Part Four: 1980-200 THE BOTTOM LINE

Part four of the book "School" talked about children going to school in the "new age." These children were seeing more of a reform. Kids in Harlem had schools that had different types of specialized schools in them. This was also a time of when low income students could get a voucher to go to a private or religious private school. This would also be the beginning of the start of mandatory testing in every grade.

I think that we have come a long way with schooling and teaching kids. We still have a long way to go but this book has really showed us how far we have come. This chapter showed us that it was still only a few decades ago that we, still did not know what to do or how to properly teach kids, but we are lowly improving what we can do to move forward.

On 9/25/18 we had a chalk talk in class. We ere separated into groups and had to write things down a piece of oak tag, if you will. We had to write down things that we had read in section 3 of our book “School” however, the catch is is that we could not talk to one another. We had to write down our thoughts and we had one person in our groups that would circle what people had written down and anyone would have to expand more on what that person had written about. 

Now personally, I was never really a fan of chalk talk because I never really know how to be broad. I always have to write or even orally tell stories or give explanations in a way that gives ever little detail, no matter how much or how little it would effect a story. On the piece of oak tag that we were given I wanted to talk about the Latinos down in Texas and how they fought for bilingual rights, however everyone else was talking about the major issues such as segregation and Title IX. While those topics are very important, I believe that I focused on the smaller issues because I never knew that they were happing during the same time period as segregation. I wanted to ask the people that I was working with if that was what we were supposed to the writing about but we could not speak to each other. 

Even when it came time to talk out loud in front of the whole class, I got scared. I even started to second guess if I read section 3, which I know that I did because I knew all of the topics for that section.Chalk talk is interesting, but I still get confused if I should or shouldn’t be specific.

What do I agree with?

In section 2 of the book, “School” which covers the years 1900-1950 they talk about many of the children who go from school to work, or the other way around. Because of the fact that child labor laws were not in place and many children had to go out and support their families, it was hard for the kids to focus on what they were learning. They found this to be especially true if the children were only staying in one class room for about 8 hours to have one teacher teach them different subjects. One thing that they had the children do were to go from class room to class room at the end of each lesson. This would keep the children on their toes and have them feel that each lesson was special. They even had rooms for napping, which I think that they should still have today. 

What do I Argue with?

I argue and whole heartedly disagree with I.Q. testing. Even today people still think that I.Q. tests are important and that they mean something. A test can’t measure a persons intelligence, in fact it can only harm them. It can make them feel that they really don’t have that much intelligence. This also brings up the S.A.Ts that were implemented and that I also disagree with because not everyone is on the same educational level to take a test that is not on their schools educational level. I went to catholic school for 13 years and I never really learned math or science. I can recall taking a practice P.S.A.T in my high school and I can recall reading a science problem having to do with Kelvins (if you don’t know what Kelvins is, it’s what they use to measure the temperature of the sun) and I know knew about Kelvins because I watched a video that referred to it. Standardized is not something that I agree with.

What do I assume?

I assumed that because, especially during this time period that we had a large influx of immigrants, that the people in the school system would have at least taken in Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese but this is quite the opposite. I would have figured that because many schools took in these immigrants (even though there were some schools that did not give immigrant kids proper education) and in some cases even taught different languages, that they would have been more accepting to their Latino and Asia counterparts but that was not the case at all and it took hard work and diction for them to be taken seriously.

What do I aspire to do?

I aspire to help a new generation of people. In what, I’m not sure but hopefully it is something very positive. While I have an idea for my future, I do not know what will happen or where I will go. I don't know how I can help, but I think that my Sociology degree can be a big help when it comes to help people across many different lines and walks of life. 

The Common School

1770-1900

In reading the first part of our book “School” entitled ‘The Common School’ I read about the events that took place during the first 100 years of school. School, as we know it today, did not start out the way that we might have thought that it did. It took many trials and tribulations to get to where we are with it today. There were so many things that went into trying to at least get one thing right and wondering how to even go about doing that. 

In the early years of schooling, school itself wasn’t even nine months out of the year round it was actually about a month or two in the whole year. That alone just makes me think how people would ever think that kids would learn what they had to. When they did start to work out how they were going to have kids go to school, not everyone was able to go to school. The poorest kids could never go at all, kids who worked on farms not only did not have the money, but also just thought that they would grow up and become a farmer like their parents. Weather kids could, but children in middle class families struggled, as they still needed some supplies and had, in some cases, needed to pay their children through, either with a local payment or to the school itself. Even at this rate, many kids were still not attending school and because school was still new, the new teachers did not know what to teach their kids. Instead what they had they do was bring books from home and recite them. While it helped the kids understand how to read and write, a good majority of the information from the books was wrong. It was doing more harm then good to the kids.

At this same time, we had a large in flux of immigrants coming into this country. Many European and catholic when at the time America was a predominately Protestant country. Many of the people wanted their version of the bible to be taught in schools, however Protestants were not having their children learn along side the Catholic kids in school because they felt that their children would leave their religion. They said that they could then either have the schools be non-secular or just not teach Catholicism at all. They then though about making a separate school for Catholics so the kids can learn about their version of the bible. I personally think that all schools should be nonsecular due to each family having their own beliefs and values in their personal life and there really is no “one-size-fits-all” mentality of religion. 

Also at this time was the start of segregation in schools between black and white students. They had put black and white kids in separate schools because the people at the time still had a mentality that whites were superior to blacks. Obviously this mentality has since gone away and today we are all equal (except for the minds of some few who are still living in the past) but this mentally really hurt the kids in those days. The schools did less and cost more. All of the children could have gone to the same school and gotten the same education, regardless of race, religion or gender. 

Girls as well were no exception to the rules. Girls only got very few years of education so they then could go off to become a mother. However Catharine Beecher was one of the women who pioneered women to making teaching a career and from there brave women young went out into the world to make a new life for themselves.

School is still not perfect, but we have made many, many improvements with the well over 200 years that we have had schooling. We have gone through many changes and with the years, we are always trying to see what we can do better. 

Literacy Autobiography Blog #1

Growing up I didn’t really like to read. My parents tried everything that they could have to get me to read a book. I remember right before I would got to sleep at night, one of my parents would read me a book and I would enjoy that. In my grammar school, every week we had to pick out a book from the library and it could never be the same book twice. I always wanted to read the Winnie The Pooh books because he was one of my favorite characters but my librarian would always tell me that I had picked that same book already. It really wasn’t until I was in the 8th grade when I started reading for fun. I was at a book fair and purchased a random book that I really ended up loving. My dad really supported me to continue reading and he keeps inspiring me to read because he always reads books in his free time. I think that because I picked up reading on my own, I was very encouraged to keep reading. I would say having to pick out the library books each week at my grammar school mainly because my librarian wasn’t the nicest person in the world and she would not encourage me to try and read books that were of my age group. Inside school, I was okay at reading aloud but still very nervous because a lot of words confused me. I was also diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in grammar school, so it was hard enough just to pass my spelling tests let alone read a book. I can actually remember being in kindergarten and I had to study for a spelling test, my dad was helping me and giving me practice spelling test but I got a lot of the words wrong. That experience really stuck with me.

It really wasn’t until my freshman year of high school that I started to feel that I could read better and write papers better too. I started to really love writing and did it for fun. I even stared to write poetry and long letters to people that I love. Speaking was never really my strong suit, but if I did have to talk about something I always try to make sure to incorporate or make the topic about something that I love. I always have enjoyed listening to audio books and reading the book at the same time, it helps me to remember what is happing in the story. I would say that visual repression of things that we were learning about, such as pictures really helped me to see and understand what we were learning. I would say something that really frustrated me, especially when I was in grammar school were some teachers who did not understand what I was going through and would actually yell at my whole class because of it. I really did not like my grammar school and honestly, I don’t know how it’s still open. Growing up my sister was my role model. I was looked up to her, to me she was this smart person that knew everything and could do anything.

Today I love literacy, I see the impacts that certain books have on certain societies. I see how books can shape a person and how they can inspire someone. I use literacy in a lot of ways in my life. For inspiration to maybe write a poem or to help me with characters that I play as in Dungeons & Dragons games that I play in. I would say that my dad continues to inspire me with continuing on with my literacy because he has written a book and I would also love to write a book myself. I also write poetry a lot for my boyfriend, so that always encourages me to write something new! I would also say my professors inspire me to keep writing.