Blog #9

"Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to develop a fundamental state of learning."

This week's reading was my favorite in which it was on Paulo Freire's article "Pedagogy of the oppressed." This amazing article talks about how students are basically seen as robots and the teacher just delivers the information or "knowledge" and expect the students to have learned it by seeing how well that student does on a test. The concept Freire is referring to is the banking model in which teachers deposit knowledge to the student and expect the student to understand. This model for teaching is completely useless because teachers are not forced to make sure the student has learned the information given. Teachers who are teaching for the standardized tests usually use this model because teachers feel that is the only way the students will pass the examine. Students are not learning but are memorizing everything given so therefore they are not learning anything. We need to understand that “knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” In order to make sure our students are learning, we need to make sure they are using this knowledge for their future endeavors.

I feel that in many cases during my education career, I was a victim of being oppressed by a teacher's pedagogy. There were many times in which the banking method was implemented in many subject areas. I knew myself and every time a teacher based the class grade on test scores, I automatically knew I was not going to do well. I feel that there are various forms of what you can test your student's knowledge and exams are not a great tool to measure that. I feel that teachers who do base their class grades solely on tests, are teachers who do not care whether that student has learned anything in class. One example that is related to this is that I graduated high school with an overall 71 percent average. Extremely low and miraculously got accepted to a four year university. Another person in my class, graduated with an 90 average but yet she was not able to pass her first semester while I've continued. Goes to show that it's not about how high your test scores may be, its what you know and how you are going to overcome.


Powerful video for you to see. The power of youtube :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRq8ZSuXuJ4

Mathphobia

This week's reading have been an eye opener for me. Math literacy is important in our society. Robert Moses have successfully examined this phenom and how it relates to civil rights. "In today's poor people economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy." (Moses, pg. 5) Moses could have not said it any better in which if we do not ensure the importance for math and science, our poor minority student will not become successful. I have an incredible youtube clip in which Bret Lewis talks about math literacy. This video is exactly what Dr. Moses is saying and if you can, please take a look at this video and relate it to what we have read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpYCOSzAgeo

Lastly, we had an assignment in which we had to evaluate our writing. This assignment was very helpful for me because it actually made me sit and think about my writing. Although English is not my first language, I have grown since my freshmen year in college. I took many English courses as an undergrad because I was not ready to write at the college level. I often tend to verbiage in my writing so I try to use as many simple words as I can in order to get my message across efficiently and effectively. I know that reading a lot will improve my writing so I see that as an opportunity for myself to improve as a writer.

Gender Inequalities in Education??

This week's reading has been my favorite so far because I feel that young male and female children tend to be placed in assumptions may hinder one's ability to grow. Males especially suffer from this inequalities in the education system because they are seen as the tough mentally mathematical or scientific student. My question is, why can't female student be just as good as the males in those subject area. One great and prime example of this inequality is while I was taking a math course in high school, my teacher always called on the male students to go up on the board and solve math questions. You barely saw the females go up and solve any of the problems because they feared that the males in the class would make fun of them.


One thing I noticed while reading such articles is that we often limit the boys in our education system. Boys often play video games and play aggressive sports which becomes apart of who they are. We often oversee that these boys, do have much emotions as their genders' counterpart. We often refrain our young males from expressing themselves emotionally because society sees it as a "female trait" which I believe affects males and females in their career paths. I found this excellent youtube clip that questions this gender inequality in education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qfajx0RqLo