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.

Initiation Rites and Learning

The teaching that one receives at home is considered the first step in a life of education. The culture that one grows up with is inherited from the immediate family as well as from the culture centric point of view of similar relatives. By having the family as a starting stone in learning about life, rites of passage rituals become a sort of test that one must pass in order to become accepted within the culture. The parents or the senior leveled individuals of a culture are responsible for the teaching of the young ones as they were once taught by their elders.

Different cultures have different ways of passing down their traditions, beliefs, and ways of thinking. There are acceptable ways of behavior that differ from culture to culture. Learning what is right and what is wrong can be considered something that differs depending on the eye of the beholder. What is considered an essential lesson in one culture may not be considered as such in another. With the appearances of formal schools, the role of sole teachers changed from the families to the formal school teachers. Still within certain cultural communities, the formal schools did not have dramatic changes in the point of view of the cultures that they belonged to. In the twenty first century as laws against segregation are established, the schools continue to be segregate by culture. In this manner, the cultural teachings is still shared by the community and the schools.

Rites of passage ceremonies have varied throughout the years. What used to be considered a direct change from child to adult is now considered unlikely with a period in between known as adolescence. The period of adolescence in western culture has diminished the effectiveness of rites of passage ceremonies and has left them to become nothing more than traditional ceremonies such as birthdays. American rites of passage ceremonies are now being compared to high school graduations or college graduations. The passage to adulthood has been blurred from a definite change to a gradual growth. But rites of passages ceremonies continue to be a form of continuous lesson taught by the elders in a specific culture.

Behaviorist and Constructionist lesson plans

Lesson plans are a set of instructions that a teacher develops to help keep a standard procedure of how a lesson is going to be taught. There are different kinds of lesson plans and some teachers chose the best one for any given situation. For the past hundred years psychological studies on behavior have led to different conclusions on what type of behavior theory applies to what type of people.

The behaviorist lesson plan focuses on the behaviorism studies in psychology. This lesson plan is based on the theory that students will learn by repetition and association. A sample behaviorist lesson plan will look like a specific set of instructions and procedure. Every detail is entailed in the paper thereby making it possible for any teacher to pick up and teach the lesson effectively. This type of lesson plan can be used to standardize lessons among classrooms. There is always a clear objective that must be achieved and the behaviorist lesson plans details how to achieve it.

Another lesson plan based on psychological studies is the constructivist plan. Based on constructivism, a student constructs his/her own lessons based on experiences interactions. Constructivist lesson plans might not contain specific instructions on how to teach the lesson, but they will have a set of instructions on how to have students working together and sharing experiences. Unlike the behaviorist plan, the constructionist plan will have the students think more than work. It will have students express what they are learning with other classmates and what they think about what has been taught. These two lesson plans differ in many ways but they have the same goal of achieving new knowledge, weather it be interpersonal knowledge or memorization.

The behaviorist lesson plan is an ideal plan for lessons that require a certain point to be learned. Unlike the constructivist plan which I believe would not be as effective during certain classes like math or history. For discovering new ideas and learn interpersonally about an emotional subject, the constructionist is a good idea. However, I believe that the behaviorist lesson plan will continue to be the standard used for many years to come.

Eve and Lucy Reflection #4

America, or as I like to call it the United States, is a terrific place to live and the best country in the world. Of course if you are not from the United States you might find that a bit arrogant. But what is uniquely american is the fact that some people can say without a hint of irony that this is the best country in the world when they themselves have not visited any other country. That is essentially a part of the american dream. The fact that you can say whatever you want and as long as you believe it to be right then there is nothing or no one that is going to change your mind. Religion is one of the subjects that many americans hold as a plan for life. As such a cherished belief, many fundamentalist religious groups find that anything scientific that somehow contradicts with their religion is, in fact, wrong.

As I read the articles on Lucy and the mitochondrial Eve I could not help but think about all the people that would misinterpret the papers as an attack on their religious beliefs. Agreeing with the scientific findings made regarding our ancestry is in a way agreeing with evolution. Evolution is a big political issue in the US and although to foreigners there is not a question regarding the theory’s validity, it is considered a taboo in some parts of this country. I believe that as thinking man, we should be able to put aside all reliances on beliefs and always question our existence.

Religion should not be an effort to subdue the pursuit of knowledge and the understanding of the world. As the articles portrayed different eras of the evolution of man, I could not help but notice how the more advance or the more adaptive of the species would outlive the other species. That shows how adaptiveness and capability to learn from previous assumptions in the end wins the evolutionary race. As we look into the future we should begin to think outside of beliefs systems.

Any sane person is capable of imagining many things that are illogical but the true power of our imaginations is the power to put together ancient fossils to better understand where our path has led us and where it will take us.

Multicultural Teaching

Many people consider South Florida to be a multicultural stew. Compared to other parts of the country, South Florida is much more culturally diverse than lets say West Virginia. I came to this country from a young age. Spanish was my language at home and everywhere else. My elementary school was dominated by mostly hispanic-americans. Being hispanic myself I can remember noticing the many differences in cultures.

There were different versions of Hispanic cultures and I learned that speaking the same language did not necessarily mean having the same culture. Throughout my school years, my teachers incorporated multicultural teaching methods. The additive approach and the contribution approach were the only two that I remember clearly being used. The contributions approach, in which the teacher would teach the importance of a hero’s contributions like Booker T. Washington, was used in cohesion with the additive approach. During February the classrooms and topics would concentrate around african american heritage. October centered around Columbus’ voyages and other hispanic topics.

Throughout the years that I was in school, multicultural lessons were always taught the same way, with a month dedicated to specific studies. I noticed that it was always the same “black history month” and “hispanic heritage month.” I never had a “Haitian heritage week” or “European heritage day.” It seemed to me that by having students learn about other cultures, they only taught the related cultures. I feel like the point in multicultural education is lost when you only include two cultures each and every time. There are probably less students that know about asian cultures than there are asian students in our south florida classrooms.

I believe that our education system is going in the right direction towards incorporating multicultural education but there is significant progress to be made. Perhaps incorporating more foreign language classes at the elementary school level would inspire students to lean more about other cultures. For now we can continue to hope that the current state of multicultural education is doing its job and helping students of all cultures appreciate other ones.