What is the Purpose of Public Education in a Democracy?

It has become clear to me that the purpose of public education in a democracy is to simply help children to be good open minded citizens. A public school should not just dump information into a kids head and say there you go you can leave now. A public school should take a child and do the best they can do to expand that child's way of thinking. Teach them the laws of our society and teach them how to work with others of all kinds. A child who has good critical thinking skills and can get along with other kids and people is a child who will grow up to be successful. A main part of life is the different interactions a person has with other people. A school needs to show kids that no one is better than anyone else and that they need to work and interact well with others in order to be successful in different tasks. If that can be taught along with allowing the kids to think through problems using each other as outlets for help then the kids in these school will grow up to be good citizens which is what the purpose of public education is. I feel everyone will have different views on what the purpose of public education is. I also feel there is no definite concrete answer, but i feel that if our society is going to survive and become stronger this is what public education has to do.

My second try at Montclair

This year I am technically a Sophomore. If you look at how long I have been in school I should have been graduating this year. When I first got into Montclair I did not know what it was I wanted to do. I stopped going to all my classes, but never dropped them. I failed all of them. I was put on academic probation so i went to Bergen for a year. When I got back into Montclair I had a GPA of 0.87. I spent one whole year retaking everything I failed in the past in order to get a respectable GPA. Now I am here just starting to get into what it is to be a teacher. I am happy with myself and the progress I have made since my first try at Montclair. I still have trouble managing my time sometimes and getting myself motivated to do the work, but I have come a long way from my 0.87 GPA. In a way i am happy that this incedent has happened to me. It has shown that I really can do whatever I want if I put my mind to it. It usually takes a lot for me to put my mind to something, sort of like failing out of school, but at least I know I can do it if I had to. Before this I did not believe in myself so much. It has made me a better person, and a harder worker. I do wish that I was done with school by now like I should have been, but everything happens for a reason so I am ok with where I am at right now.

What am I learning from my Inquiry Project?

I am learning things about No Child Left Behind that i never knew before I started doing this Inquiry Project. Before this project I just thought No Child Left Behind was some program that people did not like because it made kids take tests. That explanation alone shows how little I used to know about this topic. After doing the research for this project I can now understand why so many people do not like No Child Left Behind. One thing i learned was about how schools are getting shut down because they are not meeting their Adequate Yearly Progress. I used to just think when a school did not meet their AYP there was just some sort of penalty or something to that effect. Instead I found out that schools will sometimes be closed down when they can not meet their AYP. I do not understand how that is something that can help children. The kids are having a hard time meeting the standards set for them, so instead of giving them more help we will just shut the school down. To me that makes no sense. One other thing I did not know was how much time is actually spent teaching for the HSPA. I never realized how much time is taken away from other things in order to try to prepare these kids for these tests. They spend so much time practicing for the HSPA that they start resenting and hating it. Kids will then miss class when they know they are going to do more HSPA studying. I figure that if you want a child to do good on a test or with anything they have to enjoy what they do. Constantly pounding this information into a kids head over and over and over again is only going to make them hate it.

Service/Meetings at Arts

By going to the two meetings and completing the community service at Arts has given me some insight to what exactly i will be getting myself into. For community service I helped the guidance office organize all of the contestants in this contest that was going on between different high schools in Newark. I got to watch the videos that these kids put together and they were very powerful things to see. Some of the problems these kids talked about in their poems and videos are things I have not even been through before in my life. By doing this service it has shown me that I have to be prepared for everything. Certain kids might go through certain things other kids do not go through. I have to be ready to maybe see or hear about things I am not used to. The meetings I attended at Arts also had the same effect on me. I attended two staff meetings at Arts and the second one stood out more than the first one. At the second meeting the faculty was talking about the end of the year and students who were close to missing more days then they were allowed to and still pass. There was a list passed around of all the kids who had an outstanding amount of absences and the reasons why they were out so many times. I will not go into the reasons why some were out, but i will say that some of the things were surprising to me. Like i said before, these two things have opened my eyes a little to the fact that everything is not just good and easy. I know now things will be tough being a teacher, but i feel like i am ready for it.