Questioning Customs

 In the book “ The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined ” by Sal Khan, my college classmates and I were assigned a couple of chapters from the book to understand the start of education for students from K-12 and how there should be changes to the system. There’s not going to be a change overnight due to politics being a big part of the education system. Also, within the educational system, I read from one of the chapters that testing students is not beneficial for their educational needs. It's more about memorizing than comprehending what they are learning at school.

 

While reading the chapter test and testing in the book, this quote reminded me of a movie that I happened to scroll past one day. The quote is “ Economics and politics factors in, as does a strange Alice-In-Wonderland kind of cockeyed logic; tests change, in part, so that the results will come closer to what the testers think they should be.” (Khan, 94) Right after reading this quote, I thought of the time I saw a movie called “The Thinning.” It was about an area in the United States where there was a standardized test you had to pass with a certain score, or you were taken away. I am not going to say more because I don’t want to ruin the message, but it’s a film to watch to make you think about the education system and how politics has control over it. I will attach a clip or a trailer here

Reading another part of the book we were assigned too, when I highlighted “ Arguments about education are contentious enough without bringing partisan politics into them, but it’s interesting to note is passing that in recent years our Prussian-based public-school model has come under virulent attack from both the right and left.” (Khan, 80) After reading this part, I though of the western series “ Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” When the people who took the land from the indigenous people brainwashed the Native American adults to believe taking their children from them to awful, bordering-on-awful schools to make them different from their beautiful culture. To learn the “American way” of learning and to take away their beautiful culture. It broke my heart watching the whole series, but especially during these events about taking the children to boarding schools. I don’t know if I could be a teacher then because I would do anything to keep their culture alive. These clips show how it was the government and politics that forced these children into a school to learn what was not important to them. What their parents were teaching them at home was important. Even watching all the indigenous films has taught me a lot of life lessons more than American education. The clip I am about to show is from the show “Into the West” about the Native American children being brought to the boarding school.

start at 4:40 and watch until end but watch from the beginning to see the whole sadness of it all :(