Weblog 4

In this web log I will explain the experience that I had during reading the first two chapters of the book Ideology, Curriculum, and the New Sociology of Education. I will also discuss real life experience that I have had.

• At the beginning of the chapter I started this blog thinking that I could make a few comments on the things that I felt were important through out the chapter. I was wrong, if I were to do this I would have written a thirty page blog. So what I have decided to do instead is describe how I felt and the change of emotions that I had throughout the chapter as a whole.

In chapter one I first felt the like I was agreeing with everything that they were saying. I agree that government has too much control over the curriculum as we know it. I also feel that teachers do not have enough say in this curriculum either. As I kept reading I felt like change can happen. I was excited that we might be able to make change to the curriculum. We can work as one to build the best child based practices that will prepare the kids for the real world. And then as I kept reading I felt anger. I was getting angry, because every group of people thought that they were being hated on. They felt that curriculum was all for boys and schools were boys schools with girls in it. I feel like that is dumb. We do not oppress when we make curriculum. In the real teaching world that I am in, I have worked on maky curriculum project. We don't make any judgment as to race, gender, ect. The biggest problem that I see and think we need to improve upon is making curriculum more child-centered. We need to get away from making curriculum a bunch of fact that need to be taught in a specific order. We need to give some freedom back to the educators and let them get to know the children that they are working with and build knowledge for them on an personal basis. If we make a true effort to make curriculum child based and with facts as just guides we can truly create something special. Right now I see it is fact based with children secondary in my personal world as a teacher.

In chapter two, I found this chapter to be very interesting as well. It was first a little bit angering for me because of the research that showed how the schools in all of the different classes taught different ways. This I see as not giving people a chance. Just because you are born into a working class family doesn't mean that you shouldn't be given the opportunity to become great. The more I thought about it however the more I saw a purpose behind what they were doing. They were preparing the kids for the real world in what they thought the would enter that world as. I think we need to prepare people differently for the real world, but they need a choice in the matter. Just because someone lives five miles more in the suburbs doesn't mean that they should get a better education. I thought that all of what I read was speculation and that we did not do that in the United States. That is why we have standardized testing and assess the kids in all the same ways. I guess I was wrong. Maybe the government who makes us take these test should look at some of this research. If we are not teaching the kids the same way, why are we testing them the same way? We need reform and need to figure out what will be the best for the majority of the population. This will give us the change to get a middle class back. Like the book said we just have rich and poor now. We need a bell shaped curve for our society. Yes the upper 15% and the lower 15% will still be there and I see this as unavoidable. But the other 70% of the country will be in the average age. This chapter just angers me because this has been happening for a while and we have done nothing about it.