What holds society’s social structure together? Man-made and ever-evolving institutions such as race, laws, gender, practices, and religion are foundational in human social life. Cathy Davidson analyzes the educational institution structure and call for transformation in her essay Project Classroom Makeover; she discusses how the customs of educating students impacts their future skillsets and current attitudes and also critiques the outdated hierarchical classroom paradigm for obstructing students from reaching their brightest potentials. Furthermore, Karen Armstrong in her selection Homo Religiosus writes about ancient through modern eastern religious practices and reflects on their cultural purposes and significance in human social life.
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In her iPod experiment, Davidson worked with colleagues and Duke students to modernize the traditional, standardized classroom educational paradigm. Davidson describes one of experiment’s objective, “it was also an investment in student-led curiosity … interactivity, crowdsourcing, customizing, and inspired inquiry-driven problem solving. At our most ambitious, we hoped to change the one-directional model of attention” (54). By effectively executing the iPod experiment challenge, Davidson initiated social change and successfully equipped students with competencies necessary in the 21st Century digitally centered workforce. Furthermore, in this example the technology and the collective efforts to implement it into the Duke classrooms can be classified as social change by challenging the status quo of how to teach and what to teach students; this experiment helped pave way for a new educational paradigm shift away from standardization and towards digital student lead …show more content…
Skillsets that fall outside the curriculum of standardized education, such as arts and music, are implicitly deemed inferior to traditional skills assessed by standardized tests, such as mathematics and english. In a visit to a magnet arts middle school Davidson encountered a female student with eccentricly dyed hair who, despite being diagnosed as learning disabled, was an incredibly gifted drawer. Reflecting on the young girl’s artistic talent, Davidson acknowledges the student’s hovering institutional crossroads,
This girl’s talents don’t count on those tests, and yet she has a special and valued ability that cannot be replaced by a computer program. The problem is that her fate is to a large extent controlled by her performance on the EOG tests, and unless adults in her life---teachers and parents---are resolute in shepherding her along a path where her talents are valued, they may ultimately wind up underdeveloped
In her iPod experiment, Davidson worked with colleagues and Duke students to modernize the traditional, standardized classroom educational paradigm. Davidson describes one of experiment’s objective, “it was also an investment in student-led curiosity … interactivity, crowdsourcing, customizing, and inspired inquiry-driven problem solving. At our most ambitious, we hoped to change the one-directional model of attention” (54). By effectively executing the iPod experiment challenge, Davidson initiated social change and successfully equipped students with competencies necessary in the 21st Century digitally centered workforce. Furthermore, in this example the technology and the collective efforts to implement it into the Duke classrooms can be classified as social change by challenging the status quo of how to teach and what to teach students; this experiment helped pave way for a new educational paradigm shift away from standardization and towards digital student lead …show more content…
Skillsets that fall outside the curriculum of standardized education, such as arts and music, are implicitly deemed inferior to traditional skills assessed by standardized tests, such as mathematics and english. In a visit to a magnet arts middle school Davidson encountered a female student with eccentricly dyed hair who, despite being diagnosed as learning disabled, was an incredibly gifted drawer. Reflecting on the young girl’s artistic talent, Davidson acknowledges the student’s hovering institutional crossroads,
This girl’s talents don’t count on those tests, and yet she has a special and valued ability that cannot be replaced by a computer program. The problem is that her fate is to a large extent controlled by her performance on the EOG tests, and unless adults in her life---teachers and parents---are resolute in shepherding her along a path where her talents are valued, they may ultimately wind up underdeveloped