Friday, July 22, 2011

Seeing Both Sides of the Coin


Being a well-informed teacher is necessary in order to be adaptable in your interactions with faculty, parents, and even students. As we discussed in class, there are some very emotionally charged issues pertaining to the topic of education. While we may initially have strong opinions about these issues, our full understanding of them is imperative as teachers of students, ambassadors for schools, and citizens. If we turn a blind eye to one side or the other, we automatically reject the ideas of a group of people who most likely care just as much about the same education system that we do. Just because their opinions are different also does not mean that they are wrong.
The great cultural diversity of students in a classroom should be evidence enough that the needs of those students are just as diverse. This translates to the broader context of school in general. Different types of people want different things out of their education system. In order to understand the desires of these groups, we as teachers need to understand why these people might want these things. This can be the hardest thing for people to grapple with, because the only way to truly understand where a person is coming from is to be them. The only advice I can think to give is to use the classic idiom “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes.”
It was such a valuable experience to debate some of these issues in class on Thursday, because many of us were forced to take on opinions that we might not normally agree with. After doing this, though, I realized that there were some very valid concerns on both sides of every issue. This realization helped me come to the conclusion that we as teachers should have this attitude when looking at any issue that we are faced with. This attitude will help us in encouraging dialogue with fellow teachers, parents, faculty, and community members who might have some very important and valid concerns that should be taken into account before any conclusions can be made. 

1 comment:

  1. Any sort of prescriptive debate is going to be tricky because there is often a presupposed morality behind every argument. You can throw out as much evidence as you want about what results what method will get but the arguments eventually revert to some sort of value system. Maybe allowing school choice really does produce the most efficient little social units but is it right to encourage parents to abandon local schools? I really do not know the answer to that question.

    Because of this I agree with you that it is important to remember that the people on the other side of the debate probably care as much about education as you do. So when we put ourselves in the other person's shoes and describe the type of person we are to ourselves we should tack on "who really cares about education" to the end.

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