Education Is Politics: An Agenda for Empowerment
This is my favorite of all of the Year's Handouts with regards to Teaching Methodologies. I am still not comfortable using the term Pedogogy? For the entire school year we have been talking about the following; What type of school environment and city did you come from? My answer is always;
Working-class schools but in a very tightly disciplined environment, whereby the Counselors would help you immensely if you were an Honors or Deans List student. Since I rebelled against its Hitler- type environment, I would keep my nose clean, but lost interest in school and the disinterested teachers who felt that I was destined for the Factory floors of Industry. I had a straight B which kept my Mom and Dad out of my hair, and the teachers out of my lifestyle. I could hear a lecture once, or read an article once and it would stay with me for an entire school year almost verbatim. But I digress
once again. Our teachers themselves were under the yoke of a dictatorial, narrow-minded, thick-waisted, perpetually scowling, discipline first, foremost, and always unhappy looking ogre. Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn to his gaze, of which I would return it with equal distain and loathing.
I like how Ira Shor says that the most important thing that young students should be learning before the three R's is Socialization. He urges teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school. Wow. This is what I used to do and get in trouble for? I would question things like Why don't we have a school cafeteria, and have to brown bag our lunches daily? How come we no longer have a football teach? How come the Student Council are all Straight A Students that seemed to get elected and yet everyone swore that none of us voted for them. I smelled a Rat. A Big Smelly Rat?
Ira has the right idea, how we need students to develop socialization skills first and be able to ask questions of our teachers and principles and not be kept in a state of fear from authority. I had no problem with the three R'S. I had a real problem with the "other" three U's that we had in our school.
Unnecessary Restrictions, Unwanted Repression, Undemocratic Restraint. As Ira Shor says, "The restraint and imposition in the socializing function of school. He further states that a school year that begins by questioning school could be a democratic and critical learning experience for students. I have seen this type of "openly democratic learning" in Tim Shannon's classes at the Met School in Providence. He does not ever raise his voice, as his students listen out of respect, not out of fear. The principle is a smiling, soft-speaking man who also is respected, not feared. Fear is only a short-term motivator, while respect and love last a very long time. I took a chance on the Met School and their method of teaching in small classes, mutual respecting, highly socialized environment of free speech.
I was not wrong in that choice then, and I write of this now as proof that this teaching method works.
Back to "Empowering Education" where he says, "you must arouse children's curiosity and think about school." We do this with a discussion about why do we go to school? This gets them to open up like the petals of a flower when it faces the sun. And with the same sense of facing knowledge in an open encouraging democratic classroom, where you want to learn, and not be forced to learn by fear.
Piaget urged a reciprocal relationship between teachers and students, where respect for the teacher coexisted with cooperative and student-centered pedagogy. "If the aim of intellectual training is to form the intelligence rather than stock the memory, Piaget wrote, "and to produce intellectual explorers rather than mere erudition, then traditional education is manifestly guilty of a grave deficiency." That pretty much sums up that portion of thinking in this part of the article.
Further, In a curriculum that encourages student questioning, the teacher avoids a unilateral transfer of knowledge, she or he helps students develop their intellectual and emotional powers to examine their learning in school, their everyday experience, and the conditions in society. This is exactly the reverse of what I believe is happening in the Traditional Teaching Schools of today. Discipline and Order is first order of business, which is wrong. First order of business is to establish an environment of free thinkers, an opportunity to ask questions and get honest answers, not the politically correct ones, or the ones that the school board preapproved. I am not suggesting that we throw the "baby out with the bath water?" I am suggesting that we change what is not working, and make substantial paradigm changes to what we know is not working, and has not worked for a long time. Fred Issa
I really enjoyed the first two lines of the third paragraph, " like how Ira Shor says that the most important thing that young students should be learning before the three R's is Socialization. He urges teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school." Students should be questioning and talking about their school experiences.
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