Kendall O’Neill

Exploratory Paper

After reading and re reading the Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, No Child Left Behind Act 2001, and Creativity in Schools: Every Story Needs a Picture, I have come to the conclusion that not all schools are created equally and we are leaving kids behind left and right. Depending on your socio-economic class you are either given or denied opportunities. You are either bathed in the sea of knowledge or are in a drought of simple minded education.

 The Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work was a very eye opening piece for me. Growing up, I thought we all received the same opportunities; all that mattered is what we make of them. However, that is far from true. Depending on how much money your parents make, where you live, and who you know to get you into that great school your options are very limited. There are very different levels of education, different variations of teaching methods and different attitudes towards students.

Lower income families put their children into local schools which prepare them for failure by teaching them in the simplest form possible. They teach in the form of steps and processes and do not encourage questioning that process or understanding why it is that you would follow that process. These schools are preparing the students for simple, poor income jobs, where they will follow processes. I have three problems with this. First is that in third grade when that child fails his first end of the year test, you encourage him to study harder for next year. Fourth grade comes around and while he does do better, he still fails. You tell him that in fifth grade, if he keeps the hard work up he will pass.  He gets the scores back and he has failed yet again. You realize it’s not him, but the school that is failing. Because of the NCLB Act you have the opportunity to relocate into a better school. So you take him out and relocate him to the charter school down the road. After five years of being taught to not question why something is the way it is, how is he supposed to excel in a whole new learning environment? The second issue I have is the obvious lack of free expression and creativity. Throughout the reading in the ‘Working Class Schools’ not once do they mention anything artistic the kids created. When doing a science experiment the teacher lead the discussion and experiment and at the end told the students what they should have learned. At no point did she allow the students to talk amongst themselves and determine what they took from the experiment.  My final issue I have is not giving everyone that fair shot to be the best they can be. While we all love to root for the underdog, what if we wouldn’t have to. What if we all started at the same playing field and you either worked hard to become someone or something great and you also had the right to allow yourself to fail or become nothing. While students in poorer communities struggle with learning just the bare minimum, with minimal creative expression, and rude teachers, kids in higher socio-economic classes are flourishing.

In ‘Affluent Professional Schools’ students work out problems through creativity, expressiveness, use many different medians to do this (ie. Plays, clay, murals, books, and essays). In this educational environment these kids thrive. While they are challenged mentally they are also pushed to try new things. The kids that attend these schools, in my mind are very lucky. They do things as a class that they truly enjoy and can take pride in. The created a film, one student wrote it while the others acted in it. They received help editing it and then played it for school all while learning about the ancient Egyptians. While completing a science experiment the teacher commented and said “It doesn’t matter whether it [what they find] is right or wrong. I bring them together and there is value in discussing their ideas.” I think in order for NCLB to work then students need to be taught like this all around. I think with the level of creativity, the work ethic these students have (because they are excited) and exceptional teachers that there isn’t a reason students couldn’t pass an end of the year exam. I think it is important to focus on actually learning rather than focusing on being able to do well on a test. I think a new version of NCLB should focus on the proficiency on schools teachers rather than how they students do on testing. If you a teacher is passionate and good at what they do there is no reason a student couldn’t pass an exam.

Before ever beginning this paper, when we were still talking about the idea of the end product for the year I had already chosen my topic. I wanted to talk about charter schools. I wanted to discuss what they are exactly, were the beneficial, how the teachers felt at the end of the day (compared to regular and ib/ap schools), how are they different, should we have more of them?  I had already started mentally planning my interviews with teachers and asking them to hand out questionnaires to students.

However after doing this research and thinking more in-depth about it I think that teachers should be held more accountable for a student’s performance. We shouldn’t have to rely solely on a standardized test to determine if a student should advance to the next grade level. I believe teachers need to be evaluated yearly as well. They should have to take a written test saying what they struggled teaching, what concepts the students easily understood, did they keep the classroom creative and exciting, and comment on students falling behind and what they did to help guide them. I also think they should also have administrators sit in on classroom time and evaluate their staff. I think that if a teacher is failing to help his/her students then administrators and parents need to know sooner rather than later.

This seems much more difficult of a topic to research and find solid evidence in, however it is much more interesting to me. Thinking back, I have had personal experience with several teachers in high school and middle school that had become bitter and nasty because they are tired of teaching and dealing with kids for a living. Because of this they are half the teacher they were or hoped to be. It makes me wonder, if I had different teachers or attended a different school, would I be where I am today? Would I be further behind or would I soaring in the university of my choice? Teachers should be passionate, excited, helpful, and motivating. Without those qualities they are no more helpful than a computer spitting facts at us. Students need to be treated as individuals and not as numbers or statistics. Students need to be able to relate schooling to real life situations, they need to be able to fully communicate, be able to transfer problem solving skills into their everyday lives, and they need to be creative and innovative. Looking on a global scale, the Unites States is starting to sink lower on the worlds standing as far as the educational rank goes. According to the Huffington post, Korea holds the highest ranked education. The Unites States falls far behind that with a measly 17^th place with Canada beating us at 10^th place.  If school is not teaching us those basic skills we need to compete globally in these changing times then why are tax payers paying hundreds of million dollars to help the education system?