September 21, 2009

Today was a pretty standard day I think as far as they seem to come. I didn't particularly have any major problems. This morning was taking care of tech and administrative as well as lesson planning work as they first couple period s on Monday are set for. We did have our first fire drill today. I enjoyed stopping traffic and it seemed like it all went very well. The afternoon flew by and soon we were off to our PD. I'm still slightly confused as to how it works that we have Monday PD but oh well.

After this were my classes at TC. I was slightly scrambling to finish some of the reading so I stopped off at the library first to finish. The classes were again wonderful. I felt very prepared and really enjoyed how my two courses kind of complement each other. I am still having to adjust to the subtelties of language in a sociological context as well as what different ideas and theories through this lens mean in terms of my own theory and practice.

For example, I struggled with the idea of power and authority as an important aspect of a teacher's job. We discussed--being mindful that it was through a functionalist theory lens--that as society expects (from Jefferson through to today) schools to teach students what it means to be a citizen and to live in a democracy as well as how the systems of hierarchy operate within that, teachers become the first ideas of authority. They (we) are in effect, "agents of the state" as it was put in class. Police as to adults, as teachers are to students in establishing societal norms and hierarchy. This is done, was the argument, through behavior "management" or discipline.

I struggled with this though because I did not see this as functional. I think that thinking of teachers as the classroom police is counterintuitive to a functional analysis. Through this same lens, it is also said that education serves to create and maintain social efficiency/equilibrium thereby balancing the aggregate economic growth as well. This being said, if teachers are to police their classrooms as part of a "democratic" education, how is that we are to engage free thinkers who enter into the world eager to extend themselves and to fill their roles.

That being said, this is the problem with looking at anything through a singular lens. I'm not even really articulating my issue with the statement above (in my defense I'm exhausted). I just loved this perspective though because it was a very single minded way of exploring education as a huge actor in our society.