MUSIC 23241
January 25, 2011
Preparing for Today and Tomorrow
In this particular article, Eisner says that in order to prepare for the future, you must teach your students how to deal efficiently with the present. A teacher must challenge students with problems and ideas that are interesting as well as intellectually demanding. He spends the majority of the article talking about what schools should teach along with everything already being taught. He believes that judgement should be taught so students can deal with problems that may have more than one solution. Also students should be presented with ideas worth exploring to support critical thinking. Another important skill to be taught is meaningful literacy, the ability to encode or decode meaning in any of the symbolic forms used in the culture. Collaboration is also an important skill to be taught in schools to help students learn to work with others collectively, cooperatively, and in harmony. Working in the community can help with appropriate socialization as well as moral virtues. He also thinks that test scores shouldn't be nearly as important as they are made out to be today. The primary goal is to help students do well in their lives outside of school.
Throughout my schooling, elementary through high school, I always felt that the teachers were only teaching us the bare minimum. I always left school wishing they would go more in depth with details they would just skim over. Also, there wasn't enough group activities to help with socialization for a good cause because we never had enough time in the individual classes and a lot of the teachers didn't think the students could handle that much freedom during class time. Often we were presented with issues that there was really only one good solution to, and when we thought of another solution, we were told we were incorrect. I could never truly thrive in my surroundings until I came to Kent State University.
I feel that since students have to spend 8 hours in a day, 5 days a week and 9 months a year in school, they should be able to have a little fun and learn some things that are going to help them with the future. I agree that schools should take some time to teach all six qualities/skills that Eisner mentions in the article. Students should feel comfortable and leave at the end of the day feeling that they have learned something that will be valuable for the rest of their lives. I really enjoyed the quote at the end of the article saying "preparation for tomorrow is best served by meaningful education today".
Eisner, Elliot W. (2004). Preparing for today and tomorrow. Educational Leadership, 61, (4) 6-10.
Excellent work!
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