Gatto, Friere, Rose, Black & Chalk

In Class Blog Post Sence of Chalk and how it relates

In Gatto's Against School he writes about boredom as a common condition, seen in all aspects of education. "anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes". In Chalk there was a scene that took place in a teachers' lounge, where the teachers sat on an old couch and made petty complaints, while the new history teacher stated that his labeled food had again gone missing, to little response from the other teachers. Gatto points out that while the students blame the teachers and the content, the teachers blame the children for the boredom. In Lowrey's he wonders aloud why the children can't simply pay attention and what it takes to get through to them. He eventually resorts to jokes to keep the students entertained.

"The Banking Concept of Education" from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed focuses on the idea that students are receptacles for information to be delivered by the teachers. One of the effects of the banking concept is that the teacher is responsible for presenting the spontaneous and and parallel nature of of the content in a way that is regulated and linear. The blind acceptance and blunt presentation of content by both the history teachers serves as an example of their acceptance of their roles as teachers in the banking concept, whether they realize it or not. Even as Lowrey attempts to incorporate jokes and Stroope makes the students work harder for his goal neither of them have changed the actual teaching method.

Mike Rose's Resolutions in Education, states "To stop making the standardized test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness." In Chalk the history teacher wants to become teacher of the year. He pushes his students harder in order to get the best test scores. Even though he looses at the teacher debate and doesn't fulfill his dream of being teacher of the year, his students tell him "We did work extra hard over the year". Just because he did not win, does not show his teacher effectiveness and mean his students are not smart.

Comedian Lewis Black talks on "The Daily show" on the poor education system. He brings up the debate on charter schools, saying how they are more affective, but of course hard to get into. Chalk demonstrates how regular public schools expect everyone to do the same thing, and not having the students on there level. Even in a simple PE class the teacher says "Some of the students really are not physically fit, but they need to do the activity as well, so we do exercises that everyone can do" In a charter school, you could separate the athletically gifted students and give them a challenge while the students who are not physical fit can focus on a simpler getting into shape class. Chalk demonstrates how we "Dummy down" the system to fit the lowest kids needs.