Pedagogy of the Oppressed Assignment

This week's prompt stemmed from the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paul Freire.  This proclaimed that the current style of education is not helping students learn.  In the second chapter, he divided education styles into two parts: banking concept and problem-posing.  The banking concept is where teaching are simply inserting their "higher understanding" into the passive students, who, if able to take in a lot of knowledge, are then considered to be good students.  Here the teacher is the authority, chooser, discipliner, and thinker.  The problem-posing style, on the other hand, encourages teachers to work with students and to learn with students.  The job of the teacher is to facilitate the discussion, and although still in charge of the classroom, the teacher doesn't rule over the students.

I do believe that it is very easy as a student to be passive and still considered a "good student."  I do enjoy learning and asking the bigger questions, but I can easily go weeks in a class without saying a word or giving input.  Instead, I can just sit there and let everyone else put information into me.  I have always found discussion-oriented classes to be more enjoyable, because I am able to hear ideas and opinions from people other than the teacher.  Many times, the discussions aren't done as well as they could be, though.  I believe teachers have to be careful in how they approach discussions, because since the education currently has many classrooms using the banking concept system, students will view whatever the teacher says as the "right answer."  Many students do not want to disagree with the teacher, because under the banking concept system, the teacher is seen as the authority and possessor of all knowledge.  I have been in several classrooms where the teachers were very controlling and, I believe, took their authority too far.  They were unwilling to listen to students' reasonings or opinions when they differ from their own.

However, I believe there are some issues with the problem-posing system.  In order to have intelligent and productive discussions, there need to be facts, and if the students do not know the facts, it is the responsibility of the teacher (assuming he or she knows those facts) to present them to the students.  This presentation of facts, especially if done on a large scale, could easily turn into the banking concept system.  In addition, the discussion-based understanding of concepts takes time and has a tendency to deviate.  With the vast number of topics and concepts that a teacher needs to cover in a given year, it is very difficult to use this system to get concepts across to the students in a timely manner.

There is a need for children to take a more active role in their education, but unless the standards are changed, at this point, I believe a careful balance between banking concept and problem-posing ought to be sought by teachers,  who should also try to act as partners in the learning process and not tyrants.

Other Perspectives Assignment

I'll temporarily cease my determined search for a successful Spider Solitaire game to update this blog.  Recent posts have included insights in response to several personality surveys.  This week's assignment goes a bit further.  I asked several people what they believed I am passionate about, good at, and am likely to be doing ten years from now.

Here's the list of what they think I'm passionate about: singing, family, relationships, God's Word, performing arts, artwork, photography, pleasing God, and genealogy.  I'm a fairly mellow person, and to me, passion conveys enthusiasm and excessive energy around a particular subject, so I have a difficult time saying that I'm passionate about anything, but I will say that all these are things I either enjoy or care about, so I wouldn't really disagree with any of them.  And perhaps it sounds really "Christian," but I believe I would put pleasing God first on this list, followed by relationships, genealogy and the arts.

Now for what my dear friends, family and mentors consider me to be good at: Bible study, friendships, details, working menial tasks to completion, including others, insightful communication, listening, general intelligence, singing, photography, languages, art and planning.  What a list!  It certainly does something to inflate the ego.  Along the lines of personality, these responses center on details, determination and thoughtfulness, if I'm drawing the right conclusions.  I would tend to agree with this.  I spend a large portion of the day observing and speculating.  I am very detail-oriented and don't mind doing boring tasks, but am rather determined and don't like leaving tasks unfinished.  Along the lines of talent, it sticks to artsy type pastimes, all of which I enjoy, but haven't gotten used to the fact that some people get to make a living doing them.

And last is the list of possible careers, which, I will say seems to match my own feelings in the matter, because it covers a vast array of interests and is pretty long: Bible translator, greeting card designer, accountant, professional photographer, architect, psychologist, social worker, missionary, teacher, something international, designer, writer, artist, and writing/editing devotions or Christian literature.  Naturally, this doesn't do much in helping me decide a major, but it nice that others believe I could end up doing those things which are on my ginormous list of possible careers.  I'm not sure, though, whether these careers ended up on the list because of my friends' insights into my personality, or because they didn't necessarily disagree with what I have from time to time mentioned I might like to do in the future, and they simply remembered those careers and repeated them back to me.  Either way, it does help to see certain career interests being confirmed by those who know me well.

I'm not particularly concerned about what I'll be doing in the future, or even trying to narrow down this list too much.  God's calling for my life will be shown at some point, and perhaps only realized after I have completed it.  For now, I consider myself fortunate to have a future that is so full of possibilities that it could go in any direction and I might be able to do any number of jobs to serve God and further His kingdom.

Strengths and Spiritual Gifts Assignment

I think that a person's career should be able to combine their spiritual gifts, strengths and interests.  For now, I will compare my gifts and strengths.  (My interests would make it too complicated, because I they are so many.) My gifts are serving, teaching and showing mercy.  My strengths are context, responsibility, empathy, intellection and input.  Responsibility would certainly work well with all of the gifts.  Empathy and context would be especially helpful with teaching and showing mercy.  Input could fit well with teaching.  Intellection is the strength I feel most closely described my character.  It refers to the tendency to think, and in my case, somewhat excessively.  I wouldn't mind sitting alone in silence with nothing to do for half an hour (if I didn't have so many things to get done, that is).

Empathy with showing mercy is probably the most compatible pair.  It's a lot easier to show mercy when you understand where a person is coming from.  Many people guard their feelings very carefully and it can be difficult to know when they are needing help.  By being able to pick up on what others are feeling, I can more effectively show mercy to the people that I meet.

I think being aware of my gifts and strengths is really helpful.  It can help me understand why I do some of the things that I do, like lie awake for hours as thoughts shoot around in my tired head.  It can help me realize when I'm doing too much of one strength, such as taking on too many responsibilities.  And, it can bring me one step closer to understanding what God's purpose is for my life, something I'm very eager to discover.

Spiritual Gifts Analysis Assignment

I am the type of person who is slow to making decisions.  I am always asking other people's opinions, not entirely because I'm interested in their point of view, but because I don't want to make the decision on my own.  I rarely have a ready answer for those questions like "where should we eat today," or "what do you want to watch?"  I resolve to a quick "I don't know," and hope that the decision-making responsibility will be passed onto someone else.  Slow decision-making isn't a bad thing, until it changes from a careful thought-process to plain indecisiveness, resulting from the fear of commitment.  I once took several days deciding whether I wanted to do a job, and once I had decided for it, the job had been taken.  I didn't decide which college to attend until the last week of April my Senior year and I am currently undeclared in my major.

But the academic school-year has begun and brought with it an onslaught of surveys.  I have appreciated the insight that the personal surveys can give as to who I really am and what my gifts are.  So I appreciated the chance to see what another survey, the Spiritual Gifts Analysis, had to say about me, but even more so, I was hoping for the opportunity to be given a magic test that might tell me what my destiny is.  I wanted to let these test become the decision-maker, as it showed me what spiritual gifts God has given me, the strengths I have (as reported by StrengthsQuest), and the hobbies and that God has given me a talent for (this comes from simple personal insight).  In the end, I just wanted it to declare my major for me.

I was thoroughly disappointed.

Okay, maybe not thoroughly...I really should not have expected a spiritual gifts survey to give me career advice.  The top three gifts it showed were Serving, Teaching and Showing Mercy.  I believe these all fit me fairly well, particularly serving.  I am really a behind-the-scenes kind of person.  I love doing service projects, and always work until the last second, because I receive a lot of joy knowing that I am serving God and fulfilling His Will.  With the teaching aspect, I agreed that I like to read Scripture and discover new things from it, but I felt that teaching a group is not my sort of thing.  I'm more of the one-on-one type person and I'm thinking as far as teaching goes, I'm probably more on the writing end of things than verbal instruction.  As for showing mercy, I agree with that this is one of my gifts, but I haven't had as much experience using this gift as I would like to.

I am glad though, that spiritual gifts don't require a decision.  They are instilled in us when we accept Jesus in our hearts and can show up in the things we do, bringing glory to God and joy to our own lives.  So I am not overly concerned with declaring a major right now.  As with my college decision, the answer will come and God will work marvelous things through it.  For now, as I wait for this mysterious and elusive answer to appear, I will continue serving God by serving others, studying God's Word and teaching it to others, and showing others the mercy that God has shown me.

New Beginnings

As with all things human, there is a beginning.  This post is the beginning of my blog.  This month has been the beginning of my college days.  College marks the beginning of living independently in the real world.

Many of these things will also come to an end.  I will probably get tired of blogging someday.  I will hopefully graduate from college someday.  And even though I intend to be able to live life without other people guiding my steps or making my decisions, I may well reach a day when that is my situation.

But there is one thing with no beginning and a very few things that have beginnings, and no end.  The first, with no beginning (or end) is God.  The second, (created by God, yet destined to last for eternity) are the souls of men (and perhaps a few other things).  My own relationship with Christ Jesus began sometime when I was four years old and I was baptized when I was twelve.  Throughout my lifetime, I intend to get to know more about Christ and the way God works as I trust in Him to lead me down the path of righteousness.

I hope to use this blog (partially for my Honors class) to record what I discover about God on my trail through new beginnings and perhaps include a bit about the other things that I enjoy doing, including painting, hiking, taking pictures, singing, writing, and languages.  I look forward to sharing my opinions and thoughts and creations with any who will receive them with open minds.