Ch. 4 Rethinking Education

This chapter talks about the changes that have had occurred in American life that the authors believe have affect the changes in the American school system. The major changes that are address are the invention of the printing press, the reformation, the American Revolution, and the industrial revolution.  The printing press enabled wide spread knowledge, more writers, and more things recorded than just remember. At first I was like “why the printing press? It is so outdated;” but after thinking about it I realize why. I was the first way to write without doing everything by hand and as time when by the idea was expanded and modified; now we have computers to do our writing more efficiently. The printing press was just one of the first stepping stones.  The reformation changed schools by causing religious groups to think about education and religious education. Massachusetts Act of 1647 was creating to say that town of 50 families or more had to hire a school master. I thought this was very interesting and probably cause some problems because before it was the parents’ job to educate their children. During the American Revolution political minds had the idea of popular education because they were able to get an education in Europe and they wanted to carry that over to America.  The industrial revolution brought about state provided school, which lead to a serious decrease on depending on parents. I think is a good and bad thing because I think it is an important thing for parents to be involved in schooling but I think it is a part of education that is coming back.

I will use my new found knowledge in my class room many different ways.  I think it will be important to teach my student about the changes in technology and the events that got us to this point so they have more appreciation for what they have access to and hopefully that will help them want to learn more with technology. Also, I realize that one type of technology or way of doing things doesn’t work for every one; so I will use many different forms of teaching and technology in my classroom.