Which is all very well, but what does it have to do with education faculties?
Imagine you were to walk into your favourite education faculty and state that you see educating an individual as providing them with valuable knowledge much like making deposits of money at a bank. How do you think those around you would react? What if you wrote this in an essay and submitted it for assessment? I suspect you would be met with widespread disapproval.
What if you claimed that education was the process of posing problems for students to grapple with, set in familiar contexts? I suspect you would be met with approval.
Both ideas come from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed—which itself did not emerge from a vacuum and drew on older ideas—but I suspect the above would play out regardless of whether you, or anyone listening to you, had read this book or were familiar with the ideas. Instead, what perpetuates these attitudes is a cycle of approval and disapproval. We are highly attuned to the sentiments of those around us and that is part of our biologically primary ability to fit in and learn the rules of our society. Just as an electromagnetic wave needs nothing more than the waxing and waning of electric and magnetic fields to propagate through space, ideas need nothing more than the waxing and waning of approval and disapproval to propagate through time.
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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results.
Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability
The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?