Wednesday, November 20, 2013

How does Chalk illustrate the charges Freire and Gatto level agaist education?

The movie illustrates a lot of what Freire and Gatto write about - you just need to look for it.  I found that by rereading(again) Gatto and Freire I was able to assign scenes from the movie to bits in the essays.  Here are my examples:

From Freire:  Narration(with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content.
     In the movie, there is a scene where Mr. Lowry, a fairly incompetent first year teacher, has the students repeating words and phrases.  I am sure the kids have no idea what they were in reference to except maybe history. 

From Freire:  In the attitudes and practices section of his writings - (h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students(who were not consulted), adapt to it.
     In the movie, there is a scene where Coach Webb has decided to teach a few yoga moves and has the students doing  particular exercise that makes some of the kids uncomfortable(probably in a sexual way).  Some people do still have some modesty and to force the kids to set that aside is just wrong.

From Gatto:  "Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous
columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. 
    In the movie, there is a scene where the assistant principal is almost frantically running thru the maze of hallways trying to find a wayward student.  She has to keep getting directions from someone on the walkie-talkie who is in a room somewhere watching on the cameras that are set up to keep tabs on the students.

From Gatto:  "The empire struck back, of course; childish adults  regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty.
     In the movie, there is a scene where Coach Webb is whining to the assistant principal about the other teachers not disciplining their students for minor infractions and then the conversation takes a personal turn and a bit of yelling followed.  The two women had claimed to be good friends at one point. 

From Gatto:  "Boredom is  the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who had spent time in a teachers; lounge an vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there."
     In the movie, the one scene that I can recall that most illustrates this passage is the scene where all the teachers are in the lounge and the one male teacher is complaining because someone took his yogurt.  There  was a definite lack of energy in that room. 

No comments:

Post a Comment