So OMG! I finally met Tom and my god is he a character or what? This was my first time meeting him as I wasn't in the previous lesson and I was honestly shocked IN A GOOD WAY. I love his accent and his dress sense because that makes him very memorable and everything he says I can literally remember it because I learn in a weird way.
Anyway.. In the beginning of this lesson Tom had recapped the introduction again (Thank god) which enabled me to catch up to the rest of the class. The introduction included very important information such as the deadlines for the assignments, also SOCCER which can be a key to success, about the class blog which is on word press or any other blogging sites and becoming an educationalist and what that meant.
Moving on to the activity side of this lesson (MY FAV PART MIGHT I ADD) we had to imagine an apocalypse was coming, and we had ten different people but only three could stay in the bunker and it was up to us as a group to choose which three could stay. All ten people had different qualities to them so this made it hard to think of which three to keep. After this we drew tools on how to be a good educationalist in groups of twos. We then swiftly moved on to mediated dialogues which included talking about topics such as 'Education is all about fitting in - knowing your place, accepting your lot in life. Some are bred for success - as for the rest - at best it bores us - at worst it teaches us just how valueless we are.' after the discussion in twos we had to draw a representation and then discuss our portraits to the class.
We was then given an article to read by Paulo Freire; so we can identify the main points he includes on becoming a good educationalist and also a good student.
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| Class work |
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| My failed attempt on drawing |
Why?
The bunker activity was really fun because I was the Atheist doctor so I felt valued and very important more than any other bunker. So after I had justified my points my group began to draw up the pros and cons of every bunker in our group and decided to keep gay scientist because he can invent things for the other two bunkers, army officer as he would be good at rationing and single pregnant woman with a five year old because she can reproduce. Once we had explained our reasons for choosing these three bunkers we soon realised that as a group we did not think outside the box because we was being very literal and thinking the worst for example one of the bunkers were disabled so straight away my group cancelled them out however we didn't acknowledge how seriously disabled this person was, as far as we knew they could of broken a finger and be classified disabled. This showed us that we looked purely at skills and talent and automatically put the bunkers in a hierarchy of ability. I guess in a way the bunker activity showed me that as a student we are so use to being in a education system that puts us in bands of ability; without thinking twice we did the same to the bunkers.
The mediated dialogue was a way to question if the education system was either good for students or bad for them. This is debatable because in one way education IS the way forward because it teaches you the information you need to know for the career your heading to for example to become a surgeon you need to be taught how to operate, and learn where the body parts are and so forth. However you can then say that the education system is terrible in terms of social class because working class people are always no doubt labelled which makes them fail as teachers are middle class so they don't understand.
Freire's article on 'Education is being taken over by the mega rich' is focussed on Critical Pedagogy - which means that the educational movement is ushered by two things, passion and principle. These two things help students establish a consciousness of freedom and connect knowledge and truth to power, and learn to read both the word and world in a more broad way. Once I had understood the context of this article I soon realised that Freire understood how hard it can be to be working class and be a good student for example in the article it mentions "higher education - once conceptualized as a fundamental public good - has been reduced to a private good, now available almost exclusively to those with the financial means." It also amused me that Freire saw education very political because it offered students self- reflection. He later explained that pedagogy connected learning to social change as it challenged students to engage with the world, he also mentions that pedagogy does not involve training techniques and methods or political indoctrination but explains that education does provide knowledge, skills and social relations for students. Freire didn't seem biased to just his opinion on one theory in one place he tried to go all over to see if the education system is the same.
What did I learn?
I learnt to think outside the box and be more open minded; although the bunker activity was just for fun it actually opened my eyes a little about the education system, questioning the idea of are we being indoctrinated because we easily made a hierarchy of ability about the bunkers. Also Freire in a way taught me that knowledge and experience is power.
What was my reaction?
To be honest this lesson was a lot to take in. However I did enjoy knowing that different people see education differently whether that be in a good way or a bad way. Also the debated that took place in the class room gave me a better insight to other opinions of the topic.
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