Talking Points #5 on Oakes and Lipton from Teaching to Change the World

Premise:
This article is about...

• The ability for any child can be good at something if they put enough effort and determination into it.
• The idea of performing hard work equals success to privileged children more than the underprivileged.
• Children who are poor tend to receive as much help from the institutions as possible but yet also have to help themselves along with it in order to do better.
• The role of merit emphasizing the responsibilities of the individual more then those of the school or society.
• Teachers are taught better teaching methods to prepare students for admission into colleges.
• The usage of scientific management in schools.
• Educational reform.
• The marketplace theory states that the most successful people will survive and the people who are not will disappear.
• Progress becomes more controlled with each generation.
• "Informational Democracy" states that not everyone benefits from progress.
• Trying to change the world rather then promising for a better future.
  
• Democratic Schooling.
• "Modern" theories in teaching.

Author's Argument:
Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton argue that people in today's societies must adapt to the changes that are being made within the schools and educational programs. In order for students to be able to do good in school, they must be able to understand the material that is being taught to them. Teachers and schools need to provide them with the assistance they need to do good in the classroom. If teachers want students to do good, then the teachers need to keep updated with the newest materials and programs to use in order to aid their students throughout the class. Parents also need to keep up with what their children are learning about so that way they can help them and encourage them to perform their best in the topic.

Evidence:

1. Among those students who have the resources, opportunities, and connections that come with privilege, the more ambitious and hardworking may well go farther than those who simply do okay in school. Nothing said here belittles the ineffable qualities of character, ambition, or even charisma. However, these meritorious qualities occur with no less frequency in low-income families and among blacks, Latinos, and immigrants. yet these groups cannot parlay these qualities into economic success to the same degree what middle-class and wealthy whites can...When it comes to explaining "success," ability and ambition are often important, but that is not all there is to it. Americans' belief that success in school (and life) follows from ability and aspirations masks the reality that schooling, within the broad social structure, favors children from privileged families.
2. As schools grew larger and mre expensive, politicians, industrialists, and social reformers criticized them for their inefficient methods and dubious success. Many critics suggested that, like workers in all large enterprises, teachers could achieve greater success under factory-like management systems. University professors and school administrators set about conducting the same types of scientific studies of schools that Taylor had done in industry, and they developed schemes for making schools run more like efficient factories. To mention just a few of these new efficiencies, schools divided their large auditorium-like spaces for a hundred or more students into today's familiar classrooms that separated students by ages and subjects. Texts such as readers and spellers proliferated, making it possible to standardize curriculum. Colleges began to specify sequences of courses that would prepare students for admission. Normal schools (the first teacher education institutions) started training teachers in correct and efficient teaching methods.
3. In short, teachers and the public must look both closely and broadly at any "noncommon" school. If the school thrives because of its focused sense of purpose and community, it may benefit its students and the community. But if the school's strength results from winning the local competition for scarce educational resources (i.e., support from the politically powerful parents, money, and highly qualified teachers), then the community will soon suffer. If schools of choice succeed because their students forge closer links with the widest cross section of adults and other students in their communities, then they should be emulated for that reason. But if they serve elite or isolated interests that further divide communities, they will not serve social justice.

Questions/Comments/Points to Share:
This article states that teachers, schools, and parents need to keep up with modern day techniques about how to teach children. Children in today's societies are influenced by everything around them. They are constantly learning new things everyday whether these matters are being taught to them inside a classroom or outside of one. it is the job of the teachers and parents or guardians of the children to provide them with the necessary information and support they will need to do good in school.

School environments should also provide children comfortable places for them to learn in. These children need to be given as much support from their teachers and school environments along with their outside environments as much as possible. If students are not supported throughout their learning processes then they will not be motivated to do their best in the subjects. By teachers and parents providing their children with all the necessities they need to become better in school, then children will become more interested to learn.