Hw#51

School as a whole is a great place to get an education to farther on in life and even if you struggle with something that you have to keep trying in order to succeed because if you dont then you will not go anywhere but at the same time what does school really offer with overbearing teachers and following rules. Personally i think that school has it downfalls and good points about it. For example, in Obama speech about school he talked about kids in schools should take on responsibitiles to try in school to get what they want in life even if it means to fail a thousand times just keep going. Nothing comes easy with just getting by in order to achieve or what me as a student being told you have to get an education.

Obama and the woman that Bob Herbert was talking about Deborah Kenny views are very similar and i think its possible but in order to succeed to the top you must start at the bottom, do not try for the impossible. To elaborate i feel that just saying "well lets try hard and get to top" will not have people say that if schools did X, every kid in the US would have a better future, less racism, less poverty, more creativity, be skinnier, love poetry, better gender training because that is not true. Many believe that school is the key to everything and will open doors in some cases no in other yes. I feel like people such as Obama and other put too much emphasis on school as if its kind of like "god" and they are wrong. Over the years i think school is not what it is and things change.

Connecting back to the movie Freedom Writers, one of the students (Mario Barrett) he told the teacher why he should respect her because she has teacher written across her head just because she has the upperhand and domination. School is a place for kids to be bullied by people older then them teaching unneccesary things. In school kids just get pushed around like little slaves. "School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution)."


Sometimes it seems that school is just a trap for kids. Some people may think its like a training camp to do this this and that. Like in the article about training youth for capitalism they said "Go to school and get good grades, so you can get a good high-paying job." In simpler terms that means, "Go to school to become a good employee." I believe school is beneficial to the government to make money and make future teens puppets to themselves. Students are just being trained to be another employee not a better day for tomorrow that is what i believe or what i've been seeing for the past few years.

I agree with Gatto, i think that school is there should be a different school system (well the way he teaches). Why go to school? will it really help succeed in the future if i do not want to this with my career. We are stuck in these schools for 8 hours to learn things that do not have our interest at the same time is boredom. "Basically if you go to school, you suppose to get a good education, good job, and It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." This statement i find to be very true why spend all these hours that will take the mininmium.

School i feel is a place kind of like a church trying to conform your beliefs and do something you do not believe in or things you feel are unneccessary for your life. Larche said "schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands.” This is why we all go to school and is why society wants us to go to school. School is a trap and we can’t escape it, we have to join the institution or it will find us.Schools are nothing more than a part of a system of oppression that keeps us down" i agree thats is all we done we like repeating little robots and do what society "thinks is right for the future" or better for themselves.

I think that school is a whole is salvation and its all we know at the same time why stick with something we known and try something different. I think that we should try Gatto idea and see how it plays put in other schools in different areas. There must be a reason he has won this award multiple times not just once. Who knows what we could accomplish with new ideas as we did with technology and look where it has us now. Maybe it can make us better as a whole in the world.


Overall i think school has good apsects to it such as getting the proper learning skills and learning tools to succeed but at the same time would this really actually help me? I think that not all the things we learned in school are not needed in the everyday life and we would need them when we get older.

Hw#49-Film

For the film my personal contribution was being in the film and trying to improvise with other people in the film also. I played the role of one of the four students who come to his classroom after a school dance and find out about their teacher Jake Westwood drug addiction to crack cocaine which later helps Jake realize that the drug addiction is not the way to go. The students and i go on about how we are proud of him for stopping and staying clean. In addition to his fanazcing ideas in history.

Honestly i do not really know exactly what the message of the film was but i think that the message was that if someone is seeking need, help them. The tone of the film is very serious at the same time sympathetic towards Jake Westwood. Showing how the students helped him and he did not relapse and how serious he took the situation especially when the four students were gathered talking to him when they caught him. He realized he needed change.

Compared to the other films it was different. This film was showing the students in the classroom taking a stand and helping the teacher. Unlike the other movies the teachers were stuck teaching rebelling teenagers who came from the ghetto and felt they were going nowhere. In the end the teacher was able to teach the students and they grew on each other. In the film we did in class the table were turned and the teacher was the one in need this time but in the end he could not do by himself.

This film connects to real life in school because lots of times teachers try to be the heroic figure (not all some) and try to help those kids in need. On the other hand that does not always happen and in reality the teacher needs help. The teachers who do not show much appreciation to the students is the reason kids nowadays the way they are because teachers do not allow themselves to open a relationship with a student.

Hw#50

6 Lessons

Gatto is saying why bother with school. I think he is saying its like a prison just to tame children. He does not believe in typical teaching that is done in school. He says that the school system messes up our kids and why should they be put in a place they do not like or truly enjoy. Also being forced to learn things they do not want to learn. We are basically prisoners in our own homes and we simply just follow rules like slaves. Gatto does not believe in the school system he believes the opposite of the school system. In this article he puts the school system in 6 different components in what they go by.

I agree with Gatto i think that schools are very robotic "do this, do that". Teachers are the enforcers and we have to listen what they say because they "have the upper hand which i think is kind of unfair. I like Gatto teaching how he opposes the school system. I think it is kind of interesting. "In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place." I believe this is true you are below the teacher and you do as you are told.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

He is saying that education is just memorization. The students just memorize things and repeat it from the teachers they learn it from. Also that they are not actually fully developing any learning skills just the basic four times four is sixteen but is it really? He also says that the student is a slave towards the teacher giving the teacher existence and silent themselves not knowing that the teacher is learning from them.

I agree with Paulo on some level i think the way teacher teach are just a process of memorizing things and repeating it over and over again. "Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store." This whole paragraph i agree with we are collectors collecting information and we save it but there is not is not a "WOW" factor and its misleading us.

Interview with Lisa Delpit

In the article Lisa Delpit is talking about finding the brilliance in the students no matter what kind of background they come from. If you judge them from they come from how are you going to teach them and make them better. She wants to provide urban kids to have a opportunity to show their brilliance to the world and what they can accomplish. She also says that the art department can help these children and can open doors for them. This can expose them to poetry and other things can appeal to the children.

I agree with Lisa, i think it is a good idea to give children in the urban communities a chance to better themselves when the people and neighborhood around them may not be doing the same. It reminds me of my old middle school Kipp Star who gave me and other of my fellow classmates to learn above and beyond and experience college experiences and being exposed to new ideas just like the arts that Lisa Delpit was talking about. "I think teachers must believe in their children’s brilliance. If teachers make judgments only according to the tests being inflicted on the children by the schools, then they can misunderstand their children's brilliance. The biggest thing is that despite what you have read or been told about these children that may indicate otherwise, these children carry a brilliance that you have little access to. You have to figure out how to bring that brilliance out. I don't think we do a good enough job of showing teachers how to uncover the children's strengths" i agree with this and i believe its true, its kind of judging a book by its cover.

Mr.Fanning Speech

Mr.Fanning was talking about the basic structure of School of the Future and how its an liberal arts school. He said SOF embodies students as individuals learn social skills. He talked about juniors to pull up their grades because the seniors were going downhill. Right now grades are not good and students are failing.

I think what Mr.Fanning said is true and that as a school we need to pull ourselves together and get better grades. Lots of kids today are not doing what they should be doing and do not have their priority straight.

Hw#48-Treatment of Savior/Teacher Movie

Emily Robinson an experienced teacher for 2o years raised in a small town and worked up in the surburan area walks into the classroom and witnessed the kids she was going to teach. There were jocks, preps, popular kids, rebels, all you could think of. They were all looking at her dumb-founded. She has on her a white blouse and a high-waisted a pencil skirt and a pair of 3 in heels. She walks up to the board and writes her name on the board "Ms. Robinson".



As she turned around all hell broke loose. Chairs were thrown, papers thrown eveywhere and cursing lunatics. It was impossible for Ms.Robinson to calm them down. She told them all to sit down and be quiet. Obviously they did not listen and told her to fuck off. Stephanie one of the popular girl who was kind of the ruler of the classroom told everybody chill and they listened. Ms.Robinson returned to her introducing herself but nobody paid any attention except suck their teeth and continue to socialize.





She could not take it anymore so she told all the students to shut the hell up. Little did they know that she was in the miltary and spend 5 years as a Marine. Ralph one of the rebels told her that he was not going to do shit. In some way she was able to straighten him out in a matter of two seconds. One by one they student realized that Ms.Robinson is actually a tough cookie and started to give her the respect she needed and wanted. The question would be how long would this go on for and when would it stop?

Hw#47 Class Film Preparation 1

1.) Alpha male or female
2.)Different races separated
3.)"Bad Class"
4.)"Very caring teacher"
5.)Exact opposite of the movies we saw
6.)Make fun of each of them
7.)SOF version of Freedom Writers
So Far...

Hw#46 Research and Writing

I read the book The Curious Incident of the FOg in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. The book was about a kid named Christopher with autism and tries to figure out who murdered his neighbor's dog Wellington. On his way trying to find out he learns a lot of things about the dog and his family. There are a lot of mysteries behind everything he does and says. He later finds out that his father actually killed the dog in defense to his neighbor which causes Christopher to uncover the real true behind his mother's "death".

The main point of the story that connects to my topic is that Christopher attends a "special school" and kids with "special needs" because they do not function like "regular kids" i guess which is different than other public or private schools we know. Compared to other schools such as private and public they have do not have the same thing. As Christopher described his school he takes some high level math and learn things out of the ordinary.

On some level the book kind of did not really connect to my topic because it talked more about austism and it did not really give me valid points but on the plus side i was able to see Christopher's point of view on things from being i would not say disable and going to a different school compared to schools i've been too and heard about. It was nice to see the perpective of another child but not of some article.