The "Common School"

Today I would like to talk about education in America from 1770-1900. This time was referred to as “The Common School”. However I would have to say that it was quite selective rather than educating most of the “common” people. Common schools really only benefited poor white children. Up till the 1900s education was largely dependent on the family situation. Wealth, race and gender usually determined the amount of education an individual received. If you were from a wealthy white family and were a boy you probably would have received a decent education. However, if you were a girl, poor, or a person of color your chances for education were very few and limited. 

Interestingly enough, the closest thing to a public school nowadays in the 18^th century was short-term schools in the British colonies. Town meetings voted to open a school for elementary age children for ten to twelve weeks for boys. Parents were charged a fee to cover the expense of teaching their children.

Also, during this period of history education was given little value by the “common” person. Society was largely agrarian and family farms were passed from generation to generation. This situation generally troubled some of America’s founding fathers. How, they asked, could the young republic continue to survive if its population wasn’t educated in the fundamentals of its principles? So common schools were the answer to the problem. Educate the poor masses and America would become a strong country was the founding fathers’ thought process. I guess the simple question we have now is: did it work? Join me next week when we discuss education from 1900 to 1950!

My Approach

I foresee my approach to teaching to being a liberationist approach. I don't really see my approach being blended because I see so many advantages to the liberationist appraoch. I really like the liberationist approach because I feel that it best fits with my teaching philosophy. This approach fits me because I believe that education should be about the whole human experience. I believe that what a child learns reflects their past experiences, is integrated into what they know, and will prepare them for the future.

I feel like the liberationist approach is the best way to be taught. I feel as though a person’s educational experiences should always be changing and growing that person. I also feel like all students should have experience with the classics such as Dickens, Shakespeare, and other such materials.

I also like that this approach focuses not on parts and pieces of learning but on the entire extent of human knowledge. I feel like this is the best way to integrate knowledge. A student can see all the connections between what they have already learned and what they are currently learning. I also like this approach because it challenges students to critically think and evaluate what they are learning. I also like the fact that this type of teaching focuses on giving everybody the same type of education while expanding their horizons. It challenges students to ask why the information is being presented and who is giving the information and why the information is important or what they have to gain from acquiring the knowledge. 

My favorite part of this approach is that it focuses not just on the breadth of knowledge but on the depth of knowledge as well and it invites the students to dig deeper into what they are learning.

The Facilitator

The facilitator teacher is one that really cares about what I call the “human element”. They are concerned about what the students feel like, their home lives and how they are as a person. They “encourage and natures the growth of the students” as the book states (5 Approaches to Teaching by Gary Fenstermacher and Jonas Soltis). The facilitator’s classroom would focus on how knowledge contributes to the development of the students and freedom of choice. The instruction would be student-centered experimental learning. There would be very few formal tests in this classroom because the students would be evaluating their own learning.

Difficulties? One of the difficulties of the facilitator approach is that there are somethings that must be taught instead of facilitated such as nationalism. The teacher must in some sense, if American, must promote the benefits of America and why it is good.

Another difficulty would be when a student makes a harmful or dangerous choice because the teacher is then forced to determine if the student should then have a choice because if the choice is refused then the facilitator appears to be a false facilitator but the student must also be safe and respectful of others. I feel like sometimes we as teachers cannot be true facilitators because of the restraints that we face.

What appears to be easy about this approach is that the pressure is more on the students than on the teacher. The teacher is only connecting the students to different choices and the students are the ones to make the choice.

The Executive Approach

I have had a few experience with teachers who use the executive approach. I see it being used in most schools today in preparation for standardized tests. I think that this approach works very well for a testing environment. Personally, I am not a huge fan of this type of teaching because I believe that students find little relevance between what they are taught in school and what is going on in their lives and all too often as soon as they have passed the class they forget all the information.

However, there are a few benefits to this approach. I believe that they have very accurate assessment methods for checking for understanding in their students. I also believe that their use of the same materials lends itself to quicker learning for the children because they are simply learning new content not a new method of gaining that content. Thereby, making knowledge transfer much quicker than other methods. I also think that because Standardized testing is such a huge deal right now that the Executive approach is given much more credit because the methods used work very well for this kind of assessment era. Another benefit of this method is that it is very very highly structured.

The Executive classroom is very teacher-centered as well which sometimes makes teacher feel as though they have more control. I believe that this method is appealing to many teachers because they like to be in control of what is going on in their classroom. Personally, I feel if the teacher isn't competent in what they are teaching a highly structured classroom will not improve their teaching. This Executive approach can be very bad if the teacher isn't a good teacher, the students will simply feel like they are under a dictator which I don't think will enhance anybody's educational experience. However, if the teacher understands and can teach well then the Executive approach for them might be a very positive thing.

Being a Liberationist Teacher

 I love love love the Liberationist Approach!! I believe that to be a Liberationist teacher means that the teacher has to be open to different and new experiences. I also believe that the teacher should be well versed in what they are trying to teach. Also, if they don't know the answer they should feel comfortable about telling their students that they don't know. I also believe that they should encourage their students to "expand their horizons".

Benefits in being a Liberationist? Well...for starters I feel as though a Liberationist approach is the closest thing to learning outside of the classroom. For example, your car breaks down. How could you fix it? You decided to check out a few car manuals at the public library, watch a few Youtube videos on what you think the problem is, and perhaps do a Google search on easy car fixes. This is a Liberationist approach, no two people will take the same route or learn the same things by using this process. 

I also feel like the Liberationist approach fosters creative and individual problem solving skills and encourages people to become life-long learners. It is an exploratory approach which thrives on engagement and interest. Not only that but everybody has some kind of interest and it is only a matter of tapping into what students are interested in.

Difficulties? A standards based era really tampers down the the range and scope of a Liberationist approach. A standardized test only pieces and parts of information and it forces teachers to teach "facts" as truth. I feel as though standardization really gives a shallow educational experience.

The extreme end of the Liberationist approach is called "Emancipatory teaching", I am not comfortable with this approach due to its mostly political focus. I do feel like we should encourage responsible democratic citizens but I don't feel as though this approach is appropriate for an elementary classroom. However, it could work very well in a high-school setting as that is when students are trying to develop their identity and determine what their opinions are.

 All in all, I still feel as though the Liberationist approach is the best approach for me. I strongly believe that this is what we should be doing to prepare our students for their future.

Three Approaches to Teaching

I have been reading a great book lately that's related to education. It's called Approaches to Teaching by Gary D. Fenstermacher and Jonas F. Soltis.

This book talks about different approaches to teaching. This approaches are called: Executive, Facilitator, and Liberationist. I would like to give a quick little description of each.

Executive:
This approach is focused on the teacher. The Executive teacher makes all the decisions of what happens in the classroom and when it happens. Due to education being more and more standards-based the Executive approach is being favored more and more. This approach is focused on the acquisition of knowledge and systematic gains in student achievement. The advantage of this approach is that it prepares students for the work-force. Teachers are viewed as managers.

Facilitator:
This approach is oriented around the relationship between the teacher and students. The thought process behind this approach is that the teacher is only in the classroom to facilitate learning. The responsibility of learning is on the students-they must want to learn. The teacher teaches based on the assumption that students bring their life experience to the classroom and that new learning is based on what they already know.

Liberationist:
(My personal favorite) This approach is oriented around knowledge and how knowledge can be applied. The process behind this is that knowledge and wisdom can expand their existence. I guess that this is why I named this blog expanding horizons, I guess. I was Liberationist without knowing it!

What's your favorite?