Dear Dr. Hirsch,
After reading your thoughts on education, curriculum and teaching I must say that I agree with some of your ideas and disagree with others. I believe that the standards are important and that students should all recieve a 'core base of knowledge' in order to level economic playing field. I think that rote memorization, and whole class telling does have its place in the classroom but, so does inquiry and creativity. In addition I think that testing also has a place in education how else do we know if students are on level playing field?
Inquiry has a significant role in education in my opinion. Especially in the sciences. How else are our future doctors going to learn how to test out medicines or create vaccines? Individuality and creativity are being hindered if we are teaching our kids as if they were robots. Have you considered state funding, teacher training differences, class size, school culture, behavior issues as part of your prescription? I see at the end of the article that the new Hirsch was to be considered more like a vitamin supplement than the end all be all. That seems to make much more sense. I believe that education has so many facets that your views are too one sided to be totally effective.
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4 comments:
Dear Marisa,
Thank you for noticing my change and growth over the last few years of my life. In the past I may have believed that my way (with the Core Knowledge Series and the Cultural Literacy List) was the only way to be effective. However, I now believe that there are several different ways to educate students and create effective schools. Rather than taking a vitamin, I now feel that I may need several different nutrients.
Marisa- I agree with you that there is more to education than just rote learning. I agree with you that we must give emphasis to Inquiry and creativity. I believe that Hirsch's model is based solely on standarized testing and life is not 1 big standarized test. We must start teaching our students interpersonal skills and give them the ability to effectively communicate or else we are going to live in a world with no spoken words. Student's right now would rather hide behind a text message or computer screen than lool you in the eyes to give you a big hello. Something has to change in my opinion!
Dear Marisa,
It makes me feel good knowing that there is someone who agrees with my philosophies. Although it would be great to have all students on the same level, we most also realize that some individuals will always excel more than others. The question in this case would be how to build on this learning?
E.D
I agree that there is important subject matter content that all students need to learn. I definitely agree with th concept of standards. In my opinion, I agree that we should have state or national standards. Standards ensure that all school’s curriculum is aligned with the standard.
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