Dewey and Freire @ Bat

Dewey would have absolutely loved the way that Roosevelt has their curriculum structured. He would applaud them for having such an active role for the students and for allowing them to go in depth in their learning. His whole entire theory is that for the most part, students have four different types of instincts and we should teach to them. He believes that students have a social instinct in which they appreciate the formation of relationships in their lives. Roosevelt has a number of after school organizations that reach a wide variety of students to bring them together with their peers, this ranges from sports to robotics teams. They have a huge emphasis on collaboration and provide many different areas for students to work together. The next instinct is that they have an investigative instinct in which they have a desire to make things. All of this allows opportunities for inquiry learning, a huge goal of Roosevelt. They have a room called the “Idea Room” stacked with 3D printers, tools, and every sort of material that could inspire students. Then there is the Expressive, artistic instinct that is on the constructive side as well. This ties into the idea room, but it goes even further in the arts programs that the school provides. They have a ginormous auditorium for theatre for the students to perform on, they showcase artwork of all the students, even the younger ones, and they have a great music program too. The last instinct is the language and communication instinct, and since Roosevelt is an American school all classes are spoken in English. Since a number of the students are Spanish speaking to begin with, they end up becoming bilingual through this process. This helps them because it widens their range of schools for the future. So in Dewey’s perspective, this school would receive two thumbs up.

Then on the other side of it, Dewey would say that there are a lot of issues with the schools in areas like Augustino and even Fé y Alegría because they don’t allow the student to work in as many inquiry based learning activities. Instead of focusing on the experiences of the students they pay much more attention to the content. I think that this is part of the issue with Dewey’s whole mindset. He praises the schools that have the money to be able to provide every learning opportunity possible, but in doing so he ends up limiting the amount of students that can be reached. He also made a whole big generalization about the instincts because he excludes all of the students to have learning disabilities or don’t fit into the category of what he describes as a capable student. But that’s just me getting off track because I don’t really like his ideas because he’s just full of it…. In his world, and in the schools founded based off of his pedagogy, the most valuable thing for a student is the experience and the teacher’s role should be as a helper or a museum curator. Our purpose is to lead the kids on a journey to help them make sense of the world based on their instincts. Teachers should help the students to achieve moral and intellectual growth by showing them the path and setting them up for their own discovery.

Freire also calls for experience to become a larger part of the learning process, he talks about banking education and how can end up creating an oppressive society. Banking education refers to the storing of information as a sort of deposit system, “in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize and repeat,” (72). In his opinion, the education system has been overrun by the mindset that the students need the teacher to learn instead of having it be a sort of partnership or a connection that the student and teacher can make together. He believes that students should be able to pose the problems in that occur in their lives and that through the problem posing education they will be able to free themselves and better understand the world around them. He would be in awe of all the work that Roosevelt does for its students, the opportunities are endless, the activities are unlimited, and the students have the ability to tackle problems that matter most to them.

I don’t really know how he would respond to the other schools that we have been to, partially because I am working with such young students at De La Inmaculada and Fé y Alegría that I am not even really sure of what the approach is for these students. What I have noticed so far that I really love at DLC is how the students work together so well to uplift the student who has special needs in the class. They encourage her, they play with her, and they make her smile non-stop. I think that this shows that they tackled the problems of inclusivity and tolerance pretty early on and that’s something that Freire would be proud of. When it comes down to it, I can feel a strong sense of community in each of the different schools that we visited except for Roosevelt. I’m not calling them out by any means, but I’m simply passing on what I have observed so far. The people of El Augustino work together so well to create a safe environment for the children through the Socio Deportivo and Casitas, the students at DLC showing love to one another, and the amount of pride Lenny has for Fé y Alegría show me something below the surface. They deal with their problems in a different way, without as fancy of equipment or special rooms dedicated to ideas but through critical thinking and working as a community and I think that Freire would be pretty impressed.