A 3 page paper assessing schools' use of conformity. Schools do teach conformity. The KIPP program insists on conformity as a beginning point of demonstrating inner city children that there is a larger world than that which they have known. The Montessori method of following the child requires that the child be engaged in some learning activity, even if that activity is disguised as a game. Though each approach appears to be very different, each uses conformity as a beginning point for entrance into greater goals and ideas, and the ability to critically assess information rather than simply accepting any- and everything that their teachers pass to them. Conformity as an end point robs children of their potential. Conformity as a tool enhances their ability to achieve it. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSeduConform.rtf
Buy This Research Paper »
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Gatto among them, look at public schools and other educational systems to conclude that schools train children to conform. This is seen as a terminal point except as authors
such as Zweifel and others see the issue of positive learning. Seeing conformity as an end goal is shortsighted and the manifestation of
narrow thinking, however. It is true that children are trained in conformity of behavior in the classroom, otherwise there would be chaos and no one could learn anything at
all. The danger in insisting on conformity is not that children are made to conform in terms of behavior, but that childrens natural love of learning can be destroyed
in the process. There are ways around this. There are examples of types of classrooms that exert social control yet urge children to think for themselves. One Extreme
I.S. 151 middle school in the South Bronx has been seen as the single most problematic middle school in the country. The
buildings are substandard, teachers are embattled and the sounds of intermittent gunfire on the streets outside attract little attention either from individuals or police. Hopelessness has been rampant in
the past, and the hip-hop culture is alive and well on the purely public side of the building. I.S. 151 shares the building
with the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), however. That sharing of space is largely where the similarity between the two schools ends. Taking a 180-degree departure from what
has been the focus of public instruction for decades, the KIPP program "emphasizes morality and decorum and focus on moving students into the mainstream culture. Discipline is enforced by traditional
Back to Research Paper Results