Philosophy Without A Home

I'm one of those old fashion Irish guys who is quick to get mad and quick to forgive. That was fine as a kid, but as an adult I had to start learning how to be more mature. To do so I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and learned the universe did not randomly break things just to mess with my head. Then I worked at a summer camp as a cabin counselor. Children are not cats, you cannot herd them . I learned to let go and just let kids be kids. Next I taught. It turns out the average classroom has 29 Tom Sawyers and 1 Becky Thatcher. I learned students love to explore and learn, but they don't like uncertainty. If you make the classroom safe with predictable situations the students will stop trying to take over and start trying to learn. I had a mantra when I taught 4th grade. "You have to be smarter than the kids " Meaning simply that if I got into a war of wills with the kids I would always lose, but if I used my brain I could convince my students they wa

I used to have this in electronic form but the 3.5 inch floppy is long gone. The hard copy is a bit water damaged thus the difficulty in reading. If you would like to retype or run it through an OCR and correct the typos be my guest. I doubt it is good enough to warrant that much attention. On the other hand there are some good quotes that are still very relevant today. Please find your own and put them in the comments or I'll get to rereading it for the third time and see if I can highlight some of my favorites. Now onto the thesis in PDF form

In Chicago, it is getting more dangerous to be a student. This year, we eclipsed the number of murders in March, three months before the school year ends. The interesting twist is that according to a recent survey from the University of Chicago , many students feel safer in their classrooms than outside of them. They just need to get to school safely and during that time they can concentrate on learning I suppose. Here we have schools, in the much maligned U.S. education system, combating gang wars in the neighborhoods that require parents and police to escort students to and from school, so that they make sure they get there safely, along with on average 85 percent poverty rates. Yet still, students manage to improve academically, according to the NY Times . I am proud of the improvements that have been made in the educational system of the United States over the years. I know that we will continue to make improvements. And I hope that in the future when people forward spam emails

It is popular in some areas to complain about teachers. Tenure allows bad teachers to continue working long after they have should have been fired. I will admit I have met teachers that should have been fired years ago, but I also know people in all lines of work who should be fired. Teachers are overpaid. I know a lot of people think teachers are overpaid, but I also happen to think a lot of CEO's, bankers, politicians, and car salesmen are overpaid. Just because I think it doesn't make it right. Teachers should be considered glorified babysitters because students don't learn anything anyway. As for babysitter trust me it is a lot easier than teaching. Of course if people compare the prices of daycare and public school they might think twice about this comparison. Those who can do; those who can't teach. one of the best answers I've ever seen is here . It has been said that “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” I have often wondered whether there is any truth

Should we break up large factory style schools? Bill Gates found out that larger schools do have some advantages namely choice of classes. What they lack is the individualized student attention. Now we have two choices we can make smaller schools and use technology to offer the wide variety of choices students can find in larger schools. Or we can have larger schools with a better administrative structure. More of a decentralized structure al le Napoleon. With better teachers who have the knowledge, resources, and power to make positive changes. I'm thinking it would be easier to do the former. Simply because the infrastructure building is cheaper, but also because the advantages can be given to any size school.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Teacher Skills View more presentations from dendari .