Barksdale 6.01.09

Barksdale is the first speaker to make me start brainstorming topic ideas for my final project. His work is very interesting.
Listening to him speak I learned the importance of childhood education. When I (and possibly most people) think about the problems with the education system i think high school, drop out rates, funding, integration- basically everything but pre-k. Barksdale made me aware of how important it is for students to be ready and prepared before and when the enter kindergarten. I also learned about how children learn (disinterest in learning to read after the 3rd grade), the strategies of the teachers (dim lighting and warm rooms), and baby-sitting not teaching. It was the first time i'd ever heard about the studies (whose names escape me at the moment) made about the progress of students who have a decent pre-k education and those who don’t.
Barksdale introduced, to me, the idea that school can make up for what the children aren't getting at home. For years I kept hearing about how parents should be more involved in their children's education at home as well as in school. For the first time someone has showed me that it isn’t necessary and that school could take care of what the child is lacking in his home. It's an interesting idea... but the problem is- i'd call that baby-sitting.
Baby-sitting to me doesn't solely include nurturing the child, dressing him, and keeping him away from open fire. In my opinion, baby-sitting has to do with a third party doing every and anything the parent(s) should be doing- this includes speaking to the child in complete sentences, playing with him, engaging him in conversation etc... So if Barksdale says that school these days are baby-sitting not teaching and also says that school can take the responsibility of the parent as far as enhancing the vocabulary of the child, i feel like that’s contradictory. The latter is still considered baby-sitting because teachers are doing the job of the parent(s). The problem i see arising is that parents will now never take responsibility because they will depend on and expect the teachers and schools to do what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. The job is shifting from the parent to the teacher and i honestly don't think that's the way to go...
A question i'd ask Barksdale is why does he think his first approach failed (the one where teachers were asked to teach at different levels in the class room). When he told us about this proposal I immediately thought it wouldn't work because if a student takes too long to get it, the teacher will be stuck in that one spot and by the end of the year she can find herself still in the middle of the book. What's worse, if everyone is going at a different paste, by the end some would have learned more than others so that on state exams some students would get to a question on a topic they've never even heard of! My thing is that the state tests these kids under the impression that they are all on the same level and have all learned the same things. If the idea is not to move ahead when half the class doesn't understand a concept then what the teacher should do is stop the entire class (and not just that section) and have those who do understand it to help those who don't (a little peer teaching). So that by the end, the class would have moved forward as a whole as apposed to sections (that way no one would be left behind and no group would be called, for instance, "the slow group"). So yes Barksdale said that the idea failed, I wanted him to tell us why. To see if any of my predictions is true.

Fav part: The governor story (‘pre-k will increase teen pregnancy’)