Reflection 7 - Hedges and Learning

I was reading in the Marzano book, and I have to say that I disagree with Hedges. I may not have done intensive research or have statistics to back me up, but I disagree because I feel like he is wrong in one way or another. I think it's because he believes that educational research is weak, and isn't as important as the “hard sciences.” After all I've learned about teaching, I really feel like he's wrong about that because teaching is important for the future.

Let's take the world's greatest teacher, Christ. He brought forth the Church of Christ through His teachings. While it fell after a short time of being on the earth, it was restored again in 1830. Even after centuries of silence from the heavens, Christ's teachings, and the teachings of His Apostles touched the heart, spirit, and mind of a fourteen year old boy that led to the restoration of the true Church. Christ has had a phenomenal influence on the world because of His teachings (and of course, His crucifixion, and resurrection) which were brought forth over 2,000 years ago. Thus, His teachings have had a profound influence on the world throughout time. It proves that teaching matters, much more than Hedges thinks it does.

I have very little left to say. I'd just like to add that my love for teaching is slowly growing, hence why I jumped on Hedges a little hard here, and my love for learning is growing. There's probably hope for me after all.

Remember when I said I was a "sloppy" learner? I remembered a time when I did learn something from a class. I was in an English class, and had the book called The House of Mirth. I hated it. It taught so many evil things, and made me wonder why on earth it was considered a classic. The book taught the following: Being good doesn't get you anywhere, except death (suicide) in the end; you can do bad things and get away with them; you can frame the goodie-two-shoes with your evil acts; and being important to society is all that matters.

These things disgusted me, and I swore never to write a book like this one, ever. Even if it meant that I couldn't get into the English Canon (which is one of my goals as a novelist), I just was not going to walk down that path. That day, I learned what I really wanted to write as an aspiring novelist. As a teacher, I also will never teach anything that could depress my students, and not inspire them with anything worthy of God.