Schooling in the United States is a highly controversial, criticized, and critical

matter for society. Schools are meant to educate not simply in terms of
mathematics or history, but also in terms of ethics, morals, and those skills needed
to succeed in every aspect of life. Educating our youth is the best thing we can do for
our societys future. This belief of mine has remained unwavering throughout the
duration of this course. It is, however, my understanding of the flaws within our
schooling system that has changed as I have a better sense of the many facets
impacting education, whether negative or positive. I believe that our educational
system is not where it needs to be. We are stuck in a rut that has its roots in the
1800s, and our attempts at fixing the system are failing miserably. We are
perpetuating social orders, stifling creativity, and conforming our children to
inappropriate standards. Education is one of the most (if not the most) important
things needed for our society to thrive, and we are failing.
Our educational system is not much different today than in the past, even
though we live in a drastically different time than when public education came
about. It was conceived in the intellectual culture of the enlightenment...and the
industrial revolution (Robinson, 2010). Although the general purposes of schooling
have changed from preparing children for work to preparing them for college the
format of the system has not changed enough to keep up with the changing
ideologies and needs of society. Our curriculums are based on Anglo-Saxon
Protestant males (Banks, 2007) even though our country is a melting pot of
ethnicities and cultures. The purpose of schooling is, generally speaking, to prepare
children for post-secondary education in order to get them working as contributing
members of society. However, too much emphasis is placed on the test scores and
not enough emphasis is placed on the students developing their whole selves via a
holistic curriculum. The focus on testing and core standards takes away from
students studying the arts and vocations, the classes that may have a larger impact
on the development of the child. As Huerta states, teachers also feel constrained by
NCLB standards in that, in the rush to prepare students for their tests, best
instructional practices and innovations may be abandoned (2009, p. 71).
The purpose of schooling in the future, I believe, needs change its focus
switching from test-based, high pressure systems to concentrating on a student-
centered teaching approach and delivering a holistic curriculum that instills in
students a sense of balance, inclusion, and connection (Miller, 2008). Instead of
pumping out STEM students and high test scores, we need to develop wholesome
people with a strong sense of community, self, creativity, morals, and empathy. We
should educate our students based on a dialogical, democratic classroom, not a
teacher run monopoly. I also believe that schools should include a holistic
curriculum, which is one that ...attempts to bring education into alignment with the
fundamental realities of nature (Miller, 2008, p. 3). Miller (2008) also stated that
our current system is fragmented, separating everything into individual
components instead of seeing them all as interconnected and a piece of a greater
whole. All other academic achievements will continue to exist but will rather be
heightened in their strength by the addition of the holistic curriculum and focus on
the whole self.
My belief of what my role as an educator will be has not really changed from
the beginning of the semester either. I still believe that despite the politics and
administrative policies prevalent within our educational system, I will have to find a
way to help students achieve scholastically as well as personally, socially, and
emotionally. I agree with the Dali Lama that it is crucial to enhance and develop the
heart and instill human values in our youth(Gyatso, 1994). I believe that teachers
have to work hard and put forth an incredible effort in order to achieve this balance.
There is an educational continuation for teachers as well. Brain research is hugely
popular and exciting within education this research can ...energize and enliven
the minds of students (Willis, 2006, p.105), and I will strive to incorporate new
research into my teaching methods. There is great opportunity for teachers to
wholly educate their students, and my role will be to do this while managing the
bureaucracy. Also, I will need to welcome diversity within my classroom. My role
here will be to fulfill the standards required by the state while creating a culturally
diverse classroom, incorporating linguistic sensitivity and a multicultural
curriculum to the best of my ability.
I have definitely developed a more sound knowledge about the inequalities
present in our school system. Although my initial feelings about the perpetuation of
the orders remains essentially the same, I have a broader understanding of how
deep the issues run. As I stated in my previous paper, the orders social, cultural,
political, and economic are all intertwined and related. One cannot be separated
from the other; therefore, when a factor perpetuates an order, it is perpetuating the
entire cycle not simply one aspect. A student in a poor neighborhood attends an low
funded school; the student has high responsibilities and stress outside the school
and thus does not have time or energy to devote to academics; the lack of funding
creates lack of support for the student; the student then gets a lower than average
test score, funding decreases and the cycle continues. Banks (2007) referred to the
fact that our mainstream-centric curriculums help to perpetuate these orders as
well our school demographics are incredibly diverse yet our curriculums are
lacking in diversity. We are approaching education as a one size fits all mentality
instead of looking at the individual needs of students. We cannot expect our lower
SES students to break the barrier and have social mobility nor expect students to
truly thrive if we standardize everything. Currently we are not looking at
individuality and are seeing things only in terms of black and white, right or wrong,
instead of looking at all the various shades of gray within our students minds.
Furthermore, most of the orders (and the perpetuation thereof) revolve
around funding. The way we fund schools is unequal and can be attributed to
variances in power within our society. We need to recognize the inequalities of
privilege and oppression and the ways they are perpetuated (Johnson, 2005).
Additionally, there is a greater chance of having a new or unqualified teacher in
those schools, and although programs that place teachers in underprivileged schools
are trying to help out the cause, many times these teachers are ill prepared and
cannot effectively teach their students; furthermore, these teachers are often only in
a school for one year and so are not given the opportunity to really immerse
themselves within the school and make a difference. Huerta (2009) noted that
many first year teachers do not have the support needed to be satisfied in their jobs
and about 50 percent leave within their first five years. The cycle of ill prepared,
nervous, and dissatisfied new teachers continues.
Finally, schooling has the ability to transform existing orders. As
aforementioned, these orders are part of a cycle, and if something changes within
that cycle then everything has the ability to be transformed. Unfortunately, much of
the transformation will only come about if funding changes. If we were to equally
distribute tax money between all schools (and not by tax payer districts), it would
even out the opportunity within various socio-economic classes. However, this is
highly unlikely to happen. By forcing schools to close we are driving education to
become more privatized, which still leaves the poor at high rates of inequality. The
government has the money to spend, it is just a matter of what is more important to
them. We simply cannot continue to compete at a global level if we are failing to
educate our children. Or we can, selectively, leaving the rest of our citizens at the
bottom and ignoring the general needs of a developed nation. As we learned, charter
schools are not necessarily the answer nor are schools of choice. Teachers can
influence the students by introducing aspects of the human heart and
multiculturalism into their classrooms; they can teach little life lessons throughout
the year, and they can care. But the teachers need the support of the community and
the government in order to succeed. We as a society also need to value our teachers
more teacher income should be increased and the preparation programs should be
more rigorous due to the value and prestige potentially given to teachers. The entire
system needs to be revamped we need to overhaul the existing governmental
programs that are perpetuating the orders.
References
Banks, J.A. (2007). Approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. In J.A. Banks &
C.A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues & perspectives (4
th

ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Gyatso, T. (1994). Education and the human heart. In S. Glazer (Ed.), The heart of
learning: Spirituality in education (85-95). New York, NY: Tarcher/Putnam.
Huerta, G. C. (2009). Educational foundations: Diverse histories, diverse perspectives.
Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
Johnson, A.G. (2005). Privilege, power, and difference (2
nd
ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.
Miller, J.P. (2008). The holistic curriculum (2
nd
ed.). Toronto, Canada: University of
Toronto Press
Robinson, S. K. (2010, October 14). Changing education paradigms. RSA Animate.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.
Willis, J. (2006). Research based strategies to ignite student learning. Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.