Chapters 5-7

For the first part of this blog I'm going to talk about what the author meant by failure being an option. He means that schools should embrace the fact that failure happens, instead of being seen as a horrible thing. "Failure is inevitable in life. Unfortunately, in school, children have been brainwashed into believing they aren't supposed to take plunges into uncertainty." In all of school whenever someone gets an "F" its a big deal. The parents are disappointed and of course want an explanation from their child of why they're failing a particular class. But the ironic thing is "There's no success like failure." Besides plenty of people failed at doing something before succeeding. Look at Thomas Edison, he said "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work." The thing is we don't necessarily learn from when we succeed, but when we fail we learn from our mistakes. The author was trying to bring out how when we make failure not an option it puts a lot of pressure on the students, and for that matter we are discouraging a vital way of learning, learning from our mistakes. I also completely agree with his opinion, if failure wasn't looked at as such a bad thing people would take more risks, which in turn would lead to more exploration and learning.

The author also talks about how we do big things, and when he says "we" he means us, as in America, specifically the U.S. so like I said, "us". When he was talking about U.S.' accomplishments he focused on our innovative spirit. "In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It is how we make our living." Innovation is a huge thing in America and that's obvious, it shows because on the list of the world's most innovative companies of the past year 9 of the top 10 were American based companies. What does that tell you about innovation in America? Since innovation is so important in America why don't we teach it in schools? That's my question, because after reading about America's innovative spirit, I now know how important innovation is in this country.

In chapter 6 the author talked about different subjects in school and how they aren't being taught the right way. One subject he talked about was math, and how in the school system we take the fun out of it. We make it about formulas, and just that. So from a students' perspective it doesn't make sense why they would need to learn it, if more than likely they won't use it. "We need a mathematics curriculum that is grounded in real-life problems." Therefore emphasizing the need to make math out of everyday life, make problems where students have to use math to figure it out. To me it would almost be like Cyberchase, remember that show? The kids in the show would go on missions to save Cyberspace and they would have to use math skills to solve problems. To me the author would want things like that going on in school instead. He talked about we make history boring by just focusing on memorizing facts. That we could improve the subject if we got rid of the textbooks, be willing to teach about controversial topics, and going deep into topics instead of just scratching the surface of multiple topics. Bring competition into the class, let the students research things in history they're interested in and write a paper on it, and finally actually take the students to historical places. The last subjects it talked about where reading and writing. How in reading instead of just assigning the same old books that have been used for years, look into assigning relevant books that the current students would be interested in. Also when it comes to writing instead of just drilling in grammar, focus more on the students actually writing. Then he said how the arts should be included in all schools because that class could be the bright spot in a student's day. "Perhaps, it may even prevent a kid from dropping out." I agree with his opinion on all of these subjects, the only question is will the school system listen?

Finally in chapter 7 he talked about how teachers are treated. He brought up points about their salary and how over the years it has gone down. However, in other countries teachers are seen as heroes, people who "build nations". Being a teacher is held in high regard, in fact, "if I applied to a graduate education program, it would be more difficult to be admitted than medical school." But over here teachers are on the bottom of the education food chain. They don't really get a hand in the decision making process when it comes to standards and curriculum. The more I thought about what he was saying the more accurate I realized it was. I mean think about it, the "best" teachers go to the rich schools, and the other schools get the left overs. But in reality we should be making sure that all the teachers are the best of the best because they are teaching children, and children are the future.