Jonathan Paul Loomis
October 20, 1998
Schools and Society
Professor Laughlin
Chapter Nine Review
The most important thing that I learned from this chapter was that so many of our educational goals are very recent and have not been important goals to American schools for more than a few decades, if that. For example, science and math have only had their strong focus since the sixties. Sex and health education have only been recent developments in the eighties and nineties. Gay education has barely begun. I guess I've always known about these developments, but it is still fascinating to think that I will probably see the same vast array of changes in my lifetime. The other bit of news that was new to me was the tremendous struggles involved in creating high schools.
I fully agreed with the author's portrayal of the struggles woman have had to make in schools. Generally I think they still get the blunt end of the stick. I thought the author overdid it on the story about the high school's changing times. He fell into the trap of using the black students to signal the downfall of the school, as if there were not problems when the white students were there. Although I know this happened all over the nation, I don't think that using it in the portrait was appropriate.
I would like to know more about modern day curriculum changes and innovations. What's new? What's the International Bachalorait? What's block scheduling, or rather, how does it work and where?