BFC Q2) NIU expects you to meet two objectives in EPFE 201: 1) to identify a few key issues in education today and 2) to develop your perspective on those issues. Explain how you have met these objectives by discussing the most important issue we covered (Pink, concussions, funding, teacher quality, tenure, poverty in general…). What is the issue, what is the most compelling information about the issue in your opinion, and what should we do about it?

I have learned a lot about education and the problems it is facing in EPFE 201 and when I go out in the real world and see something about things such as tenure, I immediately think back to this class. Speaking of tenure, I found this concept/issue to be rather interesting. I had never even heard the word before being in this class and now I can say that I learned from lecture that tenure has a couple of myths that go along with it. It’s not impossible to be fired under tenure but it would take an extremely long process to get rid of a tenured teacher which is why this is a problem. I think some teachers take advantage of tenure and tend to slack off on their jobs. I’m sure not all of them do but in the movie “Waiting For Superman” they explained tenure and showed some animations that prove that a lot of teachers don’t try to teach as they should if they have tenure. What should we do about tenure? I think we should either get rid of it completely and figure out a more efficient way to evaluate teachers. The teachers shouldn’t be able to know what they are being tested on because then they will purposely do well in that area for the evaluation. But if we can’t get rid of tenure then we should only carefully give it to teachers that truly deserve it by having the students take surveys and having someone evaluate the teacher. Tenure is like many issues, hard to resolve and perfect but if teachers aren’t teaching students what they need for the future then what point is there in paying a ton of money for school? After taking this class it makes me thankful for the education that I received as a child because many families have it tough such as the ones seen in “Waiting For Superman.” It was impossible to not feel sorry for them but they and thousands of others are going through the same thing. There is definitely a lot that needs to be fixed in education but it’s far from easy.  

BFC Q1) A critical theorist would argue that the characters in the Breakfast Club are the perfect example of 1) how SES can impact one’s attitude about education, 2) how SES impacts the way schools order themselves socially (hierarchies), and 3) how SES impacts the ways students treat one another. Choose at least one character and make a case either for or against this theoretical perspective (agree/disagree).

I agree with the perspective of how the characters in the movie “The Breakfast Club” are a great example of how socio-economic status impacts education. First off, looking at Claire and Brian you can tell how social status affects the students’ attitudes about education. Claire has rich parents and she gets everything she wants and even got detention for ditching school to go shopping. This shows that she really doesn’t value her education as she is at the top of the social hierarchy. Brian on the other hand is towards the bottom of the hierarchy and although his parents force him to get A’s you can still tell that he appreciates his education more since he’s in many academic clubs as well. Second, SES impacts the way schools order themselves. Claire and Andrew are a good example because they are both at the top of the social hierarchy and they start talking to each other right away in detention. They kind of try to ignore everyone else because they are far below them. Finally, SES impacts the way the students treat each other and Bender is a good example of this. He is probably the lowest on the social hierarchy being the criminal type and he treats the prep, Claire, and the jock, Andrew, disrespectfully. He also tries to get to Claire’s level and get in her head by sexually harassing her and she doesn’t like it. The students argue throughout the movie because they are so different both by social status and because of their family lives. They all have extremely different home lives but they still all find a way to hate their parents either way. So even though socio-economic status impacts the way students treat each other and view each other the movie shows that even different people can still be friends in the end.