Reaction to the Parker Piece

Reaction to Parker Piece
“Teaching Against Idiocy”

Quote: “The children I teach are just emerging form life’s deepest wells of private perspective: babyhood and family. Then along comes school. It is the first real exposure to the public arena." -Vivian Gussin Paley

The public school system in this country is a great thing. It provides people of all races, gender, color and financial status the opportunity to better themselves and their future through becoming educated. People bring their families from different countries to come to America because they know that by living here their children will be granted the opportunity of a better education and thus a better future. Vivian Gussin Paley delves into this exact idea. She states that, “Boys and Girls are both there. Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Buddists, and atheists are there together. There are African Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and many more. Immigrants from the world over are there in school.” (Parker, 2005, p.4) Her classroom just like so many other teachers’ classrooms are is an example of people coming to this country to be educated and become active and successful participants in society.

As I was reading, “Teaching against Idiocy” by Walter C. Parker and contemplating the four essential questions from our syllabus and which one I wanted to answer the above quote jumped out at me and I immediately thought of the essential question, “ Who are our students?” Our students are the children or younger generations of “students” who came before them. They are required to go to school from a very young age and school is usually the first place they interact with other children and adults without their parents or family around. As Paley stated her students are, “…just emerging from life’s deepest wells of private perspective”, meaning they go from being babies interacting in their own private homes with their families own rules and views to school where it is the first time they are going to follow rules and learn views that they aren’t accustomed to. As stated in Parker’s piece the variety of ideas or values does not occur in the home but in the public places such as school. It becomes clear when diverse people are thrust together in public places and have to come to terms with everyone’s different view and perspectives.(Parker, 2005, p.4) These problems or everyday issues that we are faced with in public places become not only issues that are our own individual issues but become the collective issues of all the people in said public place.

That is why children that are in Kindergarten as Paley teaches need to be shown the “way the world works” from this young age so that they can become used to it and carry it throughout the rest of their schooling as well as into their future lives as citizens. Students taught in a classroom in schools aren’t only taught the basic subjects they are being groomed to become future leaders or productive members of society who will be intelligent enough to right the wrongs of our past mistake and follow in the greatness that was laid before them. They are being taught to be the kind of people who are able to handle the situations of being thrown together with diverse people in public places and the kind of people who will prove that the education of young mind is truly the future of tomorrow.