ORAL HISTORY REPORT
Current rhetoric in the media suggests that schools are in dire need of repair – kids are lazy and unintelligent, teachers and unprofessional are poorly educated, and that a return to “the good old days” would be beneficial. I am not convinced. Your task for this assignment is to interview somebody that’s at least 60 years old and about their schooling experiences. Ask them all the appropriate nuts and bolts kinds of questions – where they went to school, what they liked or disliked about school…and so on.
But then ask them some hard questions that relate to the kind of questions that this class is focused on.
Questions to ask…all questions must be answered in your report. If you have other questions you would like to add, feel free to but just make sure the following questions are answered.
What did great teaching look like when you were in school?
What did good teachers do?
What did bad teachers do?
Ask them if there were differences in how rich kids and poor kids were educated.
Ask them if there was a difference in how white kids and non-white kids were educated.
How about kids with disabilities? What kinds of support existed for kids who didn’t learn as quickly as others?
What kinds of discipline existed in schools?
What messages were sent to kids about success, working hard, and getting a job?
What do they believe school prepared them for?
And do they think all kids in school would have answered that question the same. Dig at their experiences.
Compare their answers to your experiences in schooling, education and teachers. Is there a difference between them? Explain why or why not.
