b. What’s your response to Mr. Harvey?
Mr. Harvey sounds like a more traditional teacher in the 1960's-80s. From what i have read, some teachers back then use to be a lot more strict, and serious about teaching. Mr Harvey uses threatening and powerful word to explain the importance of english, but this is not always a good thing. As we can see by the reading, Mr. harvey made most of the kids nervous and scared, which got in the way of learning english. He told the kids that they were dumb, and that he was smart. He forced them to talk out loud, when they knew that they would screw up. This creates a tension that is not good for a learning environment.
Although he seemed like a bad teacher to me, his statement is pretty important. To make it in America, it is important to not sound illiterate. It will make job searching a lot easier, and you can be more successful in life. But just because you are illiterate that doesn not mean you will automatically not be able to get a job, it just means it will be alot harder to get one.
Hi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the way people are judged based on their ability to speak, write and read Standard English? School definitely has its expectations, but school aside, who gets to decide what is "good English" versus "bad English"? Take for instance, accents. Why do people privilege European accents? How often is someone with a French accent in the U.S. criticized for speaking "broken English"?
Lauren
You did a good job of brining the times in to prospective when talking about Mr. Harvey and his teaching methods. You are right they were very different times then the more politically correct ones we live in today. So in the context of the fifties then this sort of teaching practice was more common in our schools, and I would imagine even more in Hawaii while the war was under way. Although this does not give Mr. Harvey the right to treat his students the way he did, I am thankful that we have the school systems we do today.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cody.
I agree with you that his style of teaching was not necessarily too harsh but he approached the situation incorrectly. He scared the students which made them revert to their pigeon English. This was kind of a time where America was trying to educate Hawaii and make them apart of the united states and it doesn't sound like he was very excited to be there teaching.
ReplyDeleteHi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Mr. Harvey's message was important and that his approach was getting in the way of the children learning proper English. Although there may be a few kids that do well from this approach I would guess that the majority of them suffer from it. It's hard to learn from someone who you're afraid of and who makes you self-conscious.
Deborah
Hi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteYour response to Mr. Harvey was nicely done you had made some several good points. It did sound like is more of the traditional teacher back in the 1960’s and 80s from the way he had taught his students. He was determined to get them out of the habit of speaking pidgin and into a more Standard English even if that meant his students disliked him so much cause of the way he taught, but I would have to agree he didn’t seem like such a great teacher, but he was teaching something that is important in the professional world today. I did catch some basic spelling errors but overall your writing had good content.
Hi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your response to Mr. Harvey, I especially liked how you brought into account the fact that teachers 50 years ago may have taught that way, that is a fact I hadn't thought of. Another thing about your response that I liked is that it's not a good learning environment when you force children to speak aloud when it is obvious that it makes them uncomfortable. You brought up points that I hadn't taken into account and I'm glad I chose to read your blog. Thanks for the views.
Hi Tyler,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you a lot about Mr. Harvey and you helped me see him in a different perspective. I didn't think about how he could have been from the 1960's-80's and your right way back in the day I believe they even used paddles to spank the children that were not behaving properly. So they were a lot more strict back then and that could have been the norm. Although, I still don't think it was right. I think that there are other ways of teaching that will be much more successful. Thanks,
Brittany