second blog post
I may have experienced the Tyler rational in my own schooling because it was very rational, orderly, and able to be used across subjects. The set up and presentation of ideas were very similar in each class. It was lecture based which was beneficial for some students but not others. It was definitely all product based all the teachers really cared about was pushing the students through. An example of this is one of my friends was not allowed to take certain subjects because the principal told her she would fail them. A lot of the teachers also had the same teaching styles which was not beneficial for students who could not learn that way. Some major limitations of Tyler’s rational is that it creates insensitivity to different cultures, it expects everyone to be subjective, you cannot treat every student the same way (everyone learns differently), and it prevents society from moving forward. A benefit is that it provides a guideline for teachers to follow allowing for them to stay on track throughout the year. Teacher-proof could be considered beneficial because it makes it so that it is impossible to fall behind (but there are also a lot of negatives to teacher-proof as well). Smith’s article points out the necessity of not just looking at the end product but how it is also important to think about how you will get there and how that will affect the students. The article also makes it very clear that education is more than schooling (p. 12). Tyler’s rational also makes it possible to have standard tests. Although there are positives when it comes to standardized testing like having each student be tested on the same thing in the same way. There are also a lot of negatives such as the fact that not every student is the same. Using the example of testing an elephant and a monkey on how to climb a tree the monkey would do better because it is created to climb trees elephants are not. Everyone is different and deserves a test that best represent their capabilities.
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