Crap+Detector

=== As a future teacher, I am responsible for preparing my students to be integral facets of society. Students need to be the leaders of their generation in politics, science, and education. Moreover, the twenty first century has made the need for new minds even more important. Technology and society is changing and our students have to be prepared to understand society as it is and propel our world into a more successful place. However, as Neil Postman has indicated in his article “Crap Detecting,” schools are only preparing students to understand the way world in its past. With that being said, there is a fear that our students are becoming participants in the same policies governing our society. ===

=== It is my job to make students question the world. I have to be a leader in the subversive crap detecting that Postman advocates for. It is important that students understand the past so they can be well rounded citizens and prepare for the future. However, we do not have to teach students in the past- we don’t have to ask our students to diagram sentences as our parents did to understand grammar. We can ask students to show that they understand grammar by writing a persuasive letter to local government officials about a policy they want enforced. We can teach our students to be active participants in society. ===

=== As teachers, we need to provide our students with real world situations. Students need to be given the chance to solve real world problems, make connections between their own personal world and the world, as a whole. We are no longer living in a world where the only resources we have are textbooks. Most schools have the privilege of being connected with the internet and other technology sources. Instead of treating technology as taboo, we should harbor it and use it to bring more success into our classroom. Whether some want to admit it or not, we are living in a technological society. Science, education, economics, business, and politics are changing. There is a central focus in technology and we have to prepare our students to live in a world amid television, radio, and computes. There future employments will absolutely ask them to be technological literate. ===

=== Shouldn't we be setting our students up for a successful future? If we have any aim at doing this, we have to start asking our students to question the world for bigger answers and understandings than those who came before us have already sought. If we want our world to continue to succeed and grow, our students have to become responsible for change. We will never raise this generation into the minds we need them to be if we continue to ask them to be the same thinkers as their parents and grandparents; it is not practical. ===

=== The question then remains- how do we help our students become these twenty first century, subversive citizens? Well, in my classroom I am going to give students real world problems and connections. I want students to reflect on society and challenge what they think is wrong. I want my students to learn how to use their voice so when the time comes they know how to speak for themselves and those they are representing. Students will work in groups where each student has a specific role because that is the reality of the job market. It is all about giving our students the chance to thrive in society and we can do that by bringing the realities of our culture into the classroom and demanding that our students analyze it. ===