Friday, March 2, 2012

Education Considerations

I am excited to be in the education group for the final project.  It is a topic that has always interested me.  Call me crazy, but my dream job would be a high school teacher.  That will never happen though because my future role as a husband and father cannot and will not be carried out with a teacher's salary.  I believe that this is one of the reasons that our pre-university education system in the U.S. is slipping.  From my experience in public schools, there are a considerable amount of teachers that are not good at teaching..  Just because a person is knowledgeable in a subject area does not mean that that person is able to teach that subject effectively.  Teaching is its own subject area.  It is a separate skill.  Effective teaching equally requires both knowledge in the subject taught and the ability to teach.  I had two teachers my senior year that were valedictorians of their high schools, and they honestly did not do teach very well at all.  I am not saying that I am a good teacher.  I would want to be one, but for now the subject of teaching and our education system easily interest me.


Another area to consider in the realm of education is funding.  The image above shows the average amount of money that public schools are allowed per student.  More money per student does not always mean better test scores. 


I have really liked the idea of self-directed learning in this course.  When I first heard we would be doing self-directed learning it sounded like it might be a joke of a class, but once I began to actually learn in this manner for the class, I started to thorough enjoy it and consequently I began to learn more.  It was because I was learning about what I wanted to learn about.  We of course were assigned books on certain subject material, but it was probably necessary to give some initial base or direction.  However, I do not think that self-directed learning is a substitute for structured or instructor-directed learning.  A little bit of both gives a solid foundation without compromising individuality.  

Something that does compromise individuality is standardization.  This is the most  

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