“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The typical proverb that I heard my teacher saying when my team on second year of high school during a “week of changes” offered the idea of having more engaging and interactive classes. Is not a surprise that he said that, traditional school, keeping committing the same mistakes over generations, and causing difficulties in many children because the teaching system “wasn’t broken”. Is not a surprise that students of all ages has their own way to construct knowledge in a variety of forms. The ways that students’ minds work also influence how—and how well—they learn to a subject, how they get focus more and more easily. Then, professors who understand the differences between students knows that the same point …show more content…
(Wikipedia, 2016). Also known as tactile education, this method was initially created around 1888 in Greek, just achieving notable recognition through the decades in 1983 when discussed in Howard Gardner’s book: Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In his book, he describes that activities (such as dancing or listening to music) using the five senses of the body to help developing the kinesthetic intelligence. Moreover, the kinesis is the most important learning style between all, not just academically, but above all. The reason is given as an example: when the baby is born he will look for his mom’s breast to feed (smell) and her voice (hear), with the past of the months, he will learn how to walk, or crawl (touch), be attracted by some colors (vision) and he will determinate what he likes the most to eat (taste) as well. Though the explanation, and taking to academic side, it is important to understand that the kinesis is used to guide the most important steps in people’s life. Becoming a relevant method to use for students, involving practical participation and finally to achieve the motor memory to make remind the things after they have done them
Plutarch deduces, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” A vessel is often cluttered with useless items while a fire kindles and is truly fascinating as it slowly starts to grow. The mind is always being filled with unnecessary information every single day. The student has the opportunity to mold the mind into storing information that is considered useful. In the academic sense, students should be able to use this information and apply it when they are learning. Students should strive to learn for the purpose of expanding the mind. Every single thing taught in school should be applied in life. That is the only way that anyone can become successful.
Patterson, Marilyn Nikimaa. Every Body Can Learn: Engaging the Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence in the Everyday Classroom. Tucson, AZ: Zephyr Press, 1997.
By keeping the old ways of teaching, students are never prepared for jobs that actually exist. Instead students are forced to learn the standard way and lose the ability to apply their prior knowledge to current jobs. Modernized teaching allows an individual to form a creative side of thinking. This is done by using technology, where individuals are able to explore and think of things in new ways never thought of before. Davidson discusses how the education system strictly focuses on preparing students for higher education rather than properly preparing them for jobs in their fields of interest. She
Due to the effects of higher enrolment, teaching methods are now directed towards suiting the masses, thus everything has become less personal, as well as, less educationally in depth. Teaching techniques consist of multiple choice tests, rather than written answer questions which require critical analysis, as Jacobs states “So many papers to mark, relative to numbers and qualities of mentors to mark them, changed the nature of test papers. Some came to consist of “True or False?” and “Which of the following is correct?” types of questions” (Jacobs 49). While teachers also no longer engage in one on one conversations with students, but merely in a lecture hall among masses and everyone is seen as just a student number. Jacobs states a complaint from a student “who claimed they were shortchanged in education. They had expected more personal rapport with teachers” (Jacobs 47). Universities are too much focused on the cost benefit analysis, of the problem of increased enrolment, with the mind set of “quantity trumps quality” (Jacobs 49). The benefit of student education and learning is not being put first, but rather the expansion of the university to benefit financial issues. Taylor states “individualism and the expansion of instrumental reason, have often been accounted for as by-products
Education remains a cornerstone for society as it has for decades. Technology advances, the economy fluctuates, and politics change, but education remains, not only important but imperative for personal and social growth. Yet, as important as it is touted to be, the quality and purpose of learning is often lost in the assembly-line, manufactured process of education that exists today.
In conclusion, education is broader than just falling into what the contemporary school system has to offer. Both Gatto and Graff proved this by explain how conforming students to certain perspectives of education limits their potential in other educational branches that interest the students. Also, curricula should bring a balance between making a school a place for obtaining information, and accommodating the educational demands for each individual student. It is imperative to understand that reforming the academic system, by fine-tuning schools to have its students learn what exactly they are interested in, will lead to having students accessing their full intellectual potential.
The desire to learn new things means that both sides, students and teachers, must have an engaged pedagogy. According to hooks, an engaged pedagogy is both sides are willing to learn and grow. Not only the students are empowered and are encourage sharing things about themselves and learning new things but teachers are also meant to do these things (21). This is a barrier because if students and teachers are not willing to learn and grow democratic citizens cannot be created. This is so because people will not be educated of differences and others react and deal with different things in society. This goes along with the importance of self-actualization of teachers in the class...
But I think in some classes, it has gotten worse. I think part of the problem might be teachers losing their passion for teaching. I may be wrong, but it seems that some teachers get the material they are supposed to teach, put it up on a PowerPoint for us to take notes, and then expect us to regurgitate it on a test. They do things like this instead of fun activities that really make us think and discover new things in our minds. Although this is just an assumption, this article really did make me think. I found that interesting because we are in the critical thinking unit and it is exactly what we are meant to do. We’re meant to think about things, analyze things, synthesize things, and then think about it all over again until we finally come to our own conclusion. I think that was the main point of Harris’s article. We discover our true feelings and knowledge when we search for them inside of our minds, and then we create something with our own unique ideas. Sydney J. Harris did a wonderful job on this article and I thoroughly enjoyed reading and then going into my own mind and writing about
A child must have physical development before motor development can occur (Charlesworth, 2000). According to Piaget infants acquire knowledge from their environment. Through sight, smell, hearing, and touch this is accomplished. Adults are responsible for seeing that the children have a chance to explore to acquire the knowledge. A child must be physically able to do the work that is required to keep up with the other students. Many chil...
...at previously, sometimes in the midst of a discussion, people forget that there are two sides of a story and not everyone has to agree to yours. What we learn from our books or our studies is not what is necessarily important. What we learn from our peers and our professors is what’s important. Learning is more than absorbing fact, it is acquiring understanding, and it is being passionate about the material you are given. Each piece that we have read in class, and each comment that we make impacts a person no matter how little it seems. The education systems focuses too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning. However, this course felt like we were learning something instead trying to finish the curriculum. As Albert Einstein once said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.
It is important that education is properly enforced and easily accessed by all people. Poor teaching is implemented in the classroom today, such as boring lectures consisting of taking notes and regurgitating information. Because of this, people lack the motivation necessary to take advantage of their academic opportunities. In his essay “I Just Wanna Be Average,” Mike Rose writes about how during the majority of his academic career “[he] did what [he] had to do to get by, and [he] did it with half a mind” (154). Not only had Mike Rose done this, but other students follow in the same footsteps as if they are blind to how valuable education is and how it can empower a person. The type of an educator you are taught by can differentiate whether you will “do what you have to do to get by” or actually engage yourself while in the classroom. Mike Rose makes it obvious that school was not fascinating to him, but when he is introduced to a new teacher, Jack MacFarland he states that “[he] worked very hard, for MacFarland had hooked [him]; he tapped [his] old interest in reading and creating stories” (160). Professors like Jack MacFarland are what leave impacts on students and help them realize the importance of academics. Rose even states “MacFarland gave him a way to feel special by using his mind” (160). When educators can make students feel the way that MacFarland made Rose feel they can ascertain a great amount of
John W. Gardner said, “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.” Education today is very ineffective. It is in an in between phase of the ways of old and a time of complete reform. The main issue is that people often lose sight of why the education system should even be reformed. It shouldn’t be reformed because “that’s what everyone else is doing.” It needs to be reformed to bridge the gap for the students who have a different learning style. It should be reformed to expand knowledge for students. Education reform can have good and bad effects. Because the education system is very complex, educators are being faced with changes and they must decide what is best for students.
In conclusion, auditory learners prefer to learn things visually; they prefer to listen to instructions. Kinesthetic learners rather touch and feel what they are doing. A teacher should evaluate her classroom to see what kind of learners she has in her classroom to be more a more effective teacher. Since in educational psychology there are many branches of psychology that are used to determine learning within the classroom.
students to learn and teachers to teach. At first glance, it may seem problematic, but research has
In this course I experienced an important change in my beliefs about teaching; I came to understand that there are many different theories and methods that can be tailored to suit the teacher and the needs of the student. The readings, especially those from Lyons, G., Ford, M., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2011), Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R., & Le Cornu, R. (2007), and Whitton, D., Barker, K., Nosworthy, M., Sinclair, C., Nanlohy, P. (2010), have helped me to understand this in particular. In composing my essay about teaching methods and other themes, my learning was solidified, my knowledge deepened by my research and my writing skills honed.