quotes/works cited practice

In her book Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, author and social activist bell hooks asserts that "Keeping an open mind is an essential requirement of critical thinking... [It is] far too easy to become attached to and protective of one's viewpoint, and to rule out others perspectives."

According to Daniel T. Willingham, Psychologist at the University of Virginia, critical thinking consists "of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms young ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth."

John Taylor Gatto can attest to the problem of boredom in schools in his article "Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why," saying "Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there."

Works Cited

hooks, bell. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom. Florence, KY: Taylor & Francis, 2009. Print.

Gatto, John Taylor. "Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why." wesjones.com. Wes Jones Home Page, September 2003. Web. 3 December 2013.

Freire, Paolo. "The Banking Concept of Education." Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1970. Print.

quotes

"Children are organically predisposed to be critical thinkers." bell hooks, "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom"

"Children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only. Most children are taught early on that thinking is dangerous." bell hooks, "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom"

"[Critical thinking consists] of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms young ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth." Daniel Willingham, "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?"

"Keeping an open mind is an essential requirement of critical thinking... It is far too easy to become attached to and protective of one's viewpoint, and to rule out other perspectives." bell hooks, "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom"

"So much academic training encourages teachers to assume that they must be "right" at all times. Instead, I propose that teachers must be open at all times, and we must be willing to acknowledge what we do not know." bell hooks, "Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom"

"Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there." John Taylor Gatto, "Against School"

Group Argument on Mud Wrestling

Thesis:
Cartoonists do not value mud wrestling, but they should because mud wrestling actually increases their chances of becoming successful cartoonists.

Topic sentences:
1. Mud wrestling will increase their adrenaline and in turn their creativity.
2. Mud wrestling relieves stress from a long day of cartooning.
3. Mud wrestling is comical which can inspire them to create funnier cartoons.
4. Mud wrestling will increase their popularity as a cartoonists

In Class Discussion
1) The most important is the article by Keith Gilliard about creative arts in schools. Creativity should be appreciated and not subdued. Everything around us is art and if it can't be appreciated then the point of school is gone.
2) The second most important change was in the article by bell hooks. This is a skill that won't be developed without practice and is necessary for after life at school and to function properly in school. This is a necessary skill that will be used in things like jobs interviews and problem solving in life.
3) The third most important was the article by Jerry Large about persevering through school and developing character. No matter how hard you struggle through school you can always get through it if you maintain a level of perseverance and effort. This is also a skill that will be effective later on in life. If the school doesn't teach this it will be hard for students to learn this especially if they don't have parents who will teach it to them.
4) The forth most important was the article by Barry Boyce. This was about remaining calm and learning how to focus. When you run into stressful times in school you can practice remaining calm and it will help get things done. This skill will benefit and build off of your perseverance.
5) The fifth most important article was the one by Deb Aronson. This article was about preventing censorship. It is important for schools to present students with all the facts.

Blog Post: Rank their suggestions (1 - 5) in order of importance, and explain your ranking

1. bell hooks
2. Jerry Large
3. Keith Gilyard
4. Deb Anderson
5. Barry Boyce

Reasoning: The article from bell hooks (why isn't this name capitalized?) is largely about the value of critical thinking skills and how our education system needs to promote critical thinking, not obstruct it. I have for some time felt the same way - that one of the biggest and most overlapping problems in society is a general lack of critical thinking and ability to consider a subject from the perspective of others. This article was unquestionably my first choice. Jerry Large discusses the idea that in order to be successful as a student, one must have character. More importantly, that character - which I agree is vital to success in education - is something which can be taught. Large's writing is interesting to me and is it something I had not thought much about previously, so I ranked it second behind hooks. Third is Keith Gilyard, who is simply arguing for the importance of humanities and arts in education. While I disagree the extent to which these subjects are essential to one's education, arts programs are often being dropped completely, which is a problem. The biggest problem I have with Gilyard's writing is he hardly supports his argument at all. Fourth is Deb Anderson, who is saying that teachers need to become politically engaged and involved setting education policy. While education policy may need changes, simply saying that polititions can't make decisions on education because they're not teachers is useless argument. To say that someone's opinion isn't valid because they're not qualified to speak about something is completely unproductive. The focus of Anderson's suggestion is based not on the problem that needs solving, but rather, who is solving it. I had a hard time taking Boyce's suggestions such as having parents teach yoga to their children seriously, and ranked it last.

Small group blog post

Small group blog post: choose one scene from chalk and use it to show one of the concerns that each of the writers (Freire, Gatto, Rose, and Black) have about education.




Freire talks about how our education system uses teachers just as a machine to relay information to students who temporarily memorize it for a test. In Chalk, there's a scene where Mr. Lowrey is having all of his students simply repeating what he says; no thinking, no learning, just memorization.


Black talks a lot about unqualified people working at and teaching at schools. Mr. Lowrey is a perfect example of this, as he is completely new to teaching, and he's teaching History as a former Engineer. He goes to the Library and looks to check out a book about simply controlling his class, because he's completely new to teaching and doesn't know how to maintain control in his classroom.


Gatto talks about how students are isolated and separated by titles and how teachers treat them, saying "Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes." The student in Chalk who is kicked out of class by Mr. Lowrey is an example of this idea; he is kicked out of class not just because of his cell phone, but because there's a "mutual disrespect" between them. Mr. Lowrey labels him both as a distraction and as disrespectful.


Rose says that one of the main goal in reforming out education should be "To have more young people get an engaging and challenging education." In Chalk, Mr. Stroope talks to some of his students after class, and tells them to stop using such big words and stop being smarter at history than him during class. To these kids, their education is not at all engaging or challenging.

The problem with American high schools is there isn't any specific purpose in any of it. Any argument for why a high school student is required to take a specific class is easily and effortlessly countered by an example of someone who doesn't need the class at all. This isn't just the writing of some kid who hates their English class, this is just a fact: An overwhelming majority of people who are required to take geometry won't remember or need to remember it at any point in their life. Most people who spend a month analyzing Hamlet in their tenth grade English class won't remember anything at all about it by the time they are in eleventh grade English. Some people say that the purpose in taking geometry isn't to know how to find the area of a sphere, but rather, it teaches skills such as analytical reasoning, but by the time most students graduate high school, they wouldn't be capable of proving a mathematical concept to save their life. And perhaps the reason tenth grade English students read Hamlet is to improve there vocabulary, grammar, and competence with the English language? Well, most high school seniors wouldn't even realize that "there" is incorrect in the previous sentence.