Reading Response for October 9th

Honestly, I didn’t think I would get through all of this reading. It seemed a little overwhelming when I printed it off, but I really got into the text. I found it rather easy to read. I think the fact that the author clarified what he was talking about helped a lot. Some of the ways McLaren explained things helped me connect to the content quite easily.

Right off the bat I knew I was going to like this text. By explaining that schools act as a social platform for students in a way other than most people see it, McLaren got the wheels turning in my mind. I enjoyed his comparison of the view of schooling to Marxism. The comparison to an ideology such as that took me off guard. However, once I got thinking about it I realized how right he is. If someone does something or is accused of something that is against the popular norm, they are isolated and cut off in many high school settings, which allows the common ideal to shoot to an even higher popularity. He then says how this ideology “indoctrinates students into becoming greedy young capitalists” (p. 62). This isn’t the view we should have of our students and the structure of the social society in high schools. The liberation aspect of McLaren’s thoughts to contradict this Marxist idea really stuck out to me. We should be, as some teacher are already, teaching out students to be free of these “popular norms.” The liberation they feel when realizing their belonging in a setting that previously shunned them should be celebrated!

Along with the concepts of ideology, I also enjoyed the section in the text on this subject. Mostly, it struck me as interesting that McLaren discussed the positive and negative aspects of ideology. Most people, from the articles I have read in my previous college experiences, tend to seem biased, even when attempting an unbiased text. McLaren, however, goes into discussion on the fact that there are positives and negatives to everything! He states how one good function of ideology includes providing all of the components by which people make sense of the world around them. The negative aspect he mentions in that same paragraph is that is infers that “all such perspectives are inevitably selective” (p. 69). I usually think of either one side of the argument at a time when dealing with heavier material like ideology and prejudice while McLaren jumps both feet in and lets everything run.