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In the Perkins Gomez article we read about a teacher who was reflecting on her interactions with two African American students.  With the first student the teacher addressed his difference in skin color by parading him in front of the class and interrogating him about his life as an African American.  The teacher then over compensated by making the next student stand out by doing a class project on African Americans.  This teacher did not seem to have any perspective on how to not make a student stand out.  As our group discussed this portion of the article I was reminded of an incident in my daughter’s class.  She had a new classmate who joined her class a month ago.  This child is originally from Haiti and on his first day the teacher asked him if he was there when the earthquake happened.  She thought it would be interesting for the other kids in the class to learn about this but she did not stop to think how he would feel to discuss what surely was the most traumatic event in his life.  The teacher should have put aside her curiosities and thought of how this student would feel, if she had done that she would hopefully not asked him anything related to the earthquake.

This same student has had his parent request that the teacher not expose him to anything cultural including birthdays or holidays.  The mom did not say why this was but as our group discussed this we agreed that it was important to respect this family’s request.  What we could not come up with was a way to do this without excluding the child.   This particular teacher has her whole classroom built around cultural exposure with the kids with the kids learning to count in Japanese, German and sign language.  If the teacher accommodated this child then the kids would have to stop counting in these other languages.  So it seems that it would not be fair to the other kids to cease this activity.  However if they just asked him not to he would be visibly excluded.  So should he be given other activities when they do valentines activities or do they cancel those activities for the rest of the class.  I hope some of you have some other ideas because I think we would all benefit from figuring this out.

                There are two fundamental ways to learn.  One is to make a decision to think/act/ or speak in a certain way and then to learn from the consequences, which could be good or bad.  The other way is to allow someone to tell you about someone else’s actions and what their consequences were.   When we are small children we tend to try things out on our own to see what works and what doesn’t  work, but as we get older we discover that if we listen to what others have done we can save ourselves a lot of pain.  The role or purpose of a teacher is to be that guide.  To explain to students what has been done in the past, what has worked, and what has not worked.  Then the teacher allows the student to make the decision as to what they want to do.   The students mind has been expanded beyond their personal experience and then teacher has given them the tools to decide.  To decide what?  Anything.  Teachers give students the tools to make their own decisions based on a wealth of knowledge and in the context of their own lives. 

                For example a physics teacher can explain the laws of gravity to a student in high school.  Then later in life they travel to a bridge that spans a beautiful river far below that has a bungee jump platform.  Now the physics teacher explained that gravity pulls a mass toward the Earth’s surface and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Now the physics teacher just taught them about the laws of physics not whether or not it is a good idea to jump off a bridge.  So the student is able to weigh these laws and decide to jump or not to jump.    

My definition of education is that it is a conveyance of knowledge/life skills/experiences from one individual/group to another individual/group.  This is where our group discussion started on Tuesday and I quickly began to take on multiple additions to the basic definition.  We discussed the possibility of adding “for the greater good” to our definition.  The group as a whole seemed to feel it was a good addition however it then necessitated a definition of “the greater good.”  This is difficult to define as we felt our audience could be from a varied background.  For example the greater good in our society could mean for the advancement of the United States in the world stage.  In a monetarily poorer society it might mean for the simple procurement of food.  I personally felt that there is too much room for interpretation so a simpler definition holds true for a larger population. 

                A second caveat that our group came up with was that the purpose of the education was to help the student learn to adapt.  From a biological standpoint this is the basic key to a group’s survival.  If the group is able to share previously learned knowledge then the members of the group will be able to adapt to their ever changing environment thus ensuring their groups survival.  This in itself is theoretically a variation on “for the greater good,” however I feel that speaking of adaptation vs. “greater good”  allows room for an individual to have adaptations that are different from the group, thus traversing from survival of the fittest group to survival of the fittest individual.  I think that it is important, as we as humans are so different from one another, to acknowledge that despite the educator being a part of the society and the bearer of society’s knowledge, that the educator is still and individual full of individual experiences.  Dewey’s piece, in my opinion, seemed to state that the educator is merely a voice for the society.  If society had experiences as a group there would be no real reason to convey an learned knowledge.  It is these individual experiences that all knowledge to be gained from these experiences and thus passed on to others via education. So in the end I guess I feel that my original definition holds most general and true.