Change the Story

                How can we as individuals challenge the societal norms we have become accustomed to everyday? As an elementary school student I was conditioned to fit into a system which is obviously outdated and was detrimental to my own way of learning. When I read the Bell Hooks piece, Teaching to Transgress I came to realization that I was not the only student who has had a negative experience in the education system. I understand that the bulk of the reading our class did was surrounded around college classrooms but I believe that this can also be applied to the elementary school level. Each student is an individual. We all learn differently. Some students fit into the already existing, outdated Prussian industrial model, however most do not. I was one of those students who became conditioned to fit into a way of learning that I was not comfortable with. I was a very high-energy boy and a visual learner. I learn best by being immersed in a subject. I need to see how the subject in question works in the real world.  In college certain classes I took fit my style of learning much more than I was previously accustomed to. I began to encounter professors that cared about the content of their class engaged me as an individual student. Writer Kelly J. Baker sums up my point perfectly in her review of Teaching to Transgress called Teaching as Liberation. She writes, “We must do better. Students need knowledge, but it has to be more than bits of information they are forced to remember. It should be relevant to their lives. Teachers should care not only about the mastery of the subject, but how the content engages a life.” If we change the overall story of how a classroom ‘should be’ then we can engage more students and inspire more learning in all levels of education.