Comments on the Tyak article

In America we make a big deal about democracy and making sure we preserve it, but what is it really? The simplest definition that most people will agree with is that it is a form of government by the people and for the people. The appeal for democracy is so strong that it is infused in America's public school sytems. Tyak's article shows how the common school has been built on the values of a democratic society and illustrates that it is still prevelant within the school sytem today. He states, "A survey in 1996 of public school teachers reveals the resilience of traditional civic values and the resistance to controversy in the schools. A majority believed that teaching common core moral values was more important than teaching academics." These common core values include principles of freedom, liberty, diversity and individualism. This made me think about what really is important to students.
This may be me going off on a tangent, but I feel that most students are less worried about what they learned and more concerned with the grade they recieved. One of my teachers asked our class today, "Why are you in college?" One honest individual simply stated, "To get a piece of paper." The truth is that most people fall into this category and are in it for the grades or the diploma that will get them the job and not necessarily for what they will learn from it. However, this does connect to the teaching of American values because I would say that out of all the knowledge that is presented to students throughout their educational careers those values are the most important for their lives. I would agree that they are all embedded in the school sytems of today and that they are important concepts that should be taught and valued in schools.