Legal Aspects of Nursing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Legal Aspects of Nursing - Essay Example Legal aspects of nursing The nurse caring for the patient has exhibited professional negligence. Mrs. M successfully underwent surgery to remove a brain lesion. She had problem with swallowing, and the medical team promptly carried out further investigations to ensure patient comfort and a quick recovery. The X-ray revealed that her lungs showed no signs of infiltration or congestion. However mismanagement and negligence emerged during her transportation. A driver was charged with the care of Mrs. M. The patient was in a critical state after undergoing an intensive surgical procedure. In addition, her recovery was difficult as she had a swallowing problem. It is inappropriate for the hospital management to entrust patient care of critical patients to untrained personnel. All personnel handling patients need to be professional nurses or doctors. Untrained personnel should be closely supervised by nurses. Lack of supervision is tantamount to patient neglect and this is act of gross mis conduct. This is evident in the case of Mrs. M during her transport from the hospital room to the X-ray room for a repeat chest film. The untrained patient transporter who was the sole care giver in the course of the transportation allowed the humidifier attached to the oxygen line to lay on its side. ... Moreover, the untrained transporter needs to understand his/her responsibilities as stipulated in this/her job description. Clearly, it is not his/her responsibility to make decisions on the placement of medical devices. The nurse charged with the care of Mrs. M should have supervised the untrained transporter. Due to patient mismanagement, water accumulated in Mrs. M’s lungs and she developed a bout of aspiration pneumonia. This led to her subsequent readmission in the intensive care unit. It was a major inconvenience for the patient as recovery time was prolonged. Aspiration pneumonia is a serious medical condition as it may lead to lung inflammation, lung abscess (accumulation of pus in the lungs) and chronic pneumonia. Fortunately, Mrs. M recovered well without encountering any complications. The unfortunate incident would have been prevented via proper supervision. The nurse charged with the care of Mrs. M should have fulfilled her responsibility. She should have overseen the transport and handling of Mrs. M. The uptake of oxygen via the oxygen mask should have been checked to avoid any mishaps. The humidifier attached to the oxygen line would have been maintained in the right position and not allowed to lie on the side. All supplemental oxygen that is routinely administered to patients needs to be humidified. According to BTS emergency oxygen guidelines, humidification is necessary for patients who need high flow oxygen for a period exceeding 24 hours especially if they report discomfort of the upper airway as a result of dryness. In the administration of an oxygen mask, the oxygen flow meter is attached to the wall outlet. Secondly, the humidifier is filled with the

MOVE Philadelphia Bombing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 2

MOVE Philadelphia Bombing - Research Paper Example in the world, and the means through which these are reported, ultimately have a profound and lasting impact with regards to the awareness of society, understanding of class, differentiation of race, and ultimate understanding of self worth. As such, the impact that the news media has with regards to helping an individual understand each of these complex interpersonal and societal dynamics is profound. Due to the unique history that the United States has thus far exhibited, a unique current of racial tension and undercurrent of strife exists at almost every level of society. This is partly due to the fact that racial perceptions of African-Americans and black activism’s are inherently stronger as compared to those that exist within white communities and individuals. The MOVE bombing in Philadelphia shows the disparity in treatment of black activists, both for their tactics and the representation. In the aftermath of the MOVE bombing, those responsible downplay the racial undert ones of the decision to bomb the activist; however, scholars and researchers note the fact that even when political projects, â€Å"Overtly claim to hold colorblind views, (they) covertly manipulate racial fears in order to achieve political gains†. (Omni & Winant 58). . As a means of understanding the way in which media and society effectively redefined a particular issue as a means of making it more palatable, this particular analysis will focus upon the 1970s and 1980s with respect to activism, black militant activism, and the microcosm of understanding is that the MOVE bombing of Philadelphia can help the reader to achieve. It is the further hope of this author that such a level of understanding will be useful with regards to not only understanding the unique dynamics of societal and racial tensions that helps to define the era in question, it is also the hope of this author that the MOVE bombing will help to shed a level of light and understanding with regards to the way in which

Different viewpoints and opinions on education

Different viewpoints and opinions on education Indoctrinational vs. democratic/participatory teaching methods and techniques John Dewey argued that education should use a critical democratic approach to raise student consciousness about values, attitudes and worker responsibilities. He stated that the primary purpose of education in United States was to foster the growth of democratically minded citizens, and Dewey made no distinction in the education of those who would manage the companies and those who would work on the shop floors. Dewey strongly advocated vocational exploration as a means to acquire practical knowledge, apply academic content and examine occupational and societal values. However, he adamantly opposed the use of vocational education as merely trade education as it would overemphasize technical efficiency. If this occurred, and some would argue it has, education would then become an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the existing industrial order of the society, instead of operating as a means of its transformation (Dewey, 1916). Dewey believed that it was educations role to combat soc ial predestination, not contribute to it. In contrast, Charles Prosser and David Snedden advocated an indoctrinational approach for teaching work value and attitudes; students should learn, without question, the ethical standards of dominant society and the professional ethics of the desired professional area (Prosser, 1939). Supporters of this approach believed the primary purpose of public education was the development of human capital for the success of industrial economy. To accomplish this, they argued that scientific management principles, drawn from the industrial sector, were employed in the public school setting, creating a hierarchically structured and production oriented educational system (Spring, 1990). Prossers sixteen theorems of vocational education support this vision of schooling. According to him, vocational educational should replicate the occupational environment (i.e. processes, machinery, tools), emphasize efficiency (e.g. outputs, costs) and teach functioning facts rather than in the mere acquiring of abstract and socially useless knowledge (Prosser Quigley, Vocational education in a democracy, 1949). In the past thirty five years the argument initiated by Dewey, Prosser and Snedden has resurfaced between educational theorists, outside the realm of vocational education, and business leaders concerned about the decline of industrial productivity in industrialized nations. Expanding upon Deweys perspective, these educational theorists have used a socio-political-economic framework to guide their critique. Specifically reproduction theorists have criticized vocational education for transmitting work values and attitudes necessary for a compliant workforce as well as primarily employing indoctrinational pedagogies for work values and attitudes instruction (Bowles Gintis, 1976). Reproduction and critical theorists have argued that the indoctrinational approach is exploitative because it produces attitudes in students that correspond to the type of work in which students will most likely participate upon completion of their formal education (Anyon, 1980); (Giroux, 1983); (Macleod, 1987 ). Another facet of this debate was represented in the report Americas choice: high skills or low wages! which focused on corporate organizational structure and its relationship to worker behaviors (National Center on Education and the Economys Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990). It stated that about 80% of United States companies utilize a pyramidal mass manufacture model that values reliable and compliant workers who perform their tasks almost robot like. This is in contrast to democratically structured organizations that need workers who are adaptable, resourceful, critical and capable of making decisions. While Dewey and critical theorists are concerned primarily with implementing democracy in the schools and the workplace to create a more just and equitable society, the industrial sociological literature has provided evidence that work organizations that employ democratic processes or participatory management also increase worker productivity (Hall, 1987); (J ain, 1980); (Zuboff, 1983). The Commission suggested that, while there is a trend towards companies implementing more participatory management, vocational education needs to teach democratic skills and utilize primarily democratic strategies so that future workers will be prepared to participate in, and assist in transforming companies into high performance organizations. Ineffective learning The nature of work has changed and our understanding of how people learn has also changed. Both developments call into question the organization, goals and pedagogy of our educational system. What makes these developments so powerful is that our new understanding of both work and learning suggest very similar directions for reform. Strengthening the educational system so that it conforms more to the ways people learn will also directly enhance the ability of that system to prepare students for the type of workplaces that are emerging in factories and offices throughout the industrialized world. The following discussion of effective learning emerges from a powerful knowledge base known as cognitive science. From the perspective of cognitive science this discussion purports to underscore two basic points about learning and teaching. First, school routinely and profoundly violates what we know about how people learn effectively and the conditions under which they apply their knowledge appropriately to new situations. Second, these practices seem to permeate all levels and sectors of education and training in developed countries right from elementary grades to corporate training. Mistaken assumption # 1: The educational enterprise assumes that people predictably transfer learning to new situations As a society, we presume that the ultimate point of schooling is to prepare students for effective and responsible functioning outside of school. Accepting this assumption means that we have to confront what is known as the knowledge transfer problem. Knowledge transfer simply means the appropriate use in a new situation of concepts, skills, knowledge and strategies acquired in another. Historically, lower-skilled workers had a very limited need for transfer. Transfer becomes important when you encounter the unfamiliar and non-routine, and lower skilled workers encountered little that was not familiar and did not have the responsibility for handling the non-routine that they did encounter. Goods and services were limited in number, allowing long production runs of the same thing or service and reducing the number of events that have not been previously encountered. Within this limited product or service range, companies organized the work as specialist work workers had responsibility for a narrow range of activity. Supervisors and managers were expected to handle the non-routine events that did occur within this narrow, repetitive world. That is, responsibility for events that required problem solving, judgment, heuristics, analogues, or other mental activities enhanced by the access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations was detached from lower-skill jobs and vested in middle-skill managerial jobs. However, technological innovations and changed market conditions ushered by globalization and in its wake increased competition means an increased number of non-routine events. Companies in developed countries are gradually shifting from highly specialized and repetitive jobs at lower skill levels toward teams expected to handle a broader range of activities, and they are also increasingly vesting problem-solving, supervisory responsibilities in these teams. Thus, a broader range of workers is being asked to exercise the mental activities enhanced by access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations. Extensive research, spanning decades, shows that individuals do not predictably transfer knowledge in any of the three situations where transfer should occur. They do not predictably transfer school knowledge to everyday practice (Pea, 1989); (Lave, 1988). They do not predictably transfer sound everyday practice to school endeavors, even when the former seems clearly relevant to the latter. They do not predictably transfer their learning across school subjects. We focus on the first two transfer problems: from school to nonschool and from nonschool to school. Transferring from school to outside of school: This transfer situation is at the heart of schooling. Usually, the major claim for school-type instruction is its generality and power of transfer to situations beyond classroom (Resnick, 1987). The fundamental question is whether knowledge, skills and strategies acquired in formal education in fact get used appropriately in everyday practice. Students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulae. However, even after instruction, they revert to naÃÆ' ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations to which their school learning is relevant (diSessa, 1983). Studies of expert radiologists, electronic troubleshooters and lawyers all reveal a syrprising lack of transfer of theoretical principles, processes or skills learned in school to professional practice (Resnick, 1987). For example, Morris and Rouse found that extensive training in electronics and troubleshooting theories provided little knowledge and fewer skills directly applicable to performing electronic troubleshooting (Morris Rouse, 1985) Transferring from outside of school to school: People learn outside of school all the time. The question then is what people do with what they learn outside of school when they move into school. Does sound, everyday practice get transferred to get used in school learning? How does incorrect learning outside school affect correct learning inside school? Dairy workers, although almost errorless in their use of practical arithmetic at work, performed badly in on arithmetic tests with problems like those encountered in their jobs (Scribner Fahrmeir, 1982). Brazilian street vendor children successfully solved 98% of their marketplace transactions, such as calculating total costs and change. When presented with the same transactions in formal arithmetic word problems that provided some descriptive context, the children correctly solved 74% of the problems. Their success rate dropped to 37% when asked to solve the same types of problems when these were presented as mathematical operations without descriptive context (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). Other studies show that training on one version of a logical problem has little, if any, effect on solving an isomorphic version that is represented differently (Hayes Simon, 1977). Teaching children to use general context-independent cognitive strategies has no clear benefits outside the specific domains in which they are taught (Pressley, Snyder, Cariglia-Bull, 1987) Cognitive experts agree that the conditions for transfer are not fully understood. Even though studies cited in previous paragraphs continue to find no evidence of transfer, others identify conditions under which transfer seems to occur (Holyoak, 1985); (Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, Cheng, 1987); (Lehman, Lempert, Nisbett, 1988); (Singley Anderson, 1989). We know that people routinely apply skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic to new situations with some success. These skills are used most effectively in well understood content domains. For example, readers get more out of their reading when they know something about the domain in which they are reading than when they do not. Nonetheless, skills such as reading do let us enter unfamiliar content areas we do use these skills in new situations, and they do help us. At the same time, we also keep finding lack of transfer. We now know that certain practices in school impede learning. More effective learning may not be sufficient for transfer, but poor initial learning will certainly impede it. Mistaken assumption # 2: Learners are best seen as passive vessels into which knowledge is poured In a typical schoolroom or a corporate training session, the teacher or expert faces the learners in the role of knowledge source. The learner is the passive receiver of wisdom a glass into which water is poured. This instructional arrangement comes out of an implicit assumption about the basic purpose of education: the transmission of societys culture from one generation to the next. The concept of transmission implies a one-way flow from the adult members of the society to the societys young, or, from the expert to the novice (Lave, The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding: Report No. IRL88-0007, 1988). In fact, schooling is often talked about as transmission of canonical knowledge in other words, of an authoritative, structured body of principles, rules and knowledge. Education as canonical transmission thus becomes the conveying of what experts know to be true, rather than a process of inquiry, discovery and wonder. This view of education leads naturally to the student as the receiver of the word, to a lecture mode of teaching, and to the teacher as the controller of the process. This organization of learning, with the teacher as order-giver and the student as order-taker, fits the traditional organization of work for lower-skilled workers in both civilian workplaces and the military. The workers à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ responsibility was à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ to do what he was told [to do by the management] (Callahan, 1962). Ben Hamper, an auto assembly line worker, uses more colorful language: Working the line at G. M. was like being paid to flunk high school for the rest of your life (Marchese, 1991). The assumption that the teacher is the pourer and the student the receptacle has several unfortunate consequences. Passive learning reduces or removes chances for exploration, discovery and invention: Passive learning means that learners do not interact with problems and content and thus do not get the experiential feedback that is key to learning. Students need chances to engage in choice, judgment, control processes and problem formulation; they need chances to commit mistakes. The saying, experience is the best teacher, is borne out by the research you learn what you do. While not sufficient for effective learning, doing is nonetheless necessary. However, schools usually present what is to be learned as a delineated body of knowledge, with the result that students come to regard the subject being studied mathematics, for example as something received, not discovered and as entity to be ingested, rather than a form of activity, argumentation and social discourse. This organization of learning mirrors the traditional organization of work, especially for lower skilled workers. Under the system of industrial management known as scientific management or the Taylor System, each mans task was worked out by the planning department. Each worker received an instruction card which described in minute detail not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it' (Callahan, 1962). This system was highly prescriptive; it left no room for deviation or innovation. Passive learning places control over learning in the teachers, not the learners, hands: Passive learning creates learners dependent on teachers for guidance and feedback, thus undercutting the development of confidence in their own sense making abilities, their initiative and their cognitive executive skills. The example of Brazilian street vendor children may be recalled at this juncture. The researchers found that when the children tried to work school math problems, they did not check the sensibleness of their answers by relating them back to the initial problem. Although virtually errorless in their street math activities, they came with preposterous results for school math problems (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). In a study of supermarket shoppers use of arithmetic, the researchers assessed the shoppers command of structurally similar school math problems. The shoppers spoke with self-deprecation about not having studied math for a long time. Lave clarifies what is happening here. Individuals experience themselves as both subjects and objects in the world. In the supermarket, for example, they see themselves as controlling their activities, interacting with the setting, generating problems in relation [to] the setting, and controlling problem solving processes. In contrast, school à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ create[s] contexts in which children à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ experience themselves as objects, with no control over problems or choice about problem-solving processes (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988) in sum, control in the teachers, not the students hands undercuts students trust in their own sense making abilities. As companies have started shifting decision-making power to the shop floor, managers find that workers conditioned to depending on their supervisors telling them what to do are frightened and lack confidence in their ability to solve problems and make decisions. In addition to its effects on confidence, passive learning also undercuts the development of a particular set of higher order cognitive skills called the cognitive self-management, or executive thinking, skills. These are simply the skills that we use to govern our problem-solving attempts. They include goal setting, strategic planning, checking for accurate plan execution, monitoring our progress and evaluating and revising our plans. We now know that those who function as independent and effective learners are people with these skills. However, as Pea has observed, passive learning is disastrous for developing them. Classroom studies of reading, writing, and math and science instruction show that the executive processes for controlling thinking and learning processes are under the teachers control, not the students. These processes seem to get developed when the learning situation is structured to shift control from the teacher to the student, the teacher gradually removing the support that students need initially as they begin to show the ability to work autonomously (Pea, 1989). Passive learning creates motivational and crowd control problems: Jordan describes a Mexican public health training program designed to improve the practice of Mayan midwives. Her analysis spotlights behaviors that American teachers constantly complain about their students (Jordan, 1987). The teaching is organized in a straight didactic material in a mini-lecture format. When these lectures begin, the midwives shift into what Jordan calls their waiting-it-out behavior: they sit impassively, gaze far away, feet dangling, obviously tuned out. This is behavior that one might also observe in other waiting situations, such as when a bus is late or during sermons in church, (p. 3). We see the same behaviors in American third graders. Hass found that students were deeply engaged in team problem-solving during their drill and practice time, but invested little attention or involvement in the teachers instructional sessions. During three weeks of observation, the children did not adopt any of the specific strategies demonstrated by the teacher during general instruction time (Hass, 1988). As teachers know it so well, motivational problems often end up as crowd control problems, as illustrated by the behaviors of different groups of children at a Metropolitan Museum display of Ice Age art and artifacts. Most of the school groups were moved from one exhibit to the next, pausing before each to hear a guides or teachers lecture. Since the children were bunched in front of an exhibit, they could not all hear the lecture, and even when they could, they lacked understanding of the time frames involved or the archaeological significance of bits of bone. Teachers had not set up the museum visit so that students became involved in what they were going to see. Groups were therefore restless and crowd control became the teachers primary concern. One junior high school class behaved very differently, exhibiting a quiet intensity as they moved through the exhibit gallery. They had packets of worksheets with questions about issues and problems that they were expected to solve at the exhibit. Some questions were factual, but most required inference and thought. The students had to figure out for themselves where and what the evidence would be concerning particular questions (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Motivational and crowd control problems with students have shown up for decades with lower-skilled workers in the forms of high turnover, absenteeism and, in extreme cases, sabotage. Mistaken assumption # 3: Learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and correct responses Based on his animal experiments, the brilliant psychologist Edward Thorndike developed a new theory of learning. As Cremin observed, the theory presumed that learning was the wedding of a specific response to a specific stimulus through a psychological bond in the neural system. The stimulus [S] then regularly called forth the response [R]. the bond between S and R was stamped in by being continually rewarded; an undesired bond was extinguished through punishment or failure (Cremin, 1961). For the purpose of this research, this psychological theory had three major effects. It led to the breakdown of complex ideas and tasks into components, subtasks and items (stimuli) that could be separately trained. It encouraged repetitive training (stamping in). And it led to a focus on the right answer (successful response) and to the counting of correct responses to items and subtasks, a perspective that ended up in psychometrically elegant tests that were considered the scientific way to measure achievement. The result was fractionation: having to learn disconnected subroutines, items and subskills without an understanding of the larger context into which they fit and which gives them meaning. As Farnham-Diggory notes, fractionated instruction maximizes forgetting, inattention and passivity (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Since children and adults seem to acquire knowledge from active participation in complex and meaningful environments, school programs could hardly have been better designed to prevent a childs natural learning system from operating (p. 146). The phrase a childs natural learning system goes to the heart of why the usual school programs do not meet their own learning objectives well. Human beings even the small child are quintessentially sense-making, problem-solving animals. The word Why is a hallmark of young childrens talk. As a species, we wonder, we are curious and we want to understand. Pechman talks about the child as the meaning maker. Fractionated and decontextualized instruction fails to mobilize this powerful property of human beings in the service of learning (Pechman, 1990). Mistaken assumption # 4: What matters is getting the right answer Bothe the transmission and the behaviorist views of learning place a premium on getting the right answer. A transmission view stresses the ability of the learner to reproduce the Word; a behaviorist view, the ability of the learner to generate the correct response. The end result is the same: students and teachers focus on the right answer, jeopardizing the development of real understanding. The focus plays out in several ways. An instructional focus on the right answer discourages instruction in problem solving: A right answer focus encourages an emphasis on facts. Facts are important, but by themselves constitute an impoverished understanding of a domain; a fact-focus does not help students abilities to think about the domain in different ways. Cognitive analyses of a range of jobs show that being able to generate different solutions to problems that are formally the same is a hallmark of expert performance (Scribner, Head and hand: An action approach to thinking, 1988).Employers and college educators both complain that American high school graduates are limited in their thinking and problem-solving abilities, deficiencies that stem partly from an educational emphasis on facts and right answers. Students resort to veneers of accomplishment: Students respond to a focus on right answers by learning to test right within the school system. They figure out what answers the teacher or the test seems to want, but often at the cost of real learning. These surface achievements have been called the veneer of accomplishment (Lave, Smith, Butler, Problem solving as an everyday practice, 1988). Also, Jordans analysis of a Mayan midwives training program illuminates basic truths about the learning and testing of American students (Jordan, 1987). She found that midwives who had been through the training course saw official health care system as powerful, in that it commanded resources and authority. They came to distinguish good from not good things to say. Specifically, they learned new ways of legitimizing themselves, new ways of presenting themselves as being in league with this powerful system, but with little impact on their daily practice. Although they could converse appropriately with supervisory medical personnel, their new knowledge was not incorporated into their behavioral repertoire. It was verbally, but not behaviorally fixed. Jordan notes that the trainers evaluated their program by asking the midwives to reproduce definitions, lists and abstract concepts. She observes that if these tests measure anything at all, they measure changes in linguistic repertoire and changes in discourse skills [not changes in behavior] (pp. 10-12) The same behaviors show up with Hasss American third graders. He noticed that in mathematics lessons the students got much practice in problem-solving methods that they had brought into the classroom with them methods that were not being taught and were not supposed to be used. The children used these methods to produce right answers, which the teacher took as evidence of their having grasped the formal procedures that she was teaching them. In fact, all that had happened was the appearance of learning. Teachers do not get behind the answers: We end up with appearances of learning because, in their search for right answers, teachers often fail to check behind the answers to insure that students really grasp the principles that they want the students to master. In typical American classrooms the time devoted to a lesson on a particular topic makes it hard to bring to the surface, let along change, the ideas and assumptions that individuals bring to the lesson. Traditional curriculum design is usually based on a conceptual analysis of the subject matter that ignores what is already in the learners head, with the result that students make mistakes that arise from undetected ideas that they brought to the lesson. Or they can play back memorized canonical knowledge and conceptions but return to their own ideas when confronted with unfamiliar questions or non-routine problems. As noted earlier,, students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulas, but even after instruction revert to naÃÆ' ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations (Raizen, 1989). Teachers do not focus on how to use student mistakes to help them learn: In their search for right answers, teachers tend to regard student errors as failures rather than as opportunities to strengthen students understanding. American teachers placed little emphasis on the constructive use of errors as a teaching technique, a practice that the researchers attribute to the strong influence of behaviorism in American education. Behaviorism requires teaching conditions that help learners make only correct responses that can be reinforced through praise. Mistaken assumption # 5: To insure their transfer to new situations, skills and knowledge should be acquired independently of their contexts of use This idea is often talked about as decontextualized learning, which simply means learning out of context or meaning. The rationale for decontextualised learning goes back to the presumed conditions for the transfer of learning. As Lave observes, extracting knowledge from the particulars of experience was thought to make that knowledge available for general application in all situations (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988). Almost seventy five years ago, John and Evelyn Dewey wrote about the learning costs of decontextualized education. A statement, even of facts, does not reveal the value of the fact, or the sense of its truth of the fact that it is a fact. Where children are fed only on the book knowledge, one fact is as good as another; they have no standards of judgment or belief. Take the child studying weights and measures; he reads in his textbook that eight quarts make a peck, but when he does examples he is apt, as every schoolteacher knows, to substitute four for eight. Evidently the statement as he read it in the book did not stand for anything that goes on outside the book, so it is a matter of accident what figure lodges in his brain, or whether any does. But the grocers boy who has measured out pecks with a quart measure knows. He has made pecks; he would laugh at anybody who suggested that four quarts made a peck. What is the difference in these two cases? The schoolboy has a result without the activity of which it is the result. To the grocers boy the statement has value and truth, for it is the obv ious result of an experience it is a fact. Thus we see that it is a mistake to suppose that practical activities have only or even mainly a utilitarian value in the schoolroom. They are necessary if the pupil is to understand the facts which the teacher wishes him to learn; if his knowledge is to be real, not verbal; if his education is to furnish standards of judgment and comparison. (Dewey Dewey, Schools of tomorrow, 1915) Get over the traditional distinctions between head and hand The indictment of traditionally organized learning was coming out of a powerful research base, cognitive science. At the heart of this research was the presumption that intelligence and expertise are built out of interaction with the environment, not in isolation from it. It thus challenged the traditionally held distinctions between: Head and hand Academic and vocational education Knowing and doing Abstract and applied Education and training School-based and work-based learning Recent EU policy indicates a reassessment both of the relationship between work and education and the role of work experience in academic and vocational programs, on the basis that globalization is generating the need for new learning relationships between education and work which will support lifelong learning (European Commission, 1995). Thus, in the case of work experience in both general and vocational education, it is now envisaged that it could fulfill an important new role, providing an opportunity for those young people in full-time education and training to develop their understanding about changes in the world of work, to enhance their key skills and to make closer links between their formal programs of study and the world of work (Green, Leney, Wolf, 1999). However, although there has been

The NRA Killed Gun Control Legislation Essay -- Argumentative Persuasi

The NRA Killed Gun Control Legislation By the year 2003, it is expected that firearms will cause the most injury-related deaths in the United States, surpassing even automobile accidents. Poll after poll have revealed that most Americans favor stricter gun control laws. Five recent suburban school shootings have demonstrated that when guns and kids mix, tragedy results. Yet gun control legislation remains at a standstill. The battle for stricter gun-control laws has not been without victories. In 1968, Congress passed the Gun Control Act in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., President John F. Kennedy, and Senator Robert Kennedy. The law mandated stricter licensing requirements, prohibited the sale of handguns to out-of-state residents, and banned mail-order gun sales and the import of guns not "suitable or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." The 1984 Crime Control Act lengthened the minimum mandatory sentences given to those who carry and use armor-piercing bullets to commit violent crimes. In 1993, the Brady Bill was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law, named after James Brady, who was shot and paralyzed in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, requires a five-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns. The "Assault Weapons" ban of 1994, passed despite a massive campaign by the National Rifle Association (NRA), ba nned nineteen assault-type weapons, including the Street Sweeper, a 12-gauge shotgun that can be fully discharged in three seconds. The ban also covered many semiautomatic firearms. The NRA's bid to repeal the law was stymied in 1995, with the explosion of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 peopl... ...gun's owner may be required before the gun will fire; another technology would allow an owner to activate and deactivate his or her gun via remote control. If S.113 were to become law, it would be much more difficult for children and young adults under eighteen years of age to fire their parents', relatives', or friends' guns. New Jersey's S.113 sits presently in the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee - there are not enough votes to get the bill out of committee. Â  Although the NRA boasts several millions members and a great deal of money, polls show that they hold the minority view. The fact that they have helped prevent the passage of federal and state legislation that would promote more gun-control laws shows that the NRA's minority is a vocal one. If the majority becomes half as vocal, tragedies such as the school shootings can be avoided in the future.

Community Observation Paper Essay

I. What was observed during the experience? I work at an online (virtual) public school. Every year we have what we call â€Å"Fun Day† or â€Å"Field Day† for most schools. We held this event, all students invited, at a local park in my hometown. I got to volunteer to help with it. We were there for about 7 hours. (Our team worked at the information table.) It happened to rain hard that day without stopping, so we had to move everything into the park’s gym, so it was pretty crowded! We had people from all parts of our state there: rich people, poor people, white, black, Asian, etc. Being on an online school, sometimes you feel like you are alone and there is hardly any interaction, but in watching these children, you would never know. They played with each other; they talked, and hung out in â€Å"their† groups. Oh, the cliques! You would not think that would be so in a virtual school, but it was. There were a few groups of outsiders that came with their family and kind of stuck with them or stuck with the friends they had made online. I noticed a few poor families, but to be honest, they seemed to have the most fun. We had an issue with the face painting station. There were so many children that wanted their face painted. There was this girl that never got a number to get her face painted. (We had to do that because there were so many kids!) Her mom cussed out one of the ladies that was helping with the table because her daughter â€Å"traveled all the way from Charleston to get her face painted.† I thought, wow, public schools are bad in teaching kids certain things, but it could be even worse teaching kids at home when parents act like that. What kind of things are these parents teaching? It’s almost like sports when parents get so worked up over a game. It was just a face painting. Sometimes life is not fair. Other than that issue, many of the children were really glad to see each other and also meet the teachers. Many of them only see them via a â€Å"Skype†-like program called Live Lesson and only have contact with them through the phone and webmail. Some were very shy in meeting their teachers and some were really excited. II. How did the experience affect you? This was my first â€Å"big† experience at that school because this is a new job for me. The whole experience is new for me. I have never worked at a school and definitely did not even know there were online â€Å"public† schools. It’s hard to get to know the children and the parents especially as an administrator. I felt more like an outsider than the kids and the teachers did, I’m sure. This experience affected me in the way that our youth needs us so very badly right now. Our economy is horrible, our government is corrupt, and some of the parents that I observed are not any better. I know that I wasn’t in a private Christian school environment, but I remember when I was in public school and morals were getting worse and there were issues with the kids and their families. It is so much worse than it ever was then. It broke my heart to see some of those kids hurting. One family in particular was brought to my attention. A man I had seen at a few other events, who has at least six kids, (we’ve counted and can’t figure out exactly how many he has) is at every event supporting his kids and always by himself. Later on I had found out that his wife had passed away and now he has all of the responsibility on him. This wasn’t a divorced man, but someone with a huge loss. His children seem so happy though and he is literally at every event with them! III. What are the needs of the population that you interacted with for this assignment? There are so many needs when you are dealing with a school full of different people with different backgrounds. There are some that need discipline—this includes parents—and all who need love. I overheard a child and teacher discussing tutoring. I am thankful that Liberty University offers tutoring, whereas our school is new and doesn’t have those options yet. Most public schools have guidance counselors, not only to help with placement, but for moral support, guidance, and advice. I remember going to my guidance counselors just to talk sometimes. We don’t have this ability yet at the school. I think that the kids and parents need more activities and field trips to help with interaction with other kids and the teachers. We have field trips and â€Å"learning experiences,† but there are not enough and not enough volunteers to help with them. Our state just approved a law to let public charter schools (virtual/online) get into public schools for extra-curricular activities, like band, chorus, basketball, football, tennis, soccer, volleyball, etc. I think that is a step in the right direction in aiding with interaction issues. IV. How can you help make a difference with this group? This question is somewhat hard to answer because I am an administrator and only typically deal with truancy issues (I’m the â€Å"bad† guy!), but to be honest, I could volunteer for some of the field trips and learning experiences. I know that would help because usually the issue is there are not enough volunteers for those events. I also thought of starting some groups, much like regular public schools have. Of course, that would be asking for more volunteers! It may take off because groups like that are fun. I was thinking about heading up two particular groups in which I would have experience, but ideas of course are welcome! I would love to do a Photography club or a Bible club. I believe that it would help the kids get to interact more with each other by bringing them together with a common interest. I should make myself more available to these types of things as I am really kind of shy compared to our teachers. I also believe that this would help teacher/parent—teacher/teacher relations as well. Children need interaction with other people and it helps their social skills. That is one thing that is lacking when you are homeschooled period. It is the job of the school, in my case, an online public school, to provide as many opportunities as possible to keep the kids busy and to make sure we edify, instruct, educate, accept, and train them well because they are our future and the most important part of our society, so we better do it well and do it right.

Investigating racial awareness and whom it affects in primary schools? Essay

I have carried out an investigation on racism in primary school settings and who these matters may concern. I handed 10 questionnaires to my first placement I only received half back, so I handed another five to a different primary school I am at now these all got completed. In the questionnaire it had 10 questions to find out staffs views and if they feel their school environment provides multi-cultural. I will be showing my results in forms of bar and pie charts and finish of with a conclusion of the overall investigation. I conclude that the teacher, LSA and students who filled the questionnaires in didn’t understand the term multi-cultural and why we need to be aware of it. Introduction: I am carrying out an investigation on race and who racism is affecting within primary schools settings. The main issue of carrying the investigation out is if teachers are coping with racial equality and if qualified staffs are promoting positive images and if they know enough information about this issue for them to be making it aware for children at a young age. I have been looking at my last three placements home corners I think this a good way to see how diverse the school is. I found in my first placement that it was very multicultural it had different coloured dolls, dressing up outfits from around the world and had a variety of foods that are from other countries and religions. The second placement parkway did include celebrations while I was there such as the Chinese New Year but they did not have as much diverse equipment as they need. This investigation is important to me, as I am becoming an early year’s practitioner I would like to find out other people views and opines. Children aged 11-16 year olds are now being taught about Citizen Cyd this covers racism, friendships and even drugs, this is also being introduced to children as young as three years old in my nursery. I will be saying how primary schools can promote positive learning for the children and how teachers could improve they way of learning by having skills to teach diversity. Even if the children in the area of the school where the questionnaires were handed out are all white children there is still need for children to learn about other cultures and religions. This is so when they are older even in secondary school, they show oppression for other peoples cultures and beliefs.