Diversity? Really?

In the Woodford book the author speaks about 'freedom of mind' referencing John Dewey and his Morality Project. John Dewey believed that schools should help to create a sense of creativity among it's students; a sense of individuality. He thought that it was the responsibility of the school system to create an array of different people with different belief systems, who possess the ability to think independently think for themselves and construct their own ideas based upon who they are. On this, I agree with John Dewey.

In schools today, children are almost brain-washed. They are told what to do, when to do it, and in what amount of time there are to do it in. Sure, there is your occasional art project, music project, or for lack of a better term, show-and-tell, but this isn't really allowing students to become people. This is telling pupils who to become; telling people who they are supposed to be.

I know that in grammar school and in high-school, my teachers didn't really appreciate my presence in the classroom. They thought I was rude, and out of line; they didn't like the fact that I had my own opinions and my own ways of doing things. They always told me that I was rebellious, stubborn, and that I thought of myself as "above the rules". In reality, yes I may have been just a stubborn teenager, but at the same time, nothing was ever given the opportunity to be challenged; I challenged what I could.

It is to my belief that as an educator, it is the teacher's obligation to keep the classroom on task, and on the path of what is being learned. There are of course going to be your "teachable moments" when your class goes off-task; this is normal. What is not normal is preaching to your classroom that everything has to be one way; that everything is how it is taught. Our world, and our country for that matter revolves around the idea that our country is the melting pot of the world; the very mixture of diverse ways of thinking. Why is it that education is being stifled by this socialist way of learning?