, a deeply resonant one." After reading this in the text I knew it was something I wanted to talk about because school should be a place where students can learn in a fun, interactive, and social way and it is now a norm where children in school have to sit in a seat all day and just listen to the teacher. Especially for students that are so young it is important for them to start thinking for themselves and figuring things out hands on and interacting with others. Also, "By and large these are not the schools we have now. For the most part, schools value quiet children over loud ones and operate as though adults are the only teachers in the room. The adults get to speak while the young people listen. Questions are answered rather than asked. Our schools are designed to prepare children to take their assumed place in the social order rather than to question and challenge that order. Because we train youth in the image of capitalism instead of a vision of freedom-for lives as individual workers rather than solidary human beings-young people are taught academic content that can be drilled and tested rather than understanding literacies and numeracies as forms of power, tools for organizing, fodder for the development of their own original ideas." Students that are louder shouldn't be labeled as a bad thing, it is important for the students to be themselves and not be afraid to want to share with the class. It mentions students are being taught things that they can be tested on rather than being able to learn for themselves and come up with "original ideas". "Children- especially the youngest of children- are masters of imagination. When I am burdened by the heavy weights of reality, soul-weary and stuck, young children are able to inspire my imagination for a more playful, more creative way forward." Young children have a huge imagination and should use that to their advantage rather than it slowly getting taken away from them because of how they are being taught how to learn and act in schools.

A point I would share in class is one of the quotes, I think they are all important and have a topic that would be very beneficial to talk about.

Hyperlink:

https://www.cato.org/education-wiki/educational-freedom-an-introduction