11-21-13 From Group Discussion - Chalk illustrates charges

Group discussion 11-21-13
How Chalk illustrates the charges Freire, Gatto, Rose & Black level against education.

Freire discussed his concerns about education in his paper, "The Banking Concept". One of the issues he mentions is the training of the American students into worker drones or "adaptable manageable beings". This is proved by the following statement: "It is not surprising that the "banking" concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings, the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness that would result from their intervention in the world".

Gatto's main point in "Against School" was that American kids are being pushed to conform to standards set in the 1910's. There is a tendency towards this as  Gatto states,  "forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years". (pg 2) The documentary Chalk supports this point clearly when one of Mr. Stroope's female students disrespect him because she is bored with the class and curriculum.

Lewis Black, a comedian, discusses in the video "Back to Black" how American schools are "broken". "NBC dedicates one week to education and 51 weeks to incarceration." He further goes on to summarize the failure of the American system by describing it as "We are 25th in math, 21st in science. We fall behind in almost every topic except confidence. Who needs science, math and physics if he'd had a little more confidence he'd have cleared the roof." He and Mr. Stroope in Chalk both utilized humor to make people pay attention and to motivate them.

In "Resolutions Someone Should Make for 2011" Mike Rose discusses the need to measure students and teachers success by improvement and knowledge instead of test scores. He explains it as "To stop making the standardized test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness." In the documentary Chalk this is supported by Mr. Lowery's improved relationship with student affecting their desire to learn in his class. When his relationship with them exceeded his expectations his personal confidence grew.