The movie “To sir, With Love” entails the story of an engineer named Mark Thackeray who is given the job to teach undisciplined class at a school. Although, he has a period of being a teacher, he doesn’t look to stay for long because he is hoping to obtain an engineering job in the near future. The movie portrays many themes including the idea of education and discipline.
In the movie, it is shown that the class that the Mark teaches is a roudy, disrespectful, and careless. Initially, none of the students value their education and act as if they were kids. The teacher Mr.Thackerary tries to discipline the students at first, however none of them seem to comply. The teacher remains quite patient with the students until he finally flips out after the girls in the class attempt a ‘disguting prank.’
The story begins to develop as the students realize that they are dealing a a teacher who is serious about his students and education. The theme of becoming adults was portrayed really well in the movie. I really thought the transition of the students becoming adults was great. The teacher begins to teach students based on what they want to learn about and takes them on various trips. It was also interesting to see the students begin to take things seriously in class.
In my opinion, just watching a ‘black’ teacher teach a bunch of white students to become resptful adults was just fantastic. The movie taught many lesson about the ideas of race and education. Mark Thackery was black, well educated, and was able to lead a class to become successful. Not only, did Mr. Thackery change the lives of many students, he decided not to go on his engineering route, and continued to teach students. That was really a heartfelt moment and put a huge smile on my fac.e
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Harry Potter and Education
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban entails the adventures of Harry Potter and his crew once again for a third year at Hogwarts. Aside form the plot, the book does a great job in depicting major themes. One theme in particular consists of ‘Education.’ The idea of Education is prevelant throughout the book because most of the scenes are taken at Hogwarts which is a wizardry school. Although it may not seem like it at times, but education is taken quite seriously at Hogwarts.
One example in which the idea of education is displayed, is through the character of Hermione. She is not only a hard worker, but an over achiever. In the third year back at Hogwarts, Hermione is taking twice the course load as she did previously. She is taking very difficult classes such ‘Dark Arts’ and ‘Magical Creatures’ along with several other academic courses. This exemplifies how some students take their education seriously at Hogwarts. Hermione taking a huge courseload while learning the arts of wizardry portrays the theme that Education is very important. Hermione also expresses the idea that school work is very importrant to Harry and Ron however, they don’t care quite as much.
In comparison to modern schooling today in NYC, Hogwarts is way more invested in their students education. On example being the structured schooling system at Hogwarts. All the teachers and strict, students require uniform, and they ensure ALL their students are doing well. Another example is the difference in lunch meals in Hogwarts and in NYC public schools. In the book and the movie, a full course meal is served at Hogwarts ensuring that all their students are fed well. This supports the investment that the school makes for the education of their students. Whereas, NYC public schools offer low quality lunch that may or may not be filling to many students.
My major point is that the education system in Hogwarts is really complex however good in many ways. The school values their students education dearly. It also teaches them wizardry which is by far “cooler” than anything taught in NYC. Although the school isn’t real, the book does a great job in portraying the theme of education throughout the story.
Introduction Exercise #2
School should not be the basis of education. Formal schooling is not the only way to become educated, to obtain skills, and to achieve goals. A person has the freedom and ability to learn at their own pace and own environment. Schooling feeds a bunch of uncessary information in a person’s mind and they don’t have the ability to learn what they want and find certain truths and answers. It is essential at times that a person can educate him or herself to find the answers they want, or pursue their dreams. In The Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, James Marcus Bach explains that school isn’t needed to educate a person. Bach emphasized the point that self-education allows a person to learn in their own comfort and put their knowledge to use in things that they like. Malcolm X’s persistence and dedication in educating himself while being in prison reflects Bach’s idea that self-education can go a long way. With self education, Malcolm X was able to find truths about black history, and became a powerful human rights activist.
Malcolm the Buccaneer Scholar
James Marcus Bach’s ideology explains that school isn’t needed to educate a person. Bach emphasized the point that self-education allows a person to learn in their own comfort and put their knowledge to use in things that they like. Malcolm X’s persistence and dedication in educating himself while being in prison reflects Bach’s idea that self-education can go a long way.
Free even when trapped
Earnest Gaine’s book A Lesson Before Dying depicts a life of a convicted man named Jefferson and his time before his execution. Although Jefferson claims to be innocent of the crime, he is still being sentenced for his murder charge. Throughout his time in jail, he is helped by Grant Wiggins, a well-educated teacher. The ideas of manhood, writing, and freedom is portrayed through the character Grant Wiggins. His goal is to spread these ideas to Jefferson so he can “feel like a man.” Grant teaches Jefferson about dignity and to understand that he has worth. Jefferson refused to comply at first and said “that’s only for Youmans” (Gaines). However, Grant’s dedication in helping Jefferson understand life is phenomenal. He buys Jefferson a radio, books, and other items to help him be free in his mind. After understanding Grant, Jefferson begins to turn his life around in jail. He begins to write in his journal daily, starts to understand life, death, and society. Although it ended in a sorrow way for Jefferson, he “died like a man” ( Gaines) as his Godmother wanted.
In his autobiography, Malcolm X, describe his time in jail, and how he became self-educated even in the most trapped places. The relationship between manhood and writing is shown during his time in Jail. “I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional.” (Malcolm X). Malcolm wasn’t quite literate and it had a lot to do with his manhood. He began to change the way he spoke and got a hold of a dictionary. One thing that jail taught him was to become educated and learn about the world around him. Although he wasn’t a free man because he was in jail, he wanted to free his mind. “in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk.” (Malcolm X.) Malcolm became really dedicated with reading because it allowed him to be free. Malcolm also began to get answers from all the readings he had done. “Book after book showed me how the white man had brought upon the world’s black, brown, red, and yellow peoples.” (Malcolm X). A connection between writing, reading and freedom is made here. Malcolm understood the oppression against the colored people by the whites, and understood why the black community needed to free. His self-education allowed him to build his manhood and also allowed him to be free.
ASM Methodology
Methods Check in
Description
Our ASM will teach high school kids in their freshman or sophomore year, and maybe even 8th graders, how to get into the college of their choice. We will give tips on the process of the transition between high school and college. Our tips will include everything from doing well on Regents, to applying for scholarships after acceptance. All 5 group members will teach the students and we are going to be situated in Central Park around 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday. We chose this time and location because this is the time that Central Park is usually crowded, and it is also the time most students finish school for the day. The only materials we need to gather are posters and fliers, created by us, that announce that we are offering advice to high school students for free.
10-20 Steps :
1.) First, we will create posters to advertise our ASM. The posters will include a unique motto and logo of our ASM. Jinling and Taz will be responsible for create the posters.
2.) We will then create flyers for advertising. The flyers will be give a brief description of our objective and will include the logo and motto. MD and Jan will be responsible for creating the flyers.
3.) Next, we will locate specific parts of Central park to visit. Joseph will be responsible for picking out the most populated and visible spots for us to advertise.
4.) Our primary speakers are Taz and Joseph. They will responsible for reaching out and talking to the students.
5.) Since we will be reaching out to high school students, we will obtain basic information about these students such as age, high school, grade and career interests. MD and Jan will be responsible for this part of the project.
6.) Once the students are brought over to the table, we will divide the students up individually and give advice to the students based on the information they provide us. All of our group members are responsible for this part of the project.
7.) After speaking to the students individually, we will give them our contact information and encourage them to contact us if they have any further questions.
8.) We will also provide a follow up email to each of the students that we consulted with to sum what we have discussed. Jingling will be responsible for this part.
9.) We will ask for feedback from the students by asking them if they found our methods helpful. MD will be responsible for this part.
10.) Lastly, we will analyze our success in calculating how many students we have spoken to, and counting the list of e-mails we have received. Jan will be responsible for this part.
Practical Education – ASM
The What + Why:
1) Remembering that your Alternative Schooling Moment (ASM) must happen outside of a traditional schooling environment (college or secondary campus, tutoring centers, or community class spaces), please write two paragraphs describing your group’s ASM.
Our group Alternative Schooling Moment (ASM) is a tutoring/mentorship center that is not affiliated with the public school system in any way. It is a large center situated in Brooklyn. We are open for only 3 hours each day and employ people from various fields to better accommodate the various students’ interests in their careers and their lives. Most of what we do is teach things that students do not understand in a much more interactive way than just making them read books. More importantly, we give the students advice that can’t be found in books, such as how to apply what they have learned and use that to achieve their goals.
This center is largely focused on creating an interactive learning environment with the students. For example, if someone has trouble with physics, instead of reiterating all the equations that they have read off of books, we will take them outside and show them through different activities what those equations are actually representing. Also, we focus more on the skills that are relevant to each students’ objectives in life. For example, if someone wanted to be an actor, we won’t bother teaching them anything about Chemistry. We would have one of our teachers who is in the field of acting teach the student using our methods. We would then build a foundation for their acting career by doing things such as connecting them with agents. Overall, this center is a place where people attend not to only learn about subjects they don’t understand, but how they can manage their lives in the real world.
2) Who will be the audience/students of your ASM? Why?
The main audience in our ASM are students who are mostly in high school and in college. High school and more so, college, are pivotal parts of a student’s life and are the building blocks of a student’s career. We feel that it is essential to enhance the relevant skills a college student has before entering a particular workforce. Many college students today are strictly enforced to formal education; consisting of taking tests, writing papers, and doing homework. We believe that interactively teaching the students will allow them to be adept in many academic fields. We are not limited to college and high school students, however, anyone who is trying to get on the path of starting a career would be part of our audience as well. This includes adults who have already completed their education, but want to learn more about how they could put the stuff they learned to use for their general welfare.
We will divide our audience by age and grade level. High school and college students will be separate, however, they will be interacting amongst each other frequently in our center. It is important for all our students to be sociable to promote an enjoyable way of learning instead of just a quiet lecture with no communication as we see in regular schools.
3) Remembering that learning objectives are active, please list the three main objectives of your ASM?
- Our first objective is to find out what subject/field does each student needed help with, then assign a teacher from that particular field to work with him/her individually, where they will teach them using interactive methods.
- Our second objective is to help students to apply what they have learned to real life application and helps students to develop/strengthen skills that are relevant to daily life.
- Our last objective is to set the students up and build a foundation for their career goals.
4) How do those three main objectives reflect your group’s philosophy of education and school?
Our first objective reflects on our philosophy of education by understanding what exactly the students are trying to learn. Once we learn that information, we can further develop methods to create an interactive way to help the student learn that particular subject. This shows how we put a major emphasis on practical education as oppose to formal education. Our philosophy revolves around the idea that students should be able to learn things in a way that they can put to use of it also known as practical education. By understanding what the students want to learn, we can guide them in the right direction.
The second objective is the vocal point of our philosophy. We want our students to apply what they have learned and enhance their everyday skills in order to develop their education. Our last objective is the impact that our philosophy makes. With our unique interactive learning methods, we allow students to build a foundation for their career. Again, we want students to be able to use what they learn in their careers, and that is one of our primary goals at our center.
5) Which two of the readings does your group’s philosophy on schooling and education respond to (either by supporting or challenging)? Please provide textual evidence of the relationship between that reading and your group’s philosophy.
We believe that learning doesn’t merely happen through just the completion of coursework. Successful learning comes from hands-on learning experience. John Locke once said “From experience: in that all our knowledge is founded….our observation, about sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves in that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking” (Locke, 2). Observational based teaching techniques creates relevant, engaging, memorable educational experiences that effectively address the specific challenges that learners face. Making connections between things read off of books and the real-life observations of these topics immediately registers the topic in the learner’s mind. We believe that this is not just because the learner can memorize the material better with observations, but because since the learner is now able to make more sense of the topic and understand it deeper, they will not forget it. Ultimately, this sharpens our thinking ability with more practice and exposure to observational learning, which is very beneficial in a person’s long-term learning career.
Particular experiences such as traveling and exploring can be regarded as an essential tactic to learning. This is why we will often times take the students out on trips to do fieldwork. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, the monster didn’t obtain education through a schooling system. He also wasn’t taught to read or write by friends or family. He did however, have the ability to explore his environment. By traveling around every day and observing his surroundings, the monster was able to gain knowledge about society. This relates to our philosophy in that it supports our objective of teaching students in a way where they can see and understand things for themselves, with a bit of our help.. We believe that teaching students in the form of interactions engages them better as opposed to reading countless textbook pages. Frankenstein’s monster serves as a perfect example because he used nature to learn and not textbooks. “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock” (Shelly, 13). According to Shelly, knowledge learned through experience allows a person to store more information in the long-term memory. This supports our philosophy because we believe that observational learning methods are more efficient than reading words off of paper.
Anything’s possible with Education
This is a response to Jingling’s post which can be found here
In the novel Black Shack Shelly, the author incorporates a lot of family significance and strong relationships within families. Jingling recalled Jose’s family having a “significant impact” on his life. I agree with her because throughout the story, Jose’s grandmother, M’man Tine played a huge role in his life. She took care of him all of his childhood and gave him “motherly love” as Jingling recalls. She used the quote “don’t get your clothes all torn, don’t rip off your buttons to play marbles with, don’t run too fast….” (Zobel, 80) I thought this fit well into the description of Jose’s grandmother. M’man Tine doesn’t only serve as a guardian and care taker of Jose, but also and inspiration and role model. She gives Jose proper guidance an advice to live a better life than she ever did.
Jingling adds an important line by saying that M’man Tine ” believes education is the only way to overcome poverty.” This gives the idea of education from M’man Tine’s prospective. She implants the idea in Jose head that education can lead to a better life. Jingling uses the lines “knowledge to knowing the alphabet and writes some words, Zobel would have the chance to become a factory worker instead of working in the plantation (91). ” She advises to Jose that in order to stay away from being a plantation worker, he must become education. I agree with Jingling when she says that the job you work determines your social ladder in the society. Jose’s foundation growing up allowed him to become educated later in his life. Jingling uses describes how he was able to use education to change his fate. I agree with it because education changes how a person thinks, behaves, and lives. In this case, Jose was able to get good grades and change his future.
The quote Jingling uses to conclude her response is phenomenal. “the opportunity[education] to give my parent’s profession [farmer] never again presented itself” (136). This line portrays the urge for Jose to not live a life as a plantation worker ever again.
The Journey to Freedom
Frederick Douglass has spent his entire life of misery in search for one thing, happiness, or enlightenment. Douglass knew that reaching enlightenment was not an easy task for colored people like him in the mid 1800s, but that did not discourage him. Douglass’s realizations for how to reach enlightenment were in correlation to Immanuel Kant’s philosophies on enlightenment. Kant once advised those seeking enlightenment to, “have courage to make use of yourown understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment”(Kant 1). What he is saying is that in order to reach enlightenment, one much think for themselves and find their own way to enlightenment, without being influenced by traditional societal perceptions. Douglass followed this motto and took the initiative to learn how to read and write in order to become educated. After becoming educated, a train that was not very common amongst colored people in the mid 1800s, Douglass soon realized what his own self-worth was. He then realized that his life, as well as the lives of all the other colored people, was not to be subjective to other people. Thus began his journey in spreading the message and helping lead other people into enlightenment, by educating people and teaching them how to think for themselve
Perfection ≠ Happiness
Benjamin Franklin was an author, politician, scientist, inventor, civil activist, and diplomat. He played a vital role in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories about electricity. In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, he lists 13 attributes that directly links to perfection. Even though he doesn’t perfect all 13 qualities, he says how he was “content…with a faulty character.” He also states that “a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance” (Franklin, 9). Men have the portrayal that being flawless is easy but in reality it is impossible. It is better said than done. Improving oneself and striving to better oneself is a courageous act but being perfect doesn’t directly guide one to happiness and fulfillment. One can have many flaws, accept it and find happiness within it. This is evident when Franklin states “…a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated” (Franklin, 9).
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography greatly supports Tom Sawyer from Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, that one can be happy and satisfied when he/she aren’t perfect. This showcases that perfection doesn’t correlate with ones’ happiness. Even though Sawyer doesn’t meet the 13 attributes that Franklin describes (Tom never strives for perfection), he still maintains a happy and blissful life. Perfection doesn’t embody happiness.
In The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, Tom refuses to bathe for Sunday school which challenged the “Cleanliness” attributes of Franklin’s in which he says “…tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitations.” He tries to fool his cousin, Mary that he washed up. But he got caught and did it again. “…the clean territory stopped short at his chin….below and beyond this line there was a dark expanse of irrigated soil that spread downwards…” (Twain, 4). This portrayal of his uncleanliness nature shows the character of Tom.
Sawyer lacks moral consideration because he is egotistic. This is emphasized when Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper go to an island and become imaginary pirates. While the boys were “frolicking around and enjoying their freedom” (Franklin, 236), the boys realized that the community were concerned about them. Sawyer is selfish merely because while he plans to go to the island he doesn’t even wonder about how worried the community would be about his disappearance. “…the village seemed empty and dead. Many visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They cried with them, too, and that was still better than words” (Sawyer, 235). When he came back the community was filled with joy.