I set forth on this project to see how other people view the issue of teaching/reinforcing values in schools, but I feel called to continue it because something in the process has hit me. The responses that I received on the topic of why we should teach values have set forth a change in me. My respondents emphasized the importance of the school as a catalyst for creating successful citizens. While reflecting I became conscious of the importance of creating global citizens, but I believe it goes even further. We say that teachers are helping to form citizens for the future, but I think the future is now. The little lives that are in your classroom do not start once they graduate high school, or get a job, or get married; they have already started. The stuff that we teach, the values we reinforce or introduce do not go on the backburner of student minds for use at a later date; that date is now. A video from TED that I watched during my Paideia class sparked this realization. It was a video of a talk given by Chris Lehmann called Education is broken. Within the talk Mr. Lehmann emphasized that the future that we are educating our students for is now. This struck me because of the absolute truth of the idea. This idea that the future is now, has caused me to look at my blog and its findings in a new way.
If we help kids, by acting as facilitators, to find out what they truly believe in and value, we can help them live for now and not for the day they leave our hallowed halls. I see the role of the educator as someone who is willing to stimulate student growth by encouraging students to challenge now, so they can find out now what will make their own lives flourish.
If we want to create citizens of our country and the world, we need to create people who know what they believe. We cannot continue turning out students who do not know anything about how to be a person in our ever-changing society. Many parents are no longer offering the base of values and learning that is expected of them. Teachers and schools are: “routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve" (National Commission on Excellence in Education). While this is not a great reality, it is the reality we face. I say lets move on, move beyond the blame and try and figure out what to do now.
A few classes ago my education professor accused me of making excuses for the pitfalls of the American education system. Although it was said in jest, it stuck with me. All of the discussion of values has brought me to the point in my own education where I am ready to move beyond the blame and try and figure out what I am going to do. Too often I am willing to shirk certain responsibilities because I have a passion for early childhood teaching. Don’t get me wrong, I love dissecting and discussing issues, I just am never quick to adopt the issues as my own. I am guilty of categorizing the problems in our schools, and I tend to think that early childhood has such a long set of its own unique issues, that someone else can fix the rest of the problems. This response blog has brought everything home for me. I am a teacher- fifth grade issues are my issues; third grade issues are my issues, just as kindergarten issues are everyone’s issues. Too often I let the problems divide me, but really we are all in this together. In setting out to try to learn about values, I have learned the value of my own education.
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