SECTION A
Summary of the Main Points
Students’ movements are not as strong as an outsider would assume, they are weak and look forward to senior students to do lobby for a protest to occur. Once the senior students graduate and move out of the university these movements break up until the existing group of senior students are ready enough to take over the leadership (Weber 62).
Collaboration between students and teachers is not possible because students are looked upon as citizens in making and cannot be held responsible for their purposeful, actualized and strategic actions. This makes teachers to be unwilling to participate in student activism in collaboration with the students. However, students can easily get support from the surrounding community and the common feeling that collaboration between the community and students is not true (Weber 93).
The material is very important because it helps us understand how students organize their politics, role of their leaders and senior students. By understanding this, administrators can be able to know how best to handle students who are protesting and come up with best strategies to mitigate such protests every time they take place.
Argument Not Convincing
The argument is not entirely convincing because we have heard cases when student politics have turned out to be powerful until politicians go seeking endorsement from the youth through the student leadership in universities. Moreover it is not possible to say with certainty that these movements are weaker than the administration because there also evidence on the contrary.
The author does not convince me and for that reason I doubt the credibility of his argument.
Authors Underlying Assumptions
The authors underlying assumptions is that administration department of colleges/ universities is very strong and has the power to control student politics due to their lack of permanent leadership and failure to get support from teachers.
This is not true because in many cases student movements have turned out to be very powerful than the administration and occasionally have forced administration change.
SECTION B
1. QUESTIONS
a) Under which circumstances are students’ politics/movements likely to be inline with those of their teachers?
b) What is the role of the community in student movement?
c) Are student movements different in single sex learning institutions?
d) Is use of coercion the best way of dealing with student protests?
2. Important terms
a) Educational justice- a solution to a problem that is as a result of a mistake on one or more stake holder(s) in a learning institution.
b) Political conflicts-an issue that can easily lead to feeling of injustice and therefore demanding for mass action/protest.
c) Student unions-organizations in learning institutions that champion student welfare.
d) Citizen in making- someone who cannot be taken to account for his/her mistakes because they are viewed as not fully processed citizen
Work Cited
Weber, Lynn. Understanding Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality.2nd Edition. London: International Publishers Co., 1998.
