Making a Difference

In their book, Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts the authors, Dornan, Rosen, and Wilson, provide great examples of how education has changed. Education has changed to adjust to society as the centuries go by. There are still some Middle Eastern countries that do not provide a big emphasize on education. Of course there are a lot of differences in education from country to country, but Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts deals with education in the United States. Toward the nineteenth century education began having drastic changes. Dornan, Rosen, and Wilson write, “The traditional view had been that the only effective education methodology was a step-by-step procedure that instructed in manageable increments.” Children would first have to master one part of the lesson to be able to move on to the next. This provided for a lot of many bored kids, very often referred to as trouble makers in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century there were no programs that were offered to advanced kids. There were a lot of people that tried to counter this method amongst them was John Dewey.

Since I did not know who John Dewey was I decided to do a little bit of research about him. Wikipedia describes John Dewey as, “an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.” Dewey was one of the philosophers that impacted education in the twentieth century. Dewey came up with educational theories that were presented in a few of his books among them, My Pedagogic Creed and The Child and the Curriculum. Through his different writing he carried on a similar theme, he argued that education and learning are social and interactive process, thus social reform had to take place in the school. Dewey believed that preparing kids for the future gave them authority over themselves.

I agree with John Dewey’s belief that more real-life lessons should be applied to school. I think that critical thinking is one of the most important aspects of education. Without critical thinking all we can do is answer several multiple choice questions or answer a question that is bluntly addressed in the textbook. I have met a lot of students who can read something out of a textbook and answer one of the questions perfectly, sometimes they do not even read the textbook they just go on a scavenger hunt for the answer. Although these students can answer these questions and memorize dates or facts for exams they have a hard time with critical thinking, with answering a question that is not directly answered in the book. I think that we need to make students stronger critical thinkers as opposed to having them go on scavenger hunts everyday as part of their education. By doing this, children are getting robbed of a strong foundation.

Book

Like I had previously mentioned, I am reading the book titled Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts: Reading in the Secondary Content Areas. To draw the reader in, the book starts with a very descriptive story about children in a classroom—about literacy. “This book is based on the transactional model of learning and presents a classroom model that integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking within a whole language framework” (Dornah, Matz Rosen, and Wilson 3). I really like the fact that this book will not only be about reading, it will also be about other aspects that effect reading skills.

Reading is a very important part of our everyday lives, “This book argues that literacy must be redefined to underscore the relationship between literacy and action, between knowing how to read and write and using these skills to change the world or at least a corner of it” (Dornah, Matz Rosen, and Wilson 4). By reading “Two Student Readers” in Mosaic of Thought, we were able to see that there is a big difference between knowing how to read and write and actually using these skills. Schools widely use Hooked on Phonics to teach students how to read, not really taking into account that sounding out words does not necessarily mean that someone “knows” how to read, it just mean that they are able to read. Reading not only allows us to dream, but it allows us to become wiser. Therefore, reading allows our meta-knowledge to grow. The more that out meta-knowledge grows the easier it is to analyze and understand a piece or writing.
One of the biggest problems in public education is that the teacher to student ratio is way too high. Teachers do not have the capability of meeting each student learning necessities and or capabilities. Every student learns different, making it very difficult for each student to gain the most out of each and every homework assignment. In Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts, Dornah, Matz Rosen, and Wilson write “education should value each child as an individual to be nurtured, as a whole person taking steps toward a higher quality life. Dewey and others called for educating children to think and speak for themselves” (7). For a long time students were made to feel inferior, if they couldn’t grasp a subject they were just believed to be dumb. The fact that a student or students were not learning in a classroom never had to do with the teacher’s way of teaching. If a student did not learn it was because they were either stupid or because they were troublemakers.

My Blogging Experience

At first, blogging posed a problem for me. I have never blogged before in my life. I had no idea how to set-up my blogging space, but I took it one step at a time. All it took was for me to overcome my fear of something new and get started, and in a matter of minutes I had my very own blogging space. One of the most difficult things that I had to do was make link to the wiki with my page. My biggest problem was that instead of saying Judith’s Blog, my link actually had the URL on the wiki looking something like this http://...... I did not want to leave it with the URL; therefore I used Google to find a solution to my problem. I found an easy step by step guide of how to insert link on to a blog. I was thrilled when I figured out how to make a link! Now it seems fairly simple to me. The part that I enjoyed the most was customizing my blog. I really like the themes that are provided, but what I like the most is that even though templates are provided each blogging space can look unique. The


I found a few blogs that I really enjoyed. Out of all the blogs that I found my favorite is Baby Topics - Guide for New Parents. This blog has been up and running since 2006. This blog informs parents about everything they need to know about babies. Topics range from how to sponge bath a newborn to top ten foods to give a baby then he or she first starts eating. This blog even provides a guide to how to buy the right stroller for a baby. This blog is very insightful and informative—especially to new parents. Baby names are also provided for anyone who needs help choosing a name, making the blogging space a bit more personal. This blog also provides other great baby sites such as Johnson & Johnson, Huggies, and Babys R Us.


The thing that makes a quality blog is being able to relate to your audience. This means that adaptation might have to be an option. I think that adding pictures also makes the blog space more friendly and more welcoming. It is also very important to take the audience into consideration, not only by reading and answering their comment; but by offering them more of what they want to see. This can sometimes mean try something new from time to time, but you never know if you are going to like it unless you try.

Book



I have already started reading the book I chose from the book list-- Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts. You can find this book at the following website: http://books.heinemann.com/products/0417.aspx So far this book is very interesting; I have enjoyed learning the different kinds of methods that have been used to improve reading and how the methods have changed throughout the years.