Life in Schools Presentation

Today in class, the second literature group presented their book, Life in Schools. Once again, I was very impressed with there presentation. This group also did a lot of research, but used less statistics (mainly because the main idea of this book couldn’t be supported by statistics and graphs). I was very impressed with their knowledge of the capitalist system and they were successful in explaining how the system affects the educational system. Until this class, I have never thought about how the different classes in society affected the classroom. The group showed that the capitalist system lead to oppression as well as the alienation of workers. These problems are passed onto our children through social reproduction. The answer to the problem presented was for teachers to engage students in social analysis. Although I think the presentation was well-rehearsed, I feel as though a lot was left out because the group ran out of time. While capitalism and the problems that it causes were well introduced and explained, I feel as though there should have been more time spent about what answers the book has. I did, however, find the main ideas of this book very interesting and I hope that we can talk more about it in class when we have more time.