Category Archives: “The What” Check-In

"The What" Check-In

What Why Check-In

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  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 alternative schooling moment will take place in the heart of New York City – Times Square. Our city is unique due to the fact that it is always filled with people from all around the world. When people come to New York, it is predictable for a New Yorker to know where they will be and what locations they “try” to squeeze into their itineraries. Times Square at any given day will be full of people from around the world and around the country.

This ASM will be in the open plaza of 7th Avenue and West 47th Street. It will be full of tourists. It will be a fast-paced setting meaning that we will have to work quickly to get a message out. We plan on doing this by handing out papers or pamphlets with facts about countries and civilizations from all around the world. The facts will serve to give people a much more global perspective than the one they have and enlighten them to things they may not have known before.

2) Who will be the audience/students of your ASM? Why?

The great thing about our method is that no one is too young or too old! Our audience is anyone on the streets of West 47th willing to listen. We know that everyone can benefit from our holistic approach to education. Knowledge of different countries not only help gain a better perspective of the world around us, but it also helps us better understand people from different cultures. It’s best to start from young adults; however, and seniors can just as well put this information to good use. In a city like New York with so much cultural diversity, being understanding and accepting of people from different cultural backgrounds is essential.

 

3) Remembering that learning objectives are active, please list the three main objectives of your ASM?

  1. a) To give people more well rounded knowledge (globally)
  2. b) To enlighten people about facts concerning different countries
  3. c) To determine if our alternative schooling moment yields positive results

       4) How do those three main objectives reflect your group’s philosophy of education and school?

Those three main objectives reflect our group’s philosophy of education and school as it interconnects one another through the knowledge of countries other than our own, making us more holistic overall. It is without a doubt that Americans find themselves superior than anyone other than their own. As great as it is to show pride in one’s country, one is restricted when bound within the grounds of their own homeland. Knowledge is only powerful when it is wandering and free. By providing vast numbers of people at Times Square with interesting facts and information on other countries, we are guiding everyone’s knowledge, as well as our own, around the globe and viewing this world with a global perspective.

        5)  Which two of the readings does your group’s philosophy on schooling and education respond to (either by supporting or challenging)?
        Descartes made a strong point regarding how one of the benefits of a formal education was its usefulness in preparing him for the world.  Nowadays, American schooling does not provide the well rounded education that is necessary to the development of useful members of society.   He says that “to hold converse with those of other ages and to travel, are almost the same thing” (Part 1), drawing a comparison between an education of world history and actually going out and experiencing the world for yourself.  Rousseau on the other hand, argues against the need for a broad education, especially early in life, claiming that students will be much more inclined to learn things not forced upon them, and things that they need in that immediate moment.  

"The What" Check-In

Learn, Understand, Share

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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.

  1. Our ASM has two phases, an informative stage and a practical stage. Any public environment outside of school could be our ASM environment — coffee shops, parks, shopping malls, restaurants. Preferably a place where one can sit down and can comfortably interact with the “teacher”. Generally we will have a small “lecture”, in which we provide readings or instructions about the subject we want to teach. This is meant to give an overview of the topic to the individual. Then we will provide the important details of the topic- the message we are trying to convey.
    After the informative stage, we transition to the practical stage. Here we apply practice and utilize the information the individual was just exposed to. As the hands-on experiences progress, we take notes, ask questions, discuss lessons learned and hear comments. In the meantime, we observe and record people’s behaviors as indicators of their understanding and engagement of the subject. This practical stage is meant to complement and enhance the lecture while also finding out what the individual needs to work on. This is similar to self-reflection, which is to gauge how much the individual has learned/understood.  Most importantly, we want to understand what the individual values the most out of the lecture, which can be a summary or feedback of what they learned. The good thing about our ASM is that there is no set curriculum. The “students” learn from experience. They can pursue what they are interested in if they want to. This also establishes better attitudes towards learning.

2)  Who will be the audience/students of your ASM? Why?

Our audience/students will be adults between ages 18 and 24.  This group of people who are currently attending have just completed college or an institution of higher education. They can more accurately see the pros and cons of our ASM since they have a broader understanding of the educational system. Additionally, our group can provide diverse feedback to our program. Our choice of audience can help us fully understand learning so that we can grow on our idea as well as to determine how to adapt to a different target audience if needed. Potentially with our audience, we can help grow and change our ASM to be more efficient than traditional schooling. As such, the methods that we utilize can ultimately give us a better understanding of how the audience responds as well as how they decide on if a particular subject matter is either meaningful or completely useless subject.

3) Remembering that learning objectives are active, please list the three main objectives of your ASM?

1) A general understanding and comprehension of the subject matter.

2) Application to real life that will benefit the individual.

3) Ability to share their recent findings with others and share the knowledge.

4) How do those three main objectives reflect your group’s philosophy of education and school?

We believe that it should teach us things relevant to our lives. Not everyone wishes to learn advanced calculus or modern physics. What we learn should be a choice. This is the problem with traditional schooling. Many students complain that what they learn does not have any practical use. In our ASM, we want to teach individuals something that is potentially useful and could at some point be used in their life. Namely, interview and resume writing skills, etc. Most students cannot endure learning subjects that do not interest them and will soon decide to drop out of school. Secondly, we believe that people should know more than the surface of the topic. It’s easy to “know” of the topic, but it is another thing to be able to carry a conversation about it. To do that, you must have a strong understanding as well as a good foundation of how that particular topic applies to real life. But most importantly, one has to want it. If an individual isn’t learning what he/she wants, it’s useless. Our system maximizes each individual’s education in a way that is not only enjoyable but also effective. One has to be actively engaged in the topic. The strong understanding leads to our third point, the ability to share the knowledge. With a solid understanding, you can be the teacher yourself and educate others on your recent findings. If you find it useful in life, another individual can benefit from it as well. This is the ultimate goal of what we are trying to achieve.

 

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.

In The American Scholar, Emerson points out the danger of bookworms and the importance of being original. Our ASM will avoid focusing excessively on the text because individuals really have to actively engage in the teaching part in order to get the most out of it. By providing them the instructions first, what they create or perform later is really their own idea and a form of self-expression. Additionally, we will go in-depth to analyze and exemplify the significance of what Emerson states as the “Man Thinking” and how it contrasts with the typical bookroom which is evident in modern day society (Emerson 2). By giving an insight as to how the text and the precepts it discusses applies to real life, we can then commentate on the ways in which students should learn. Unlike the normal method of studying, we can create a new way to study. Differentiating between how books should be used as mere tools of influence rather than idolised forms of text will also be of great importance to our group’s philosophy of education. As books are great; however, experience can be just as valuable.

“Discourse on the Method” by Descartes supports our group’s philosophy on schooling and education. His first learning law states that a person should never accept anything as true unless it is evident. Hands-on experiences is the best way to have the individuals examine the subjects themselves. His fourth law states that a good learning method involves constant reviewing. This is particularly evident in the text in the sense that Descartes had to travel the world to gather an understanding of things he later regarded as either valuable or important. By giving a synopsis of what Descartes learned throughout his travels, our group can then elaborate on how a person can get an education no matter where they are, even if it is a little extreme or subtle from what they know. Therefore, by describing, explaining, applying and debriefing the text, we can then assure that nothing is omitted from our group’s philosophical point-of-view of education and schooling. Furthermore, Descartes explains how each subject does not benefit him. He says “I revered our theology, and aspired as much as anyone to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to most ignorant than to the most learned” (Descartes, pt.1, par.10). He thinks that studying theology is not likely to obtain the secrets from heaven. Rather, it is just a node between the real world and the human perception of heaven. Regarding philosophy, Descartes says “there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute… I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable” (pt.1,par.11). Even the best poets are “unacquainted with the art of poetry” (Descartes,pt.1,par.7). in his opinion. As to science, Descartes thinks it has “no solid superstructures” and is “infirm”. Therefore, our ASM can definitely serve to help individuals find what is not for them as well; as education should be subjective rather than to be uniform.

"The What" Check-In

Practical Education – ASM

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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?

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

"The What" Check-In

Alternative Schooling Method

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 amogst 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?

  1. Our first objective is to find out what subject/field doe s 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

"The What" Check-In

Alternative Approach

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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. One of our alternative schooling idea is that instead of just in class lectures and tests, there should be more or if not, then at least the same amount of hands on activities so that the students may get a jist of what it is like in the real world. Just by teaching them a concept or idea and just by learning a new idea isn’t enough for a student. It’s extremely important for students to be taught how to apply these concepts in the real world and in a everyday realistic situation. The Second idea is to change the grading system, We will figure out a way to grade students not through the traditional way. Most of the traditional school grade students based on the exams, but we all believed that grading students should never only based on exams. Lots of students have lost their confidence and eventually given up on study because they got a bad grade though exam, and thinking themselves as bad students. Therefore grading shouldn’t be a tool to determine student whether they good or bad, but should be a way to find out what students are really good at, and to encourage them to focus more on what they are interesting of, in order to give them confidence.

2)  Who will be the audience/students of your ASM? Why?  The audience/students for the ASM would be freshman College students but that is still subject to change.

3) Remembering that learning objectives are active, please list the three main objectives of your ASM? The first main objective is Helping students learn through school along with hands on experiences to better help them understand the use of their education and how it applies to the real world. The second main objective is Coming up with a way to get the students to be engaged in the process of learning through experience and interacting them as much as possible. The third main objective is Having a new testing system, where we can test out what is individual student actually good at, and interesting on, therefore we can have the individual focus on of what they are interested in.

4) How do those three main objectives reflect your group’s philosophy of education and school? All these different points reflects our philosophy that there are different ways to learn and attain knowledge. The more options and alternative there are the more individual the learning experience can become. The first objective which is hands on experience lets the knowledge they learn get put into use and the student can decide if that method or material they learn works or if they should use a different approach next time they encounter that situation. Getting the student more engaged will make the learning experience more enjoyable which will increase the likelihood of them becoming more knowledgeable due to their positive experience learning. The new testing system will be more practical and also because it is based on what they are interested they will have a more engaged attitude towards the material which will make them more willing to study and learn the material.

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.  The two readings our group’s philosophy on schooling and education supports the most are: John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and Emerson’s “The American Scholar”. These two pieces of work are the ones that most thoroughly support what our philosophy is all about and where we stand on with our beliefs. Locke says that “all ideas come from sensation and reflection; all knowledge is founded on experience” (Locke 2) He rejects the idea of innate principles and tries to convey that they do not really exist. He describes the mind at birth, at a blank state, which is later on filled with experience, not some divine natural light through which the mind can gain knowledge as we go. Emerson, on the other hand, is the one that believes that books are helpful and important, but to a certain extent. For him, books are more of a record of the past, records that “Each age… must write… or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.” (Emerson 3) Being able to be independent and think before we act on things is what sets the humans apart. However, if we only read, without having thoughts of our own, “…instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm.” (Emerson 4) Education, for these two thinkers, and all of us, is not merely the transmission of the ideas from the book writers to the readers. It is and it should be way more than that. Books can be helpful, but are not a fundamental factor of learning.

"The What" Check-In

Finding One’s Own Way

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  1. Describing Our ASM

For this Alternative Schooling Moment, we will have our students travel around the city to reach one destination. We will be getting four people that we already know because it is too difficult to ask this of strangers. We will split these four into two pairs of people, those paired together will not be acquainted with each other, and their goal will be to reach the same destination. We will simulate the pressures of society on formal education on one of the groups. This group will get a printout of directions obtained from Google Maps, MapQuest, etc. They will strictly follow the directions we give them, similar to how students strictly follow the lesson plan given to them by formal education. Additionally, we will place time constraints on this group, which relates to the time limits institutions place upon students during the school year and especially during test-taking conditions.

As for the other group, we will simply give them hints on where to go, such as pictures of landmarks and street corners. This group will be left to use mostly their own intuition to reach the destination. They are prohibited from asking strangers on the street for help, for that may suppress any creativity that their intuitions may spur. Instead of coming up with their own ways to reach the destination, they would still be relying on others’ help, which we want to avoid as much as possible. Our group of five will split up to film each pair separately, and we will not attach ourselves to pairs with members that we individually know.

2. Our Audience and Our Students

The audience will be those who believe that formal education and the society attached  to it should be the main motivators for a student’s education. Our second audience would be supporters of non formal education methods. Our students will be friends, two of whom will be chosen by asking them if they want to go on an adventure in the city, thus creating our motivated group. We are choosing friends that do not know one another because we do not want their existing relationship to influence this ASM, and two people meeting and learning about each other for the first time should also be a nice additional lesson.

3. The Three Main Objectives of Our ASM…

  • Understanding of the city, the students’ surroundings, and even of their newly acquainted partners by those who have no “societal pressures”
  • Creativity in the way to get to the destination by the group with the freedom to pave their own path
  • Evoking and receiving passionate and genuine motivation to reach their destination from the students

4. …And How They Reflect Our Group’s Philosophy on Education

The understanding that will hopefully be obtained by the group with no “societal pressures” will reflect how we believe that motivation to learn coming from within the self achieves the best, long-lasting results. The group with constraints will be pressured to strictly follow the directions we give them and therefore will not be able to enjoy their surroundings and learn from it as well as the group with freedom. We also hope to garner as much creativity and fun from the group without pressures as well, and this will help them think of it less and less as a task that we are asking them to achieve. The creativity and fun will also help our next objective, which is to evoke and receive passionate and genuine motivation to reach their destination. This passion and true motivation will bring our philosophy back full circle, because if they are able to bring this kind of reaction out, they will obtain the best results of understanding the city, their surroundings, and their partners. Those who are more motivated with no pressure from anyone except themselves are more likely to be open to learning lessons from everything that surrounds them, instead of limiting themselves to the mindset presented to them.

5. Two Readings Reflecting Our Group’s Philosophy on Education

Rousseau:

Rousseau’s insistence of Emile learning from and for himself allows our group’s philosophy to support it. Rousseau writes, “This is also the time to train him gradually to prolonged attention to a given object; but this attention should never be the result of constraint, but of interest or desire” (17). This quote comes from Rousseau’s instruction on the ideal education for man, as he says that it is best for Emile to be trained gradually to give attention to a certain thing, but this attention should not be forced or limited to certain constraints. Instead, it should come from the student’s own interests and desire to learn. This relates to our philosophy that the student who motivates himself to learn and has actual interest in the topic is the one who obtains the ideal education. This is why we are allowing one group to be free of constraints that one usually has on his or her education, so that the group’s motivation to reach their destination will come purely from their own interest and desire.

Additionally, Rousseau believes that one learns when they reason and experience things on their own freely. He writes, “”Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it” (Rousseau 15). The students with no direction also will have to heavily rely on their own instincts in order to reach the destination. Like Rousseau gives Emile no set plan on what to learn and does not teach the latter things, the students with freedom must learn and discover their own way to the destination. This gives the students a clearer and more personal understanding of where they are going and how they get there. Students with direction, however, won’t receive the same understanding since the directions are directly given to them. They will strictly follow the directions and therefore, they will not be free to admire their surroundings, learn mistakes, or have much fun on the way to the destination. They aren’t discovering anything new, instead they are only learning within the constraints set upon them.

Shelley:

The reading written by Shelley, specifically with the monster motivating himself and paving his own way to education is also a text that our group’s philosophy supports. The monster, after being abandoned by Victor Frankenstein, finds “that [he] could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which [he] could not either surmount or avoid” (Shelley 209). Because the monster was not a part of society and had no expectations from others he could go around without being held back by anyone or anything. He was able to find Frankenstein while also gaining knowledge in his own way. The motivation to find his creator influenced his decisions to observe and learn from others even though he was rejected by humans. He did not give up the hope of wanting to communicate with others. This relates to what our philosophy is trying to reflect, that one should not base his or her own motivation to learn on what others think or try to tell one to. Whether or not others are in support of one’s journey to education should not affect the individual’s desire to keep going.

This motivation can come in different ways, and the monster displays that. Hope to communicate with others is one way, and another way is his fear that he will never be able to reach that goal. The monster “tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds” however “the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from [him] frightened [him] into silence again” (211). Though afraid at first and drifting back into silence, the monster quickly gets over that in his determination to learn the ways of humans. Similar to how the monster’s inability to communicate and learn language frightened and motivated him at the same time to educate himself, the students without directions will be motivated by their fear of getting lost and not reaching their destination.

Another instance that supports our philosophy occurs when the monster was in the woods, when he “quickly collected some branches, but they were wet and would not burn” (Shelley 212). The monster sat and observed how “the wet wood which [he] had placed near the heat dried and itself became inflamed” (Shelley 213). He reflected on his mistake “and by touching the various branches, [he] discovered the cause and busied [him]self…that [he] might dry it and have a plentiful supply of fire” (Shelley 213). The monster’s lesson of learning how to start a fire relates to our project and philosophy. The students without directions will be learning from their mistakes because if they ever get lost, they now know never to go that way again if they want to go to the same destination. This way of thinking also reflects on our philosophy because the monster was motivated to supply himself with fire, not letting his mistakes destroy his determination to survive and instead learning from them. Learning from mistakes are lessons that stay with individuals for life, because they learn that there is nothing to gain from that route.

 

"The What" Check-In, Close Reading Post, Weekly Post Check-In

Self Education vs. School

In the excerpt Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, James Marcus Bach writes about his ‘away from school’ experience and how it was perceived at the high school he spoke at. He tries to be honest with the students and tells them about what he really went through. He expressed this by saying “Education is important. School is not.” (1). Bach believes that getting a piece of paper that proves that we “successfully” completed this stage is not the only way to go about earning an education. He does not agree with what schools are doing to the students. “The result is a nonsensical record from which little of value can be inferred” (13). That is how he feels about the topic of whether or not low or high grades on tests show how good or bad of a student someone is. In the eyes of Bach, education is something you gain through experience and it can be fully self taught, it does not have to be done through school.

“I felt that it was wasting my time” (2) is what he states when explaining why he left school and dropped out. It all comes down to show that it is not about what we learn in theory, memorized word that we will soon forget, but it is mostly about what we experience and go through in life that helps us educate ourselves more.

Kanye West, on the other hand, when he went to perform at the Santa Monica High School, tried to convey to the students that education and school are indeed important, and they go hand in hand together. “… this is a hard world, a real world, and you want every advantage you can have” (par. 3) was the advice he gave to the students. He believes that, if available, college is a great opportunity and way to teach students a lot of things, and living in the real world, that is something to not be taken for granted.

It is significant that both Bach and Kanye are drop out students, who ended up being successful, and although they have opposite stands on the topic, both Bach and Kanye support the fact that everyone should follow their interests and find something they are passionate about. It is not always about the high grades and the things you can memorize from a class lesson. It is mostly about finding something that will be enjoyable doing for the rest of one’s life, something one can only get better at with experience.

“A buccaneer wants status, too, but only if that status is justly earned and sustained through the quality of his work” is what the Dictionary.com states about the word, which simply means pirate on Wikipedia.