Oakes

Premise
Tracking/Not Tracking
Grouping Students
Learning Capabilities
Privledge
Neglect
Teaching Style

Arguement
Oakes argues that the teaching style to toa needs to change to benefit all students, as opposed to those students who may have an easier time learning than others. Studies show that students who have an easier time in class become more privledged as time goes on because they are able to receive more help from their teachers compared to those of which who need more help, and are simply not getting it. Teacher need to stop "Tracking" and profiling students, and make universal rule or techniques that can apply to all students, rather than just some.

...This finding helps e xplain, at least in part, why it is that tracking sometimes seems to "work" for high ability students and not for others..."
"...Students with high abilities or with handicaps had the effect of making students in the middle "unspecial" and guaranteeing that they were taught in "unspecial" ways."
"It's ironic that when other, less able students are offered simliar advantages, they also seem to benefit."

I would have to agree with Oake's arguement. I think that the society that we live in today is a very complex one. I think that as time goes on, it is going to be almost impossible to get ahead in the world. Students who are able to go enroll in high class private schools are going to have a much better chance of getting into a high standard college or institute. Students attending public schools on the other hand may not have the same advantages. So I think that this notion of "tracking" happens not only in the classroom, but in the entire schooling stystem as well.

Service Learning Post

Premise
Service Learning
Community involvement
Advantages
Disadvantages
Involvement
Participation
Community Service
Arguement
I think the main arguement in this peice deals with the overall importance of service learning. THere are a lot of good points that back up the fact that not only is service learning a good thing for a variety of different things, whether in the class room, or in the community. It is also said that both sides are benefitting from the experiance. Not only those who may be direclty being helped or benefitted from the experiance, but also those who are participating in the activity and actually taking part in the service learning.

Evidence
"Almost all discussions of service learning practices emphasize the importnace of reflection...Clearly, having students share their thoughts and experiences with one another can be valuable..."
"By contrast, those oriented toward change embrace the importance of political activity."
"...Educators and legislators alike maintain taht service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom..."

Personally, service learning should be a big part of the class room. My biggest concern is to which age this type of activity should be used on students. I think that it is critical because depending on which age group of kids you may be working with, the project I think could be a major failure unfortunatly. I think that it should be focused on kids at a young age to allow them to be more comfortable with doing things like this later on in their lives, but also, it can be a major eye opener to them and may open them up to new things.

Christensen Post

Premise
-Misconception
-Race
-Gender
-Power
-Whats Populr
-Stereotyping
-"Accepted Knowledge"
-Images of Society

Arguement
Christensen argues that people of all ages should be more critical about what they see in the media; television, adds, movies, radio newspaper. If people start analyzing what they have failed to notice their entire lives, there will be a large push for change in society. People have been overlooking what they "think" they enjoy for so long, and by started in her class room, Christensen is sparking the minds of her students who are then going out and making a change outside of the class room after analyzing stereotypes that are being pushed onto youth, starting at very young ages, suggested what dreams they should have, and what is and is not accepted in society today.

Evidence
"...the Disney movie Peter Pan, were cited by the children...as their number one source of information."
"...I show a Popey cartoon, "Ali Baba and the 40 Theives," that depicts all Arabs with the same face, same turban, same body,--and they are all thieves swinging enormous swords."

There are many more quotes I think that could be taken out of this article that all show overwhelming evidence that depict certain stereotypes and power advantages by just using a few selected films that are very popular in modern day society. I have heard of certain anyalization like this in the past over kids films and I would have to agree that there is a large amount of evidence that Christensen could use to back up her arguement.
However, I think that by having the need to feel like you have to analyze everything that you see or hear on tv is going a little over the top. Even if Christensen sparks this extream revolt against the media today, I think that stereotyping will never be abolished. I think that there are so many things that are terrible that are happening in the world today. Any type of racism or hatred towards another culture is a terrible thing. The way films and cartoons have been made all these years up until now do portray a lot of these aspects. However, it think that in the last few years there have also been a lot of efforts to make these problems go away by the broadcast of new television shows available to kids. I would agree that the majority of television shows shown up until about five years ago are based upon white middle class lives, and I understand what Christensen is trying to do. However, I don't think that a problem like this is ever just going to go away. What happens when television shows start portraying just black, asian, or spanish families? The white population will have a problem with that. I mean as drastic as it sounds, the only real way to stop stereotyping is to shut down the media all together, and I don't think that that will ever happen any time soon.