Week3 - Education

The core problems surrounding our education system today are based around the fact that our system was designed for a different era. Everything about life was so drastically different when the basis of the public education system was formed. There was a time when studying the classics and having a standard education system for the masses was beneficial. This was also a time before mass media, a global economy, and the Internet. When almost everything in our daily lives has evolved to fit the times, our education system has not. We still are putting our children into a cookie cutter system, when most success today is a result of ingenuity and creative reasoning. The test showing the decline in divergent thinking as children age truly resonates with my opinion on the public school system in the US.  We must mol our education to better fit the times and adapt to individual ways of thinking, rather than an age, or “date of manufacture” as referred to in the video.

While the videos did not have concrete or abstract solutions, they do raise very valid points that change must be made. I am not a professional in the field of education, and therefore am probably not the best to suggest resolutions to the problem, but I can recognize the fact that there is a problem. Forcing a standardized way of thinking onto children only closes their minds to their capabilities.

While I know that in passing the No Child Left Behind Act, leaders had really great hopes and intentions, in actuality it was more of a publicity act and another hindering on our public schooling. By standardizing our public school systems even further (through standardized testing) we are smothering any lingering ingenuity of our children. One system is not going to work for everyone; people learn in different ways and have different strengths and weaknesses. Instituting a standardized test for which the success of schools will be judged is completely the wrong way to go about fixing our education system.  Now, talented teachers who have the ability to help develop the minds of our young children in individualized ways are forced into this cookie-cutter system. One standardized system with this design of success or failure as a black and white system developed through math and reading, leaves no hope for divergent thinkers. This system will never work; the whole system must be restructured.

While I do not have an actual solution for this system, I know it is altogether wrong. There is so much hope and possibility in the minds of our youth. We need to help nurture those ideas and let them blossom rather than pulling what a few see as weeds, and trimming the rest to conform to an industrial revolution age’s idea of “education”.

Week 2

If I were making the decision of where to locate my middle income family of four, there clearly would be numerous influences shaping that decision. The quality of education offered in various parts of the city would be a major driver. While the quality of public schools would definitely be important, I would also take into consideration the quality of culture offered. I believe that culture is nearly as important in the education process as the actual schooling itself. I know whole-heartedly that I will raise my children in an dense urban area that can offer education on a daily basis through the culture, art, music, and diversity of residents. Suburban enclaves suffocate creativity and act as a buffer between residents and the happenings of the real world. Due to the "central place theory" there is simply more to offer in the center of a city than on the outskirts or suburbs.

In addition to providing the cultural education I desire for my children, having the option of walking down the street to the market or a few blocks to the public transit system a very important to me. To make a well thought out decision, I would need to consider the downfalls of living in the city and compare them with the option of suburban life. Realizing that often, the public school systems in cities are of lower quality than those in the suburbs, I would have to consider the cost of private education. As a middle income family, most likely the cost would be out of our budget and would require cuts elsewhere in our spending plan. I would use the bid-rent curve to my advantage in this instance; with public transit much more readily available in the city, I could put the money saved in transportation costs towards the cost of private schooling. 

Another common criticism of urban living for families is that children need areas to run and play, and unless one is a tremendously wealthy and can afford a condo next to Central Park, the options are slim to none. In order to address this problem as a middle income family, again we would need to make changes to our living plan. I would choose to reside in a small modest apartment/condo within a five minute walk to a small park. I believe that the availability of museums, neighborhood parks, theaters, and events would outweigh the stereotypical suburban mansion on a full acre of green grass, and that by giving up the extra space available in the suburbs, we would gain the quality of life I would be striving for. 

While I don't know how well the concentric zone model applies to cities today, if I were to apply the model to New York City, I would suppose that the central business district would be manhattan in general, while the "factory zone" would be Brooklyn or Queens. the "zone of transition" and"working class" zones would be Jersey City and Newark, and the commuter zone would be everywhere beyond that. While I can dream of living in Manhattan in Chelsea or Harlem, in reality as a middle income family that would not be likely. I would have to most likely move somewhere such as Brooklyn. There are many really great neighborhoods there that would be ideal for my living situation and desires. It seems odd to consider these areas "factory zones" but at one time they were. Gentrification has taken its course throughout Manhattan and is spreading rapidly through these further boroughs, but using the Burgess model of concentric zoning, I guess I will have to say that I would chose to raise my middle income family in the "factory zone" (a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn). 

Week 1

I find it kind of funny how a description of what makes cities so great is given in the introduction to the first reading, and what they stress are the tourist-y traps such as the statue of liberty, golden gate bridge, etc. While these a very prominent and important sites, I don’t feel that they should be mentioned as the first reason why cities are so important. Rather, the attention should focus on what truly makes a city so special which is the connections between residents, the interactions of food, culture, music, and art all working together to create the lifeline of the city. One of my favorite quotes about this magic of cities was offered by Jane Jacobs, she referred to this interaction and connectedness as “the ballet of the street”.

I really support the idea that by attempting to put order into cities, planners and developers managed to ruin the magic of cities. As mentioned in the first reading developers came into cities with this overarching idea that order was needed and that separation of uses equaled order. Through this idea, suburbs (or the death of great American cities) were created. By designating large shopping malls, convention centers, and areas of separate uses only connected by highways, cities were meticulously being taken apart. The separation of uses developed and promoted throughout the last thirty years really created more problems than ever imagined.  Hope for the future of cities is coming back to life in recent years though. Young people everywhere are beginning to see past the “promises of suburbia” and returning to cities and therefore perpetuating their diversity and growth. Richard Florida has coined this as “the rise of the creative class.”

Many times in papers such as these, it is easy to get the impression that there are only two polar opposite options when considering the problems of cities. They mention individualist vs. communitarian communities, centralized vs. decentralized education systems, and regionalists vs. decentralists just to name a few. The problem with this outlook is that it promotes a way of thinking in which answers are either left or right, rather than comprehensively including both left and right. This then promotes the idea that one must either be pro-city or pro-rural, but the truth is that there is a place and need for all degrees of density.  Andres Duany used a concept from ecology to describe this idea, he considered it a “rural to urban transect” in which increasing levels of density could be found. Using this theory helps to please people with varying outlooks on cities. This way everyone can see that all types of land, from pure natural preserves, to farms and low density towns, to dense urban centers all have their place in society.

I just believe that is important to look at these issues seen in our landscapes today not as “America’s urban problems” but as “America’s problems”.  All densities of towns from rural to urban impact each other and feed off of each other, and in order to solve the problems in one area, we must look at the ways we are living in all areas.

Introducing Me

Hello, my name is Kali Miller and I am a senior in the School of Sustainability with a focus on Urban Dynamics and a minor in Urban and Metropolitan Studies. I am from Indiana but have lived here in AZ for three years.  I live, work, and play in downtown Phoenix with the occasional trip to Tempe for class. Currently I am a server at Pita Jungle Downtown where I can be found about 25 hours a week. I am also an intern for Roosevelt Row downtown.

When I am not in class or work, I practice yoga at Sutra Midtown, travel as often as possible, venture around on my bike, go to concerts, and kick it with my friends. Now that you know a little about me, you can follow all my exciting urban policy blogs!