Thinking Critically

While reading Coming of Age I was startled by the amount of money we spend on incarcerated people compared to students (Brighton, 103).While there is no debate over the fact that we are not spending money effectively and with proper education we would have to spend less money on Correctional facilities, you also need to look at the facts they gave us critically (which I didn't do at first). I was very intrigued by this fact so I was sharing it with some friends, when they made me analyze it deeper. We provide 24 hour a day care with all meals to incarcerated people, while we only spend 7 hours a day on students with few amenities. If you break it down that way, we spend $1,125/hr on a person in jail, while we spend $1,242 on a student per hour. I bring this up, because later on in this chapter it discusses how we need to train students to be "discerning about media they consume and the advertising to which they are exposed." (Brighton, 114) When I first read the stats on page 103 I was shocked, but I didn't analyze it critically like the chapter later on says we need to train students to do. I find myself being very critical of some things I read (i.e. political articles) but then are less observant at other times, how can we teach constant critical thinking skills?

Creativity vs. Assessment

On the theme of assessment, what information is the data really giving us about our students? We know that students do not put forth their best effort on them as hard as we try. Honestly, are we putting our best effort forth? Summative assessment does not correlate with the middle school beliefs at all, the students have no control over what they are learning in preparing for these tests, and they rate very low on Bloom's taxonomy. I agree that there needs to be some consistency among schools and their curriculum, but this is not the way to do it. There is so much information that students learn that they will never be tested on but is far more influential to their learning. We need to take a look at our priorities. This generation of students who are getting over tested is losing precious creatvity. The developmental stage they are at has already lost some of their childhood imagination and creativity, why are we pushing more of it out?

Community and Curriculum

I have noticed throughout all the reading that one of the suggestions is to incorporate the community in many aspects of the middle school. There are always complaints of people who do not have children attending public school that they are paying too much for sub par results. We all feel burden by the testing that must be completed and when it the results are not satisfactory it is even more of an importance. How can we involve communities more with what we have in our curriculum? Service learning projects to help the community are an obvious answer but has anyone invited the community into your school to see what transpires over the course of a day? My elementary school use to do a "Tax Payer Appreciation Day" in April every year. We invited every resident of the town and showcased some top work from each grade as well as provided snacks and a tour. It normally was a big success, but because of testing obligations and financial restraints I think they have stopped.