Books+from+the+Critical+Thinking+Library



School is teaching me to become a regurgitating machine. I take in information, try to break it down as much as the curriculum allows me to and spit it back out on a piece of paper in a form of a test or a five paragraph essay. In this process of regurgitation, I am also learning how to bullshit my way through some of my classes. I absolutely hate bullshitting my work, especially writing. I try to do my work to the best of my ability, however, some classes are forcing me to compromise my standards for lack of meaning and purpose of the topic at hand. "I'm pulling this essay out of my ass" or "I'm bullshitting my way through this" I hear those words on a daily basis in school. Students do not care about the work they produce in their classes because they are uninterested. What bothers me the most is that we are so well trained to do what is told of us that when asked what we want to learn most of our faces turn blank. Perhaps we are awestricken by the notion that we could have control over our education. In any case, schools are creating followers, mere perpetuators of the system installed by those in power. The routines and useless work students are subjected to everyday in school is slowly dilapidating their character. Schools are conditioning the youth into weak-hearted individuals without spiritual, intellectual and emotional connections to their surroundings. I feel obliged to suppress my aspirations and genuine interests to deliver the expectations of an ideal student. Although I lack the qualities of a perfect student and I am far from doing
 * What kind of person is school making you into? What is school teaching us to do?**

CREATE CONSUMERS! MONEY AND POWER!
 * What is the purpose of school? What does society value the most?**

=**__Who are these education theorists?__**=

> > > > >
 * Rousseau - **Jean-Jaques Rousseau** (1712-1778) was a philosopher from Geneva in the period of Englightenment. His philosophy had socialist leanings which branched out to other spectrums of practices such as music, politics, education and religion. He believes that men are naturally good in the state of nature but our existence in society, which he considers artificial, corrupts us with "urban individualism and self-consciousness." It was his opinion that a young person's emotions is more important than reasoning, he also believes that guidance by a mentor that exemplifies the "good way of living" is crucial in a person's development. His most noted work on education is his book Emile where he expresses his educational philosophy through the story of a growing boy.
 * Pestalozzi - **Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi** (1746-1827) took Rousseau's educational theory and put them into practice in schools he established himself. They were very influencial, particularly the latter school situated in Yverdon where Friedrich Froebel was one of his pupils. The Swiss educator, born in Zurich, committed his life to reforming education. He emphasized the balance of using three elements - the hands, heart and head as well as the importance of spontaneity and activities that arouse the senses. He believes that a child's learning must be done in gradual stages: concrete before abstract concepts, immediate environment before distant, simple exercises before complex ones. The aforementioned methods are described in his most eminent book, How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (1801).
 * Froebel - **Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel** (1782-1852) focused on the child education. It was his philosophy that the attention and nurturing during childhood is fundamental to their mental and physical conditions as an adult. He believes that a child's education should encourage activities that vary according to their needs and interests. He created the word "kindergarten",which means "children's garden" in German, for the children in the Play and Activity Institute that he staretd in 1837.
 * Kropotkin - **Peter Kropotkin** (1842-1921) was a prominent Russian theorist and influencial anarchist-communist. Although he was born into nobility as prince of Russia, he dismissed this title for his activism. At the age of fifteen he entered the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg Russia where he received exeptional education and military training that was exclusive to artistocratic students. His inquisitiveness led him to travel to places like Siberia, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland where he worked with the International Workingmen's Association which was the beginning of his radical organizing. Kropotkin's brilliant mind produced many important articles and pamphlets that serves inspiration to radicals today. Some of his works are Anarchist Morality (1897), Conquest of Bread (1892), An Appeal to the Young, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899), Fields, Factories and Workshops (1901), Mutual Aid (1902), and Ethics, Origin and Development (1922) which was published posthumously.
 * Tolstoy - **Leo Tolstoy** (1828 - 1910) came from a well-known Russian noble family. He was an influencial writer, philosopher and educational reformer. In his early thirties, Tolstoy focused in education theory and realized the importance of literature in a person's education. However, only once percent of about seventy million Russians were literate. In 1859, he decided to open a school in his large estate to give free education to peasant children. He realized that although literature is a powerful resource to enrich education, it can be alienating. It excludes illiterate people from attaining information. He opens a school that directly teaches students elementary skills and moral influence. Although he agreed with many progressive educaion theorists of his time that learning and inquistiveness is a natural hunger and education should not be obligatory, he believes that education is an individual growth and should not serve as a medium for societal change.
 * Bakunin
 * Godwin
 * Herbert Read
 * James Guillaume
 * Owen
 * Fourier
 * Proudhon

=__QUOTES, THOUGHTS AND RESEARCH:__=

> //- Romanticism was an intellectual and artistic movement that started in Germany and England in the 18th century, eventually spreading out to all of Western Europe by mid-19th century. It rejected the period of Enlightenment which advocated the use of reason to create an aristrocratic and hierarchal culture and society. Romanticism, on the contrary, encourages people to perceive their surroundings through emotions and intuition over technical reasoning. It emphasizes imagination, vision and spontaneity in an individual's pursuit of knowledge or truth.// //- Ferrer's outlook on education was unconventional at his time. This pedagogy compels an individual to be an object of their education instead of being a disconnected observer. Although this kind of philosophy is more accepted or rather typical in todays teachers or academics, it is yet to be practiced successfully within public classrooms.//
 * Francisco Ferrer's pedagogical theory was **"in direct line of an educational tradition which rooted in the eighteenth-century rationalism and** //**__ninteenth-century romanticism__,**// **involved a shift from emphasis on instruction to emphasis on process of learning, from teaching by rote and memorization to teaching by example and experience, from education as preparation for life to education as life itself." (**7)

> //-Can an educator be completely neutral in teaching his/her students? How can a person in this profession nurture or guide a young person's education without imposing their own ideas on the student? It is difficult to assess the suitable dynamics between students and teachers especially when one holds strong ideals on equality between all individuals who participate in an educational experience. Normally a teacher holds the most power in a classroom. However, if a school is established on non-hierarchal ideals, what would a class look like? What is the purpose of a teacher? How can we implement self-reliance and accountability in classrooms?//
 * //Francisco Ferrer also says on the subject of teachers,// **"...the true education is the man who does not impose his own ideas and will on the child, but appeals to its own energies." Ferrer also depicts this profession as an agent that trains students "to obey, to believe, to think according to the social dogmas which govern us."**

//Kropotkin says// **"By compelling our children to study real things from mere graphical representations, instead of MAKING these things themselves, we compel them to waste the most precious time; we uselessly worry their minds; we accustom them to the worst method of learning; we kill independent thought in the bud; and very seldom we succeed in conveying a real knowledge of what we are teaching."** (14)
 * //Most of the theorists above agree that all children go through a path of development from simple to complex. In these stages of development certain skills are attained depending on the individual's character. However, they believe that the skill of reading should be restrained until a certain age. All theorists, except for Godwin, believe that over emphasis of literature in an early age will direct the child away from experiential learning. Not to say that they are against books and printed materials, on the contrary, they believe this is an enriching resource. Nonetheless, in the early stages of learning, active education should be practiced which affirms Ferrer's thought that education should not be a preparatory measure for life but "education as life itself." The over intellectualization of our everyday experiences dissociates us from humanity and abates pragmatic knowledge.//

//Kafka says, and Kropotkin would probably agree,// **"A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us."** //If this is so, what is the incentive to exercise our revelations or new knowledge? Our inertia lies on the conditioning of schools to become mere recipients of knowledge but not engage it. People are often disconnected from the subjects we read about in books, newspapers, magazines and encyclopedias because we do not relate it to our lives. Why is that? Should knowledge be rationalized and analyzed to the point of abstraction? For instance, reading about the death tolls produced by the war in Iraq on the New York Times created a strong reaction in my English class. People felt outraged, confused, saddened; students agreed that this inhumanity should be stopped. However, how many of us actually took the initiative to do something about it? May it be counter recruitment organizing, awareness building through the arts or workshops, protesting or petitioning. When the clock ticked 11:49 we were dismissed from class and everybody brushed it off their shoulder. However for one hour we uselessy worried our minds about the civilians, soldiers and insurgents who died. Our relation to the issue began and ended within the one hour we had to read that page on the newspaper. If we had learned that issue holistically and grasp the correlations of events in the world, real knowledge can be active and apathy will not prevail.//