Education concepts and applications

Education & Politics in the Classroom

The article "Politics in the Classroom," written by Lynne Cheney, discusses one of the crucial and important issues about education and its function to the society -- how history is utilized to propagate political propagandas for particular sectors in the society. Cheney focuses on how American history is taught to students with the intention of influencing students to believe ideologies that illustrate certain sectors of the society in a positive light, while other ideologies negatively portray other sectors of the society. The author discusses how gender, race, and social ideologies serve as the primary factors that affect America's history. History, as taught in schools, may portray Westerners as conquerors or colonizers, and Africans and other societies from the Eastern region as slaves, without taking into account the fact that, in fact, that "African kings or Arab traders for centuries preceding and following the trans-Atlantic slave trade." Feminism also pervades American history, wherein the female ideal of being a mother and a housewife is discarded in favor of the more radical and liberal female. Lastly, Cheney also cites how social phenomenon such as the development of technology has always been portrayed as a positive societal development. This propaganda was supported in American history teaching without so much focus on technology's detrimental effects to society, specifically with the increasingly deteriorating condition of the environment that society lives in. In sum, the article illustrates that there is an emerging change in teaching in America's classroom, especially in teaching the country's history. As asserted in Cheney's article, teaching and education in general has ceased to be an 'objective' endeavor; rather, subjectivity has taken the place of objectivity in providing students with a more realistic and truthful portrayal of American history. Thus, learning has become meaningful and experiential because of this subjectivity, providing students with more avenues to expressing their own perspectives about issues essential to the formation of their education.

School" by Kyoko Mori, on the other hand, provides a comparative analysis of the social norms regarding education and learning between the Japanese and American settings. Mori reflects at the differences in the kind of education that Japanese and American women receive as a result of prevailing norms in their respective societies. The author, who was given the opportunity to obtain and continue her education in United States, shows how opportunities given to American women to develop their learning and further their education became their key to success in empowering themselves. Mori, a product of this opportunity, empowered herself by developing her skills in writing, eventually becoming a writer. These opportunities, as Mori points out, lacks in the Japanese setting, where women are not expected by society to develop their learning and further their education, primarily because society expects them to become housewives to their husbands and mothers to their children. Lack of opportunities result to lack of success in life, since Japanese women are given only limited, even, no alternative options to change and improve their states of living. Unlike Mori's experience as a Japanese woman in America, Japanese women have been isolated from their society, repressed to express their thoughts and feelings. Mori exemplifies this point by stating that lack of education opportunities for women in Japan is a "sad reality that prevents many people from becoming writers," or whatever career that they may wish to take. "School" shows how society and culture becomes influential factors in delaying or furthering individual development, particularly in the context of education and learning in individualist (U.S.) and collectivist (Japan) societies.