Sunday, November 29, 2015

Empowering Education by Ira Shor

I had a difficult time reading this. I wasn't really grasping the entire concept but I now have a better understanding thanks to MaryAbby's blog. She did an amazing job of taking Shor's main arguments and making them more understandable. MaryAbby brought up the fact that education is politics. This has to do with funding, school structures and the defense of the school system itself.

FUNDING

The breakdown of funds to schools goes by the community as well as scores on mandatory testing. The communities with more profitable careers will have more tax dollars spent on their schools compared to communities who are less fortunate causing less money to go to the schools. This disparity in funds creates a gap in the education the students are receiving which causes the upper class students to receive a better education than the lower class because of the amount of money spent on their education. With this, test score differ and instead of helping the underperforming schools, they punish them by not giving them as much money. So they are forced to stay in the underperforming levels because they are not receiving the funds they need to improve.

STRUCTURE

 This has to do with funding as well since the lower class who do not have the money to dedicate to their schools often suffer and are faced with older facilities that are not suitable for a proper education of the students. This can cause health and safety issues and can distract students from learning. This particularly stands out to me from the American Life episode that talked about dead pigeons falling from the ceilings in classrooms. It took an action like that to be publicized before something would be done to fix the structural damage of the building.

DEFENSE

When tax cuts need to be made in communities, it often goes to school budgets. The defense of the school system needs to be a higher priority. We are educating the future citizens of our country and yet that doesn't seem to be enough to make cuts from something else. The fact that educators no longer need to focus on the proper education of their students and need to focus more on advocating for what they are teaching and the supplies they need to do it is unsettling.


The world is all about politics. It's all about who you know and your economic status that can influence how far you get in life. This is the same with schools. The better the community, the more political influence they have, the better their schools and education will be. It all goes back to one of the overall lessons from this semester: PRIVILEDGE.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Erica, your response really helped me with understanding the article better. thanks!

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  2. i love the political cartoon, it really hit home the message of your blog!

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  3. Really awesome political cartoon! Great response.

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  4. You had some great points about taxes and why are we taking from the children.

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