Socratic Seminar

Kendra Woods

The School and Society and the Child and the Curriculum by John Dewey

“It will do harm if child-study leave in the popular mind the impression that a child of a given age has a positive equipment of purposes and interests to be cultivated just as they stand. Interests in reality are but attitudes toward possible experiences; they are not achievements; their worth is in the leverage they afford, not in the accomplishment they represent.” (Page 193)

I think this says something about the teacher student relationship because I think that a teacher needs to understand that they have to help mold children into the things they need to be. They can’t expect a child to just learn information and be great just off of that. The child needs to be interested in what they are learning so that they use it in a positive way and as an accomplishment. To be interested in something helps to have experiences with what you are interested in. This is good for teachers because a student who is interested in something will work harder and gain more experiences because they like what they are learning.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, 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. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.” (Chapter 2, page 53)

I think that this has to do with the teacher student relationship because it explains how teachers and students work. Teachers deposit information into students and they take that information and receive it file it and store it into their brain. I think this is a good example of exactly what some teachers do. Instead of interacting with children they just feed them all of this information and want the child to learn it and remember it. The student needs to remember what is deposited into them so they can memorize and repeat it back to the teacher. I think to a certain extent teachers do just have to give out a whole lot of information that students need to receive, but that should not be there whole way of teaching. They should listen to students and help them understand what they are learning and make them interact with each other and with the teacher.

Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner

“Next, there are particular sites or loci where learning takes place. Much education, particularly in traditional societies, takes place on site: the learner is simply placed near the model, who is at the time doing “his thing”. On site learning can occur at home, when that is the customary locus of the activity, be it learning how to prepare a meal or coming to “identify” with a parent who is always studying. As I have already noted, when societies become more complex, they are likely to set up specialized institutions for learning.” (Page 335)

I think this has a lot to do with teacher student relationships because a teacher does not have to be a professor. A school does not have to be in a special building. Kids are taught at home all of the time and they learn just as much as the ones who go to school. I think this says a lot because students don’t believe that their parents are teachers or their siblings are teachers. Everyone teaches you in some kind of way. Yes, teachers do teach you more about the world and math and subjects but the people around you teach you a lot also. So the teacher student relationship can be with any student and any teacher.

The Danger of Softness by Peter Elbow

“Elementary teachers are in more immediate contact with the fact that students cannot learn well unless they have some fun and get some personal support. Because they work with such young students and because they are with them so many hours in a day, they can see a student right before their eyes lose the ability to learn…” (Page 204)

This passage has to do with a student teacher relationship directly. Teachers can see when their students have lost interest in what is going on. Teachers with younger students can see this more clearly because a student needs a little fun and excitement to understand things that are going on. Students can get bored in a class very easily and sometimes need the teachers help to stay focused. So class should not be all play but at certain times students may need to take a bit of a break and do something fun for a while.



Discussion Questions

1. Why is it hard for students to understand teachers? Why can they understand a student better than a teacher?
2. Why is it hard for students to respect the authority of teachers in classrooms?
3. What can teachers do to accommodate different children’s learning styles all together to teach them all at the same time?
4. What techniques can a teacher use to get their students to understand and grasp information better?
5. What can students do to help the teacher better adapt to their learning styles so that no child is left out?