Week 8 Review: Faculty Jacobin
Faculty Jacobin’s education blog, “Moderately Radical Reason on Teaching and Learning,” is easily my favorite of those I have encountered over this semester. It is written by an AP history teacher at an “independent high school.” To my extreme disappointment, it has not been updated since November of last year (although the Twitter page has updated even today), and yet the opinions shared by this teacher are shockingly (and refreshingly) critical of common education rhetoric. Jacobin is tremendously protective of students and holds them a standard higher than most I have seen lately in the realm of secondary education.
This blog, unlike many others, is not so much about what Jacobin teaches or how they teach it, but rather many serious issues that are being ignored by teachers across the country. My favorite posts I’ve read so far concern a number of fascinating problems: students being told to fail in a system that does not allow it, teachers being reduced to “passion,” and the sweeping generalizations about adolescent attention spans that demand flashy technology in the classroom. Best of all, Jacobin writes in an extremely entertaining, articulate, and dryly humorous way that immediately caught my attention.
I will focus on the post “Fending off the Barbarians of Educational Technology,” which I believe makes some valid points about how some teachers, not all but a few, blindly and enthusiastically insist that teenagers desperately need the newest technology to learn. In my current transition from bored high schooler to exasperated high school teacher, I’ve seen a severe disconnect between how students react to technology and how teachers EXPECT students to react to technology. Jacobin asks, “Why do we push e-books and social media into classrooms even when our students tell us year after year that they hate e-books and really don’t like when teachers intrude on their social spaces?” These are extremely important questions that I rarely see educators daring to ask, and I admire Jacobin for taking that step.
This blog, unlike many others, is not so much about what Jacobin teaches or how they teach it, but rather many serious issues that are being ignored by teachers across the country. My favorite posts I’ve read so far concern a number of fascinating problems: students being told to fail in a system that does not allow it, teachers being reduced to “passion,” and the sweeping generalizations about adolescent attention spans that demand flashy technology in the classroom. Best of all, Jacobin writes in an extremely entertaining, articulate, and dryly humorous way that immediately caught my attention.
I will focus on the post “Fending off the Barbarians of Educational Technology,” which I believe makes some valid points about how some teachers, not all but a few, blindly and enthusiastically insist that teenagers desperately need the newest technology to learn. In my current transition from bored high schooler to exasperated high school teacher, I’ve seen a severe disconnect between how students react to technology and how teachers EXPECT students to react to technology. Jacobin asks, “Why do we push e-books and social media into classrooms even when our students tell us year after year that they hate e-books and really don’t like when teachers intrude on their social spaces?” These are extremely important questions that I rarely see educators daring to ask, and I admire Jacobin for taking that step.