One of the integral parts of the video is how much of school is not based on effectiveness, but rather tradition, and essentially lies to students claiming that what is been done in school is what is necessary for them as learners. For instance, one student points out that “We are taught there is always a single unambiguous right answer to a question;” yet as someone else alludes, not only teacher but students themselves often push to keep doing things the same way (Wesch, 2011). Nevertheless, there are much more efforts to make a change. One issue that I actually sort of address in one of my class activities was the issue of following authority. Wesch’s video mentions that schools generally teach students to simply trust “authority,” (2011) but as shown in my activity, different authority figures are not always the most reliable sources, or qualified for a given claim. In my class activity for example, I had students note from primary source analysis that one source referred to the authority of military personnel’s claims as evidence to state the Spanish attacked the U.S.S. Maine. Meanwhile, another source referred to an expert on ships to claim that the U.S.S. Maine explosion was most likely an accident from overheating blowing up the ship’s magazines. Ultimately after discussion my class and I agreed that the ship expert was a better source of evidence, because he was an authority figure with greater expertise in this instance. Though they end up relying on an authority figure in the end, it still got them questioning another figure of authority, and we found that indeed the ship expert turned out to be correct.
Back to the topic of the video! A reoccurring theme of the video is students asking for changed, notably for the end of standardized tests which “standardize students” (Wesch, 2011). There is an obvious disconnect today in which the video does a fine job displaying. One way of doing this was showing a girls phone that read “I am on Facebook 4 of the 8 hours that I am in class” (Wesch, 2011). There is a movement to update education. They mention this movement is nothing new, yet now we need it to address current societal needs. I myself can see schools moving towards more technology, especially since that will prepare them for their futures’ now. They “need new media literacy” (Wesch, 2011). To wrap it up, the video end with a link to a great website that provides various other videos along with links, sources, etc. Check it out at : http://visionsofstudents.org/
References:
Wesch, M. (2011 June 18). "a few ideas ..." (Visions of Students Today) [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/jrXpitAlva0