Source Reflection

As I crafted this essay I used sources written by several different people holding various assumptions and biases. My most useful source was John Holts Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education. The introduction of this book explains that Holt taught at a prestige school and examined how children learn. In the book, Holt talks about ways children learn and can be taught, outside of school. Because Holt has teaching experience and has observed lots of students, I accept his opinions and trust him as an author. I figure he has been around children and is a professional teacher, so his ideas are most likely well thought out. Furthermore, Holt is widely recognized as an education professional and has written many books about education. In fact, I also used his book Learning all the Time to craft my paper. In this book he talks about how kids learn outside of the class room. He uses lots of examples and anecdotes which illustrate children teaching themselves new things. I accept the theories he presents in this book because he gives personal accounts to prove his credibility.
I got some ideas about education reform from the book Inside Charter Schools edited by Bruce Fuller. Although this source was helpful in giving me a look at some solutions to the education problem, it was really detailed and narrow so it was not as usual as I hoped. A lot of the information in this book seemed to “over prove” the thesis. Basically, I believe the argument because it seemed logical, and I did not go into depth and read all the proof.
Several of my demographics came from the book Home Schooling: Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives by Jane Van Galen and Mary Anne Pitman. Galen’s title is Foundations of Education, Youngstown State University, and Pitman’s title is Department of Education, University of Cincinnati, and just by looking at those titles I realize that this is an academic work and most likely reliable. At the end of each article is a list of references, so I can find where their research came from and check its reliability. This book included a lot of visuals, such as tables showing different home school patterns, so as a reader I noticed that the authors had scientific proof behind their theories. I accepted most of what I read in this book because of the bibliographies and visual aids.
About the other sources I used, I tried to refer only to ones that seemed “official” and academic. I stayed away from online blogs, and the only real mere “opinion” I got was from public school teachers that I emailed. Because these emails were opinion based, I could compare them to my own experiences and assumptions and throw out information that I disagreed with and keep information that seemed reasonable. For example, one email said that home schoolers are socially awkward. I did not buy into that because as a home schooler, I know that is just a stereotype and not necessarily true.
My favorite source was the book on education by Ralph Waldo Emerson. His quotes beautifully captured what I wanted to say, and because he said everything so beautifully I was willing to accept it. Furthermore his style is clear, so I was never confused as to what he was trying to communicate. I know Emerson is highly educated and an acclaimed writer and thinker, so I placed confidence in his writing and held on to most of his arguments.
Overall, I researched sources that I knew would be reliable, so I accepted most of the arguments I encountered. Additionally, because this was an Inquiry Essay, I was obligated to accept most of the arguments presented to me because each argument represented a different grey area within my controversy.