Part III: Strengthening the Core

Meeting Alan Khazei Was a Great Experience!

Part III:

Strengthening the Core

A waterfall begins from only one drop of water.

 

 

Introduction

Metaphors are typically recognized as playing an important aesthetic, ornamental, and pedagogical role not only in literature, but also in education. As explained in Part II, metaphors function on different levels; there is more to figurative language than its simple linguistic ability to help people make comparisons. As Max Black’s theory suggests, metaphors have some cognitive content, and therefore cannot be reduced to the literal level. Metaphors are often used when there is, in fact, no literal equivalent; they help “[plug] the gaps in a literal vocabulary” (Black, p.280). Metaphors are not merely instrumental but indispensable because they have the power of providing one with insight that a simple literal statement is unable to provide.

It is important to acknowledge how metaphor gains its power through the effect it has upon the hearer by the speaker’s use. People perceive and act in accordance with them; they help shape behavior. “Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities. A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. In this sense metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies” (Lakoff, p.132).

In this final part of my project, I will show the relationship between underlying philosophical assumptions and pedagogy. I will show how metaphors help shape pedagogical theories and approaches to teaching and learning. The notion of conceptual metaphors, which was discussed in Part II, will be employed to demonstrate how metaphors serve as a frame of reference for teachers.

Conceptual metaphors play both a critical and crucial role in the shaping of a teacher’s educational methodology. When a metaphor is stated, it is important to then unfold what is being implied, because if the wrong metaphor is used, perceptions can be directed in a way that then leads to unwanted behavioral responses.

There are various metaphors often used when discussing education. Some of the most common metaphors that come up are: “education is growth”, “education is production”, and “education is manufacturing”. By working through the epistemological assumptions embedded in each one of these metaphors, we can see the powerful influence they have on shaping the teacher’s educational methodology, students’ eagerness to learn, and policy makers’ course of action.

 

Teacher’s Educational Methodology

We each adopt different roles in everyday situations, and these roles change with the situation. We can think of these roles as hats that we wear at appropriate times – mother, father, teacher, employee, etc. These roles have implied behavior, and it is this social behavior that creates deeper meaning and understanding. For the purpose of trying to provide good quality education for all children, it becomes crucial to think about the role of the teacher. A child spends roughly one-third of his/her day with his/her teacher, so it is clear that a teacher becomes a model for her students. Students are easily affected by their teacher’s warmth, competence, and moral commitment.

Now, the question is, how does a teacher give her students a rich, insightful, and enticing education? It is my belief that a proper public education begins with the realization that “language is undoubtedly at the heart of learning”; “language has now replaced IQ as an explanation for social and education disadvantage.”[1] Every child, with few exceptions, learns how to talk. However, the social and linguistic environments surrounding children as they begin to acquire language competence greatly differ cross-culturally.

Thinkers such as Rousseau and Herbart, argue that students need to be nurtured and given the opportunity to learn in their own ways at their own pace, and if given the proper sustenance, they will act morally according to their own free will.[2] The metaphor education is growth identifies how an educator can either help or hinder a child’s learning experience depending on the amount of care she gives to her students’ individual needs. The metaphor of growth describes the learner as a member of a community of plants growing in a garden. The educator acts as gardener, taking responsibility for the development of each plant. “Gardens, like curriculum, can be rigorously planned, plucked and nurtured, leaving as little as possible to happenstance; alternatively, they can be wild, left completely to nature. The garden and curriculum invite participation through physical movement, intellectual engagement and creative imagination.”[3] The way a gardener must feed her soil nutrients to foster growth, it is crucial for a teacher to provide an environment where children from all family backgrounds are exposed to rich language and exposed to the uses and functions of various prints. Children reared in poverty are exposed to fewer opportunities for experiences of many kinds, language just being one of them, and it takes this realization to understand why the education system needs to make an effort to help improve the language and cognitive performance of these less advantaged children.

Continuing with the garden metaphor, in an exposed garden outside elements such as sun and rain cannot be shut out. Even the most proficient gardener cannot predict nor control these environmentally influential factors. Parallel with this concept, students walk into the classroom on the first day of school carrying on their back their own language, culture, and load of personal experiences. Curriculum can be constructed to either unpack or zip-up and disregard these individual experiences, thereby “enriching, or alternatively, polluting and corrupting the educational milieu” (Baptist, p.21). To be an effective educator requires shedding oneself of assumptions and prejudices in order to “reorient consciousness” and “help us move from a kind of confinement to something wider” (Cook-Sather, p.35). An effective educator must embrace a broader understanding of each child’s individual needs, and facilitate the translations of her students (Cook-Sather, p.37). “The teacher creates a context in which she can facilitate, support, and encourage the students’ translation of themselves” (Cook-Sather, p.37).

Now, we can look at a different metaphor, and look at how it compares to “education is growth.” The metaphor, “education is production” became a conceptual framework during the industrial revolution in the United States. It provides reference to the roles, lexicon, and the actions and interactions of the nineteenth century business of production: the manager, the factory worker, the sorting machine. By the 1850s, public discussion about educational policy illustrated the complete acceptance of the industrial model by educators (Cook-Sather, p.43). Within this model, the school is a “factory,” curriculum is “an assembly line down which students go,” and students themselves are “products to be molded, tested against common standards, and inspected carefully before being passed on to the next workbench for further processing.”[4] This concept of school led to “reductionistic, ‘parts-catalog’ approaches to teaching and learning.”[5] Both educators and the general public became obsessed with efficiency, rational control, and testable outcomes; they embraced and idealized production as the model for education (Cook-Sather, p.44). Within the conceptual framework of education is production, teachers are considerably degraded. The structure for control aimed at efficiency is too intense. Teachers are given packaged curricula, readers, and textbooks, organized into tightly sequenced units and accompanied by teachers’ guides – forms of highly structured, step-by-step instructions. This type of system discourages creativity, critical thinking, or any kind of deviation from standardized manuals for learning (Cook-Sather, p.44). The teacher is placed outside the system of learning, rather than inside; rather than being in charge of regulating the content and activities of the learner, the teacher is just a “manager” or “technician” in charge of implementing material that has already been established for the children to learn. “The school has been converted into the most dehumanizing institution…each child being treated as if he possessed a memory and the faculty of speech, but no individuality, no sensibilities, no soul.”[6] This model makes students passive rather than active learners. There is no room for imagination and creativity to grow.

John Locke said, the human mind is a blank slate, and therefore educators furnish it with ideas to think on.[7] Humans are not born with full-fledged ideas in their heads, but slowly form them through the sensory input of the material world. However, I do not believe Locke accurately captured the whole learning picture. It is true that in thinking about language, educators fill the minds of their students with the skills necessary to understand the structures of a text, assess the logic of an argument, and develop an awareness of how language is consciously deployed to achieve meaning and input.[8] However, the teacher too is a learner in the classroom. While there are modifications to the education is production model, some being less drastic, overall, the meaningfulness of learning is lost when education is viewed as a means for production. Research has been done that shows what classroom climates are best for enhancing student learning. Good schools have five characteristics: 1) They emphasize intellectual activities, 2) they have committed teachers who are given autonomy, 3) they monitor their own progress, 4) they are well integrated into their community, and 5) they have a high proportion of classrooms in which students are active participants in their education.[9] At the heart of these characteristics is the established sense of community within and outside the walls of the classroom.

 

Student Learning Outcomes

It is important to consider what the educational “outcomes” will be. A good educator is one who is concerned with the future. This is why once educators have defined what their educational philosophy is, it is important for them to think about what strategies they will use for implementing their philosophies in the classroom.

These innovative strategies, when effective, should get all students to dive into their work, and increase concentration, which leads to an increase in success. Three things that are substantially important skills for children to obtain over the course of their educational years include the ability to develop their imagination, the ability to learn effective communication skills, and the ability to obtain problem solving skills. It is my theory that these skills can all be obtained through good language education, including use of metaphor.

Language education allows for students to recognize what is “personal, distinctive, and even unique about themselves and their work.”[10] Language education looks beyond what standardized tests articulate about an individual, and instead is about the creation of a “personal vision” (Eisner, p.44). The classroom is demonstrated to provide a context in which students interact and in which mobility is possible (Eisner, p.62). Through the use of metaphors, students are given the opportunity and the means to grow. Metaphors nourish the mind, and through achievement, students develop new attitudes and dispositions that will allow for them to continue learning throughout life (Eisner, p.240).

It helps to look at Psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s social learning theory to better understand how educators can help children’s learning and cognitive development. According to Vygotsky, infants are born with the basic skills necessary for intellectual development, and through interactions within the child’s socio-cultural environment, these skills develop into more sophisticated and effective mental processes, which he calls “higher mental functions”.[11]  The most important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful mentor. The mentor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions given, and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate his/her own performance. Vygotsky suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers within the zone of proximal development. He believed when a student is at the zone of proximal development for a certain task, providing the appropriate amount of assistance, scaffolding, will give the student the necessary “boost” to achieve the task. The scaffolding can be removed once the student masters the task and can complete the task again on his/her own.[12]

Think of the scaffolding as the usage of a good metaphor to enhance understanding of an unfamiliar concept. A teacher, when trying to explain the concept behind fractions, can explain how division is like dividing up slices of a pie. Or, in science, when explaining the functions of atoms in the world, they can be referred to as “the building blocks of matter”. These metaphors help a child understand abstract concepts through concrete images.

Metaphors provide intuitive knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is not obtained by standard logical reasoning. This form of “artistry consists in having an idea worth expressing, the imaginative ability needed to conceive of how, the technical skills needed to work effectively with some material, and the sensibilities needed to make the delicate adjustments that will give the forms the moving qualities that the best of them possess” (Eisner, p.81). This form of knowledge is important to each individual, and children should be exposed to this experience in the educational setting at an early age. First, figurative language, specifically metaphor, helps to stimulate the imagination; secondly, one’s ability to construct metaphors enhances strong communication skills; and lastly, learning to develop this craft teaches important life skills, especially critical thinking and problem solving.

One way metaphors have an impact on a child’s development is by way of imagination. Metaphors allow for children to stretch and explore through their imagination; children can “learn to reach beyond one’s capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes and accidents.” [13] Think about the impact of storytelling. Rather than passively receiving images, children can actively engage in making and connecting metaphorical images to their own life experiences. Children can integrate the elements from fairytales and folklore into their own world, which can possibly help them “bridge the confusing dimensions of the world.” [14]  Stories can be told in times of crisis to help children deal with big issues, including death, violence, and abuse. Not only can stories be told to help comfort children, but for children to tell their own stories can be therapeutic (McColly).

By using one’s imagination to then create metaphor is credited with having positive psychological effects. Kant articulates that a “productive” imagination brings sensation and understanding together, therein creating a “second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.[15] To better understand these implications it is helpful to turn to Freud’s psychoanalytic studies. Freud claimed one who has creative insight has the ability to “objectify and universalize his fantasies in his artworks.”[16] This form of expression surpasses anything that is seen or heard. The process is an attempt for the speaker to fulfill a desire, and in storytelling, works in the following way: While telling stories, the story teller knows she is in a fantasy world, but through her story, she is able to return to reality. She does this by first making the fantasy into a work of art by stripping the original fantasy of all its personal and egocentric qualities. Then, through elaboration, the teller’s fantasies are transformed into a new kind of reality. Finally, the last step in breaking down the barrier between the teller’s ego and those of others is an act of bribery. This pleasure yielding offer allows for release (Freud, pp. 5-7). Storytelling and other art forms allow for the conveying of ideas, feelings, or personal meanings (Hetland, p.6). Developmental Psychologist Paul Harris has conducted studies that prove the development of one’s imagination is necessary for cognitive development and normal adult functioning.[17] It is necessary for young children to be given the opportunity, not only to think about pure fantasy, but to contemplate reality. Educational settings should strive to foster growth and learning, and the artistic experience has successfully demonstrated its achievement in providing growth and learning in the sensory, perceptual, and imaginative sense.

Figurative language, specifically the use of metaphors, allows one to learn how to better communicate with others. One person’s argument in support of this claim is Tolstoy. Tolstoy makes the argument that art is aesthetically valuable not because of the production of beauty, but because the emotional importance pivots on the value of communication-as-infection. This same idea can be applied to the usage of metaphors. Good metaphors cause the hearer to enter into a kind of relationship both with who produced, or is communicating, the metaphor, and with all those who receive the same metaphoric idea.[18] Each of us experiences the world through our own unique filters. Our environment, influences and experiences make us unique in our own ways, and therefore two people never see the same event in the same way. While metaphors help us construct meaning of the outer world surrounding us, metaphors also help us reveal and explain our inner worlds by using symbols and images other people can relate to.

One’s inner world is different than one’s physical world. A child’s inner world is the home of her physical, emotional, and psychological life; a world of dreams and fantasy. When thinking about how to reach an understanding of the inner being of children, literal language proves to be ineffective. This is because it is often hard for people to express how they truly feel when there are limited words to choose from to express emotions. However, metaphors provide a way to enhance symbolic representation. For example, someone could use the phrase, “she was frozen with fear,” “the news inflamed her temper,” or, “his monkey mind is always full of new ideas”. These are just a few examples of metaphors that would take kids some time to understand, but once they did, they would gain an understanding of how the usage of metaphors in everyday communication is effective in rendering the unfamiliar more familiar, therein allowing for the building of a relationship between the speaker and the listener.

Metaphorical communication fosters feelings of universality. When one communicates with others, one has the opportunity to learn from others as well as the chance to reflect internally. Humans as distinct individuals have personal preferences for things. Often these preferences can lead to criticism and judgment, but when strong communication skills are developed, individuals are able to reflect on their opinions in a constructive fashion, and from this, further their understanding of the world; By learning how to communicate effectively with others, one can learn to embrace problems of relevance within the world, and/or personal importance (Hetland, p.6). Communication involves clarity, effectiveness, and poise that will only come with practice and for this reason it is important such skills be instilled in educational institutes. Communication transforms consciousness into a public form, which is what representation is designed to do, and is necessary for individual growth (Eisner, pp.6-7). When children learn the importance and effectiveness of tone, body language, facial expressions, and other features of non-verbal language, children will gain an understanding of how to effectively develop into well-functioning human beings beyond the classroom. The relationship that forms through this social contribution and educational process allows for individuals to develop symbiotic relationships with others (Eisner, p.7). Such various forms of communication allow for children to see the world in different ways. Such tropes are relevant to every aspect of the human condition; humanity depends on social harmony and understanding to function and live well, and metaphor has the ability to unite people with one another.

Thirdly, educators should focus on strengthening their students’ critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. Metaphors play an active role in helping students develop their critical thinking skills because when metaphors are used to teach critical thinking and problem solving skills, children have an easier time grasping unfamiliar concepts.

Critical thinking and problem solving can be thought of as necessary life jobs, and when teachers provide their students with the proper tools, students can obtain effective problem solving habits. For example, in order for a child to learn how to read, after a child has learned how to talk there are six reading steps that follow. Within each step, certain skills are obtains to prepare the child for the task of reading. First, after learning how to speak, children’s verbal vocabulary and ability to articulate sounds of words are enhanced. Second, parents and teachers assist children by reading them stories with pictures, rhyming, and songs.[19] Third, children need to learn the alphabet. Children can recognize and master naming the letters of the alphabet by working with letter magnets and playing letter recognition games. Fourth, for children to continue on the road to being an excellent reader, they must learn the sounds of letters. Picture-sound flash cards make good tools for achieving the mastery of this reading step. The fifth step is teaching children simple words. By this stage, since being given the tools necessary for recognizing letters and sounds, children should be able to sound out simple words like dog, cat, and boy. Sixth, children must work on increasing their written vocabulary. When a teacher has the child read sentences out loud, has the child sound out any unfamiliar words and uses pictures and verbal explanations to provide context and understanding of the meaning of the new words, a child increases her written word vocabulary. Lastly, the best method for continued improvement in a child’s reading skills is to extend this guided reading concept to stories the child reads. Practice is the only way to improve reading comprehension.

Metaphors are useful because they allow for children to: raise vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely; gather and assess relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards; allow one to think open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and allow one to communicate effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

 

Policy Making: Choosing the Best Course of Action

Now, what needs to be done to make sure all children across the nation receive equal education opportunities, opportunities that will enhance the skills discussed above? In order for children of all cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to obtain a positive and nurturing education, a national commitment needs to be made to support and provide a voice to those who are left at a disadvantage. Teachers can only do so much on their own to provide students with the nutrients necessary to grow into well-rounded, mature, and unique individuals. The “education is growth” metaphor is a good representation of how we should perceive the expected role of students. Nurturing and fostering life are at the heart of this metaphor.  It recognizes how students require the proper support and care in order to become enriched with knowledge and develop.

To see this metaphor at work, we can turn and look at what is happening in East Harlem, New York City. Here we find the Harlem Children’s Zone, which covers 97 blocks and reaches over 8,000 children in one of the hardest areas of the country to get a decent education and escape generational poverty. This program demonstrates how it only takes one passionate advocate for education reform to instigate change. Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, has demonstrated how the cycle of poverty for poor children in the United States can be broken. He has literally turned around Central Harlem, block by block, creating safe zones through schools and community centers for kids to learn and play. The Zone provides free and comprehensive educational, social and medical services for all the children in the area.[20] Canada states, “What we wanted to see in Harlem was our community to look like middle class communities, where kids had healthcare, where kids got their teeth fixed from the dentist, where kids were not obese and they were eating nutritional meals, where young people didn’t have to worry about gangs and being shot and being killed” (Hopper). The main goal is to provide these kids with a bright future. The door to opportunity is through an education, and Canada makes a promise to these kids and to their parents that they will make it.

While this is a fairly new educational development, we can see how Canada has adopted the education is growth metaphor. The Harlem Children’s Zone’s success is rooted in the belief that public education must be part of holistic community development. This sense of community helps these children develop their personal identities, and how he has successfully bridged the gap between class and race. Canada, when asked why “place” is so central to educational success stated how “in our country we’ve allowed some communities to become toxic for children. These are places where the schools don’t work and young people don’t feel safe…rebuilding community is really critical to our work”[21] The way in which a garden needs healthy soil in order to be productive and produce high quality crops, children need to be enriched in a safe and clean community. The children who do not have the luxury of attending a nourishing environment, one free rom crime, drugs, and street violence, will more than likely end up facing negative outcomes.

It is important to recognize that every interaction within a classroom both reflects and constructs a social order. Teachers can create through language the worlds that children inhabit in the classroom. The individual and the sociohistorical come together in every language interaction.”[22] “Through language, children of diverse ethnicities, social classes, ages, abilities and genders orchestrate their social organization and socialize one another across a range of activities… children’s lives are shaped by their encounters with family, peers, adults and others expressing various language ideologies, in neighborhoods, schools and after school, [and] children change developmentally over time” (González, p.191).

Geoffrey Canada’s approach shows how it takes a kind of risk-taking behavior to keep organizations moving forward. A lot of organizations try not to leave a comfortable place where rewards are easily measurable, but Canada claims these organizations are not going to get a lot of innovation under these circumstances.[23] Canada makes it clear that educators and policy makers need to act in order to educate children and strengthen community. However, the question becomes, what is the best approach?

While we may not always know it, metaphorical concepts have a dramatic effect in political reasoning. To illustrate how this system works, we can look at how we understand quantity in terms of directionality. For example, “prices are rising.” These conceptual metaphors are readily used by politicians to persuade people to hop on the bandwagon, often regardless of the underlying evidence. When discussing education reform movements made in the white house over the last decade, we can see conceptual metaphor at work:

In January of 2001, the legislation of the No Child Left Behind Act was proposed by President George W. Bush. The bill was then passed and signed into law in January of 2002. NCLB supports standard-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.  Here we can see the conceptual metaphor of directionality at work. “Behind” refers to neglect and loss. In contrast, moving forward is synonymous with achievement and success. Not falling behind means providing each child with the knowledge and resources necessary to succeed. Bush made this act sound like it would affect every person: teachers, principals and administrators would have to make changes to meet the challenges of minority children, children with disabilities, children with limited English proficiency, and children from low-income families.

However, eight years after Congress passed the No Child Left Behind act, with the goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading, most states hovered between 20 and 30 percent proficiency, and 70 percent of eighth graders could not read at their grade level. At this rate, by 2020, only an estimated 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill 123 million highly skilled, highly paid jobs.[24]  What does this mean for our nation? Well, maybe our nation is taking the wrong approach in trying to change American society. We can look at another metaphor and see if a change in how we frame the issue of education might be enough to provide all children with the skills necessary to compete in today’s growing and complex world.

In 2009, President Barack Obama announced Race to the Top as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This $4.35 billion United States Department of Education contest was created to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education. This metaphor creates the visual representation of schools striving to be the first one to reach the summit of a tall mountain. Each key area of reform can be thought of as a checkpoint needing to be reached along the way. The key areas of reform include: development of rigorous standards and better assessments; adoption of better data systems to provide schools, teachers, and parents with information about student progress, support for teachers and school leaders to become more effective, and increased emphasis and resources for the rigorous interventions needed to turn around the lowest performing schools.[25] To win the race, schools must successfully leverage, enhance and improve classroom practices and resources” (The White House).

While a little bit of healthy competition never harmed anyone, I see problems ahead with this model being used to achieve education reform. What happens when the $4.35 billion is used up? What happens when the said “race” is over? The schools that will have successfully transformed their classroom practices may continue to strive, but the schools that have not obtained the necessary tools and strategies to help children become proficient in math and reading are stuck in a rut, with no way to move forward.

However, I do think there are some positive changes being made in our nation today. Currently in our nation, President Obama has made a call to “make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America”.[26] The president’s plan also calls for expanding Early Head Start, the federal program designed to prepare children from low-income families for school, which provides quality childcare for infants and toddlers. These children do not have the advantages of nightly bedtime stories and music lessons, and so this advantage would help to prepare these children for kindergarten and beyond.

His plan has been met with some resistance. Critics argue that federal money would be “squandered on ineffective programs” (Motoko). However, in thinking about outcomes, I think we can easily predict what will happen if this nation does not take action: There is also a significant correlation between literacy and economic status. According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, adults in the lower literacy levels were far more likely than those in the higher levels to be in poverty and were far more likely to be on food stamps than to report receiving interest from savings. Individuals in the higher levels of literacy were more likely to be employed, earn higher wages, work more weeks per year, and be in professional, technical, or managerial occupations than respondents who displayed lower levels of skill. Those in the lower literacy levels were less likely than those in the higher levels to say they also get some or a lot of information from print media. In addition, adults with limited literacy proficiencies were far less likely to have voted in a recent state or national election than were those with more advanced competencies.

These statistics are frightening. We tend to think illiteracy is only prevalent in third world countries in Africa and Asia, but this is not the case. While yes, illiteracy rates are significantly more drastic in these places, problems with literacy is something that also hits close to home, and action needs to be taken. Educators specifically need to think about the role they play in helping to bring illiteracy rates down. Children are growing up in a complex world, and within childhood development, different problems can arise for each individual. Parts of life’s complexities are inscribed in schooling. Many of these problems are due to the socialized ideas of power, privilege and prestige. Educators should be aware of how these ideas can contribute to the issues of language and identity formation many children are faced with. There are a few things educators can and should do in order to help foster educational development. Such teaching strategies include acknowledging the diversity of children’s experiences and the constitutive nature of language. By recognizing how an effective use of language can shape a child’s learning environment, children of all socioeconomic backgrounds can grow as individuals. These teaching techniques incorporate the link between language and identity, therein allowing children to find themselves in a world where they are exposed to multiple pressures and identities.

On January 17^th, 2013, Cornel West spoke at Tavis Smiley’s forum titled, “Vision for a New America: A Future without Poverty.” The focus of this forum was on poverty in the United States, and much of what was discussed was the importance of education. West strongly expressed his views on why we are failing to see a lot of progress in establishing good quality education for all children. His belief is that the problem lies in society, a society where our priorities are “warped” due to our culture that is filled with “self-interest, aberrance, and greed.”[27] Another insightful speaker at this forum was Jonathan Kozol. He spoke on the low-level dialogue of social reform. This dialogue is nothing “transcendental” nor “courageous,” but rather is only “tinkering around the edges” of the issue of educational equity (insert citation). Kozol mentions how politicians often say they are working to fix the problem. Kozol does not like this mechanistic metaphor that views schools as if they are cars in an automobile shop.

I agree with both West and Kozol when they express how the law has failed to transform schools into safe and enriching environments for all children. In the past election both Mitt Romney and President Obama largely ducked the issue, remaining fixed on the status quo. However, the president is not the only one who can create change. It takes a village to raise a child, and it is going to take the collaboration and cooperation of communities across the country to equalize educational opportunity for this nation’s children. However, I believe it can all start with one teacher in one classroom with one goal: to do one’s best to take course material outside the context of the classroom and remember that we study in order to better the world.

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[1] Romaine, Suzanne. The Language of Children and Adolescents: The Acquisition of Communicative Competence. Oxford [Oxfordshire: B. Blackwell, 1984. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Romaine, p.#).

[2] Cook-Sather, Alison. Education Is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2006. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Cook-Sather, p.#).

[3]Baptist, Karen Wilson. “The Garden as Metaphor for Curriculum.” Teacher Education Quarterly (n.d.): 19-37. JSTOR. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. <http://www.teqjournal.org/Back%20Issues/Volume%2029/VOL29%20PDFS/29_4/revolume29issue4pdfs/08baptist.pdf&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Baptist, p.#).

[4] Schlechty, Phillip C. Schools for the Twenty-first Century: Leadership Imperatives for Educational Reform. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Schlechty, p.#).

[5] Zehm, Stanley J. “Deciding to Teach: Implications of a Self-Development Perspective.” The Role of Self in Teacher Development. By Richard P. Lipka and Thomas M. Brinthaupt. Albany: State University of New York, 1999. N. pag. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Zehm, p.#).

[6] Rice, Joseph Mayer. The Public-school System of the United States: By Dr. J.M. Rice.New York: Century, 1893. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Rice, p.#).

[7] Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Locke, p.#).

 

[8] “Mission Statement.” Common Core State Standards Initiative. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. <http://www.corestandards.org/&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (CCSS).

[9]  Steinberg, Laurence D. Adolescence. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Steinberg, p.#).

[10] Eisner, Elliot W. The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven: Yale UP, 2002. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Eisner, p.#).

[11] McLeod, Saul. “Lev Vygotsky.” Simply Psychology. Simply Psychology, 2007. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. <http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (McLeod).

 

[12] McLeod, Saul. “Zone of Proximal Development.” Simply Psychology. Simply Psychology, 2010. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. <http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Simply Psychology).

[13] Hetland, Louis, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, Kimberly Sheridan. Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2007. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Hetland, p.#).

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