Point Your Finger

  

As my class started the book club session I took notice of how many people were in each group, some groups had more than 5 people in them, I felt unfortunate to be in a group of just 3 people including myself but regardless of how many people were in my group, we still did a very productive job at pointing out things that the professor thought was discussion worthy. Within the groups each of us had a task to do, as a discussion member the task was to write about interesting points in the chapters read, as a discussion leader the task was to come up with questions that would entice productive chats on the chapters. Each of us took turns being the discussion leader. The first week of book club went like this...     
                                                          
So for our first discussion, we looked into how society views the school system. I was shocked to see that people would blame the schools themselves of being broken when in reality the people to blame are corrupt government officials who make up the laws while slipping their own benefits because no one would do anything that wouldn't benefit them right? Here are my notes on chapters 1-4 (week 1 of book club) of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" by Diane Ravitch


1) Ravitch mentions how school can't solve every issue but should be treated as the most important thing in a child's life, this reminds me of every parent I've heard say "the school will take care of it" or "it's the teacher's job" (pg. 6)

2) Ravitch states that schools are not to blame when a child does poorly, most of the time this is due to low funding, I remember how my elementary school didn't go on many field trips but the teachers I had did everything they could to keep their class interesting! (pg. 34)

3) Ravitch talks about schools in San Diego, California and how they were modeled to be like the schools in New York, she mentions how Alvarado would remind people that if they want to change something, it's not the responsibility of the District Administrations, it starts small with faculty, students, and their parents as a community! (the sum of chapter 4)

Three sections that caught my attention are as follows....

1) page 9 paragraph 2 -> I thought it was important to know the core history of the issues in schools.

2) page 15 paragraph 3 -> Through Standardized Tests we've lost direction in creating lesson plans that better a child's learning experience.

3) page 34 paragraph 4 -> It's not always the school's fault, most of them are poorly funded so they work with what they can find.

I hope my Christmas list of things didn't bore the hell out of you but it is important to keep in mind that in the school system many things go into it so we cannot simply blame a teacher or the school overall as it also has to do with how the school is funded and what laws have been passed!