Summary C4T #3

I commented on the Cooperative Catalyst blog by John Spencer. He writes blogs about some of the different issues in education and his opinions and solutions. The first post I commented on was called The Real Cause of Burnout. In this post he explained the real reasons why teachers were leaving schools or giving up on the profession. He says that the reason is the lack of freedom from their superiors to teach in a way that students respond to. He says the pressure to prepare the students for all the standardized testing takes away the teachers freedom to really teach effectively. I responded by telling him that I agree that as a future teacher something has to be done about the constant pressure to drill information into a child's brain just long enough so they can pass a test that will make the school look like it's doing its job. I really hope this changes because the child's education and development as a part of society is more important than him memorizing a list of facts and spitting them onto an answer sheet.
The second blog post I commented on was called "What's the Purpose of Education?" In this post Mr. Spencer explains that he took part in a webinar where the purpose of education and how your life reflects that was discussed. He took a poll of all the people who attended and asked them to choose from 4 different explanations of their purpose for education. While #1 is the choice that you would expect to be most frequent( it includes achieving the American dream and "if you try you will succeed") it wasn't. the most frequent choice(79%) was #3. It included points such as finding ones own path and making meaning of the world. I responded by saying that it was very interesting to see the results of his poll. It is always good to see how the way we view the purpose of education is changing. It also made me consider my opinion on the subject. I really enjoyed his posts.

You can find his blog at http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/