Talking Point #6

Jeannie Oakes

"Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route"


Premise: (What is this about?)

1. Schooling
2. Power
3. Privilege
4. Teachers

Argument:

That school tracking is both a response to significant differences among students and an ongoing contribution to those differences.


My Thoughts:

Jeannie Oakes talks about school tracking here in this article and the advantages and disadvantages of it. How tracking puts together kids on the same "education level" together in a classroom and how privileged they are or become because they are labeled as smarter than the norm. Now she's not also saying lets mix the smart kids with the dumb ones and that will solve all our problems, because in fact that will only cause more for both sets of students. She offers some alternatives to tracking in hope to shorten the gap between the privileged and non-privileged students.

Oakes raises a good point here that I agree with, she seems to think there is a need to change they types of knowledge that children are expected to acquire in the social organization of schools and classrooms. I agree with Oakes here because from what I've acquired through my schooling career, I'll say a good amount of it I'm not going to need to know for my future. For example who the 17th president of the United States was (Andrew Johnson by the way), or the fact that "Au" on the table of elements is gold. Like that is basic high school knowledge that you are expected to attain, yet in the "real world" the only time your going to need to know that is on a jeopardy question. Oakes also suggests that classrooms fail to provide all students with time, opportunity and resources they need to learn, and that unless teachers and administrators believe and expect all students to learn well, they will be unlikely to create school and classroom conditions where students believe in their own ability and exert the effort it takes to succeed.

Oakes also suggests that when curriculum is organized around the central themes of a subject area rather than around disconnected topics and skills, all students stand the greatest chance of enhancing their intellectual development. I think this means that when teachers present a subject topic that all students can relate to, and are open to voice their opinions or personal experience maybe, then it enhances the students learning.