Talking Points #10: Shor

1.) "He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school: "You must arouse children's curiosity and make them think about school..."

-This quote stood out to me, even though it is only on the first page, it one of my favorites because i think children should be allowed to question authority. They should not only do as they're told, but also be curious as to why they're learning it and think what it will do for them in the future. In a way I took this as creating a discourse between kids and authority.

2.) "In school and society, the lack of meaningful participation alienates workers, teachers, and students. This alienation lowers their productivity in class and on the job. I think of this lowered productivity as a performance strike, an unorganized mass refusal to perform well, and informal and unacknowledged strike."

- This resinated with me because it so true that the more people don't want to be teaching or students don't want to learn, the less productive the school community will be. Each school member, whether teacher or student, feed off of each other and essentially lead people to strive for better, or produce worse material.

3.) "The teacher plays a key role in the crucial classroom. Student participation and positive emotions are influenced by the teacher's commitment to both."

- This statement is not only completely true, in the sense that if a teacher can motivate a child, they will want to be in school much more, but it also reminds me of the culture of power. In the reading of Delpit, in which the culture of power is discussed, people should conform to the culture of power. This quote reminds me of that because it is children conforming the the culture of power, yet in a good and helpful way. If students like their teacher, then they will strive to please and do right by them, opposed to students who don't care and don't want to conform.

This reading summed up a lot of what we have talked about in class, and I liked it as the last reading because it focused on simply education and classrooms. I liked the focus of how teachers effect classrooms because that's why we're all in class, to learn how to be unbiased, and well-rounded teachers.