In Experience and Education, John Dewey writes:
"I am not romantic enough about the young to suppose that every pupil will respond or that any child of normally strong impulses will respond on every occasion. There are likely to be some who, when they come to school, are already victims of injurious conditions outside of the school and who have become so passive and unduly docile that they fail to contribute. There will be others who, because of previous experience, are bumptious and unruly and perhaps downright rebellious."
Dewey goes on to say that neither the traditional "battle of wills" method of bringing non-participating students into participation, nor the straight out exclusion of these students from the school, are solutions to these kinds of student situations. He also goes on to discuss the need for sufficiently thoughtful planning on the part of the school, so as to make room for and have resources to deal with such students.
But the assumption I'm hearing is that students start out wanting ever so much to learn and participate democratically and prepare ahead and strike the optimal balance of respect for authority and confidence in their individual positions. This I tend to agree with, but only within the context of students' developmental levels. There is likelihood of student disengagement, rebelliousness, passivity, and poor previous experience no matter where students come from in the socioeconomic spectrum. These things are part human variant, part developmental stage (like separation from authority in high school or devotion to black & white thinking and social group definition in middle school), and part -- not all - environment.
In our next conversation, or one of the next anyway, I'd like to chat more with the group about how, if at all, we would like to continue exploring the implications of targeting specifically disadvantaged student populations for any school endeavor. Ditto the boarding school. There's quite a bit students lose when they are removed from their home environment into one created by, and consisting solely of, their school environment. The kind of students we start talking about when we talk about the benefits of a boarding school will need much more infrastructural support than just a caring set of teachers and a dorm dad.
(Just having an anti-Stand and Deliver backlash moment, and wondering if we can talk about who we want to be as educators without creating straw orphans to save by the sheer power of our great teaching and school administration in the process.)
Have at it with me in the comments?
I'm not greatly keen on the idea of creating a school solely for disadvantaged students. I think it should be a blending of advantaged and disadvantaged students. We can provide some sort of scholarship basis for the disadvantaged kids and require school uniforms (which could also be funded in part or whole by scholarship). The idea here is that students are students and should not be segregated based on their background. If the idea is to help all students, we can teach tolerance all around and not place so much emphasis on a child's history and perhaps present living environment--and place more of it on the child's future.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as one who has taught at many schools for children exclusively of disadvantaged families, I can tell you that you will find a culture will arise in which students develop a collectively low self esteem. And socialization amongst themselves will perpetuate this as they all find excuses about why they cannot succeed. I think this would be especially pronounced if our school initiates in a predominantly non-white neighborhood. A bunch of white people preaching education to black, hispanic, etc. students may give the impression to students (even if unintentional) that their race is educationally inferior.
I once felt a strong desire to become an educator. I studied pedagogical philosophy for a long time, dreamed of writing my own math text for children (talk about a broken system!), and worked to tutor my friends and peers at regular intervals. I recently got back in touch with an old friend (foreign exchange student) who told me I was the main reason he became fascinated with math and pursued his PhD. He now has 11 publications. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteI am still passionate about education, but "teaching" isn't for me. Educating others is fundamentally about leading others where they have little (practical) capability to go on their own.
So why isn't teaching for me? The traditional school system emphasizes teaching at the expense of learning. It emphasizes process over results. It emphasizes grades over understanding. It emphasizes the results of science instead of the process of science. It's artificial problems are neatly solvable when the real world is complex. The traditional school system has become like a factory, where scientific management is utilized to control the students instead of leading them. The whole experience of teaching in a public school is just absolutely terrifying for these reasons.
Now, I've taken a round-about way to get here, but carefully note what I didn't talk about above. I did not talk about socioeconomic issues. I did not talk about financially and emotionally disadvantaged kids. Why? Because these factors don't define what kind of educator I wish to be.
The reality is that MOST kids are performing below their capacity. MOST kids need and deserve better systems than what society is delivering today. Fundamentally, MOST kids are disadvantaged in that they have very few people supporting them in the goals/objectives that they choose for themselves. Why should I focus my efforts on a single subset of students when the basis for everything I believe about education rests on the notion that we are all equal in our humanity?
Not only do I think we tear down the straw orphans and ask ourselves who we want to be, but Why, Why, Why, Why, and Why. It's a game we play called 5 Why's. We should all try it.
- Andrew
So, for those of you who don't already know what the 5 Why's are, Jessica suggested I post a little more information here.
ReplyDeleteClarification of the 5 Why's can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
Illustrative example can be found here http://moneytipsguide.blogspot.com/2009/02/5-whys-of-money-management.html
The whole point is to drive yourself to a deeper and deeper understanding why it is that you want what you say you want. Who we want to be as teachers is best understood from the perspective of WHY we want to be that way.
As an additional comment, after Jessica and I talked about Rachel's question, we realized we had come away with different understandings of what was expected to be done in response to this post. Jessica felt it requested our participants to focus on the pros/cons of the border school / disadvantaged kids emphasis. I really felt like the point of the post was to open refocus our discussion on who we want to be as teachers.
Perhaps some clarification on this point would be beneficial to those who have not chimed in yet.