Two-Column Notes

Date:

Name: Jamie Fletcher

Class/Subject:
EDTL 6940

6/6
Topic or Chapter
Authentic Education
John M. Fischer
Page #

The Text Says

Notes (key concepts, direct quotes, etc.)

31

education can be more than the

traditional image of teacher (knowledge
holder) imparting to student (knowledge
container).

32

If one role for schools in democratic

societies is to help prepare young people
for active life, then schools need to
become more democratic in order to pass
on a democratic ethos.

33

Knowledge is not static. It is, in fact,

ambiguous and ever changing as new
interpretations and discoveries push us to
reconsider what we know about a topic, a
species, or a global issue.

37

Expeditionary learning, as played out in

our model, has become a tool for helping
us to better understand the educational
process and our own identity as a teacher

I Say
My notes, commentary
This quote is powerful and should be what
teaching needs to move towards. Instead of
the teacher always imparting knowledge to the
student, the teachers needs to give the
student opportunities to learn from themselves
and do research and explore.
When I read this, I thought back to Dahl and
his article Why Democracy. It made me think
about Dahls 10 points for why democracy is so
important. This then lead me to connect that
importance or passing on democratic ethos,
which Fischer is discussing.
This quote about knowledge being static is the
same argument about history being static
because history is the differing and changing
interpretations of events.

During this trip, I was able to learn so much as

a student but I was also able to think about
everything from the teacher point of view. As
soon as we learned something knew I stored it

and student.

in my student part of the brain but then I was

immediately thinking, how can I tie this into
the standards and draw on these concepts and
ideas?
This statement echoes part of the purpose of
our expeditionary learning on this trip. We
were to keep an open mind and suspend
judgment while raising our own awareness of
the history and events that took place within
Ireland and Northern Ireland.

38

The elements of this process have been

designed to teach tolerance, openness
and understanding in a global society
during a workshop or expedition that
seeks to raise awareness of the reality of
diversity and layered history to every
event, location and phenomenon.

40

The aspects of authentic and democratic

education help educators accomplish the
broad goal of preparing and motivating
students to be participatory members of
society.

Connectio
ns to
previous
reading
(s)

This article echoes the same things that I read in A Forgotten Art. They both stressed that
schools need to become more democratic in order to prepare students for a democratic
society. They both talked about the importance of authentic learning and expeditionary
learning which are extremely important in solving real world problems and changing the
world.

One of the main goals of teaching social

studies is to prepare students to be
participatory members of society so it is very
fitting that social studies teachers incorporate
authentic and democratic education into their
curriculum.