Empowering Education by IRA SHOR

Education in Politics

                This article talks about Piaget’s work, and reading from this article reminds me of my psychology education class last year. Piaget’s work was based on how teachers should teach and how children learn. In this article, Ira Shor took Piaget’s statement, “To educate is to adapt the children to an adult social environment ...The children is called upon to receive from outside the already perfected products of adult knowledge and morality...” (Page 12) and elaborated in her point of view. I agree that for children to learn they must first take interest into the adult’s world and then will be taught about the world. If children have no interest there is no meaning of teaching the child when all they’ve learned will go to waste.

            It is true when Shor have pointed out what Piaget stated, “The deficiency is the curriculum in schools, which he saw as a one-way transmission of rules and knowledge from teacher to students, stifling their curiosity” (page 12). “Students in empowering classes should be expected to develop skills and knowledge as well as high expectations for themselves, their education and their futures” (page 16). I agree that students should have high expectation for themselves, but a problem that encounters with students’ skills are what doesn’t enable their power in a class. This relates to the article “Literacy with an Attitude” by Patrick J. Finn. A child would have tons of skills and talents but what if that child comes from a working class? Will the school and teachers have the appropriate material to teach that child? I expected that the working class doesn’t have the materials and educating method for that child. If the child doesn’t have the education they needed when they set high expectations upon themselves, it would make their education worthless and it would pull the child down a long with the rest of the children who attends the same school.

            What is a good teaching method? Here is one that Shor stated about in her article, “She or he must lead the class energetically while patiently enabling students to develop their thoughts, agendas, and abilities for leading. The teacher has to offer questions, comments, structure, and academic knowledge while patiently listening to students' criticisms and initiatives as they codevelop the syllabus” (page 25). This teaching method is very familiar and I know exactly who uses this teaching method. It’s Professor Stevos! As much as I wanted to point out other teachers, I couldn’t pick out a better educator then our Professor. Professor Stevos uses class discussions and she uses this method, where the students must speak among themselves and learn from one another and if there was no point being made, our Professor is the guidance. Professor Stevos’ method also relates to Shor’s teaching method located on page 28, “Instead of answering the questions in brief lectures, I posed them one by one, so that students could participate more, answer their peer's questions as best they could, practice thinking out loud, and display what they already knew...”

            I know that there are good teachers who teach with creative methods and there are others who use lectures that bored out the students. Shor pointed on in her article on page 27 where she stated, “The heart of the problem is that teachers are taught to lecture and give orders. These old habits have been overcome by many creative and democratic teachers now practicing in the classroom, but the change is not easy.” Yes it’s true the change is not easy because teachers do know more than students and many facts are taught by lecturing. Relating to “An Indian Father’s Plea” by Robert Lake, the teachers always gives out orders and lectures. That’s where things have gone wrong. When you are teaching a bilingual student, they like to be creative and social among their peers and if you were to put them in front of a teacher who lecture all the time and only gives order, they will barely learn anything because as hard as it is to learn a new language, you will have no interest if you don’t understand anything the teacher is saying.

            I find Shor’s statement on page 34 “By limiting creative and critical questioning, the banking model makes education into an authoritarian transfer instead of a democratic experience. Any material imposed by authority as doctrine stops being knowledge and becomes dogma,” corresponding to “Literacy with an Attitude.” Their similarities are stated upon working class education and how students are always following commands from the teachers instead of giving them some freedom to express themselves. Education is not simple and there can be an erroneous problem when education becomes a business instead of a school. 

Here is a video through empowering education through technology: 

Here are some websites that teach you about Empowering Education:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrEPVE-G0k

http://www.cmtempoweringeducation.com/