Common Sense has been a term we have thoroughly discussed in class and analyzed as how it impacts us in the classroom. With the definition of commonsense relating to the information and normatives that a particular demographic is accustomed to, how do we determine what makes a good student in the sense of this? In this mindset, a “good” student is going to be a person who follows in the norms of society and doesn’t disrupt the flow of learning. By not questioning why things are the way we see them or challenging our perspectives on the content we are learning, it allows you to mould and go into society with the best possibility of becoming a contributing citizen. This is seen as ideal as the education you are given is circulated back into society fulfilling the holes society needs to fill.

The problems that this can cause is that even though it is developed to fit the “majority” of society, doesn’t mean it is benefiting the individuals participating. With having different ways of learning and perspectives on topics, each student has the opportunity to embrace their uniqueness and contribute to society in their own way. By using the “good” student mould, we discourage the individualism of these students and inhibit their abilities to learn. This makes equality an incredibly difficult goal to reach as this becomes disadvantageous to students simply by the way they process information. This mindset is also incredible favoured towards people with accessibility. Many factors play into this concept such as social class and wealth as they are opportunities for these students to get ahead and fit this mould. Students should be more than rhetorical robots and be free to express themselves as unique individuals.

I chose to do my project on Maxine Greene. I was intrigued by her approach to education through aesthetic approaches and a more creative approach to the curriculum. She believed in teaching about the social imagination and we focus to heavily on the instructional based learning where.students aren’t allowed to question the way things are done. By embracing their creative aspects and approaching problems with an inquisitive focus, it allows students to shape their own identity instead of being molded by the system. She often used metaphors to engage students minds and open them to this aesthetic way of thinking encouraging students to act, think or engage in new ways from the understandings they would perceive interpreting these metaphors. 

She combines philosophy and education to try and achieve these goals. She believed that the school was not only the child’s place of work, but also much like a second home spending large amounts of time there, in turn, should be a place reflecting happiness to encourage students in the environment. She believed that the classroom itself held infinite possibilities and that we as teachers had some responsibility of facilitating that. This included entertaining the non traditional methods of teaching as it explored the unimagined possibilities this kind of openness to creativity nurtures inside of children. Opening new ways of experiencing things leads to new innovative ways of approaching problems that can tackle the ever involving roadblocks we face today.

My approach continuing this is to see the experimental work has been done with aesthetic experience and how we are planning to engage students with it. As someone who is a visual learner, aesthetic experience has always intrigued me in how we can use it to our advantage form the smallest of pictures in classrooms, to organizing projects to engage certain students. I would like to find articles showing the impact these aesthetic learners have had on society and whether this approach is as impactful on society as it can be for individuals. With the constant of integration of technology into classrooms, it would be great to find some innovative strategies to implement this philosophy in classrooms side by side.

The Tyler rationale provides an interesting perspective on curriculum and has a solid address to give optimal learning objectives. It provides a very structured plan to transfer information from the teacher to the student in direct manner. It has set goals, how to accomplish these goals, and what the desired outcome will be for the students. Many of the shop classes we took in high school were structured in this fashion to ensure we learned the proper skills in a particular way in order for us to be successful. There were only certain ways to obtain these skills correctly and made it easy to demonstrate how we were to accomplish these goals.

Although this can be extremely helpful in some aspects, it also limits the students and teachers involved in the process. This type of rationale has only one way of determining whether a student is learning and a very linear way of marking which can really restrict the students to the amount of critical thinking and creativity they may use to solve certain problems. This also in turn shackles the teachers, making it a very straight forward of passing on the knowledge without allowing them to use different methods of teaching to engage different types of learners. This system can be very detrimental to learners who aren’t taken in by direct teaching and need more visual or engaging ways to absorb the information.

This system does however benefit the small group of people who are able to adapt and learn with very basic reciprocative styles. It is organized extremely well to allow students to follow along on how they can be successful and what methods to use in order to attain that as well. This enables students to take the initiative and prepare themsleves in the proper ways to identify how to be successful.

In this article, Kumashiro addresses the idea of common sense in education. He believes that common sense is a set idea we have based on our beliefs, societal influences, morals, that varies among cultures. Kumashiro believes that common sense however isn’t as common as we believe because it will vary depending on the influences you have and where you grow up. This can however cause many problems when trying to educate and relate to others. When teaching, this common sense to act as a tool of oppression if not used properly.

Kumshiro expresses that because it can express this oppression, it is crucial we are cognitive of the impact it has. Pushing our influences on others can impact the way that they learn. In following common sense, we do not question what is seen as the right way to do things and in turn, almost assimilate ourselves to act in the commonality. It is very important to combat this in the education system, especially because as teachers we impact our students abilities of self expression and creativity by converting them to the norms. Proper education about race, religion, diversity, sexuality, are all important tools we can use to try and educate ourselves into questioning what we see as normal and find new ways to educate ourselves with the ongoing diverse world around us.