Blog Assignment 10

Do You Teach Or Do You Educate? by Joshua Bloom

        This was an inspiring video explaining how we should educate rather than teach.  Teaching consists of throwing all the information out to students and expecting them to know it.  Educating is giving the information to you students in an inspiring way and letting them decide whether or not they want to learn it.  At least, these are the definitions in my opinion.
        I became an education major for many reasons, one of them being that I always dreamed of being the kind of teacher that kids would always remember as being their favorite.  Not because I was easy and not because I was passive, but because I made class fun, interesting, and challenging.  I got them inspired about history in the same way I felt about history so later on down the road when a history related question comes up on Jeopardy! or a historical monument is erected or they're at some history museum or decide they want to make a historical documentary or movie, they might know all about it or enjoy it possibly because they learned something in my class years ago.


Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home by Tom Johnson

        This was an interesting way to set up an argument.  Mr. Johnson effectively states his dismay with how some people react to new information through a quoted conversation.  Though this particular conversation is about the use of pencils at home, I think Mr. Johnson intended the blog post to have a much broader interpretation.
        Gertrude assumed that because statistics had shown that children who brought pencils home had lower standardized test scores, Mr. Johnson should stop giving his students paper and pencil homework. She entirely missed the point of this article.  The problem was not the act of having pencil and paper homework, but what kids were actually doing with their pencils at home.  The assignments the kids were assigned were boring and not engaging, therefore affecting the children's ability to creatively learn.  These same kids who took the standardized tests had the same thoughts about pencils as they did about the "boring homework" thus causing their test scores to plummet.  Mr. Johnson explained to Gertrude that he only assigned homework that would interest his students, but ultimately it was up to them what they did with their pencils.
        This blog post is a classic example of people taking information out of context and isolating it.  We must always remember there are conditions and circumstances for every bit of new information we come across.  It makes me think of the numerous ads giving free things away.  (The majority of the time, they are not free)