discussion |

May 1st has come and gone but how many of us teachers really challenged our students to learn about the place and importance of “the working class” in our teaching? How many of us challenged students to think about how we get the things we adorn our lives with – ipads, bicycles, cool t-shirts, gourmet coffee or the sheets we curl up in?

I introduce this post and challenge teachers after thinking about this while in Turkey presenting and teacher training. At the recent Istek ELT conference I attended a presentation by a teacher who has started “The No Project”. A project seeking to inform students world wide about human exploitation and slavery. A heavy topic but one we need to keep in our radar.

I have been one who when challenged, asked, has told teachers to steer clear of this subject and others like religion, sexual oriention, politics, racism and so forth …. Thought our place as teachers was to help paying students with their English and there were plenty of other “safe” topics. I don’t advocate this anymore.

Think of the recent news from Bangladesh and the murder of hundreds of garment workers. Yes, murder. Anyone who dies unnecessarily and through no fault of their own is murdered. But what has the news shown us? Nothing but a news story. Deaths and facts and that’s all. No learning. Manufacturers carry on like it is business as usual. Yes, some have said they’ll offer compensation etc… But this is just PR, it isn’t really changing their value system (stockholder value) or giving workers support, proper pay and sharing wealth. We owe it to ourselves as educators to take a moment and ask our students, explain to our students how this came about. How the cheap goods we get in our Walmart or Costco, cost, cost lives and even worse daily pain and suffering. [a nice place to start is "The Story of Stuff"]

During the presentation about The No Project, several teachers questioned how they could ever bring up this topic in class. Impossible they said. And yes, I sympathize with teachers who are in this situation (most of us). However, be it the official curriculum or the hidden curriculum (often what isn’t in the textbooks and by omission sends a message), we need to be subversive in our own way and can do so if we are smart educators. Doesn’t have to be a full lesson or written into the lesson plan. Can just be a few moments, a video, a song. Nothing direct but we can inductively turn on our students minds to be critical thinkers and seers – good educators do this. I’ve spoken with them and they are magicians in how they bring into the official curriculum, the real world and the important issues.

When I was teaching ESL, I always did it at the beginning of the day. Every day, I’d scoop up 20-30 issues of the Metro newspaper on the subway. I’d bring them to class and students could read during the 20 minutes before school started and when they had to be at their desks. Then when class started, I directed conversation about what was happening in the world. This was our kitchen table, my way of bringing up questions about the world not in the official and “purile” curriculum.

Think about it. Several decades ago, we couldn’t mention or spend time on the environment. It was a non issue. Publishers would say nobody was interested in “green” and it wasn’t the role of the teacher to use this kind of topic. However nowadays, you can’t buy a textbook with the subject being prominent. Yet, today, other issues don’t get into the official curriculum, like “peace” , like “human slavery” , like “sexual orientation” – why not? Can we wait 20 more years until they become timely? I say no, we can’t wait. Each of us teachers needs to be subversive, needs to bring this to our class, our kitchen table.

I’ve always valued people (teachers or otherwise) who call things as they are. They stand for values and find schools and work that allows them to be who they are. I’ve become convinced I have to be the same. So I’m making plans to change my life and really stop just standing at the pulpit but put things into practice. Also, help those in need. And I think big or small, all teachers can do this, we really can. Otherwise if we don’t – we as teachers are exploited and by default, our students also.

Scott Thornbury has a recent post on this about “Representation”. As always, the comments on his post are very insightful. It mostly deals with textbooks and their lack of “critical pedagogy” but also about how we as teachers have a responsibility to bring the world into our classrooms, given that textbooks and official materials don’t.

Please look more at The No Project and think about what you as a teacher can do. I want to do more also. My Project Peace helped but really think the classroom is the front line. This video might be a start.

Having recent stepped back from teaching, I’m starting to see the forest for the trees and been thinking a lot about the “competitive” nature of our classrooms, our schools and our western educational systems.

First off, I’m not a warm and fuzzy “humanist”, asserting that we shouldn’t measure or mark students. Not at all. Competition is healthy if done without long lasting “selfish” and negative consequences, if done for the benefit of learning. That said, I do find some very disturbing things about how we line up and race students down the learning path. This has been my experience and here are a few of my observations.

1. The race is to the quick?

How come we make learning into a sprint? Why not a marathon? Why not off track or even against yourself? What I mean is, we chunk up learning into discrete units of time and space, usually a few weeks or months. Students memorize and “learn” in a short period of time. We then say they have “learned”. We then say who has won, who gets the ribbons and who is “dumb”. But what have they won? And what about the students who learn over time, the hedgehogs and late bloomers? Why should we look at learning only through a short time frame and in terms of learning having an expiration date?

2. Teaching to the top.

The competitive nature of our education system, our labeling and grading, our ranking and judging of students – creates a hierarchy. And one of the most severe consequences of this, is so many teachers without clothes. Meaning, teachers teaching to the high end, to the audience that is listening/responding. They really and truly have no clothes though – unaware that so many others are left along the road, not really learning and yet still afraid to tell the teacher they have no clothes (for they aren’t teaching those that truly need it, the others at the top will learn nevertheless and sometimes inspite of the teacher). Why do we continue to teach to the top and create schools where only the “top” fit in?

3. Values out the door – dog eat dog.

When we mark a student and compare students, aren’t we making education into one giant scramble up the intellectual garbage heap? Is that the end game and role of education – to create individuals who are constantly comparing themselves, ranking themselves against others? Supremism / Superiorism / Elitism / Cliquism seems to be the end result, along with a lot of individuals laid to waste along this road. Why must there be failures for others to succeed? Who ever said it should be so?

4. Intellectual Grandiosis

This is the disease that our competitive education system holds up as a sign of health. Why must the end goal of all education, from kindergarten to university, be the creation of a being that counts only from the neck up? So asked Ken Robinson. I totally agree. Why should the race just be along the path of facts and books and rationalism? Why don’t we value our quirky ones, or our athletes, or our very empathetic and kind students? Is not empathy something we learn and should value? Why do we worship the rotting library of academia?

5. Knowing More Does Not Mean Understanding More.

Our students “know” and the competitive system assures so. However, that doesn’t equate to understanding nor even the enacting and proper use of this knowledge. There are many students who do intuitively understand and who we don’t value because they can’t explain it. Why should we equate “winning” with being able to explain? We undervalue and undermine the great force of intuition and wisdom in our competitive market place.

5. Institutionalized Powerlessness

We value human beings by how many years of competitive schooling they’ve had. X number of years and you have it made, you are of the “powerful”. You’ve climbed to the top and are given “value” for such. But what about those who’ve learned by themselves, who gained knowledge while on the toilet or from the tube or their Toshiba laptop? Who is the great decider that tells who should go left and others go right? Isn’t our educational system to blame? How we consign people to failure not based on merit but solely because they didn’t run the educational race?

Just a few thoughts about how competitive education has become. We make it so, to our detriment.

I hope the next blog post, to outline some ways teachers can be subversive and help all students with as little labeling as possible.

Tag Archives: discussion

Saying NO (more)

The Competitive Side of Schooling