So many people have fought to correct hurtful social policies so that we can have better experiences in school and in our public life. The job is never done. What is one thing or rule that you feel needs to be fixed so that your experience in school would be improved? (and WHY?)
It can be too easy to look back at the work of reformers or persons who advocated for a cause and assume that “those were the days,” that there is a huge gulf of time between what these reformers did and our current situation(s). From our point of view, it’s obvious that someone like Zitkala-Sa would recognize the injustice and harm being done to her people and her culture and do something about it. But this had been going on for a long time and it had been thought of by the larger culture to be the way things should be. Native Americans needed to change and be more like the European Americans. What seems so obvious to us wasn’t so obvious to everyone back then. I’m trying to imagine what one of Zitkala-Sa’s fellow new teachers might have thought when she decided against teaching at the big school and wanted to begin a school that respected the traditions of her people.
In some ways things have gotten better, but it’s so hard to see the glaring mistakes we’re currently making because we’re also continuing to do things just as they’ve done for over 100 years in the classroom or in the wider society. For example, if we believe that all children should get equal education, why do we insist on funding the work based on local taxes and not evenly distribute the funds to all school across the whole nation? Local school districts should govern how things are run in each district, but access to funding should be the same regardless of one’s zip code. The curriculum should reflect the values of each region (within reason!), but the funding should be universal. What’s wrong with that idea? Education is a lot more complicated than just how it’s funded, but if we espouse to having any pride as a nation, we’re doing a crappy job supporting this thing we say is so important as a nation.
What do you think, where can we do better, to make education a better experience for (all) students?
Source: Untold History, Zitkala-Sa: Advocate for the Rights of Native People, https://youtu.be/UY7kWysLM9w
It can be too easy to look back at the work of reformers or persons who advocated for a cause and assume that “those were the days,” that there is a huge gulf of time between what these reformers did and our current situation(s). From our point of view, it’s obvious that someone like Zitkala-Sa would recognize the injustice and harm being done to her people and her culture and do something about it. But this had been going on for a long time and it had been thought of by the larger culture to be the way things should be. Native Americans needed to change and be more like the European Americans. What seems so obvious to us wasn’t so obvious to everyone back then. I’m trying to imagine what one of Zitkala-Sa’s fellow new teachers might have thought when she decided against teaching at the big school and wanted to begin a school that respected the traditions of her people.
In some ways things have gotten better, but it’s so hard to see the glaring mistakes we’re currently making because we’re also continuing to do things just as they’ve done for over 100 years in the classroom or in the wider society. For example, if we believe that all children should get equal education, why do we insist on funding the work based on local taxes and not evenly distribute the funds to all school across the whole nation? Local school districts should govern how things are run in each district, but access to funding should be the same regardless of one’s zip code. The curriculum should reflect the values of each region (within reason!), but the funding should be universal. What’s wrong with that idea? Education is a lot more complicated than just how it’s funded, but if we espouse to having any pride as a nation, we’re doing a crappy job supporting this thing we say is so important as a nation.
What do you think, where can we do better, to make education a better experience for (all) students?