hirsch vs sizer

In the open debate on school systems, there are two names that can not be ignored. Hirsch and Sizer. these two men can be compared to two warlords with their armies facing off. Born in 1932, Sizer founded the coalition of essential schools. Before starting the coalition Ted Sizer went around and studied high schools. He interviewed watched classrooms and interviewed various people around school. The end result was Horace's Compromise. In this book Sizer discusses many of the common problems of schools. While he mentioned things such as too much focused on sports, his main philosophy was that schools shouldn't just skim over a lot of subjects. they should go deeply into a few. Thus he created the habits of mind to achieve this goal. he stated he want to create schools where " students clearly exhibit the mastery of their school work."

Its hard for me to generally beleive in this idea even while attending a essintial school, infact its because I attend one that I'm not keen on the idea. While doing deep into a subject is good, it can backfire. It backfires when the students dont care about the subject. When students have to dive deeply into a subject they dont care about, the feeling can be described as beatting your head against a wall. We can all see why that isnt good.

On the other end of the battle field is E.D. Hirsch. Hirsch, born 1928, believed more in cultural literacy. He beleived that students would do better in life if they knew about many diffrent things, even if they werent experts in the subbjects. A jack of all trades master of none kind of thing. He says that students need a understanding of common cultural refrences. As an example he uses the sentence "Jones sacrificed and knocked in a run.". Now if you dont know baseball that sentence makes no sense. But understanding baseball will allow you to make sense of that sentence.

I prefer this philosophy better. High school's job is to prepare you for the future. A way to do that is to widen ones view of the world. If you take two students, student A and student B. student A learns about three subjects in depth. student B learns about 5 subjects but with only half the depth as student A. While student A knows more about those subjects, student B knows has a more spread out knowledge. Student A doesnt know about the 4th and 5th subject that B learned about. What happens if subject 5 enters his life somehow later, he wont be as prepared as student B. Another thing to think about is the more you learn about the better chance you have of finding something you like. Mabye student A would have loved subject #4 and want to turn it into a career, but because he spent so much time learning 1-3 he never got a chance to expirence it.

44

The point of school is to make personal achievement easier. It is meant to give you the basic skills and work ethic to succeed in the modern society. Because of this though school is, or should be, a personal experience. The opportunity is given and it is up to the individual student to take it. Obama's speech empathizes this. He says "That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them.". He doesn't talk about what he is going to do for the student, or how the system is brining the student down. He is holding the students responsible for their own education.  A school isnt a magical building that beams education into your head. You need to want the education and you have to work for it.

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http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2008-2009/20090622_grad_rates.htm

This article talks about the increase of high school graduation rates. In the article they act excited that the rate is 60% (the highest in four years). 60% graduation says alot about the modivation of students. Just over half of the public school population past, this also in includes students who just barely past. so the actually percentage of students who were modivated to do well is a smaller number.

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-925/rate.htm
This website states a study that examined the drop out rate between normal school and a school that was based more toward a future career. The article states that the more focused the curriculum is, the less kids will drop out. The reason for this they state is because students have an idea of why they are learning something. Education can be explained like this: Imagen someone is making you jump up and down 100 times in one minute. If you only jump up and down 64 times, will you really care that much. It all depends if you know why you are jumping. If jumping less then 65 times results in the death of a kitten then yes. But if you arent really sure why you are jumping, and you dont want to be jumping, chances are you wont care.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/05/dropout.rate.study/index.html
This article was pretty basic except for the part where a girl talks about why she dropped out. She talks about how she lost interest after two of her friends were killed in a gang shooting. This brings up the idea of school in the big picture. Mabye kids arent motivated in school because they dont see it as that important compared to things in their life, such as staying alive.


http://diplomaguide.com/articles/GED_Statistics.html
In this source the article tells us basic facts about the GED. One interesting not about the GED is that the average age to get one is 24. That means that sometime after high school kids are remotivated and take extra steps to get where they want. Another Interesting fact is that one of the main reasons listed for getting a GED is "lack of interest in high school". I found this interesting because it shows that kids can get the end result of high school with out going through the process.


Unmotivated high school students need to personally see the connection between school and a sucsseful career and must gain the confidence to think they can do well.

This is an important topic because it has to deal with a major problem in schools, motivation. It is obvoiuse why the more kids that graduate the better it is for the society. Which would you want, 100 kids being doctors or 100 kids washing cars. I am not saying that high school is the only way to a good job, but it helps. By analyzing why kids arent motivated you can come up with a solution.

interview

Me:first lets start with the basics, how much schooling have you had.
Buisness suit man: I have a dagree in (a major that sounded made up) from (some college i have never heard of)
Me: Do you think that getting the dagree helped you get where you are
Him: yes its the only reason i am where i am today.
Me: so nobody can get to your level with out one
Him: No you need the dagree i got to get where i am
Me: so by getting the level of education you got, do you consider yourself better then some people
Him: Well i worked harder then them and i have a more important job then some people, so in a way yea.

Me:what do you do for a living
Teacher: im a teacher
Me: what do you teach
her: 5th grade history
me:is what you teach important, will they need it in years to come
her: i think so, just not directly. They will not need to know every fact just the general information. it prevents ingorance, and mabye the kid will realize they love history and become a historian.

me:what level of education do you have
hipster: I am currently going to school at bmcc
me: why community college
hipster: well i messed around in high school but then my parents convinced me that some college is better then no college
Me: what do you wanna do as a career
hipster: i dont know yet
me: so you went into college with no clear sense of direction
hipster: yea. I decided to just go in and hope i find my way soon
Me: i hope you dont go hiking with the same additude.
hipster: What?
me: nothing thank you for your time.

Me: hi, what grade are you in
Kid: im in 1st
me: do you know what you want to be when you grow up
Kid: i want to be a actor
Me: when the teacher tells you to sit down what do you do
kid: sit down
me: why?
kid: because the teacher said so dummy
me: why do you listen to the teacher
kid: because shes the boss and you always listen to the boss

Me:how much schooling do you have
brandon: i stopped after highschool.
me: do you think college is a necessity
brandon:no not really. It helps and you should. But i didnt go to college and look at me now im living in America. (brandon is my muay thai coach from australia)


The main thing school teaches you is how to do what ever you need to pass. for example, the kid knew to listen to the teacher. As you get more into school, it gets alittle more complicated. Depending on what kind of life you want to live, depends on how good your gonna do in school. If you want to be a top notch buisness man you need that dagree, so you are gonna need to get good grades. But if you want to be a muay thai coach, you dont really need to get a college dagree. Because of that all you dont really have to work that hard. I have come to the conclusion that school is not about teaching you the facts, but how to work to reach a goal. For example if you have an C but you want an A you need to figure out how to do that.

1. The teacher is never at fualt.
2. If you are not good at school it is assumed you will fail at life.
3. Students dont have a say in anything, no matter how many people voted you into student council.

In society school is seen as something that turns useless kids into someone the society can use. A diploma is like a stamp that tells the world we can be used. There are two stamps we get. The first stamp is high school. If you dont graduate high school and get that stamp you are considered stupid and worthless. If you graduate high school but dont go to college your are in a slightly better place but you are considered worthless. Only after graduatting college are you considered to be worth something to society, only then do people give you full respect. For some reason spending hours in a building where you learn things that you dont want to learn about, being treated as less then a person, and under the constant pressure to please; somehow doing all of those things gets you respect. Seeing someone as less of a person because they didnt do good in school is like seeing someone as less of a person because they didnt do well in jail. Because lets face it there is not much diffrent between jail and school. In both you are shuffled around from room to room under the watchful eye of superiors, for the ultimet purpouse of making you worthy to enter the world.

video analysis

The main point of my project was to show that cool is like a voice in my head that goes against what we originally think we should do. In the video juan places a high school student. In the first scene he sees katherine, a pretty high school female. Aberham, who plays the original voice in his head, tells him to go talk to her. Juan takes his advice but is shot down. Walking away he bumps into jace who is a tough guy and challenges juan. Once again aberham comes in and tells juan to apologize and avoid a conflict. But then granit comes in. Granit gives juan the opposite advice and tells him to act tough right back to jace. Juan takes Granits advice this time and jace not only backs off but offers juan a cigerette. Abe reappears to tell juan not to take it and that cigerettes are bad, this time granit physically moves abe out of the way to tell juan to take it. After juan takes the cigerette katherine comes back up to him offering to go to the movies. this time juan places it cool and gives her a mabye. the film ends with granit and juan walking away together, then granit turning back and giving the camera a sinister smile.

The point of the movie was to show what really goes on in the quest for cool. When ever we are faced with a choice we have to opposing voices in our heads. One voice (abe) is what we really want to do, the other voice (granit) is what needs to be done to be cool. The second part of the message is that unforetunetly listening to the cool is what gets us accepted.


. In this project i filmed and directed. I told people where to stand and what to say.
I wouldnt say that making art is cool. I mean that in the way that making art helps with the persona of being calm, which is my definition of cool. I like making movies because its you can express your ideas in more ways then most other art medias. In books you can write your thoughts, and in visual art you can show what you want to say. Only in movies can you do both. You can use dialog to get your ideas across, but you can use visuals at the same time.

cool

Life is like Halloween night. Everyone walks around with a pre-decided idea of who they want to be. They hope that if their costume is good enough they will get extra candy. At the same time is you see someone with a crappy costume you automatically label them not as good as you. In life we try to show our costume the best we can without showing that it is a costume. But if you spend all day wearing a costume eventually you forget what you look like. The majority of our personality is what we think people will respond positively to, not who we really are.
“I’m going to lose my cool!”We have all heard it before; usually said by a parent to stop whatever bratty thing you happen to be doing at the moment. But this is more than just a threatening warning; it also holds the definition of cool. When someone loses their cool they get angry, they lose their calmness. So to be cool is to be calm and collected. These days there is a constant pressure to be cool. The cool kids are the popular kids. This results in a giant hypocrisy. The quest for cool has caused people to put lots of effort into making life look effortless. Lets take the example of little Jimmy. Little Jimmy is a nice kid with a good sense of humor, but he is afraid of heights. He lives in a small town so he was able to keep this a secret, until he is invited to the local like to go cliff jumping. He soon finds himself at the top of a cliff looking at a 20 foot drop into dark waters. Little Jimmy couldn’t admit he was afraid of heights because then he wouldn’t be calm. But since he acted like we wasn’t afraid of heights he finds himself looking off the edge of the cliff. Sorry Jimmy, should have acted like cliff jumping was boring.
When we watch TV we all have that one character we like. “Oh I like Pierce, he’s funny”. On T.V. each character that has a certain trait that everything they do reinforces. In our life we try to emulate that. We have this idea of who we want to be and we try to play that role in every situation. If we are trying to play the role of the bad boy, you might light up a cigarette in detention. We do this because, just like the characters on tv, we all have certain types of people that we like. The bad boy will have a group of friends at union square who give him high fives when he tells them how he was smoking in detention. We take on a certain persona to please a certain group of people. This can happen on a small level such as high school clicks, but this is most clearly seen in the presidential elections. Both candidates take on a persona thinking it’s the one the American people want to see. We decided what group we want to be part of than act a certain way so they will like us.
I stood in Union Square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves were not that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But I was not starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waiting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You did not sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It uses to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo; you did not get cool point because you had a Kio fish or a dragon. You throw away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who wants to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimate trick. If I want to be a hippie and I get the peace sign on my arm. Since I am stuck with it people assume I’m a hardcore hippie. I do not even have to open my mouth.