Category: Learning & Assessment

School Name: New Roads School (Independent school in Santa Monica)

Reported by: New Roads Students, Carlos Hernández, Diana Flores

Date: June 2, 2003

Student Learning at New Roads School

Read Deborah Meier’s passage below and think about what it means to be “well-educated”?

If we agree that what we want are citizens with a lively curiosity—who ask, "how come?" and "why?" and "is it truly so?" — we’ll have the start of a new definition of ‘well-educated.’ How about being closely observant, prepared to keep one’s eyes and ears open for patterns, for details, for the unusual? Schooling should encourage playfulness — the capacity to imagine, to wonder, to put things together in new and interesting ways — as well as the possession of a skeptical and open mind. To be in the habit of imagining how others think, feel, and see the world — in the habit of stepping into the shoes of others — should surely be one of our new basics. (How else, after all, can we follow the Golden Rule?) And of course we need to be respectful of evidence, to distinguish good data from bad, to hesitate before sounding off without any facts. I’d add knowing how to communicate carefully, persuasively, and powerfully in a of media — including the skilled use of written and spoken language. My definition would also put a high premium on caring enough about the world and one’s fellow citizens to take a stand and defend it.

Deborah Meier. The power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.

As students, what types of skills, knowledge, and understandings do you need to be “well-educated?”
To come into the classroom willing to be open-minded and at the same time enable a critical identity. I believe is essential to be well educated. There needs to be constant progress as a student, and we must recognize our study habits, our learning habits, the way in which we will apply what we have been taught beyond the classroom in order to fully benefit from school. Positive teachers, through their encouragement, their willingness to be creative and to step away from the tedious curriculum, have definitely helped me become a positive and fruitful student. We must face the different aspects of our world, we must be able to see the bigger picture, and consider that “The intellectual challenge-usually cast as methodological debate in these days in which academic forms of expression have a monopoly on intellectual life-is how to think about representational practices in terms of history, culture, and society. How does one understand, analyze, and enact such practices today?”(p. 20 The New Cultural Politics of Difference-Cornell West). At the same time, all of this is based on the assumption that we would be provided with appropriate textbooks-relevant to a student’s culture-access to facilities and individuals that will allow us to make use of these in order to succeed in the classroom-libraries, computer rooms, counselors, etc-.