First Week of Classes

For our first real week of classes, we went over the basic concepts of sociology. We were able to understand why a class such as Society and Education will be able to help us in our careers as teachers. After being told that many teachers do not find this information helpful information until about their fifth year of teaching, it made me want to learn about it even more. Maybe with this extra knowledge, we as teachers can help fix many of the existing problems.

There are four main advantages of sociology. The first advantage is that it allows us to see the bigger picture and not just look for an immediate solution. We talked about a theft issue that was taking place in a school. Many students were bullying and harassing other students in order to get their lunches. An immediate solution to this problem is to punish the children who are causing these problems, but this presents even more issues to deal with. Maybe the real issue is that these kids are hungry and are not being fed, so the school in turn needs to start some kind of lunch program. Overall, the issue was with the “neighbourhood” and not the school. I definitely need work in trying to see the bigger picture instead of thinking that I know the answer right away. This is not to say that I would assume the students are causing problems for no reason, but I would not quickly jump to the solution of the kids being hungry.

The second advantage is that it counter-acts ideology. This is saying that it takes the sole blame off individuals. An example that was brought up in class is the education program at the university. Why is it that there are only 220 places open to education? It has been proved that the best teachers are not necessarily the ones who had the highest GPA. I have a personal experience in this situation, as I am sure many others have as well. I have wanted to be a teacher for I do not even know how long now, but I am going to say around grade two. Once I graduated from high school, I took a year off to work and then returned a year later. I did my first year of school at the Medicine Hat College and then transferred to the U of L so that I would be able to complete a music minor (something not offered at the college). My second year went well, but obviously not as well as I had hoped. I initially did not make it in and it made me so angry because I knew that I would make an amazing teacher despite my grades that year. Once I got a callback that someone had dropped out, I was very happy to find out that I now had a place in the program. I had also talked to about three other people that had the same thing happen to them. These are people that you can just tell that they will be amazing in their careers later on. Sociology is able to break away from the idea that the individual is to blame and instead look at the patterns.

Thirdly, sociology helps us question ‘reforms’. This allows us as teaches to help see beyond decisions. The issue with more Math and Science classes was initially trying to help Alberta ‘make-up’ compared to other provinces. Although they possibly lessened one problem, they created about ten new ones. 1. Students were now missing classes in the arts as this was always the first thing to go. 2. Schools downplayed how important fine arts were (not everyone can afford outside of school time). 3. There will be less consumerism (culture crash). 4. The province thought that there were more dropouts when students were actually spending four years in high school instead of three. This is just to name a few, but with the solution to one problem, it created many more. Sociology is meant to help make decisions so that these things will not happen.

Lastly, it helps teachers to be proactive. It allows us to anticipate problems and formulate responses before the issue comes into the classroom. A good example of a problem that was not fixed is the $80 million dollar budget cuts. One main reason they decided to do this is that in comparison to other provinces that were spending less money, we did not compare or show substantial increases in grades. How are they actually comparing the provinces? Did they look further beyond to see the students later in their lives? How can they justify giving away money without good reason, and then take away from a system that is a defining factor in someone’s life? It is very upsetting to hear that we used to have the highest budget and now we are the second lowest. It is hard for me to understand fully, as I am not in the system yet, but I have talked to many people who work in schools who are upset over it.

Overall, looking at education from a sociological perspective allows us to predict and foresee problems/issues and to see the larger picture. When I first thought about writing a blog, I assumed that I would be struggling to come up with things to say, but I find myself to be very passionate about what I am discussing which really helps. I can tell that this class will be very informing.