Education has begun to be taken for granted, not realizing what an impact it has on culture. In the television show Community, the view of education differs in many of the characters. There are both positive and negative stereotypes revealed throughout the show which were discussed in a way so that the issues present could be changed. Even though the show Community is presented as a comedy, with many mishaps, it presents education as something which is important and should be treasured. Education in our culture is many times underappreciated, looked at as an entitlement rather than a privilege; however, Community, forces the audience to reexamine education and why such a high value is placed on it in our culture. In the show Community, at Greendale Community College, the main character, Jeff, was a lawyer, with a fake degree, and needs to go back to school to get a degree in order to keep his job. Jeff decides that he would try to bribe a professor that he knows, to give him all of the exam answers. Jeff is lazy and does not want to study to get a proper education, he would rather cheat his way to get a degree. As Jeff is walking around the college, he sees an attractive classmate, Britta, a high school dropout who is coming back to school after seeing the value in education, and decides to hit on her. He arranges a fake Spanish study group in order to get time to talk to her. They are then joined by Abed, a foreign born student who must overcome cultural and mental challenges in order to succeed in school. Abed then invites his friends from Spanish class, which was made up of: Troy, an ex high school jock and prom king, Pierce, an aging businessman trying to remain current, Shirley, a wife and mother who wants more from life, a... ... middle of paper ... ... audience to reexamine education and why such a high value is placed on it in our culture. A person can be rejected in order to realize the importance of education. They may transform their thinking and “save” their life by doing so, because they will use education to their advantage and to become successful in life. The show was effective in conveying the cultural message. Jeff was transformed and saved by education mainly because he will look at things in life differently and will not take things for granted, and take the easy route. He now will take education seriously and succeed in life and in his educational pursuits. Go ahead and think a little more about how the culture around the world affects everyday life, and that way a persons life can be saved through education and the help of peers. Works Cited “Pilot.” Community. NBC. 17 September 2009. Television.
However, the students that are on the lower end of the achievement gap are caught between being members of a disadvantaged community and aspiring to be a part of the middle class. This causes them to have to adapt to the communities that they are a part of. This act of adapting to the difference in normative expectations is what Morton refers to as “straddling the gap” or “code switching”. These students not only have to navigate differences in language and dress codes but they have to switch dispositions to ones that are unfamiliar to them, which can come into conflict with those at home (Morton 276). There are benefits to the code-switching that these students do. For example, multicultural societies are characterized by the intermingling of cultural communities and the students who belong to different communities have the greatest position to help new relationships form between them (Morton 277). However, educational systems are being used to potentially alienate the students from their communities values and relationships in order to form them for a labor market. Morton believes that “whether educational institutions are justified in undertaking the task of rectifying this injustice by shaping a
Tozer, Steve, and Guy Senese. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.
Palmer noted community was not traditionally valued in objective based education. Palmer believed community is useful as students seek meaning with the resulting transcendent communal greater than sum of its parts. Community may be based on the student, teacher, patient/family, school/institution, community, nation, or world.
The assumptions that everyone can learn, and that schools have the potential to transform a country with a tradition of hatred and an unequal distribution of wealth, extend from the vision of education as a democratic practice where there is "a struggle for both change and the freedom to change" (Irwin, p. 51, 1991). The change is about transforming an exclusive, often oppressive and disempowering system into a more inclusive, equal, and equitable one that is accessible to children from ...
Most students are not able to share their knowledge, experiences, and assets with educators to guide their own learning, but instead have to learn what curriculum and standards require. Normally, this does not include learning about diverse communities and cultures, which directly affects how students in different social classes view knowledge. Since working-class and middle-class students cannot relate to what they are learning in school, they view knowledge as something only higher up officials in the education system possess and make while also thinking it has to do with memorizing facts and information. Furthermore, they do not view knowledge as something they possess. However, affluent professional schools have more opportunities for this type of learning and recognize knowledge as something they can make by making statements such as, “You can go explore for new things” and “I’d think of something to discover, then I’d make it” (Anyon). These statements show how these affluent students can think critically and abstractly about a concept rather than just memorizing facts. Because they were given the opportunity to share their experiences, and connect to most things being taught within the education system, they have more opportunities for meaningful
The video also shows how much inclusive education has changed throughout the years, and how things like collaboration have improved. At the end of Sean’s Story I still have the question of even though Sean’s friend was in a school and they were teaching the students to be functional in the real world, those students were not being exposed to normal students. This made we wonder if this would impact them in the long world because the will never have that chance to be in a controlled environment to make mistakes about being around others and have that learning
The documentary “Dropout Nation” shows how difficult it is for students who live in poorer communities to receive a good education and graduate high school. Students and teachers are interviewed in this documentary to show that these students are intelligent but are not able to graduate due to their circumstances. These examples help explain the concepts learned in chapter 10 about social institutions and how it is affected by politics, education, and religion.
...ducation makes them unskilled at helping their children do well in school. Heath studied their struggles and identified significant ways to teach these children. As the study closes, we realize that to improve the education of the Roadville and Trackton communities, we would need to change the home environment, the religious traditions, and the culture of the communities to match that of the townspeople. To change the school to meet the needs of the students would not create a long lasting improvement. I for one find difficulty in judging one community as being better than another since each has its own value. Homogeneity seems to be an evil, but one that education in America both supports and at times seems to demand. Perhaps someday we will find a solution.
Jeff was the class clown, known for doing things as ridiculous as faking seizures for laughs. In fact, he was lonely and isolated in school, with few friends.
“At the heart of a high-community school is an inclusive web of respectful, supportive relationships among and between students, teachers and parents. We learn best from, and with, those to whom we relate well. High-community schools emphasize not only the importance of academic learning, but also the other qualities that ...
Schools are the basic foundation of knowledge, which is imparted to children. They give a chance for children to gain knowledge in various fields such as humanity, literature, history, mathematics and science. By obtaining knowledge, they are in a better position to know the world around them. A school is a society where faith and other values are developed. Schools also play an important role in a democratic social set up. Students of today are the citizens of tomorrow. Schools are the backbone of a society, where children interact with other children and develop certain social skills. Education in schools opens doors to various opportunities that would not be possible if it had not been for the knowledge one gained at school. However, in the articles, “Idiot Nation” by Michael Moore and “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, the authors express their concerns about the degrading quality of education. There are many problems the education system is facing today, and several of them are having negative effects on the quality of the education that the students are receiving which are highlighted aptly by the effective use of rhetorical strategies by Moore and Gatto.
Education is a social problem that is very prominent in the world today. Education affects not only children currently attending school, but what they do when they are older. It affects where someone may end up later in their life, what job they will have, and how much money they will be making. Unfortunately, not everyone graduates high school, goes to college, and earns a high paying job. The cards some people are dealt can be much different, and education today arises as a social problem because of income, family life, and the area someone lives. These three areas can really help someone in their education, but it can also set them back.
The education one earns is something that does not just affect them, but rather, it affects all the people around them. A community filled with mostly uneducated people holds itself back from bigger an...
Our education system allegedly provides an equal opportunity to all members of society to reach their potential. The research by Richer, particularly in elementary school, leads us to believe that this is not essentially the case. Our school system has a “hidden curriculum” that produces an inequality between the middle and lower class as well as men and woman. When a child enters a school environment they are required to adhere to a set of values proposed by the teacher and classroom environment. This school environment is competitive, teachers r...
Education is a vital part of society. It serves the beneficial purpose of educating our children and getting them ready to be productive adults in today's society. But, the social institution of education is not without its problems. Continual efforts to modify and improve the system need to be made, if we are to reap the highest benefits that education has to offer to our children and our society as a whole.