I know it’s very random, but first of all, I want to thank you guys.
I think I learn so much from listening to you in class and reading your thoughts on blog.
But at the same time, I have to apologize that I haven’t been able to give you chance to explore my thoughts. I will do blog more steadily!!
Last night, while I was reading the assignments for today’s class, I got frustrated because I couldn’t really understand the language in the reading. There were lots of words that I couldn’t’ grasp of the meaning even though I translated them to Korean words. That was because those words have never existed in my life, in other words, I have never needed to use those words in my life. So, after reading, I may now know the meaning of the new words, but it is still very abstract, and I’m not sure when to or how to use the words properly. The words were introduced to me. However, I haven’t created any relationship with those words yet, which means I haven’t internalized those words. They would be useless words until I am able to give myself proud smile as I find the moment I can use the words perfectly!
Here, I can relate my story I just told you above to the problems of education system. A lot of times students are given the knowledge, but the knowledge is just knowledge to them, and the knowledge is not theirs. The students haven’t internalized the knowledge and haven’t found the way to apply the knowledge in their own ways yet. So, they don’t know what to do with the knowledge they have gained. Then, why do we have to educate our kids? Is it just to make our kids knowledgeable?
I don’t think we can blame only the current educational system. Based on reading, the educational system, the institutional system, reflects the people, the mentality of people. Even though it is not us but older generation who created the this type of system, and even though the institution forces us to go to certain direction based on older generation’s mentality, the institution has also adopted new ways to reflect the mentality of our generation. So, once we really work on changing our mind and attitude to the way that we want, the institution, the educational system will be able to be changed in a way which we expected to be.
But! I’m contradicting myself here too. Is it really possible to have an institution which can totally, perfectly reflect existing people? Like, If I create an institution now which will work very well for my generation, and this institution is going to be inherited to next generation, which means the institution will no longer perfectly reflect its people.
Is society really us?
Students at Sherman Institute, 1919. Courtesy Sherman Indian High School, Riverside CA.
1 comment:
Is school just about knowledge? If Foucault's point is partly that such institutions emerged as disciplinary strategies of power, then perhaps we need to think of schooling as partly about matters not strictly related to "knoweledge" but also related to "socialization" or "enculturation" or a host of other such terms for the construction of an adult within contemporary relations of power. What aspects of these very challenging readings you are currently encountering represent a socialization for you? What is the social curriculum of Soka University... of this seminar...?
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