Thursday, 09 October 2008

• Currently Reading Teachers, Schools, and Society (Book & CD-ROM) By David M. Sadker, Myra P. Sadker, Karen Zittleman see related

  An Unashamed Conservative

  I am now in the seventh week of the first semester in my venture into Higher Education.  My major is Secondary Education with concentration area in Citizenship (History).   I do not think I could have picked more controversial subjects. 

  I am greatly enjoying the college experience. I will perhaps describe it at length sometime, however, at the moment I am being overwhelmed with the soapbox urge.

  At times while studying, it is not uncommon to feel an intense desire to hurl my textbook across the room.  It is at these moments that I belabor my poor parents with my opinions on the subject matter.  This evening I suddenly remembered that I have a perfect opportunity for expostulation without creating difficulties in my home situation.  I Do have a blog.  And right now I am feeling constrained to post my opinions willy-nilly, regardless of potential career suicide. 

  The authors of the above text, the Sadkers and Zittleman, are decidedly progressive reconstructionists.  It is evident in their selection of individuals for incorporation in their "Educational Hall of Fame" found on pages 300-308 of the text.  These are the people who they believe should be glorified for their positive impacts on education.  I believe Sadker has made a few legitimate choices, but I also strenuously disagree with few of them. I have listed them all below.  First of all are the ones who I do not believe should be included on any Educational Hall of Fame roster.  

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Why? He believed that humans are fundamentally good in their free and natural state but corrupted as a result of societal institutions, such as schools.  Like Comenius, he saw children as developing through stages and believed that the child's interests and needs should be the focus of the curriculum. Rousseau emphasized the senses over formalized teaching found in books and classrooms, nature over society, and the instincts of the learner over the adult-developed curriculum of school.  -David Miller Sadker and others, Teachers, Schools, and Society, (McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, 2008), 300.

  And Rousseau is considered an educational hero??  Something strikes me as radically off base here.  How do you align the above passage with this one--Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? ?   Ah I do believe I committed a faux pas. I have begun mixing religion into my discourse.  As if the above passage about Rousseau were entirely free from religious taint. Look at this definition of religion gleaned from American Heritage Dictionary, A cause, a principle, or an activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived from 1712 to 1778 at the height of the Enlightenment.  He was among the foremost of the leading writers of the Enlightenment.  How did these writers pursue their causes, principles, and acitivities??   

  Something I find amusing in my study of the Enlightenment this past week is the continued emphasis on how society was at last being released from religion.  Granted I do not for a minute endorse the Catholic church's stranglehold on Europe throughout the Dark Ages and into the Early Modern Period, however, to postulate that society and thinkers were "free from religion" is simply ludicrous.  I believe the religion merely changed!   

  John Dewey

  B. F. Skinner

  Paulo Reglus Freire

  The others do not bother me quite as badly

  Friedrich Froebel

  Johann Herbart

  Emma Hart Willard

  Horace Mann

  Prudence Crandall

  Maria Montessori

  Mary McLeod Bethune

  Jean Piaget

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner

  Kenneth Clark

  I would love to sound off on all of these, however the hour grows late.  I must continue my study for the Midterm in this class on Monday.  It's a wonderful life.

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