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Ron, I agree with you that issues of social justice permeate education, and that inequality is present on all levels of society (at home, in the classroom, in larger communities, etc). Thank you for your input.

In the past, I’ve found it to be very useful to compare and contrast the educational systems within a single country as well as between different countries. I think our group would benefit from hearing more about your experiences in the Netherlands, especially regarding open-ended transactional learning styles.

On another note, though it was a small part of his post (really just one word, in fact), Ron touched on a very important piece of the education pie that we haven't discussed much. That piece is, of course, parenting. After reading Ron's thoughts, I remembered Unequal Childhoods, a book by Annette Lareau that I read in a Social Inequality in the United States course. In her book, Lareau argues that the very language used at home with children and the questions parents ask (or do not ask) alter a child's self-perception.

Our focus this summer tends towards education as understood within the realm of schools and classrooms, but education certainly occurs at home. If we accept that we're all scientists and that the revised scientific method is a useful way of treating all observations (be they inside or outside the classroom) parents should be just as important as teachers in cultivating these ways of viewing the world.