Process vs. product continued

I am currentley the head coach of my high school's baseball team. Being the head coach, I continuously receive numerous emails, magazines, etc talking about the game of baseball. I get info on how to become a better picther, hitter, and many other aspects of baseball. But one of the emails that I get deals with the mental side of baseball. After the Red Sox came back to beat the Indians, I received an very interesting email that reminded me of curriculum class. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Did you hear the Bosox talk about how they won? "We played
one game and one pitch at a time," they sang in chorus.

They focused on the process, not the outcome.

Now we get to see who can stay focused on the process of
playing and emotionally under control while the outcome
they've been dreaming of their whole lives dangles in front
of their noses.

Right there for me to see was the two words that we talked about in class; process and product. I realized that these two words could be used for many different facets, other than just curriculum or education. I believe that the Red Sox won because they worried about the process and not just the victory of one game or the whole series.
I relate this to education because too many people want to know what the outcome of grades or standardizing questions are. They don't worry about the important thing, how do they get to that point. And maybe the process makes for a beter learner or more importantely a better person. I believe a lifelong learning will benefit more from understanding of the process than simply the end result. This is why cheating becomes such a big problem. Too many students only want to hand in the end result. They don't realize that the process to achieve the final grade is what is important in their edcation.

More

As a phys ed teacher I like reading the first part of the article titled Countering Standardization. As we discussed in class last week, the article was referring to the product oriented educators who care only about scores and want to eliminate some of the "non academic" areas like art, music and phys ed. I applaud the author for proclaiming this as a myth and providing some ways to dispell this myth. The educators involved failed to see what was best for all the children involved. The care was mostly for their own egos.

Bullying

Alot of the information in the bullying article was neither surprising or new to me. At the first in service day for the new school year I chose to go to the session dealing with bullying. Our district, as with other districts, has really inforced this policy. The goal in our district was to familiarize more teachers with the information reguarding bullying. While I was reading this article, I began to go over the statistics and relate them to the middle school that I teach in. I was surprised that more 7th graders felt bullied than 8th graders. But these were taken from only three schools. If you factor in more schools, these stats might change. The reason for this surprise was from my viewings as a middle school teacher for 10 years. In my experiences I have found more 8th graders who bully, especially the girls. These girls follow the same stats as the article. Instead of physical bullying, I witness more mental bullying. Leaving people out, talking behind backs, nasty attitudes, etc. are all common in adolescent girls. As the article pointed out, many of these girls are consoled by friends or classmates whom are girls.
One part of information I was surprised was ommitted was the amount of bullying that goes on via technology. It is a big problem because many bullies feel more comfortable in this element because there is no confrontation and might not see the response of the victim causing some remorse. In the future you will see these numbers growing at alarming rates.

Process vs. Product

One of the last paragraphs from the Mullen reading mentions that most people in education would agree that the major goal of education is to improve the profession and student learning. Reguardless of whether you believe in process or product, the ultimate goal is to help the children in anyway we can. Whether it's in our teachings or life occurrances, most people in this profession are in it for the students. With that in mind, I agree with the curriculum developers that believe in process as the main means of learning. To start my point, I am going to talk about Conant, a proponant of product. He emphasizes the need of a greater influx of math and science and elimination of other non-academic areas, because they don't offer as much as the previously mentioned subjects. Being in a non-academic area, I find this to be appaling, because you are taking away areas that people can excel at. Whether it's phys ed, art, shop, etc, all of these areas allow people to experience excellence that might not comein math and science. I think Conant developed this rationale because he was comparing the US to other countries. Sometimes I think this is the rationale of people who develop our educational guidelines.
The two curriculum theorist that have the best views, in my opinion, are Thorndike and Bruner. The theories I agree with are that students have to have a connection with the facts to experience the neccassary learning. I believe children need to connect with the information to want to learn and continue to try and educate themselves. If they are force-feed than learning can be minimal and roadblocks will be encountered.As teachers we have all experienced lessons that go real smooth because the students find relivance to the materials being taught. We also have experienced the lows when students are bored or distant because of negative experiences related to the topic.

The winds of change

As the cool weather is kicking into full swing and the MLB playoffs are beginning in a couple days, the new season makes me feel the change from the summer to the fall mentality. I guess I can relate this to this curriculum class. As I entered into this class I had an idea what curriculum meant to me. Whatever it might have been, I began to realize through the first few weeks that I needed my views to change, just as the seasons change. I didn't realize how many pieces went into developing a curriculum. I had a blanket idea,but the reality was far from what we talked about last Tuesday. As we continue to loearn more, I am sure I will have a greater grasp of what curriculum means to me.