1. Chapter 2, The Politics of Education
1.1. Four Purposes of Education are Political, Social, Economic, and Intellectual Purposes.
1.1.1. According to the authors of the book, the intellectual purposes of schooling are to teach basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge; and to help students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
1.1.2. According to the authors of the book, the social purposes of schooling are to help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions, such as family and the church (or synagogue) to ensure social cohesion; and to socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society. They stated that this process, referred to by sociologists as socialization, is a key ingredient to the stability of any society.
1.1.3. According to the authors, the political purposes of schooling are to inculcate allegiance to the exiting political order (patriotism); to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order; to help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order; and to teach children the basic laws of the society.
1.1.4. According to the authors of the book, the economic purposes of schooling are to prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor. The degree to which schools directly prepare students for work varies from society to society, but most schools have at least an indirect role in this process.
1.2. According to the authors, the role of the school is directly concerned with aims, purposes, and functions of education. The author listed three different perspective views such conservative, liberal, and radical. They see the role of school in a different perspective.
1.2.1. In the conservative perspective views the role of education as essential to both economic productivity and social stability because it provides the necessary educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity.
1.2.2. In liberal views, stresses the school's role in providing necessary education to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed in school. The liberals envision a society in which citizens participate in decision making, in which adult status is based on merit and achievement, and which all citizens receive a fair and equal opportunity for economic wealth, political power, and social status. As Diane Ravitch says, to believe in education is to believe in the future, to believe in what may be accomplished through the disciplined use of intelligence, allied with cooperation, and good will. In other words, education is important for our future.
1.2.3. The Radical perspective puts forth the belief that schools actually cause the unequal conditions of society. They think that the schools ought to eliminate these inequalities but that they only perpetuate them. They believe that these inequalities are caused by Capitalism and that the schools will continue to be ineffective at eliminating them.
2. Chapter 5, The Philosophy of Education and Its Significance for Teachers
2.1. Pragmatism-According to the authors, "Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends." Pragmatists are practical minded and the two terms have come to have almost the same meaning. To find a solution that works and then apply it, is the basic idea of pragmatism.
2.1.1. Generic Notion-This idea comes primarily from John Dewey. He thought that children could learn from experience as well as from books. He believed that children were constantly changing and growing and needed an environment in which to reflect their particular state of development.
2.1.2. Key Researchers-John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
2.1.3. Role of Teacher-In Dewey's progressive setting the teacher is not the authority figure from which the knowledge comes, rather the teacher is just the facilitator. The teacher should have a command of several disciplines in order to create a curriculum and to implement it.
2.1.4. Goal of Education-Dewey's idea of schools were concerned with social order. He did not separate ideas from social conditions. He felt that ideas had the responsibility of improving social order and that the schools were a place to test them.
2.1.5. Curriculum-The authors state that Dewey believed in a core curriculum, but that the parts of it should be used to solve the questions surrounding a particular subject. In other words, you might use math, science, history, reading, writing and other disciplines as well while exploring one particular subject of interest.
2.1.6. Methods of Instruction-According to the textbook, Dewey proposed that children learn both individually and in groups. He thought that children should start the process of learning by asking questions about what they want to learn. This method is now called Problem solving or inquiry method.
3. Chapter 6, Schools as Organization and Teacher Professionalization
3.1. According to the authors, the four elements of change of school processes and school culture are: Conflict are necessary part of change; New behaviors must be learned; Team building must be extend to the entire school; and Process and content are interrelated.
3.1.1. Conflict is a necessary part of change. It says in the book, efforts to democratize schools do not create conflicts, but they allow previously hidden problems, issues, and disagreements to surface. Staff involvement is school restricting must be prepared to elicit, manage, and resolve conflicts. The communication and involvement of everyone helps overcome the conflicts.
3.1.2. New behaviors must be learned. The authors says, because change requires new relationships and behaviors, the change process must include building communication and trust, enabling leadership and initiative to emerge, and learning techniques of communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution.
3.1.3. Team building must extend to the entire school. According to the authors of the book, shared decision making must consciously work out and give on-going attention to relationships within the rest of the school's staff. Otherwise, issues of exclusiveness and imagined elitism may surface, and perceived "resistance to change" will persist.
3.1.4. Process and content are interrelated. The authors say, the process a team uses in going about its work is as important as the content of educational changes it attempts. The substance of a project often depends upon the degree of trust and openess
3.2. The Major Stakeholders in my district are: Sate Senator-Larry Stutts, House of Representatives-Mike Millican, State Superintendent-Michael Sentence, Representative on State School Board-Jeffrey Newman, Local Superintendent-Ryan Hollingsworth, Local School Board- L.C. Fowler
4. Chapter 3, The History of Education
4.1. The Rise of Common School is the movement that influence the most of US education today. Horace Mann, the father of American public school, made education available to all children to establish free public elementary school. In the book, it says Mann's belief that schools can change the social order and that education can foster social mobility are beliefs responsible for the faith and support many people give U.S. public schools. Horace Mann establish in the minds of American people that education should be universal and every children should have equal opportunity to go to school.
4.1.1. Project specifications
4.1.2. End User requirements
4.1.3. Action points sign-off
4.2. Historical interpretation of U.S. education The Democratic-liberals see the school system as flawed. They see a continuous conflict between equality and excellence. They believe that an equal opportunity should be provided to all, but in doing this, the quality of excellence in impaired. They do not see equality and excellence as being completely incompatible but recognize that there will always be tensions between the two, which will have to be resolved by compromises. They think that education should continue to move toward the best goals for each one without sacrificing too much from either.
5. Chapter 4, The Sociology of Education
5.1. The Four theoretical perspectives concerning the relationship between school and society are functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionalism.
5.1.1. Functionalism-in our book, Functionalists view the society as a kind of machine, where one part particulates with another to produce the dynamic energy to make society work. The machine has different small parts yet each part serves a particular purpose. Our society consist of different people and their cultures yet serves a different purpose to our society.
5.1.2. Conflict Theory-according to the authors, not all sociologists of education believe that society held together by shared values alone. It is viewed, the glue of society is economic, political, cultural, and military power. The Conflict sociologists do not see the relation between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward. They emphasized it as struggle. It says that schools are similar to battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrator, and so on.
5.1.3. Interactionalism- The idea of interactionalism is a look at how the different theories work together and how they affect each other. They make the point that although this helps in looking at the "big picture", it does little or nothing to help to interpret or improve on what schools do on a daily basis. They give the examples of looking at the way children are identified for gifted services and also how speech patterns identify children from low-income backgrounds. They say that these types of activities must be viewed in their entirety or as a whole.
5.2. The five effects of schooling on individuals that I think had a greatest impact on students are: Knowledge and attitudes, employment, inside the school, teacher behavior, and tracking.
5.2.1. Knowledge and Attitudes- according to the authors of the book, researchers says that the more time the children be involved in school, the more the children learn. It says that the more years in schooling leads to greater knowledge and social participation.
5.2.2. Teacher Behavior-It is true what the author says that teacher has a big impact on student learning and behavior because teachers are role model for students, instructional leaders, teachers set standards for students and influence students self-esteem and sense of efficacy. It says on the book that when teachers demanded more from their students and praised them more, students learned more and felt better about themselves. This is very important to remember as teachers or teachers to be how much the impact of our teaching to our children.
5.2.3. Inadequate School-Obviously, in our growing society and evolving curriculum, there are some schools that are not getting enough materials that they needed to help educate their children specially minorities or poor children. As we all know that education is very important for our children's future but we fail to prepare our children, it will impaired our to prepare themselves for the future. School has a very huge impact for our children's life and their future.
5.2.4. Employment-In today's world, education is the key to succeed and to have a better life. In the book it says that most students believe that graduating from college will lead to great employment opportunities to have a better jobs. It was also mentioned the salary differences when you have a college when acquiring a job.
5.2.5. Tracking-According to the authors, tracking within the schools has a noticeable impact on student success. Tracking refers to the placement of students according to their abilities and interests. However, in reality, students are often placed according to socio-economic status and race. Students in the higher level tracks are more successful, not necessarily because of their ability, but because they receive better teaching, have access to better labs and learning materials, and have the opportunity for more extra-curricular activities, than do the students in the lower tracks.
6. Chapter 7, Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Transmission of Knowledge
6.1. The curriculum theory that I advocate is the developmentalist curriculum. The author explained that this curriculum is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of the society. This curriculum is come from the aspects of Dewey's writings related to the relationships between the child and the curriculum. This philosophically progressive approach to teaching was student centered with relating the curriculum to the needs and interest of each child at the particular development stages. The author also stated that the development curriculum stressed the importance of relating schooling to the life experiences of each child in a way that would make education come alive and meaningful manner.
6.2. The two dominant traditions of teaching are Mimetic and Transformative Tradition.
6.2.1. Mimetic Tradition-According to the authors of the book, a crucial property of mimetic knowledge is its reproducibility. It is this property that allows us to say it is "transmitted" from teacher to student or from text to student. The root term is the Greek word mimesis, from which we get "mime" and "mimic". It gives a central place of factual and procedural knowledge from one person to another, through an essentially imitative process.
6.2.2. Transformative Tradition-In the book it explains that teachers working within the transformative tradition are actually trying to bring about changes in their students (and possibly in themselves as well) that make them better person, not simply more knowledgeable or more skillful, but better in the sense of being closer to what human are capable of becoming-more virtues, fuller participants in an evolving moral order. On page 320, it was mentioned the three modes such as: personal modeling, "soft" suasion, and use of narrative. It was explained the many attributes associated with transformative teaching, the most crucial ones seem to concern the teacher as a person and how it affects the learning of the students.
7. Chapter 8, Equality of Opportunity and Educational Outcomes
7.1. Describe how class, race, and gender each impact educational outcomes.
7.1.1. Class-According to the authors of the book, the families from the upper class and middle class are more likely to expect their children to finish school, whereas working-class and underclass families often have lower levels of expectation fro their children. It also explained in the book that children from upper middle-class are more likely to speak "standard" English because the children from this class are more exposed with books. It is also predicted that children from upper middle-class have high likelihood that more emphasis is placed on high academic achievement. The author says that children from lower or working class most likely drop out school and resist curriculum of the school. And children from upper middle class more likely enroll for college.
7.1.2. Race-It is true what author say that despite the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960, U.S. society is still highly stratified by race. The authors say, an individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. By looking at the percentage of students that drop out according to their race is very interesting and I agree what author says that race is related to educational outcomes in undeniable and extremely difficult to separate the race from class.
7.1.3. Gender-According to the author of the book it says, the males outperform females in mathematics proficiency and females less likely drop out of school than males. The author also mentioned that males are more likely to score higher on the SATs than females.