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             There is a lot that can be said about the current state of education. There is a lot to be said about what is wrong with the current state of education. In particular, there is still a lot to say about different types of inequalities apparent within the classroom. While I could talk about racial or socioeconomic inequalities, I would like to focus on the gender inequalities of males and females. Even more specifically, I will argue that these gender inequalities are brought about through the ways in which people (teachers, students, etc.) have been socialized to look at gender and education and the fact that males and females just learn differently.

"One well-known path to change is a heavily favorable mutation in a single gene. But it may be well known only because it is easy to study. Another path is exploitation of mildly favorable differences that already exist in many genes ... Theorists have argued over this point for years, but researchers have been able to address it only recently." ... Natural selection cuts broad swath through fruit fly genome, New York Times, 20 September, 2010

Our discussion of getting lost made me think of this article from the last summer’s New York Times. I believe it relates to Solnit in the way that getting lost within the bounds of the unknown is unsettling - you don’t physically know your way around the woods, you don’t know what a word means, you cannot interpret a situation or your own thoughts. Unknown unknowns cause the brief flashes of panic that occur once you are ‘found’ – the fact that you are not aware of things you do not know about (take a second to read that slowly) is such an uncomfortable idea, as you cannot prepare for them. Being lost, having an unknown location, is built on the framework of your unknown unknowns. Here’s the article.

Exit through the Gift Shop: (Guetta) via Banksy, not (Banksy) via Guetta

Trailer:

   It can be argued that the U.S. has created and maintained a culture of black males who feel trapped in the stereotypes of society and therefore often fall into them. With no one expecting them to amount to anything but a statistic, African-American males subconsciously fulfill the roles of high school dropout, drug dealer, criminal, gangster, jock, and teen father. They continuously feed into a system that exploits rather than supports them.

           Co-constructive education liberates the students from having to worry about having an aim in mind. Students are free to explore knowledge and construct understandings on their own term. The hope is that this freedom will inspire new and creative ways of comprehending the world. One assumption behind this method of education is that knowledge is subjectively constructed. There is no single body of knowledge that necessarily grounds all understandings.

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 African American Student Mobility through Education: “You sound white…”