Paper #3 (Assignment 12/5, due 12/10/13 tuesday night at midnight)

The public education system would like to give as its premise that it is teaching the basic education that a person would need to be able to function in society with at least the minimum of academic skills.  These skills will allow a person if they excel academically to enter into college, however many of the classes such as math or English are just duplicated in college and so are effectively a waste of time that could be better spent getting other college credits. In addition many school systems do not concern themselves to teach a trade to those who may not have the; desire, personality, mental acuity (aptitude), or time/personal management skills to enable them to be effective students and they are left to their own devices to possibly become effective members of our society after they graduate if they graduate.  The changes that should be made to the K-12 curriculum are discussed with these issues in mind.  Therefore a more intelligent use of high school would be to allow the students to choose their future educational goals when finishing their freshman year of high school and start working toward those goals while in high school.

Assuming that high school is either to; prepare for college, or prepare for the job market, then the academic direction (classes) a student takes in high school should be toward that end.  The classes taken other than basic “core” classes should depend on the; desires, finances, and aptitude of the student.  If going straight to the job market then high school should teach the basic skills that are needed in the average job that someone without a degree would be looking for.  To that end the final year or two should be spent in a vocational technology (trade school) or an apprenticeship for at least part of the academic day.  If the high school experience is going to be for preparing for college then the core college classes should actually be taught in high school and given college credit.

When John Taylor Gatto asked his students “why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answer: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, and that they already knew it.  They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around.”  First let us address the boredom.  It is a common practice to learn through repetition however people learn at different rates.  Information or skills one individual might learn in two or three attempts might take another individual twenty or more attempts.  Redundancy in education often leads to boredom especially in the brighter students which results in a lower performance level or disciplinary problems as they have difficulty staying engaged.  In order to relieve their boredom students might choose to amuse their self with disruptive behavior as seen in the movie Chalk with Will “using big words that [he] don’t quite understand … and the class does not understand” and Alex “rolling her eyes” and “guffaws” in Mr. Shoope’s class, and Damon in Mr. Lowrey’s class.

            This method of education would be a start to the breaking of “the banking methods of education” concept as discussed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Paolo Friere discusses “The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power.” Students would start thinking critically, not just storing information whether it was on the vocational side or on the college side.  Students would learn to carry on a dialogue with their teachers and not just be receptacles for information storage.  This would happen at both the vocational level and at the college level.  As discussed in Teaching Critical Thinking students will start to be taught to think critically.  Students will be taught the “who what when, and how of things … and then utilizing that knowledge.”  Both types of students; college and vocational are encouraged to be critical thinkers and think creatively in solving problems.  Students are not just being filled with knowledge but are expected to be engaged in the learning process as there “is an interactive relationship between the student and the teacher” and “the classroom functions more like a cooprerative.”  Students are expected to use the knowledge they learn to solve real problems and think outside of the box when necessary.  In the movie Stand and Deliver which is based on a true story, Mr. Escalante says “Students will rise to the level of expectation.”  Throughout the movie Mr. Escalante engages students in the learning process to motivate the students to learn math.  In the beginning of the movie they are disrespectful and perform poorly as they have not been challenged academically.  By the end of the movie the students all pass a very difficult AP Calculus test.

These two changes should be made to the school systems across the country, and it would give students something to strive for as they would come out of high school with either a job skill or college credits.  Either of these would be of benefit to both society and student and therefore would result in a win-win situation upon satisfactory completion by the student.  Additionally this would have the benefit of keeping students in school longer and off the streets as the students would see some value in staying in school longer instead of dropping out.  Students that desire to be in school are going to be more productive students.

Some critics of these two ideas might say that the cost would be prohibitive.  Other critics might say that the logistics of time management for the students would be difficult.  Others might just question the need for the change.  The need for change was answered in the paragraphs above.  As for the cost and time management issues these have already been addressed in some school districts and both of these ideas are currently being used in some localities.

The state of Washington and the state of Hawaii have a program called Running Start that allows students to participate in college classes for college credit while the student is enrolled in high school.  In this way if the students have learned what they should have learned by the time they get to high school they would take an appropriate placement test and take college classes at their level instead of wasting their time taking the same classes over again in college.  This addresses the issue of boredom through repetition and allows students to progress academically if they have the aptitude instead of just occupying a seat in the classroom.

 There are high schools in Oklahoma that participate in the vocational technology education system.  Indian Meridian Area Vocational Technical School provides a vocational education to the high school students in the region that desire to participate.  See Meridian Tech website for partnered schools.  One half of the high school day is taken up at the vocational technical school for the students desiring to attend.  There are a range of skills taught and the students are readily picked up by local businesses after graduation because of the quality of the education the students receive.  Some of the classes such as the carpentry class are taught are in the form of an apprenticeship.  The final project of the students in this class is to build a full size house that will house occupants after the house is completed.  Other classes such as the Graphic Arts shop serve the community as a commercial print shop.  See Meridian Tech website for details on classes taught.  Additionally many of these vocational technical classes result in a college credit upon satisfactory completion.  As an added bonus the commercial revenue generated from the products of the classes taught at the vocational technical school partially offsets the cost of the curriculum in the school budget.

Changing the structure of high school nationally to this system of education in at least the eleventh and twelfth grades would be a more intelligent use of time high school and would allow the students to choose their future educational goals and start working toward those goals in high school. Society would benefit as graduates of this system would be more useful to society whether academically or through industry.  Additionally students would benefit as they would graduate with skills that would put them 1 to 2 years ahead in society without the added stress of the economic burden placed on them by having to pay for those years of education themselves.  In the case of graduates of the vocational technical schools society would benefit economically as there would be more money spent due to the higher wages earned by the graduates.

Works Cited

Chalk Dir. Mike Akel. Perf. Chris Mass, Troy Schremmer.
          Arts Alliance America, 2007. DVD.

Friere, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
          New York: Continuum, 1970. Print.

“Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and               Why”, Harpers Magazine, Harpers Magazine.
          John Taylor Gatto, September 2003.

hooks, bell. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom. 
          New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.

Stand and Deliver, Dir. Ramón Menéndez. Perf. Edward James
          Olmos. Warner Bros. 1988. DVD.

Meridian Area Vocational Technical Institute Course List

    www.meridiantech.edu/programs/students/career-major.
          Meridian Technology Center, 2013. Web.
          05 December 2013.

Meridian Area Vocational Technical Institute Partnered
          Schools www.meridiantech.edu/individual/partner-
          high-schools. Meridian Technology Center, 2013.
          Web.05 December 2013.

Running Start

    www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadiness/
          RunningStart.aspx State of Washington Office of
          Superintendant of Public Instruction and
          RCW 28A.600.400, 11 April 1990. Web.
          05 December 2013.