Learning Theories Week 2 T2P

Today's class built on the things that we learned in last weeks class.  Last week we learned that there are so many different influences on a learners life and school is just one of many.  We learned that you need to cater your teaching style in competition with the many distractions out there in the world. Today we looked at how specifically to do that in a classroom setting.  This is done through analysis of our educational philosophy.  What goals do you consider to be the most important and how do you get to them safely and in the most efficient and fair way.
Our analysis of other teachers work was eye-opening.  Obviously I have seen Dead Poets Society.  Every book and movie on teaching references it in one way or another.  I have not ever watched the movie critically however.  Paying attention to such details as the moral fortitude of Robin Williams character to keep telling his students to rip out pages of the text while the principal is standing in the doorway was never a goal of watching the movie before.  By analyzing techniques, even in a fictional setting,  it becomes possible to weed out nuances of teaching that can be used in the future to build on my own moral values that I will pass on to students.  Another of the videos that we watched today was of the woman running a sixth grade math class.  That clip illicited alot of emotion from me.  Initially I saw a drill sergeant making her students jump when she said jump.  The lesson plan might have been on PEMDAS but the under-current of the lesson was on obeying authority and conformity to the group mentality.  I was then surprised to see all of the class having fun and behaving.  All of the students seemed to enjoy themselves and their were smiles on every face.   Again I was dismayed as I look further though.  A number of students in the crowd were not making the right gestures.  Others had no partner and they were just talking to the wall.  When she asked them to tell each other how excited they were about the topic no-one communicated with each other.  There was just yelling and shouting throughout the room. 
I guess the short of it is that appearances can be decieving.  Conformity and obedience can be enforced in the classroom but does any real learning come out of that?  She never stopped to ask questions or help out someone who might have missed a step.  She ran on like a freight train, never stopping to get input from the students. Perhaps that was on purpose?  I don't know.  What I do know is that there must be a concious decision as an educator to think about what subtleties of morality are going to be picked up by my students.  Am I going to teach as a cowering idealist who changes his attitude when the principal shows up or am I going to stand by my convictions knowing that I have the right to them?  Will I teach in such a way that my students think for themselves or will I brand them into groups with conformist activities?  What I learned today is that those are questions that I must ask myself everyday if I am to be a successfull educator.