school 1980-present (ish)

This section of the video series highlighted some of the best and worst moments for education. In this era, schools were more inclusive and taught a higher majority of the American Public than ever before. The flip side to this is that while our schools were arguable performing better than they have ever performed before, the schools were used as a scapegoat. Perhaps this is based on my opinion rather than fact, but i believe the school system was unfairly blamed for our countries economic hardships as a way to shift the blame from the parties it belonged to to parties the American Public would be more likely to look at as dis-favorable given the level of authority the President wields in comparison to the power given to schools. Also, this period saw a number of scholastic peculiarities rise. For example, trying to use an outside company to govern the practices in a school was attempted and thankfully rejected by the American Public. Charter schools became a bigger issue in this period of Education (and are increasingly an issue today). The combination of this controversy and the blame pointed on education from the "nation at risk" resulted, eventually, in the formulation of the No Child Left Behind Act. The act, though attempting to achieve something all educators want to see, all children taught adequately, fails in its practice. The act has two main problems in my opinion. For one, it allocates funds in a manner that makes no sense. To remove funding from schools that are "at risk" is simply irresponsible and will only result in a decline for those schools. Secondly, the act focuses too much on a few subject areas and deprives students of a well rounded education.

School episode 1

This section of the school series is kind of interesting because it shows the start of the American educational system. The idea that everyone is the united states should be entitled to an education just makes sense based on the beliefs that our country is founded on. To create a country that aims to have no nobility and to have equal opportunity for all doesn't seem possible without there being a chance for everyone to learn. I also found it interesting that many of the same issues that the school systems faced at the time are still issues that we face now, even if not in the same capacity that those in the past dealt with them. We still find ourselves wondering how to combat the issue of inequality of facilities and materials though with a higher degree of support from both federal and local funds schools are more uniform than they would have otherwise been. Our schools see the biggest differences based on which state they are in as opposed to simply being in a town that has a higher SES but still SES plays into the state of the schools also. One of the big issues that we still deal with is wondering what the role of languages other than English will play in our school system. Our school systems are inundated with an increasing number of English language leaners and have to decide weather the way to handle this situation is to simply attempt to mainstream these students by increasing their english proficiency or if they should be allowed to work in, and honor, their native language. Also, there is some debate about how important it is for students to be learning a second language in schools. There is some movement to see students learning a second language at a younger age and I personally could not be more enthusiastic about it. For one, i think it is incredibly ignorant of the US to have our citizens only learning one language. most countries have their citizens learn more than one language and simply look at it as a chance to enrich thier population but for some reason we seem to look at learning any language aside from English as a sort of attempt to rob our society of its identity even though English isn't even the official language of the US! also, it is widely documented that learning a second language also helps individuals have greater proficiency in English. taking all this into consideration and remembering that alternate languages are on the rise in the US (most notably spanish) it seems irresponsible not to have our students learning another language at an early age where their brains are more apt to truely comprehend a new language.

generations video episode 3

this video dealt mostly with the civil rights movements that took place across america from the 50's through the early 80's. The short, abbreviated version of what took place was that once the brown v board of education decision was reached, members of other discriminated minorities perused their own civil rights. Some of these groups included mexican americans, women, and individuals with handicaps. The video struck a chord with me in that i have seen discrimination against individuals for things such as gender, handicap, and sexual orientation. For me, one of the hardest examples of this came when my father, who is gay, was fired from a job that he held for nearly 10 years when his boss discovered his lifestyle choice. Though this was clearly the case for his being fired, there was not concrete evidence to prove this so his boss was never brought to justice for his act of bigotry . Sadly, this type of discrimination still exists within our school systems. Our job as educators is to see past these foolish prejudices and give all of our students a chance at education

Video PBS - Episode 2 – “The Story of Schools” 1900-1950

Though there were some things in this video that seemed outright foolish to most educators today, what struck me was that many of the issues that were trying to be addressed in the video are the same issues that our school systems struggle to deal with today. For example, though we do not instantly place students who come from different ethnic backgrounds into classes where they are seen as only fit to learn certain trade skills we do still have questions over to the degree of vocational programs in schools and though less blatant, racism is still present in our school. As the book Teach With Your Heart shows us, prejudice is still a major factor in the schools we have today. One of the biggest concerns in the video that is also a huge concern for us today is the issue of what language to speak in school. The video showed a progression towards having more school systems teaching entirely in English, but in today's school systems there is an increase in ESL (English as a Second Language) programs. With our school systems becoming saturated with students who don't speak English, or have limited proficiency, we are turning towards assisting these students with the language barrier to help give more students a good chance at a successful education.