Sputnik

During the first half of the twentieth century, education consisted of teaching the basics and professional studies were only attainable by going to college. The launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 came with a major reform and a change in the national way of thinking. New curriculums in American schools began to emphasize a sense of nationalism and the need to better than the soviets.

After world war II as many nations of Europe were indebted financially to the United States, the common theme was that the US was the most powerful nation in the world. With the launch of Sputnik, president Eisenhower decided to put the nation's sense of power to the test. The president began a series of initiatives aimed to address the technical shortcomings of the United States. The National Defense Education Act was passed and is considered one of the largest reforms in the history of American education with over $1 billion for schools. New federal programs allowed many students to seek high education. New efforts in vocational education were designed to train students in various technical subjects that overall assured that the nation was equipped with competent individuals.

As the space race continued, school classes began to employ measures of safety regarding a nuclear war. Americanism began to show its way into textbooks and many students adult beliefs began as study subjects in school. The threat of communism and socialism has a very negative connotation in american society. The threat of war can be considered a very serious and dangerous environment in any given country but good things can come out of it. Without the threat of being inferior to the Soviet Union, the United States was able to improve in many different aspects including education.

Had Sputnik not begun the space race who knows how public education would have ended up in today’s modern times. Other reforms came later in the way of preparing better teachers and in professionalizing the teaching field. Perhaps one can say that professionalizing teachers was an indirect result of the space race. As much as americans disliked the soviets, it was thanks to that little satellite that they were able to improve upon the educating of their citizens.

Socrates' Influences in Modern Education

Modern education is a culmination of many years of theories and the end result of an evolutionary road that began thousands of years ago. Psychological theories that have been studied thoroughly in the past hundred years may be the main processes used for educating; but the ethical and reasoning environment that schools have come to represent cam from long before our time.

As the greeks became on the first civilizations to have a curiosity about the world, Socrates the philosopher began to convey ideas that revolutionized how humans thought. These ideas and theories are still used today in modern education. The elenchus, socrates method of debating, is a way of asking and answering questions to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. Today’s teaching environments are based essentially on asking questions and answering them. This way of teaching might seem like an obvious effective method, but to the greeks it was a new way of reasoning.

Socrates’ views on truth and happiness were one of the firsts to make people think about what kind of persons they were. Wisdom was a centrally important aspect of achieving happiness. Although today’s society is more concerned with maintaining a healthy lifestyle by dieting and exercising in order to live longer, Socrates believed in achieving the best possible state of the soul even if it included achieving wealth and honor. In today’s schools the pursuit of happiness is determined by preparing the students for a future by educating them properly. Students can make their own happiness and the schools will provide the education necessary to become successful. Socrates' lack of belief in the greek’s religions led him to develop moral reasoning that did not need a religious reason.

Morality should be based on man’s search for truth and not on the fear of religious deities. This sort of argument may have led to Socrates’ death and it is still a debated issue today among religious and non religious people. American public schools have to follow a doctrine of separating religion with education and the teachings of morality can be learned without any religious arguments.

The Gatekeeper

Although asking questions in seek of an answer is a form of curiosity that leads to learning, it is the teachers, not the students, who ask most of the questions in a classroom. This is largely due to the fact that teachers are considered gatekeepers. What does the word gatekeeper mean exactly?

A gatekeeper seems to be the point that allows travel between one location and another through a gate or a passageway. The gatekeeper effectively controls the transitions between one place and the other by maintaining the flow of the situation. In a teacher’s case, they will determine who will talk, when, and for how long. This precise control can effectively influence the lesson being taught. A learning environment can be considered more efficient when the entire group is constantly participating and communicating but without the teacher giving the instructions and maintaining the flow of the discourse, the learning environment can disperse.

The teachers as the gatekeepers influenced some major reforms in the field of education. Training better and more professional educators in turn leads to better, or at least more qualified gatekeepers. There are some critics of gatekeeping that believe something should be changed to allow for better student interaction. A teacher that lectures and over- controls classes might not be achieving the full potential of the lesson. Students get bored easily especially if there is no interaction. While teacher may be the ones asking most of the questions, not enough time is given for the students to think about an answer.

Professional gatekeeping should be a required professional skill. If more resources went into effectively training teachers to use gatekeeping to its maximum potential, then perhaps the students will benefit from it. Effective gatekeeping should be a mixture of classroom interaction and discourse transitioned by the teacher in a way that does not disrupt the thinking environment. There should be a way of allowing the teacher to allow the students to ask the right questions while maintaining the subject on point. Effective gatekeeping should be considered an art if done correctly.

First Schools

It seems that throughout time, the darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest has transcended not only the physical adaptation of survival, but the cultural and psychological aspects of society. The ones who have the mean to survive and are the top class will undoubtedly rule the unadapted.

In the case of the Sumerian first schools, the individuals with the highest of class wee the ones receiving the education. The major point in the first schools was of course the training of scribes. Teaching the sumerian language and how to scribe it was the main goal. Students learned to write by repetition and there have been archeological findings of what appeared to be schoolhouses with rooms full of repeated lines thought to have been practiced by the students. There was no search for knowledge or truth in the schooling of the Sumerians.

By the time that the Egyptians advanced as a civilization, the matter of schooling and what was taught had evolved from the Sumerian’s style. Teaching had now developed into a skill, morality, and idealogical way of passing down information that the elders of the society deemed important. Ethical principles were now taught along with religion. Home schooling became a sort of apprenticeship with a father taking responsibility for the son’s education. Sons and daughters followed their respective family’s trade and eventually passed that knowledge down to their children. Formal scribe education continued in Egypt but with the inclusion of moral and vocational lessons. Formal education still belonged to the well-to-do families in the society.

This form of societal difference ensured that the educated ruled over the less educated and for thousands of years, education was reserved for the high class. Only today do we see a major change in the way of schooling. It has become almost rare to have an illiterate individual in a developed world. Although education is freely available to anyone that seeks it, the most expensive and most reputable centers for education are still considered something reserved for the members of high society.

The tree waves of educational reform continue to influence the education system in America. These waves of reform came during times where schools were not living up to the standards of what was being demanded by society.

The first wave of reforms which came during the early eighties, came from complaints from corporations and the military. This first wave was focused on the strength of the country as a world superpower. Students were not achieving high scores on international tests and were not considered prepared to use newly sophisticated equipment in the military. This first wave of reform gave way to the beginnings of standardized tests to identify the different performances of students and teachers.

The second wave of reform came in the late eighties and was focused on the nature of curriculums in the schools. The reformists were concerned with oppressive school climates and the poor academic performances that resulted from bureaucratic systems. This wave of reform focused on building professional teachers and empowering them along with administrators to implement professional teaching methods that would apply to different settings.

The third wave of reform in the early nineties gave way to what is called “full service schools.” In full service schools, the acknowledgement that many families did not posses the ability to fully raise their children is realized. Children’s boards replaced school boards. The needs of children became the responsibility of schools along with education. School policies where changed and extra curriculum activities where implemented to provide students with a vast arrange of social activities.

Our school system will always be a system that tries to achieve the perfect goals that society requires. The need for our schools to be able to compete with international standards continues to be one of the goals. As the US aspires to be a major superpower in the world, the pressure is put on the schools to produce students that will compete internationally and will contribute to the nation. I believe that reform is a natural part of the process of growing and without proper reform every once in a while, the system becomes old and will eventually fail.

Reflection 7

The first form of education comes from the imitation of out parents. Those who we are raised with become by default, our first professors. That is how we learn to speak and that is how we learn to behave. Our unique cultural heritage is also engraved in our way of life and as we grow older, we become more and more like our parents. This way of learning is not new by any means and it is the way that the ancient civilizations passed down their knowledge to the new generations. In ancient Egypt, homeschooling was the way to learn.

Whatever your family was skilled at is what eventually you would become. As a young man, you could not chose your own career path. Young men learned the trade that their fathers taught them and eventually taught their own children. Young girls were taught lessons by their mothers on how to manage the household, how to sing, and to ply musical instruments. If the girls were to eventually become temple workers, the singing and dancing became their respective careers. Mesopotamia’s way of instructing was more focused on the teaching of scribes and priests.

Not everyone could attend a scribe school or priest school but those who could were treated to many methods of learning including memorization and individual instructions. This type of education was considered difficult and became a test of excellence for those who could master it.

Another way of teaching similar to the home schooling method was the apprenticeship. First noticed in Hammurabi’s code, and apprenticeship required a student to learn from a master for many years until the student became a master himself. This system was used throughout the ancient world and not until the last century did it diminish in use. During medieval times, guild system based on apprenticeship learning was the main way to achieve a career. Official documents were made for an apprentice to in order to become a journeyman. Once a journeyman, the student would become a master after making a “masterpiece.” This way of learning ensured proper teaching methods were used to pass down a craft from generation to generation.

It is only recent that school have become diverse enough to give the options of different careers for students.

Writing and Civilizations

The invention of writing was a crucial step in the establishment of the world’s great ancient civilizations. At first developed as a form of economic usefulness with pictures representing amounts and what the merchandise was, writing began it’s journey through many transformations into a tool used to maintain a society.

History began when writing was invented. With the eventual ability to write symbols representative of the language, writers and readers where able to intercommunicate and develop long-standing communications. With the unifications of these forms of communications within regions of the world, societies were now capable of becoming bigger and without much differing ideas. With writing becoming a way to establish laws and write them down for the entire society to see, civilizations now possessed a means of control and a means of dictating how the established way of life should be. Ancient egyptians believed that writing your name many times would grant you a never ending life.

As societies became separated by nobility with those in charge being the ones capable of reading and writing, literacy continued to be a major tool used in the governing of the peoples. Alexander the Great considered writing to be such a powerful tool that he built the library at Alexandria where most of the worlds writings were to be kept and studied. People began to understand how important it was to have a recollection of the past so that we may learn from past mistakes and not repeat them.

I believe that the invention of writing is one of the most important things to have aided in the evolution of the human brain. The discovery of fire and the invention of tools was important in the growth of human knowledge but writing, I believe, contained the ability to unite humans in a bigger and more controlled environment. Without the invention of writing I don’t think that any major advances in technology and advancement of species would have occurred as efficiently as it did with the invention of writing. It was crucial for ancient civilizations and it is crucial for modern civilizations.