Tricks And Tricks In Doing School By Denise Pope

Within the book, “Doing School” by Denise Pope (Pope, 2001), throughout the students’ years in the education system, all of them learned how to do school, in one form or another. Each student developed their own tricks and trades to deal with issues they were personally facing and to help deal with issues that developed because of their school’s curriculum. As Egan (2001) stated “We all recognize the difference between genuine knowledge and accumulated codes – we talk of education as against training, wisdom as against “book learning”…But our schools are not good either at recognizing the difference or, consequently, promoting the genuine article rather than the counterfeit” (p 930). The students in "Doing School" (Pope, 2001) were involved …show more content…
These commitments and obligations, for some students, not only took the form of concrete extracurricular activities, but also in the form of ideas like getting into college, making their family and friends proud, and getting high paying jobs. A trend for nearly all of the students was that they felt they had obligations to their family, whether stated or unstated. This took shape in many forms and this pressure added to the need the students had to do well in school. It also added to the shortcuts and tricks they developed to get the grades and make their family proud. Kevin, who father was pushing him to get into an Ivy League school to get a high paying, “prestigious” job, relied on cheating practices and questioning teachers grading to increase his GPA. Another pressure that existed with students included the need to provide help within their family dynamic. Using Teresa’s story, "Doing School" (Pope 2001) briefly exposed how students’ obligations at home could potentially influence their academic experiences. Pope showed that instead of assuming that students are lacking skills or enthusiasm for learning, it is important to understand their lives outside of class because students are people