Monday, October 8, 2012

Having a say in what you learn

I am still mulling over democratic education and life.  In face, two of my final essays will offer a thesis that students ought to have an interest in what they learn.  To do this, I suggest they are offered the choice of what to learn, based on their own experiences of life.  Part of this is based on a growing awareness that I have often portrayed that I own knowledge, and that it is my students' role to (passively) receive that knowledge from me.  I do this by telling them what to learn and how to learn it, as well as by only teaching things I think I know the answer to.  Don't blame me, it comes from what I had mostly subconsciously observed through my own education.  I learned that my teachers knew because they told me they did.  It also comes out of (my AND the students') fear of the unknown.  

It doesn't seem so complicated when I write it here, but it is, and it reaches into all factors of life - not just the classroom.  For now, I'm going to get back to writing about it for the classroom. 

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