Talk:Foundations and Assessment of Education/Edition 1/Foundations Table of Contents/Chapter 2/In the News



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Author Reflection
Writing this article was awkward and strange for me. I felt how baby giraffes look when they are first born and take those wobbly first steps. My knees buckled, I glistened with otherworldly fluids, and I determinedly shambled along. I found my articles. I summarized them. I tried to string them together. Overall, I think I failed. I am unhappy with the result and I apologize for it. I can only hope my inept attempt at representing the relevancy of education philosophies does not cheapen the reader’s perception of the subject. Despite how pitifully I represent them within my article education philosophies are quite literally what dictates the ebb and flow of education. If education were the economy, education philosophies would be oil. To demonstrate this please allow me to assail you with an anecdote.

During my freshman year in high school I had a particularly fantastic history teacher. For the sake of my account, his name was “Mr. Edwards”. Mr. Edwards taught that year with vigor, his lectures were animated, engaging and often he went to great lengths to relate the material to the students. Sometimes this would backfire resulting in tangents that took over large portions of class time. Other times it was highly effective, getting even the most stubborn of students to smile and nod along with his ranting. Then, at the end of the year we took the S.O.Ls. While Mr. Edwards’ class was the most fun, and I felt the class I took the most away from as a student, overall his were the classes ended up with some of the lowest S.O.Ls.

In the eleventh grade, I had Mr. Edwards again. I was excited, my other teacher had been no fun, he gave no elaborate lectures, made no effort to relate and generally relied on worksheets to do all the teaching for him. Surely, Mr. Edwards was the best History teacher; surely, his class would be just as fun as it ever was. On the first week Mr. Edwards handed out a worksheet. Maybe it was an off week. He didn’t have time to prepare his informative raving. On the second week, alas, another worksheet. I confronted him in the hall, and asked the simple question, “What happened to the old way you did things?” He replied, that he would like to do things that way, it was how he loved to teach, but the graded worksheets made sure students at least skimmed the material. They were the best way to get passing S.O.L’s and that was his job at the moment, not to teach, but to provide passing S.O.L’s.

BitterAsianMan (talk) 06:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Reader Responses
The author reflection was very interesting to read. The idea of writing being like a baby giraffe walking brought quite the picture to my mind! To the author - I don't think you failed at your article. Everyone has trouble writing sometimes, and apologizing for that is not necessary. I'm sure you aren't the only one who struggled writing the article, and overall the article was nicely written and held my attention! Hcogg001 (talk) 00:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)