Back To School By Ira Glass Analysis

Prior to listening to Ira Glass on “Back to School” there were a lot of ideas and beliefs of my own on education. I thought that all it would talk about, would be the power that SES (Social Economic Status) holds for education. It should be known that at times I tend to believe statements to be true without proper research on my behalf if they are stated as statistics or statements giving credit to scientist conducting correlational research (please keep in mind that this was prior to Dr. Romero’s speech about not believing all types of correlational research). Another belief, I have is the argument of Nature Vs Nurture.
Ira Glass starts off talking about how the United States focuses a lot on standardized tests, according to Glass this is
In the podcast Glass interviews a man by the name of Paul Tough. Tough also talks about what is being measured by these standardized test, Tough and Glass call it cognitive skills. My stance on this is that sadly I am one of those people that believed that Standardized testing is all that matters when it comes to development, but I feel as if I was taught to believe that due to teachers emphasizing how important it was. After listening to Glass I realize that those types of test are not all that matter, if we want our youth to not just learn but thrive in school. In the prologue Glass talks about the pressure the education system puts on its employees, our teachers. Glass goes on to talk about this nationwide debate, he states “how much could we expect teachers to actually accomplish? Like how much could they do, really, with the students they were given?” For the first time I actually realized that while teachers do play an important role on trying to help develop cognitive skills sometimes it truly is out of their reach. Till the podcast I actually believed that there were only
I think that part of the reason I felt this way about poverty is from first hand experiences and media outlets constantly leading one to believe that low SES is the reason for lack of these skills. Glass states that it’s not really poverty and low SES but the stress caused by these factors. He states that a difficult home lie affects the biology of the brain causing difficulties in learning. Glass then goes on to talk about the vicious effects of stress like for example, a difficult childhood can put an individual at risk of developing COPD at a rate two and a half times higher than an individual who does not experience stress. According to the podcast, stress produces more cortisol putting the human body in a fight or flight state, Glass states that it is like fighting a bear, it shuts off a human’s cognitive side and gives more primal instinct. It is also stated that stress affects the pre frontal cortex in which self-control, impulse control and certain memories and reasoning happens. This is certainly a lot of information to take in but very useful because it is sold information that helped me understand that it wasn’t low SES but really, stressing and stress can be caused by many things than just low