I completely agree with Heather, that students are "taught" to follow the norm these days. I also feel like the ones who are told "be good today, don't cause any problems, make sure you do good on your test" etc. are the disobbdient ones. Some children want to rebell so they do the oposite of what they are told. So how can we help this students without telling them to follow a norm? Also, some parents tell their children that they better be good in school or their will be consequences. I feel like this is not incouraging the child to do well but it is a scare factor, that if they get in trouble they will be punished. Children to be doing well in school because they want to learn and want to be there not because they are "threatened" that if they don't do what they are told, or follow the norm, it is wrong. I also agree with Heather when she said that children who are allowed to express themselves good because someone famous or important. This is why we need creativity in our classrooms just as we talked about on Thursday. If we teach our students that they can be themselves and still do good in school without being a follower I think that will make a difference. Now I have a question, how do you think you can teach your students to be leaders instead of followers?

I agree with the previous statements as well. I also never really thought about students being too obedient. Children have always been told to do what their teachers say, do their work, and do not misbehave. There is some logic to children being not as obedient to show their true selves. I feel like there are advantages and disadvantages to the obedience issue. If students were not as obedient, the classroom structure would be less organized and more chaotic. There would probably be more behavior problems as well, with everyone acting differently and not being as attentive to the teacher and assignments.
In response to the previous question about how to make students more leaders, there are always different tasks or projects that you could have your students participate in and "head up" the class. Group projects could always require a leader to head up discussions and tasks within the project and then rotate positions.

I think there is a line that really needs to be defined here. As someone who often attempts to go against the norm, people often see that as "weird or crazy." Everyone remebers that person in school that thought they were going against someone else only to be imulating just a different steriotype. No matter what, there is and there needs to be some form of likeness especially in a school setting. With that said however, NO ONE STUDENT SHOULD EVER RELY STRICTLY ON ANOTHER PERSONS THINKING. Their is a reason that we are all a bit different and it is as simple as stateing that we are all different. In a school setting, every student has a unique set of difficulties just as they have a unique set of strengths. To simply play to the "averages" is setting students to fail later. I think that this paper does a fantastic job of explaining that not only in a school setting but also for when students leave school for essentially a different kind of world.

All of the previous statements that were discussed are exactly how I feel about this situation. I was really interested with this article and loved reading every word of it. I feel like many of you in the sense that children are taught to go to school, obey their teachers, and then come home with a smile on their faces. Something does need to be done about this because in the world that we are living in, today, children need to learn hoe to stand up for themselves more than ever. I think that this is be taught in a way without children being disrespectful and I believe that it is up to the teacher to think of ways to do this successfully. I feel that one of these successful ways of doing this is like Dr. Turner runs our class. Open fourems, discussions, and debates are a great way for children to express their feelings but their conversations still be able to be censored. What does everyone else think?