Episode Four of The Story of Schools

At the beginning of Episode 4, I was shocked about what was to come in this section due to the first question answered. When asked who won the civil war the boy replied, “ I have no idea and I don’t care.” This was a surprising confession being made. I had an idea of what this period till present day would look like but this shocked me even more. Though this time seemed to be one in which they claimed students were not being challenged, there were many different types of schools being presented showing kids true potential to learn. This movie demonstrates the fact that students are unique and need learning systems that help them excel instead of hindering students by not meeting their educational needs. This movie shows the benefits of hands on learning and being interactive with students’ learning. As everything around them progresses, it does not make sense to keep school the same as it has been throughout the decade. School itself needs to keep moving forward however the strategies being introduced and the testing systems seem to be pushing students back into the past. They are unable to move forward in learning because they are forced to sit and listen as teachers talk to them. I believe interactive learning would be a positive help to students’ education. After hearing that in the 80’s 500 million was the cost of testing, I realized there are many more tests being placed into the schools now showing that much more is spent on testing every year. This is absurd and the money could be used to help the progression of education and make a unified test that would be more beneficial to our students.

Funding seemed to be a topic that was mentioned many times in this episode. This showed what government funding is used for in the field of education. It was interesting to see the kids getting a choice of what type of education they want and getting paid to go to that form of school. I think it would be interesting to implement these different learning strategies into the public school system. They claimed they were worried about the students leaving the public school system for these alternative schools. If these different strategies were implemented in the public school they would have nothing to worry about. As a future educator, these topics are ones in which I will have to think about in the future. I want to make sure my students are being satisfied with their education rather than getting bored because they are not being challenged. This episode helps me get the information presented in the past.