Blog #4

When I was in school I never was one of those students that was a fan of standardized testing.  I felt that it was more a test to see if somebody has good test taking skills or not.  It also measured your stamina for taking tests, because these tests were a very long process.  I remember we had to break apart every section with the back of a pencil before we began otherwise the teacher would think that your test has been tampered with. 

two things that I had always agreed was were trade schools, and the fact that it allows job security.  I realized that when I graduated high school I would go on to college to eventually get a degree to help secure a job.  Well what I see now that happens to be very common, is that students are exiting college with degrees, but are unable to find jobs.  Not only are they not able to make any money, but some of the students that graduate also have loads of bills to pay from school debt.  I agree with vocational schools.  Vocational schools allow you to learn a trade, such as automotive, graphic design, etc. before graduating so that when you do graduate you are ahead of the game and know a skill. “American schools have been vocationalized” (174.)  Doing this is a good thing because now kids are not just going to school to read and write, but they are graduating with a huge advantage having learned skills particular to a certain job.  For example, being efficient in the automotive industry is excellent because that is a big expense that you could save money on if you knew how to fix your own vehicle.  Peoples car are always needing to be fixed, which is another plus for the automotive industry.  Much like a hospital that always have patients, automotive repair shops will have always have customers.

A thing that I strongly disagree with is when the teachers spend the entire class time talking, and the students just either read a book the whole time, and occasionally answer questions.  I think this is absolute cancer for schools as the kids are not learning anything at all.  I think that something that schools should focus on is interaction in the classroom, but once again they are worried that you know the correct answers to something as opposed to having people skills.  “Teachers talked most of the time; children listened, read textbooks, and recited answers to their teachers” (175).  Kids do not learn this way.  Not all kids learn the same way.  Some students learn by reading something, some student learn by doing something.  I am for one a visual learner. 

Another thing I disagree with that I read in the text was that kids should be shamed if they did not get something right.  “Shame and punish those that fail to meet the standards; and reduce costs by contracting out certain tasks to private firms” (178).  The worst thing that you can do to someone is make them feel like an idiot in front of everybody.  That gets people very upset, and in no way helps their self-esteem, and become a better person.  For my major I had to take a class called Fire Company Officer Management.  If there is anything that I learned from taking this class, and reading the book is that you should always praise in public, and reprimand in private.

Two things that I can assume from the reading was, even though students probably hated the standardized testing, they still had to put up with it anyway because back in the day you would get in a lot of trouble for going against a teacher.  I can also assume that there were probably people that disagreed with the way that testing, and schooling was done back in the day, including the teachers that were teaching, and administering the standardized testing.