Analyzing and analyzing!!

Hi every reader of our blog, it’s Trini! 

This week I’ve played the Analyst role of C’mon Tutankamon group. First of all I have to say that I am so exiting of being the analyst for two mainly reason. The first one is that I’ve never been the analyst before so this is my first time and I’m sure I will enjoy myself so much doing this work because I love writing and express my feelings about something (so I’ll try to do my best!) . The second reason I’m talking about is that what we have had to discover for this week has been really astonishing for me.

I will explain you what I am talking about…

A few days ago we came to the Organization class as usual and our teacher, Linda, started to talk about something I’ve never heard from the mouth of a teacher before. She was telling us that Textbooks (yes, the main tool for students or that is what most of us thought) were so bad for teachers and students. This topic obviously caught my attention but when I was expecting the explanation about why textbooks in school have a “dark side” Linda stopped talking and just said one word to us:

“Investigate”

So that’s what I did. I spent a few afternoons with my computer trying to discover of what Linda has been talking about in class and (like we always do) days after this the rest of the group and I met to discuss of what we have found.

Although each of us had different theories, opinions and thoughts about the topic we were investigating in, all of us have had one result in common: Linda was right. Certainly, avoiding textbooks in our future classroom is the best thing we could do.

From this common point of view I will start doing the questions every analyst have to answer and I hope reading them you better understand our position of...

NO TEXTBOOKS, PLEASE !

What was the best part of the activity?  

The best part of the activity was at first and as I said before, what we have discover about textbook. We have been working with a textbook on the table all our student’s life. We had not even considered whether it was right or wrong… it was just what every teacher of our life has done. It was “normal”. But no! Now we have realized that we were so blind about it. Nobody had told us the impact that has using textbooks in all aspects.

Also another amazing part of this activity is the repercussion that will have in our future job. Now, we have the power of deciding about use or not use them. (We are so sure that this power is not available for every teacher because they don’t even know this “dark side”).

It was awesome the collaboration of every member of the group this week. Although we have a lot of problems recording, making and exposing the videos (our camera broke, subtitles doesn’t appear etc…) we have decided to face all of these together (for good and for bad!) and we are more united now.

What was the worst? 

The worst part was that searching for information on internet about Why textbooks are bad for us because each website we found said different things about the topic so for us was a little bit confusing to concentrate all these information and create a common knowledge about the activity. Actually I think more of the website don’t agree with each other or don’t say exactly what we want to find in them because they don’t even know the topic in its own totality. We have discovered that this “dark side” of textbooks is so hide and just few people know about how editorials control us with them, for example.

What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?

With any doubt the best part of it all was recording. Our creativity flowed constantly. We have had a great time, we laugh a lot and at the same time me learnt because while we were giving ideas of what to record or how to do it we said important things about textbooks. It was like “I think it is better to have here a forefront about the poster of Second Hand books because it means that it has more importance and then the class and Linda will understand the idea of that in most places this type of bookshops are forbidden, don’t you think so?”

What have you learnt? 

First of all I have to say that we learnt a good strategy of making the students work. The information we had at the start of the week was minimum. Teacher pushed us to investigate for our own and then put it in common. Later on, we were asked to record a video with a critical message so all we have been searching and investigating would be showed in the advertisements. Because of this we have to talk between us to think the best idea so, in this way, we learnt from our other group mates discovering new ideas that they have found. To sum up, we learnt a lot about the topic with the context of an entertaining activity that catch our attention from the first time. We really loved this way of doing tasks and the most of my group are agree that it will be a great idea to reproduce this methodology in our future class.

After saying this I’m going to deepen in the contents and the things we have discovered. Textbook have a lot of black points that concerned to all the context a child is in: Family, teacher, way of think, etc… It’s a reality that most of the school don’t care about it. It is so easy just ask for textbooks to the students’ parent and have all done, isn’t it? Behind this ignorance the dark side of textbooks grow.

A strong feature of textbook are their economic impact in all the aspects. Editorials just get richer and richer changing from one year to another two silly thing about the front of the books, irrelevant information about something inside or just adding an “interactive” CD in the new books. This result in a huge economical cost for the families who can’t afford for books every year and they neither can ask to other older children the ones from the last years because “they’re different” (even actually they are almost identical).

Another point we must keep in mind is the educational framework. Textbooks just tell facts without having a previous knowledge about the context each specific child is in. All the children of every school are not the same at all. You cannot systematically want that one child who is so fast acquiring knowledge or his family is supporting him a lot helping him and so on, understand the same from another whose family doesn’t want to know anything about him and his education or he is just slower to catch the things in class. It is impossible. Also, textbook just give one point of view of each thing. They don’t allow children to have their own opinion about some topic.

In what regards to the teacher the disadvantages are also shocking. The use of textbooks subtracts authority, creativity and professionalism to teachers. Why do teacher exist if we already have a textbook which tell us how to teach? Everybody can be a teacher in this way, can’t they? Please, let’s avoid it. You should be furious if after being studying a degree for years and preparing to be a good teacher, a book tells you what you have to do in each moment. Dear, a bit of personality.

To finalize, we must keep in mind the things that “we don’t see” so easily. I’m referring to the hidden curriculum that most of the textbooks immersed in. Ideological views are hide in some pages children just read and this don’t allow them to think for themselves. We must give to children an objective information and let them judge.

What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?

 And what do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks? 

Unfortunately, this is the penultimate week of this part of the subject. I said unfortunately because RIGHT NOW is when we've got the hang of this methodology new for us. Honestly, I think our work in group is really awesome. We have a lot of patient with each other and each member of the group is implicated as much as they can in every week task. This week hasn’t been an exception.  I’m so happy about it and I know my classmate agree.

So, in this way I can be more concise saying that what we have to conserve for the last week is all we have now. We are united, respectful and patient because all the work has been going very well until this point and we don’t argue with each other or get angry about something (believe me, for a group this is terribly difficult).

And to point something we have to change, it just came to my mind the IMPORTANT thing of don’t be panic and don’t stress yourself if something is not going perfect. Get nervous don’t fix anything. Let’s just try to do our best with what we have. Improvisation is a virtue. We don’t have to get upset because something went wrong in the last moment. We can make it through. It is not necessary to argue between us for these thing destroying the good environment we have created last weeks of work.

How this content is related to other contents in the course and in your degree? 

Specifically this topic is so related with most of the subjects in this term of the course. I’m talking about Educational psychology, Sociology, Diversity of students and so on… All of them related to know better the students we’ll have in class and knowing how to behave and adapt each content for different context the pupils can be involved in. Textbooks cannot tell us how to do it, we have to learn by ourselves using our best strategies and recognizing the needs of each class and, individually, each child, trying to get the best of them.

The same happens with the degree. Thanks of this activity we have discovered that the main tool for education are not textbooks, the most important tool is the teachers and their professionalism. Having that in mind now we can put in action for the coming years in our practices to get the degree and probably in our future job (or so we hope!)

There is any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?

Of course it is. As I said before, textbooks and different types of ideology are connected by what we called “hidden curriculum”. Telling some history facts for example, children can be influenced by the way the author tell it or maybe they create a wrong idea about the concept. In this way we, as teachers, must be neutral as much as we can or tell our point of view but also saying to them that there’s more points of view about a thing. Teacher (NOT TEXBOOKS) must teach children how to think for themselves and create their own conception of life and events giving them autonomy and personality for the adult one day they will be.