As a supervisor of a student teacher today, I thought I would revisit one of my older photos from a past blog. This is a photo in a classroom with high ceilings so I am thinking that it is in a larger town school house, not in a country school.
The photo came from the Osceola pile of old photos that my dad had collected from a house that he demolished. It has no identification on it but it looks like it was a special day in the early 1900's.
Schools have changed in so many ways from the time this was taken. Technology today encourages students not to read books but to flip pages on a computer screen. The types of things read back then are not the same. The older classics were probably contemporary pieces back then, but today's teaching is geared to less historic study and more contemporary thinking. Who of those who are in control of the kind of thinking the students should follow does bothers me a lot, but hopefully students learn to think out their own viewpoints from learning how to do so without the command of others.
There are a handful of students who do read the classics and a small handful of teachers who are introducing some classic writings. Times have changed and the classroom is only a temporary holding spot for students until they can get out and make their own way. In some ways that was the same back then, but today the multi media overwhelms and dominates more that what is taught in schools.
Photos of students from my mom's country school days. The majority probably have lived their lives to the fullest and many would be in their 80's if they are still alive at all. They have progressed into this modern world. Some I am sure have easily embraced the computer world and modern thinking and are blogging. Others have refused to belong to this computer age and television is their only means of viewing the outside world. The difference now with television is that we are viewing earthquakes and mine collapses live on the spot. Daring rescues are seen live and not in books of old.
As I ramble on, I have no message to preach. I am just an observer of life and the lives of people that I observe today in comparison to old. Time changes all things and we control so little of the things that we thought we could.
As I sit in a classroom of eight graders of today, I wonder if they will learn of the wars of old through today's movies, will they know the philosophies that caused them and do they know what they will face in the future. Will the today's versions actually tell the truth or tint it to their liking? Is their future frosted with dreams of old that may never be attainable and will the true purpose of life ever be revealed to them?
Check out the other Sepia Saturday posts from all around the world by clicking here.
16 comments:
Education today is indeed pretty frightening. Books continue to be dumbed down to fit the short attention spans technology has created. I actually put a lot of blame on MTV with the video images a series of quick cuts, noise, and motion. Textbooks now have to be visual, content is secondary.
And then there's the problem of individual states demanding that history be rewritten to fit a subgroups ideology.
It's not a pretty picture, but the pictures you posted are.
I miss being a student teacher...I miss the read marks written by the teacher supervising me on my lesson plans.
I miss teaching. Thanks for this post and for reminding me about the life inside a classroom of a student teacher, the fun thing and not-so-fun thing and the responsibilities that come in between.
When I started school, the room didn't look much different than that. I wonder if the flowers in the front were for a special occasion.
I notice there's a globe in that classroom. I wonder how many modern classrooms have globes? It's really hard to get a sense of where we are in relation to other countries if you're looking at a flat screen.
I really like the first photo and especially the globe hanging from the ceiling! Nice group of students they were too!
Hi Larry, thank you for your post and photos. I share many of your views of modern day schools and ways of teaching, and with bullying and other things, if I had small children today I would do my best to home school them. My kids are in their early 20's and early 30's, and things were changing back then too ... I'm not sure that every neat invention turns out to be a wonderful tool ... though God help the person who tries to take away my computer at this point, lol!
Wishing you a very Happy Easter, and thank you so much for your post.
Kathy M.
PS - I re-posted my SS link. If you had a hard time seeing it the first time around, I'm sorry.
school photos seem to be a semi-topic today. Wonder what happened to all the students sitting in the classroom.
Is that really a globe hanging from the ceiling? It looks like maybe its the firmament. Could there be a globe of the firmament? I think I'm really revealing my ignorance here. I wonder why it's up so high. Doesn't look too handy for studying.
It does look like a special occasion...the flower bouquets on the teacher's desk. Maybe it was her birthday.
Barbara
Reminds me of my first school - and several after that one with the high ceilings. I wonder if those were for circulation or were they just the current style. Much more material and higher cost to add the tall windows and high ceilings. History will always be made up of the current "truth".
If it's any indication, my sons are both voracious readers and my youngest son, particularly, is a student of history, politics, critical thinking. They were both raised high tech (by parents who were voracious readers, critical thinkers, and gadget users).
We've seen massive changes in the world and education in the last 20 - 30 years, but I think learning depends on the teacher (from a pupil's point of view, I'm not a teacher). If my history teacher had been as good as my ecomonics or English teacher, I wouldn't have spent the last 20 years catching up on history :-) Some teachers just have a natural enthusiasm which is infectious and inspires :-) Jo
very very thoughtful, Larry. I am not convinced that today there is education but lots of indoctrination. So true that students need to learn to think, to analyze, to question, to logically reason. Oh my, this post really got me to thinking. Well done...
Excellent.
How neat! I see your from Iowa, so is my family and my Dad's mother was a school teacher also, her house is still standing, 1800s home abandoned since the 1960s. We went back many years ago and sifted through paper all over the upstairs floor, I came home with school work of my Dads, school record books and some random student snapshots among other things. What area in Iowa are your pictures from? Both my parents grew up there.
Beautiful photograph! From a time when education was a privilege and schoolteachers were frightening!
Larry, as a fellow teacher, I though you might enjoy my post today at Nana Stories www.nana-karen-stories.blogspot.com
Post a Comment