Class Discussion: How many ways is education political?

Extra Post about class on November 29, 2010

In class today, we were asked the question, is education political and how.  Before we discussed anything about it, my first instinct was no, education isn't political at all.  It didn't take long into discussing for me to realize that I was wrong.  Education is very political and in many ways.  My group came up with three different ways.  One way that education is political is by the structure of the school.  Power and ranking is very political and in a school, you have a superintendent above a principal.  The principal is about the teachers and the teachers are above the students.  There is clearly a rank system in education and in all schools. 

Another extremely important thing in schools is a curriculum.  The "higher ranks" get to decide what should or what shouldn't be on the curriculum.  They get to choose basically what they think is important for the future generations to know.  Teachers have the potential to mold students and create their idea of "model citizens."  Since teachers are above the students and have that political power, they can alter the curriculum to best suit his or her own classroom.  Teachers are also in charge of how they teach the material given.  They can use whatever method they want to and it can either benefit the teacher, students, or both.  The problem with that is trying to figure out what works for both the teacher and students.

The last way my group thought that education is political is by the funding.  Schools and states are constantly competing to be the best and receive the highest test scores in order to receive the funding.  Politics mainly focus and work around money and education does as well.  When schools compete for funding, it also affects the way teachers may go about their classwork.  Instead of having an interactive classroom, the teachers may feel as though they need to drill the information into the students heads and make them memorize it. 

After our class discussion, I realized that I was definitely wrong.  Education is very political and with the classes input, we came up with a lot of different ways.  I thought this discussion was very important to have as teachers "in the making."  It is very important for us to know the ins and outs of teaching and not just the basics.  Not only do we have to care about our jobs as teachers, but we have to realize that we are carving the minds of students so they can be successful in the future.