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Freedom in the Classroom Teachers usually teach a typical classroom, but just how much does the teacher teach? Most high school classrooms today have preset lesson plans, fixed agendas, and assigned texts that the teacher decides to use; but instead assigned to the teacher by the board of education of what the students need to know. This necessary material that teachers teach gives the students knowledge. Most high schools have this system of teaching, regardless of how well it worked in the past, it does not work well know. Democracy in the classroom presents itself like this: teachers would vote for representatives who hold similar ideas to them, for example, ideas of how to teach and what to teach; these representatives would then get together, and vote on the ideas they have conflicts with. In the end, the teachers need to teach whatever they consider as the appropriate content and approach. Democracy in the classroom may work well for the majority, but what about the minority? Democracy in high school classrooms does not work because of the overgeneralization it places on the classrooms, restrictions on the teachers’ abilities, and incorporations of outdated techniques of teaching. I would rather have the teacher teach the way she feels would be the most effective for the student in his/her classroom. First off, what defines democracy in the classroom? The dictionary best defines democracy as majority rule. Democracy forms a control that incorporates learned-lessons and proven facts of the past. It takes away the idea that most people get a say in what goes on. They have representatives, elected by the board of education, that collectively get together to decide issues on, what they should teach in the classroom, and how well they would teach it.. When ideas conflict in democracy, the majority wins and the minority has to succumb to the democratic decision. With democracy in the classroom comes an extreme overgeneralization of how children learn and what they need to learn. Every class has a different dynamic, making the best possible approach different for each class. Some classes would do best with group work, while other classes produce the best results through note-taking, and lectures. Throughout most of my high school career I did not learn anything.
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