Our Personal History with School

1. Our Personal History with School • Example: Our “first day” anecdotes… • I.E., We have an understanding of ourselves as students, learners, practitioners, academics, professionals. • Example: We have heard from parents, relatives, mentors about the “importance” of school. • I.E., We have learned / acquired a coded set of assumptions, values, prejudices, politics, about what “education” or “learning” means.

2. Vygotsky in Educational Psychology (1926) “Our movements – they are our teacher..”Ultimately, the child teaches himself. It is in his organism as nowhere else that there occurs the decisive engagement between all those different factors that determine his behavior for many years to come. In this sense, education, in every country and in every epoch, has always been social in nature; Indeed by its very ideology it could hardly exist as antisocial in any way…. (The) assumption that the student is simply passive, just like the underestimation of his personal experience, is the greatest of sins, since it takes as its foundation the false rule that the teacher is everything and the student is nothing…. Education should be structured so that is is not the student who is educated, but that the student educates himself.

3. American Schools / Purposes • The Land Grant university (Morrill Act 1862) as an example and metaphor…. • We have UMD and “access” because of • legislation based on societal values • What Values? • National Identity, Moral purpose, economic utility, individual freedom • Others? What does the text say about this?

4. Learning to Teach Everyone’s Children • Text explores the societal values (and the history of those values) related primarily to k-12 education in America. • It examines the professional identity of teachers • Segue to Portfolio Project…briefly.