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The following study draws from interviews with and written questionnaires from forty minority high school students from Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, California. Their articulation of what a positive learning environment is like provides important information for urban teachers. As a teacher myself, my interest is to illustrate the importance of community in the high school classroom. By community, I mean several things. I refer to a democratic environment in which people (teachers and students) care enough about themselves and other people to work together for common goals, and to become not only participants or observers, but change agents. I refer to a classroom in which people learn collaboratively, in which learning is clearly connected to the learners' lives and worlds, and in which all cultures and languages are valued and have meaningful purposes. The student voices expressed in this study are essential to understanding the experiences and perceptions of urban high school students regarding ideal learning environments. Such voices are largely absent in discussions about improving urban education, but are necessary if we are to make any significant changes in schools. In this paper I will first present a theoretical argument for
democratic
community in the classroom, drawing from the work of several critical
theorists.
I focus on theories which view learning as social and which acknowledge
the importance of shared power and collectivity. I will then explain
how
such democratic practices are linked to student perceptions of a
positive
learning environment. Using a Marxist theory of alienation, I show how
the absence of such democratic practices in schools and classrooms can
play a part in creating an environment in which students and teachers
can
become alienated from school, from curriculum, from each other, and
from
learning. I argue that students and teachers are alienated primarily
through
oppressive and isolating structures and ideologies, through lack of
access
to the tools for knowledge production, and through a lack of respectful
and humane relationships between members of the school. Such
alienation,
I argue, leads to many "problems" in schools that are usually blamed on
teachers and students. I go on to relate my own experience as an
English
teacher in an urban high school in Oakland, California, and then to
evaluate
my students' testimonies about their perceptions of positive learning
environments.
Here I show more concretely, using student voices, how students and
teachers
can be alienated in school and classrooms. I also explore, again using
student data, the connection between curriculum, student-teacher
relationships,
and student resistance. Finally, I support a liberatory pedagogy and
offer
possibilities for teacher resistance.
Theoretical
Basis
Many critical theorists such as Henry Giroux, Paulo Friere, Lilia Bartolome, and Michael Apple have written about the need for a democratic community in the classroom. For example, Bartolome argues for a "humanizing pedagogy that values the students' background knowledge, culture, and life experiences, and creates contexts where power is shared by teachers and students" (55). In order to value students' life experiences in the classroom, and to connect learning with the reality of students' lives, we must try to learn about them. To do that, we need to have respectful, trusting relationships with them. In a humanized and democratic classroom, the teacher's primary role is not solely one of a disciplinarian. There is no need to develop dozens of rules or to offer rewards and punishments for behavior. "Instead, structure comes through an underlying program of activities that moves students through real and meaningful work and makes everybody in the class feel invested in that work. Discipline comes from engagement and activity, imposed more from within the group than from the teacher's desk. Responsibility for classroom order is shared" (Kutz and Roskelly, 251). I argue in this paper that when democratic ideals of humanity, shared power, and collectivity are practiced in the classroom, students will perceive a positive learning environment. They will feel respected and will care more about their own learning, which will consequently avoid the need for authoritarian discipline. Unfortunately, the focus in most of North American life is on the individual, not on collectivity. This serves in the long run to reproduce existing systems because it causes people to act against their own interest, which is collective struggle. In fact, people begin to believe that it is in their best interest not to work or interact with other people, especially people of races or classes that are different from their own. Schools often not only condone but encourage the reified, alienated lives that students follow in resignation. Dominant practices and ideologies in schools deny the fact that humans are social and require the cooperation of several individuals. Patrick Shannon explains that "individuals acquire language and shape it to fit...social environment(s). In this way, language and literacy are both personal and social. The purpose for developing either is to ensure that one's needs get met and thoughts get known, but in order to act on those purposes, language and literacy must take place in a social environment" (48). When schools diminish that social environment and focus only on the individual, both teachers and students can easily be alienated from the learning process. They can be further alienated when the ownership and production of knowledge and the tools for such ownership and production - including state and national standards, standardized test content, textbook content, curriculum materials and approved reading lists - become private and controlled by those other than the learners and teachers. In fact, tools for thought and learning can be parallel to tools for work. This connection is linked to the ideas of Marx, who explained the social nature of humans and in fact defines society as "the sum of the relations in which…individuals stand to one another" (Ollman, 104). To Marx, when people are separated from their life activity (work) by severing their relationship with the tools for work (because someone else owns these tools), their relationships with their product and with other people are also severed. They become alienated, and lose their communal nature. They become individualistic and competitive, and therefore no longer resemble what Marx considered to be natural (wo)man. "What is left of the individual after all of these cleavages have occurred is a mere rump, a lowest common denominator attained by lopping off all of those qualities on which is based his claim to recognition as a (wo)man" (Ollman, 134). The cleavages Ollman refers to are the breaks between the individual and his or her life activity, the break between people and their own products, and the break between (wo)man and (wo)man. If learning is a student's life activity, and knowledge production and ownership are purely private and individual, all of these cleavages can also occur within students. There is no room for the multiple ownership that Shannon argues is needed to help students and teachers expand their intellectual autonomy, through which we would be able to examine ourselves, others, and the world around us and make active decisions about how we want to live together (34-37). Instead, knowledge is frequently and externally defined by "skills," and becomes a commodity which students accumulate and possess as isolated individuals. They are then tested as individuals - on content that is not shaped by teachers or students - to determine how many skills they have come to possess. Increasingly, schools are becoming more privatized and corporatized (Giroux 2000), which means that the process of producing knowledge is defined and controlled by people external to the classroom. When the tools and mediational means of knowledge production are not owned by students or teachers, students lose their connection to their products and teachers lose their connection to their work the same way that workers do when they do not have access to the means of production. For example, the use of prepackaged curriculum materials with pre-specified teacher actions and student responses deskills teachers (alienating them from their jobs) and requires less interaction among them. Teachers replace the skills they once needed to develop curriculum with skills to manage and control students, (Apple 1982,145-147) which may lead to authoritarianism and/or apathy. Schools "devalue teacher authority and subvert teacher skills by dictating not only what they teach but how they should teach it" (Giroux 2000, 90). Apple (1989) argues that we see the "intensification" of teacher's work in many ways, from the intellectual deskilling that comes with the lack of time preventing teachers from keeping up with their own field, to the overload of work for which teachers become responsible. The more schools are dominated by prescribed standards, tests, curriculum, and measures of accountability, the less time teachers have to spend reflecting upon their teaching and working with their students. "Such curricular practice require(s) that teachers spend a large portion of their time evaluating student 'mastery' of each of the various objectives and recording the results of these multiple evaluations for later discussions with parents or decisions on whether or not the student could 'go on' to another set of skills-based worksheets" (Apple 1989, 43). Additionally, teachers must spend time administering and grading the prescribed tests, and must spend even more time developing lessons designed to help students pass such tests (thus wasting valuable class time). In order to accomplish all of the tasks required of teachers, they must come to school early, leave late, and still spend hours at home working. Teachers can easily, as we will see from the student testimonies that follow, become so alienated that may give up on the students entirely or they may begin to buy into the very structures and ideologies that take away their power. Apple's study showed that "as responsibility for designing one's own curricula and one's own teaching decreased, responsibility over technical and management concerns came to the fore" (45). He found that teachers even began to view such managerial work as increased professionalism, and embraced their new roles as efficient technicians. Again, it is through the separation of teachers from their own creativity and intellectual autonomy, and through their lack of participation in their own work that they are alienated so extremely from their jobs, from each other, and from their students. When students, like teachers, have little input into their education, they will not be very connected to the work they do. Their products will not be as meaningful as they would be had the students had a closer relationship with what they were learning. Without that relationship, learning is not a necessity or a desirable activity that is related to the students' lives. Schools become for students and teaching becomes for teachers what work becomes for workers: "My individuality is externalized to the point where I hate this activity and where it is a torment for me. Rather, it is then only the semblance of an activity, only a forced activity, imposed upon me only by external and accidental necessity and not by an internal and determined necessity" (Marx, 125). The same way that severing workers and academic laborers (such as teachers) from their life activity leads to individualism and competition, so does severing students from their life activity. Learning becomes an individual effort that is torn from its social process. This is problematic, because as Vygotsky explains in Mind in Society, people develop into individuals through their social relations with others, not in isolation from others: "Learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child in interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his (or her) peers" (90). The increasingly prevalent logic of schools, though, educates students to work, act, and think alone. Giroux explains this corporate and privatized view of education as one in which "compassion, solidarity, cooperation, social responsibility, and other attributes of education as social good get displaced by defining education exclusively as a private good" (2000, 98). He argues that such a view of education defines students primarily as individual consumers and teachers as "the ultimate sales people." Students, then, easily become alienated in schools and
classrooms when
learning is only an individual process, when curriculum is not
connected
to their lives, and when humane relationships with other students and
teachers
are not fostered. I will argue that such alienation leads to behavior
problems,
poor attendance, lack of effort, and cynicism about school. It is
therefore
not through isolation or authoritarianism that we can best encourage
learning.
My
English Class
I left my undergraduate teacher education program without understanding any of this. When I started teaching in Oakland, I was sure that the methods of assertive discipline that I had learned in college would be effective. When I had 'behavior problems' the first few days of school, I quickly employed the strategies I had practiced in my head. I wrote names on the board. I threatened to give detentions and suspensions without realizing that these things did not exist in our school. I tried as hard as I could to display my authority, but I still seemed to have no authority. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out that my tactics weren't working. So I decided to treat the students like people instead of my subjects, and I asked them what was happening. What was I doing wrong? They were surprised that I asked, and I was surprised that they told me. They wanted to be respected they did not perceive my actions as respectful. They wanted to have a say in their own class, and I had not yet allowed them that opportunity. So they resisted. This sounds simple, and maybe we all know it. But from the student responses that I have gathered, it is clear that many teachers do not know. If they do, they don't know what to do with the information. Perhaps the classroom that Kutz and Roskelly suggest sounds idealistic, maybe even impossible. But I argue otherwise. After I talked with the students and heard what they had to say, I changed and the class changed. We became more like the community that I describe above, and each year the community became stronger. In the three years after those first two weeks, I had only two 'discipline problems.' Students who never went to other classes came to mine. Students who were described by other teachers as "disruptive" and "lazy" were some of my best students. Most of the time, students were engaged in our class, and were interested in their work. Our classroom became remarkably similar to the one Kutz and Roskelly picture. The change in our class was not only in the way that I treated the students. We will see from the following student comments that positive relationships with teachers are not enough to create what they perceive as a positive learning environment. They also made it clear that they wanted to take an active part in their own learning, and that they want learning to be related to their lives. Since it was a large part of my political goal to develop students who would be change agents, I centered curriculum largely around our need to explore our past and present so that we can change our future. We confronted and examined the multiple causes of racism, sexism and class oppression directly, and talked extensively about how we would rather live together. It is important to remember, of course, that these discussions could not have taken place without the sense of community that had developed in the class. Literature was usually selected on the basis of its relation to issues of oppression, since oppression is a central part of the students' lives. For example, we read The Grapes of Wrath and Tomas Rivera's ...and the earth did not devour him as part of an inquiry about labor. We also critically viewed the film Salt of the Earth, which depicts a miners' strike, and the documentary Harvest of Shame, a piece about migrant workers aired by CBS. To supplement our reading and viewing, we studied labor history (using some of the lessons in William Bigelow's The Power in Our Hands) and political economy using lessons I developed, starting from an analysis of the places in which the students work (such as Burger King). The students did research projects about child and teen labor, sweatshop labor, famous strikes, migrant workers in California, and the myths of welfare, among other labor issues. They were therefore able to connect the history in The Grapes of Wrath and the story of modern, local migrant workers in ...and the earth did not devour him to labor issues today that are part of their lives. Since most of my students work, they particularly enjoyed the lessons about political economy. They were amazed by other students' presentations about the way Nike and Disney use sweatshop labor, and the way Mexican migrant workers - some of whom work one hour away in Watsonville, CA - live. They were amazed by the statistics students found about welfare that disputed the popular myths about welfare recipients (which many of them are) and the structure of welfare. Most importantly, they were able to see the change that has taken place historically in regard to labor, both positive and negative. With an understanding of how people have fought to change things, my hope is that students will see their own lives as more changeable. From this study, not only were the students able to gain "English" skills like research, writing, oral communication, and literary interpretation, they were able to connect English to other subject areas (history and economics) and to their own lives. If students are to become change agents, they also must see the value in collective struggle. As you will hear in more detail from the students who follow, we utilized (almost daily) discussion and project work both as a class and in groups. We did not have competitions in class, and I tried as hard as I could to get them to shift the focus from grades to learning by making the learning interesting and worth their while. They created many products together, including a newsletter we started that was written and produced by six to eight different students per issue. The student editors used Page Maker to design the layout and the student photographers used a digital camera to take pictures (we got our technology from a grant). The newsletter was about their work in all of their classes in the Health Academy, and they mailed it to all of our community partners. They also used it as a venue to publish their writing. The following poem was written collaboratively by two of my classes in response to Ana Castillo's "We Want You to Know." It was published in the second issue of the newsletter. We Want You to Know by Ms. Troise's English 3
Classes
We want you to know We do not all have perfect bodies or perfect features We do not all have to pay to
look beautiful.
-Shirley Hoang
We do not all have fake nails and long weaves. We are not all victims All slaves to men All helpless. -Shareen Duke
We do love, but we do not all have. We do not all need a man.
-Danielle Mayeux
We are strong We can live on our own and be anything we want to be
-Kit Chong
We are not the rainfall which comes down hard or soft one season then leaves. We are the sun to your moon. Whenever you set we are there to light your way.
-Josette
Neale de Stanton
These are the facts
We do not all smoke nor drink We do have respect for ourselves. We are not all defiant nor are we criminals but we are the future. -Kayla
Merchant
We do not all shoplift or sit around doing nothing We do not all fill up the county jails or appear on trashy talk shows We do not all stand around on street corners and reject a free education. -Valerie Stokes We did not want to turn out this way We only do what we know.
-Miranda Murray
We are desperately searching for someone to care. Don't ignore us. -Aimee Turnbull
We do not all beg for money because we don't want to work. We do struggle. We don't all have rags for clothing Though the economy doesn't allow everyone a Macy's charge card.
We would like to give you a thousand excuses Why some of us are on the street Why people gave up on us We would like you to know how it feels to be us. -Kevin
Franks
We do not all have gold teeth or rap sheets as long as Broadway. -Jamilah
Scott
We do not all steal even if we desperately need to.
-Raina
Washington
We are all victims of poverty of pressure of changes. -Jenny Cooc
We do not all steal for nothing even if we've been stolen from all our lives. We are not all drunks nor punks But we are all soldiers. We do not all sell drugs all night for kicks. We do survive although the economy doesn't allow everyone a piece of the pie.
-Kalen Thomas
We are not all illegal immigrants nor did we all travel here by raft. We do not all own nail shops. We would like to make a thousand excuses why you judge us based on false assumptions.
-Thao Phan
We do not all have an accent when we speak English even if grandma and grandpa try their best. These are the facts.
We would like you to know that color blinds us from the truth. What you see from the outside isn't all that's there.
-Michelle Kith
We do not all have the same mind or intentions in life But our dreams are similar.
-Jessica Davis
We are the future leaders We are smart and bold. So erase what you've been told.
-Davita
Harris
We will all succeed Rise above the stereotypes. We will be somebody. -Tiffany
Gibson
Since the newsletter project and the writing of the above poem required group collaboration, had a very real audience, and dealt with issues that were directly relevant to them as a group, the students developed a sense of camaraderie that continued to build throughout the year. We will see in the student comments throughout this paper that they grew to value the opportunity to work productively with their peers, which was an important goal I'd had for the class at the beginning of the year. During my first year of teaching, I also began to realize the importance of valuing students' multicultural languages and cultures and making sure that they had meaningful purposes in the classroom. Most English teachers in Oakland use multicultural literature, which I did, but I also used literature that used non-mainstream discourses and rhetorical strategies so that students would see them as valuable and 'academic.' I asked students to write and read poems in their first language and to use their oral traditions to tell folk tales, which they gathered orally from relatives. While students were required to do their formal writing in Standard English, we talked about using certain Spanish, Vietnamese or AAVE words in their essays for effect. I should have also spent more time examining and analyzing students' multiple discourses and rhetorical strategies as part of the English class, and will do so in the future. At the end of my first year at Tech, the same students who did everything they could to antagonize me during the first two weeks of school threw me my first surprise birthday party. Omar and Jamal lured me to a local restaurant where thirty other students waited at a table complete with balloons, tear-wrenching cards, flowers, and a huge homemade cake. Shemone, the singer of the group, sang a beautiful solo "Happy Birthday;" and soon after she finished the rest of the group broke into song. Before the dinner came, they decided to go around the table and each "say something good" about me - all thirty of them. They had never seen a $250 dinner bill before; but refusing to let me pay a cent, they pooled all of their one and five dollar bills until they had enough. The waiter, I'm sure, wished he had stayed home that night, but it was my most memorable evening. For the next two years, I continued to get surprise parties,
each new
class trying to outdo the previous one. I always knew about the
parties,
and would prefer never to have another surprise in my life, but I was
the
only teacher leaving that school several times a year loaded with
cards,
balloons, cakes, goldfish, and flowers. So while I don't know that the
students learned everything I wanted them to in my class, I know I did
something right. I decided to find out exactly what that was.
Chapter 2: A Study of
Oakland High
School Students' Perceptions of a Positive Learning Environment
Methods
In Spring of 2000, Oakland Technical High School completed a
"School
Climate Survey" to which 260 random students responded. I asked the
same
questions that were on this survey of 50 of my own students (randomly,
ten from each class) in reference to our classroom. The results are
displayed
in table 2.1:
O.T. HIGH SCHOOL OUR CLASSROOM
Table 2.1 2000 School Climate Survey Student Results
The "climate," in our English class was decidedly better than that of the school as a whole. What was the difference? Again I decided to ask the students. At the end of my last year at Oakland Tech, I asked two classes to describe a positive learning environment. I listed their criteria on the board, and then created a questionnaire based on those criteria. I asked them to write about a class that met their qualifications (Class 1), and to explain how and why the class did so. Then they chose a class that did not meet the criteria (Class 2), and again wrote about how and why this was the case. The students did not identify the classes that they wrote about, or the teachers of the classes, but I was always able to identify Class 1 by their description of the curriculum (another part of the survey that will be explored later). Though I asked them to write about any class from high school, every student chose our English class as Class 1. The questionnaires were designed to learn how students perceive a positive learning environment and what teachers can do to facilitate such an environment in the classroom. I asked two of my classes to complete the questionnaire - an eleventh grade class and a twelfth grade class. Both classes were untracked. Forty out of forty-six students returned questionnaires, 30 female and 10 male. Due to my position in the Health Academy, which attracted mostly female students, this male-female ratio was typical in my English classes. 21 of the respondents were African American, 3 were Latina or Latino, and 16 were Asian. This is very representative of the population in our school. The surveys were anonymous, to allow for complete honesty, but my familiarity with student handwriting enabled me to identify the writers. When asked how they feel in a positive learning environment, the two classes listed the following criteria: 1 you do not feel distracted from learning in the classroom 2 you feel that the teacher cares personally about the students 3 you feel that the teacher likes the student and the students like the teacher (the students explained that "liking" is different from the "caring" referred to in #2) 4 you feel respected by the teacher and the other students 5 you feel comfortable making comments or asking questions and asking the teacher for help 6 you feel encouraged Both of the classes came up with criteria 2, 3, 4 and 5. The
eleventh
graders listed criteria 1, and the seniors added criteria 6. The
questionnaire
asked "why" about each item. For example, in reference to Class 1, the
question for criteria #1 was "Why don't you feel distracted from
learning
in this classroom?" The question for Class 2 was "Why do you feel
distracted
from learning in this classroom?"
Results
Distraction The most frequently noted distraction in class (named by over
half of
the students) was that "the teacher ha(d) no control," or there was
"loud"
student talking while the teacher was talking. This is hardly a
surprise.
But then we consider why there was so much interruptive talking. Half
of
the students were distracted by "uninteresting," "boring," and/or
"simple"
work. As Chuen explains, "there is nothing better to do." This seems to
be the most important factor, as 53% of the students explained that the
reason they were not distracted in the positive classroom was because
of
"challenging," "involving," or "interesting" work. There was no time,
they
write, to have been distracted. Finally, six of the students explained
that
since they could not understand the teacher's explanations, they
started
thinking about and doing other things.
Caring
Half of the students explained that they know the teacher
cares about
them because she gives them personal attention and spends extra time
helping
them. Danielle, for example, says that she knows her teacher cares
about
her because "she's always there to answer questions when you need her.
She gives extra help when you need it and she never gives up on you
especially
if she knows you try." Thirteen students (33%) wrote about being able
to
talk to the teacher about non-school issues. Correspondingly, 45% say
that
they know the teacher doesn't care when she does not give them her
attention
or time, and/or when she does not come to school on a regular basis,
although
three students know the teacher doesn't like them simply because the
teacher
told them so. Ten of the students (25%) connect caring with
personality.
They mention the teacher having a sense of humor, smiling, being
energetic,
and not being "strictly about business." When writing about Class 2,
they
describe the teacher as "never smiling, never calm," "too serious," and
"hostile."
Respect
Respect to the students seems to be mostly indicated by the
teacher's
willingness to listen to them. Fourteen of them (35%) wrote that they
feel
respected when the "teacher listens to everyone's ideas and opinions"
and
doesn't "cut them off." Not surprisingly, nine (23%) also deem it
respectful
when a teacher does not "insult" them or "attack (them) verbally." What
is surprising is that when writing about teachers who don't respect
them,
seven students wrote about teachers who yell at them, tell them to
"shut
up," and/or "make rude and obscene comments." Four students associate
the
teacher not giving them any assignments with not respecting them.
Participating
Half of the students say that they feel comfortable asking for
help
because they know they'll get it, and ask questions/make comments
because
they know the teacher and students won't make fun of them. Seventeen
students
(43%) are afraid to ask questions because the teacher might embarrass,
ignore, or laugh at them. Ten of these students (25%) use the words "I
feel stupid" or "makes me feel stupid" in their responses. Monica, for
example, doesn't ask questions or participate in a particular class.
She
says. "you don't want to feel stupid if the question is awkward, or if
I did not know. The teacher sometimes makes me feel stupid when I ask a
question and she laughs at my comments." She was an active participant
in our class, though, and explained the difference: "I know (the
teacher)
will not laugh at me, she will make eye contact with me and be
responsive
toward my feelings and comment in a positive way. She will do the same
with every student." Five students explain that they don't ask
questions
because there is simply nothing to ask since there is no work.
Encouragement
The most frequently mentioned encouraging aspects of the
classroom are
when the whole class is involved and everyone cares about one another.
Shelley, for example, feels encouraged because of "the happiness,
warmth,
and positive energy, and the fact that I can do my best." Seven
students
also mention positive comments on and about their work, and three
explain
that they are encouraged because they get second chances. Listed by
twenty-seven
(68%) of the students, the most discouraging part of a classroom seems
to fall under the categories of either no challenge and/or no work, or
lack of caring and support on the part of the teacher. Anh explains
that
"I really feel stupid in this class. The teacher makes us feel more
lazy
and I don't want to do the work even when there is work. It's a habit
if
it keeps going on like that." The same three students who mentioned
having
a second chance as encouraging listed "no second chances" as
discouraging.
Structures
and Alienation
Teachers
There are several themes that arise from these student's
testimonies.
One is that the structures and ideologies of school weigh heavily on
the
teachers, who can clearly become alienated from their students, from
other
teachers, and from their work. We must be careful not to read these
students'
negative experiences in class as the result of teachers' personality
flaws.
Their actions and responses to students indicate a hostility that in
many
cases would not exist were it not for the antagonistic environment in
which
these teachers work each day. Some of the teachers seem to have given
up
on the students and on teaching in general as a result of the
alienating
structures and ideologies that surround them. Patrick Shannon explains
that the structures of schools and society can develop in teachers the
"paralyzing attitude" that they "are pawns in someone else's chess
game,"
and cannot make much of a difference in the larger system (18). We will
see further evidence in the student accounts that follow that teachers
begin to leave unchallenged (and to even internalize) the dominant
ideologies
about students and about teaching and learning. I make the connection
between
teacher alienation and the teacher behaviors in this study based partly
on a School Climate Survey, completed in Spring of 2000, for teachers
at
Oakland Technical High School. There were 54 respondents - about 65% of
the teaching staff. Table 2.2 shows some of the results.
Survey Statement Teacher Responses
Table 2.2 2000 School Climate Survey Teacher Results It is easy to see from these results how the hostile environment of this school has affected the teachers, and may have lead them to many of the negative behaviors and ideologies reflected in this study. For example, when we consider that only 15% of the teachers found the school to have a positive teacher morale, we can see in part why 64% of the respondents listed teacher absenteeism as a "moderate" or "serious problem." From the overwhelming lack of agreement with the survey statements, we can see that teachers at this school often feel as negatively about school, and as isolated and alone in school, as students do. Most schools are not physically designed to promote teacher interaction, nor is time organized for collaboration. They are often denied the support they need to do their jobs well, and lack the time to deal individually with an excessive number of students. Many teachers at Oakland Tech have also argued that the conditions in the school are not conducive to teaching or learning. They generally do not feel safe in the school, and 71% list "verbal abuse of teachers" as a "moderate" or "serious problem." We were expected to close and lock our classroom doors during class to prevent people (sometimes people who were not students at the school) in the hallways from coming into our class or throwing firecrackers, water balloons, or various other dangerous objects into our rooms. In fact, 85% of the respondents agreed that the level of student misbehavior outside of the classroom (in hallways, etc.) interferes with their teaching, which may be partly because only 6% agree that rules for student behavior, student tardiness, and student cutting in the school are enforced by the administration. Because of the constant disruptive behavior in the hallways, teachers can easily develop negative perceptions about students in general without considering the relatively small number of students who are doing the disrupting, or why they might be doing it. Further, the deskilling of teachers with increasingly
prescribed standards
and curriculum reduces their primary role to classroom managers. Only
34%
of the teachers in this survey feel that they are a part of making the
most educational decisions in the school, which can easily alienate
them
from their jobs. Even when teachers are given freedom to make
educational
decisions such as creating and implementing curriculum that they
determine
to be best for their students, they usually need to spend most of their
free time doing so. In short, we cannot simply blame teachers for a
system
that fails them as much as it fails the students. It is interesting to
note that, after the results of this survey were revealed, the school
made
no attempt the I was aware of to discover the reasons for these
teacher's
negative responses or to do anything about it. The results were not
discussed
at any of our staff meetings, but were simply placed in our mailboxes.
Students
It is obvious from my learning environment questionnaires that
students
are also easily alienated, particularly from classrooms that do not
allow
social learning and do not develop positive social relationships
between
the teacher and students and among the students. This is something that
students themselves are able to articulate. When writing about the
class
with the positive learning environment (Class 1), students frequently
discussed
the social aspects of that class:
Alan: "We all work as one and can accomplish more by helping one another. Not everyone is the same and we all learn differently but together." Rita: "The way me and the rest of the students came together and just bonded a good life long friendship, all because we had a teacher who showed she cared, it was all we needed and all any student ever needs." Brandon: "Everything cannot be done alone. We all need a little help sometimes, and we shouldn't be afraid to ask for it because it only helps us grow as people." Rahwa: "I learned how to work with others and trust people more in this class." Thuy: "Everyone is here to learn together and we respect each other. All students deserve a classroom like this one." Tammy: "We all work as a class, and that lets us learn more. We can interact and communicate with each other. The students and teacher make me feel comfortable as if I were with my family." Jamilah: "Our classroom is pretty much like a family. We can take criticism and help each other without taking it the wrong way." Sophan: "Everyone in this class loves me and will listen to me, so I can learn better." Tiffany: "Everyone is involved in classroom activities, and I like to participate when everyone else does." Linda: "There are never any competitions." Boramee: "No one is there to put you down - they
listen to you.
Teacher working with students, students working together. Respect.
Motivation.
Challenge."
Students feel that they are learning in an environment where
the learners
are active participants and feel a sense of collectivity. As bell hooks
argues in Teaching to Transgress, "a feeling of community
creates
a sense that there is a shared commitment and a common good that binds
us. What we all ideally share is the desire to learn" (40). The
students
above obviously agree. When they write about a class in which they
don't
feel that they are learning, there is no mention of social
relationships,
but there is clear alienation:
Chuen: "No one cares what you think, you feel isolated." Monica: "Nobody listens to me." Mita: "I feel very depressed…the teacher ignores me and I feel like crying…he might embarrass me or ignore me again, making me feel like I don't belong here." Alexandra: "No body listens to anything I say, so why bother talking?" Sophan: "Working with other students is hard because I don't know them or maybe they won't want to work with me." Alan: "No one wants to help me." Danielle: "When we work together she thinks we are
cheating."
These students, because they feel alone, "ignored,"
"isolated," and
"stupid," feel that they are unable to learn. They are unable to
communicate
with the other people in the classroom in a positive way, are alienated
from the learning process, and are left to fend for themselves. Of
course,
these feelings have further consequences. Even the "best" students say
that they do not attend Class 2 as much as they attend Class 1. What
the
students may not realize is that their teachers probably feel as
isolated,
disrespected, and devalued as they do.
Student
Behavior
In the 2000 Oakland Technical High School Climate Survey for teachers, 37% agreed (7% strongly) that there is nothing teachers can do about student behavior or performance because it "depends on the home environment." There are no other statements in the survey that offer any other explanation for poor classroom performance or behavior, so we do not know what these teachers feel could be other contributors to classroom behavior and performance problems. But we can develop some ideas about what causes undesirable student behavior by looking at my students' responses to the learning environment questionairres. Poor relationships between students and teachers and teacher behavior are clearly both factors, factors which teachers may not consider. Nineteen students (45%) mentioned things like sense of humor, tone of voice, smiling, and calmness as teacher attributes that contribute to a positive learning environment, which concurs with Alfie Kohn's observation that "The teacher's presence and behavior...and her tone of voice are as much a part of the lesson as the curriculum itself" (231). Students also want teachers to listen to them and at least try to understand them. Amber's response that she learns more in a class where the "teacher cares to know what is going on in your life" was echoed by many students. They write frequently about the importance of communication between students and teachers. Alex views her teacher as not caring because he "doesn't pay attention to student's needs or listen to what (they) have to say," while Trenna writes about a teacher who is "quick to jump to his own defenses instead of understanding student concerns and trying to communicate with (them)." Other students recount specific experiences with teachers that caused a shift in their behavior. Kalen, a junior, remembers a teacher in eighth grade who said to him, "I won't feel sorry for you when you end up in prison like the failure you are." He explained that once the teacher said that, he "had an attitude because (he doesn't) care." When he shared this with the class, Candice reaffirmed his feelings with, "Yeah. The teacher doesn't care so the class doesn't care. Plain and simple!" It is important that teachers realize what students perceive to be a lack of caring, and how much that perception can affect what the students do in the classroom. Another factor that shapes behavior for many of these students is the curriculum. They note that their behavior, or that of their classmates, is worse in the class that does not provide interesting and challenging work. Tiffany explained that "my behavior is better in the first class because in the second one I have nothing better to do than bother other people and cause trouble." Kids may begin antagonizing each other to keep themselves busy, because they see "nothing else to do." Students may very well feel this way despite the fact that they are given more than enough individual "seat work" to keep them busy. They will still start looking for other ways to spend their time in a way that they see as more productive. For example, they may, like Tiffany, start harassing and joking with their friends (thus creating their own social relationships). They may not even go to the class at all, either because they feel that they are not learning anything and are therefore "wasting (their) time," or as Jenny said, because no one will "even notice if I was gone." The students make it clear that they need to have a desire to attend class and to complete the work. Thao explains that while she does not mind missing some of her classes and will cut, "(she doesn't) want to miss our English class because (she) will miss good stuff." Interestingly, many students also associated lack of serious curriculum with a teacher not caring. Carnetta says that she knows her teacher does not care about her "because if he did we would do work. We would learn." Students do want to be challenged. Antonette points out that in the class in which learning takes place for her, the teacher is "sympathetic to our needs yet stern in her requirements. This is good because no one is being misused or manipulated. I learned more in one year of this class than in my entire four years of high school." She is clearly upset with the fact that she feels she has learned little throughout high school, and feels that she has been "misused and manipulated" in other classes that do not expect anything of her. She rightfully resents this, and her behavior and that of her peers will likely be affected negatively. I talked with at least two teachers who always described Antonette as "giving serious attitude" and/or cutting class habitually. She cut my class frequently, too, which I knew was partly due to serious problems at home, but she never "had an attitude" with me. We can see from her testimony that her behavior was likely a form of resistance to a school and to classes that provides her with an inferior education. There is "accumulated evidence from the field of social psychology demonstrating that much of how we act and who we are reflects the situation in which we find ourselves" (Kohn 21). Students like Antonette, Carnetta, Kalen and Tiffany, among others who follow, provide further such evidence. As Antonette observes, students in urban schools are all too often treated and viewed as incapable and as lacking intelligence. Lilia Bartolome correctly observes that "low SES and ethnic minority students have historically (and currently) been perceived as deficient" (45). These students from Oakland Tech support her further claim that when such deficiency models are forced upon the school community, there is "very little opportunity for teachers and students to interact in meaningful ways, establish positive and trusting working relations, and share knowledge" (45). We find too many teachers becoming convinced that they need to "dumb down" curriculum, sometimes to extremes. In fact, only 31% of teacher respondents in the 200 School Climate Survey agreed that "Teachers at this school (Oakland Tech) have high expectations for student academic achievement." Students wrote about teachers who play video games during class and who show movies like The Bride of Chucky all week long. It is clear from their frequent complaints about teachers who "give no serious work" that they do not want to have "free time" every day. It is clear from their positive comments about the class that provides what they consider to be challenging work that they are not lazy and that they want to learn. It is clear from their articulate voices throughout this paper and from their success with the challenging work in our class that they are extremely intelligent and capable. When they are not treated as such, they will resist with their behavior. Still, many students complained about being treated as if they were "dumb." Josette makes the following statement: "The teacher answers questions like we are stupid. We got treated like we were autistic, or slow and couldn't think. Excuse my terminology, but it gets upsetting." Michael felt like his teacher cared about him and his classmates because she "talks to us calmly and like we are people. She likes to see us get better and it makes it easier to do better. She tells me I'm a good student." When I read this, I asked him if he felt that he was not treated like a person in other classes, and he said he did. He recounted an elaborate story from middle school about his being placed in the "blue reading group," which was clearly the lowest one. He felt that he was treated "inhumanely" in this reading group because everyone seemed to think he couldn't read. He also explained that for many years he lived up to the low expectations the teachers had for him and did no work in school. Antonette and Michael, as well as many other students, exhibit
signs
of a kind of student resistance that John Ogbu calls 'oppositional
culture.'
He and Fordham argue that one major reason black and other 'subversive
minorites' so poorly in school is "partly because white Americans
traditionally
refused to acknowledge that black Americans are capable of intellectual
achievement, and partly because black Americans subsequently began to
doubt
their own intellectual ability" (177). What has happened, they argue,
is
that African American students deliberately try to resist school,
because
succeeding in school would mean 'acting white.' For example, they
studied
African American students who are successful in school, and found that
these students often try to cover their academic success, which would
be
perceived as 'acting white,' by clowning or making friends with
"hoodlems"
(202). Oppositional behavior, in this case, is caused by "minorities'
perceptions
and interpretations of schooling as learning the white American
cultural
frame of reference which they have come to assume to have adverse
effects
on their own cultural and identity integrity" (182). By adopting
deficit
theories, schools can lead students to such perceptions and
interpretations.
When teachers do not accept such deficit theories, students may stop
perceiving
academic pursuit as 'acting white,' and may put forth more effort.
Michael,
for example, says he does better in Class 1 basically because his
teacher
really thought that he and his classmates could succeed. Antonette does
better in Class 1 because the curriculum is more challenging, and again
the teacher has higher expectations from her.
Chapter 3 : Student
Perceptions of
Curriculum
In addition to a challenging curriculum, students also clearly want one that is relevant and one in which they have some say. As Kohn argues, "Students acquire a sense of significance from doing significant things, from being active participants in their own education" (158). Trenna, for example, finds the fact that "the assignments (in Class 2) are not related to students lives" to be discouraging. Here we have another reason to get to know about our students' everyday experiences and concerns. Paulo Friere explains in Teachers as Cultural Workers that "our relationship with learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. To try to know the reality that students live is a task that educational practice imposes on us: Without this, we have no access to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know" (58). Implicit in his statement is the fact that, as Charles Lemert (1997) argues, people are constantly shaped and affected by social things. We must understand the students' world in order to build upon their already existing knowledge base. This is vital, because "learning is the act of linking new information to prior knowledge" (Bartolome, 48). This is particularly important to recognize in urban schools, where the students' existing knowledge is often deemed inferior. Educators must confront their social bias, reject deficit theories, and "recognize that no language or set of life experiences is inherently superior...(and must) build on culturally different ways of learning, behaving, and using language in the classroom" (Bartolome, 49). For example, urban curriculums that do not include multicultural languages, oral traditions, and literatures cannot be relevant to the students in the classroom. Because I suspected that curriculum would play a role in the way students perceived environment, I added my own question to the learning environment questionnaire. Regarding Class 1, I asked "Do you feel that this classroom provided a curriculum that is engaging (interesting), relevant, and/or challenging? Please check and give examples for any that apply. If you answered 'no' to this question, go on to Part 2." I also asked if they felt that the curriculum in the class affected the learning environment. Only one student answered "no" to the latter. The rest of the students explained with answers such as: Tammy: "Yes, because the activities we do are interesting to most of the students which enables us to stay focused. If I enjoy something or am interested in it, I'll stick to it and want to learn more about it." Antonette: "Yes I do. Students are tired of learning the same thing every year. Now that we have a teacher who is giving us a challenge she has our undivided attention because that is a tactic that we haven't seen used before." Chedee: "Sure, because everything we do on the class motivates us and makes us eager to make something out of education. It's not your typical 'in and out' classroom." Davita: "Yes, because it opens everyone's mind up. You are able to hear the opinions of others." Danielle: "Yes, if everyone enjoys the curriculum that will make the students do the work and it will bring the class together." In fact, every student answered "yes" to all three descriptions (engaging, relevant, and challenging) of Class 1, and gave examples. So what do students consider to be engaging, interesting, and challenging work? Interesting work seems to be associated with projects, creativity, group work, and choice. Tiana explains that "the many different projects helped us to grasp concepts through artistry and creativity instead of drilling themes and vocab into our heads, only to be forgotten a week later. I actually remember what I learn in this class." 35% (14) of the students mentioned acting out plays (either Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, or A Raisin in the Sun, depending on the grade). For this project, they were asked to select their favorite scene with their group and put on a performance using costumes and props, to which we invited parents, teachers, and administrators. While each student was writing her own interpretive essay about the play at home, in class the groups created computer-generated programs, drew set and costume designs, wrote detailed analyses of their characters, and blocked their scenes. Almost all of the students voluntarily memorized their lines. Figure 3.1 shows a performance of the cauldron scene in Macbeth, for which the students used a crock pot with a small steam machine.
Figure 3.1 Macbeth performance
18% of students mentioned visual essay projects as
interesting, which
they created after reading for Like Water for Chocolate.
Figures
3.2 - 3.4 show student artifacts from this visual essay project, for
which
the student groups visually represented their responses to interpretive
questions using words and textual quotes; symbolic images, colors, and
objects; and masks. Upon completion, each group presented their essays
to the class and explained their work.
Figure 3.2 Visual Essay 1
Figure 3.3 Visual Essay 2 Figure 3.4 Visual Essay 3
Ten students (25%) also described creative writing projects like short story writing or poetry portfolios as interesting. Four students remembered our study of the media as engaging, and two described a project for which they created video documentaries about the issue of their choice. In all of the projects described as interesting, students were able to exercise their choice and use their creativity. In all but one, students were working with their peers to create their product. The students described relevant work most frequently (40%) as work that they thought prepared them for college, like essays, research, and using Standard English. This response surprised me, so I had a conversation with the class about it. It seems that they felt that they had never been expected to go to college in other classes, so they really found it important that they learned "college preparation stuff" in our class. They said it encouraged them to think they really could go, that they wouldn't fail when they got there. Therefore, they found "academic" work to be relevant to their futures. But seven students (18%) mention connection to texts as their example of relevance. Boramee says that "in our essays, we always used our own interpretation. We put in our own thoughts, opinions, and experiences. The stories we read, like The Kitchen God's Wife, gave us something to relate to." Not only was the text important, but her ability to relate it to her own life in her formal and informal writing made a difference as well. Brandon, likewise, says that he read a lot of stories that "are about situations that are related to real life topics." I asked him which stories he meant, and he referenced The Metamorphosis, because he related to Gregor, stories from Learning to Play God, because he wants to be a doctor, and non-fiction materials from the media unit, because it helped him think more carefully about ads and TV news. He also talked about the texts he read in the research he did for a paper about sweatshop labor as relevant because he "learned about important things happening today that (he) didn't know about before." Note that while Boramee identified with a text that was written by and about an Asian woman, Brandon, who is African American, mentioned no African American texts (though we read several). A text is not relevant only when it directly relates to a student's race, as it could also relate to their class, gender, community, culture, or life experiences. Challenging work, not surprisingly, was frequently described as "essays." But the menacing essay was outnumbered (as the most challenging work) by projects. Eleven students described the thought and time required to do various projects as the most challenging. Many of the same projects that were described as "interesting" also fell into this category. Students say things like, "it made you think," "it was mind-engaging," "it engages you in knowledge and is inquiring," and "quality is more important than quantity in this class, so a lot of time must be put into projects." Students also mentioned deadlines, revisions, "uncovering hidden messages in media," power point presentations, and group work as difficult. Figures 3.5 - 3.7 are advertisement parodies that students made during our study of media, which the students wrote about as both interesting and challenging.
Figure 3.5 Advertisement Parody 1
Figure 3.6 Advertisement Parody 2
Figure 3.7 Advertisement Parody 3
While every student identified the work in the Class 1 as
interesting,
relevant, and challenging, only nine described the curriculum
in
Class 2 with even one of these adjectives. Two found the work to be
engaging.
Siobhan says, "we had a presentation project that was never presented,
but it was kind of fun doing it." One student found the class relevant,
because "you need math all the time." The other six students agreed
that
the curriculum was challenging, though of those students explained that
this is because they don't understand the material. One student finds
it
challenging to complete essays in Class 2 because she is a bilingual
speaker
and is "not good with Standard English." The same student, however,
identified
essays as relevant and interesting in Class 1, perhaps because she was
not forced to write in Standard English all the time in our class. The
remaining student said that the work is not challenging because "it is
only based on one ethnicity."
Chapter
4: Conclusion - Student and Teacher Resistance and Liberatory Pedagogy
Student Resistance: Authoritarianism vs. Authority The student responses overwhelmingly suggest that if there is a relevant, rigorous, and engaging curriculum, and if there are respectful and trusting relationships between all members of the classroom community, there will be no behavior problems. As Alfie Kohn argues, "Students are far less likely to act aggressively, intrusively, or obnoxiously in places where the teacher is not concerned with being in charge - and, indeed, is not particularly interested in classroom-management techniques." He realized that his discipline problems were not due to a lack of control on his part, but to a lack of engaging curriculum (14). This would account for Amber's observation that "the same students (in our English class) who are always working and participating here are disrespectful in other classes." Though I listed no rules as the teacher, and gave no punishments or rewards for behavior, the students seemed to internalize the "rules" of democracy and respect that I had in mind. Brandon said about our class that "the teacher cares more about the students than making a lot of unnecessary rules." In our class, the rules were unnecessary. In fact, several students indicated that authoritarian teachers do not get results. Kevin observed that when a teacher "becomes more like a policeman, the students (still) aren't learning and don't pay attention." Students have two choices when confronted with authoritarianism: submit or resist. The negative consequences of resistance are clear in the sense that the student will disrupt class. There could be positive consequences as well, since the student will learn to defy authority, though there are certainly better ways to encourage more productive resistance. While it may seem that submission is the desired effect, we must consider that it may "lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom" (Friere, 40). These are hardly desirable qualities to encourage in a student. Truly, we as teachers need not present ourselves as the ultimate authority figures in order to get respect in the class. In fact, as my students imply, the opposite will probably happen. It is very possible that "fear of losing control in the classroom often leads individual (teachers) to fall into a conventional teaching pattern wherein power is used destructively" (hooks, 188). My hope is that it is clear from this study that exerting control over students should not be an objective of teaching, and that wielding complete power is not the way gain respect or create a productive learning environment. Instead, we need to share power and honestly respect students as people in our actions and our ideologies. It is important, however, as Friere explains in Pedagogy
of Freedom,
not to confuse authority with the extreme manifestation of
authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism, not authority, indicates the absence of freedom. Both
freedom and authority, when practiced without limits, are unproductive
in terms of Friere's view of democratic education. Patrick Shannon
agrees
in text, lies, and videotape when he says that "I cannot and
should
not renounce power and responsibility to facilitate my own or their
learning.
Teachers cannot and should not negate the power and responsibility they
hold in their classrooms and schools in order to engage in dialogue
with
their students" (107). It is clear from the student's comments that
they
want neither a class in which their freedom is completely suppressed
nor
a classroom in which there is no order and no challenge. Friere argues
that neither of these extremes promotes discipline, and it is only when
both freedom and autonomy are practiced through mutual respect that we
see disciplined practice (83). Friere reveals the dialectical
relationship
between freedom and authority, and acknowledges that teachers cannot
and
should not relinquish all authority, but should establish relationships
of mutual respect between all members of the classroom. What he calls
"coherent
democratic authority" constructs discipline and maintains order without
eradicating the freedom of the students. In fact, freedom and authority
coexist and even depend upon each other: "It is in living critically my
freedom as a learner that, in large part, I will prepare my authority
as
a teacher in the future or recover it in the present" (84). Since
Friere
maintains that "there is no teaching without learning," teachers must
have
authority but must also be willing to listen to and learn from their
students
so that they too can participate in authorship of knowledge. Not only
is
the authoritarian teacher removing herself and her students from the
process
of knowledge production, she is, as Giroux and Friere argue, teaching
students
that learning is about abuse. "The teacher can abuse the students
without
physically hitting them" (Friere, 109). He offers examples of teachers
who "transgress fundamental ethical principles of the human condition"
by using "irony to put down legitimate questioning," by not being
"respectfully
present in the educational experience of the student," and by failing
to
value students' worldviews, languages, and cultures (59). We can recall
many of the students in this study who described teacher behaviors in
Class
2 that match the behaviors Friere describes. What we hear in the
students'
description of Class 1, on the other hand, is an example of Friere's
"democratic
authority." The teacher does not have unlimited authority, but the
students
do not have unlimited freedom.
Teacher Resistance It may seem that the structures and ideologies that shape schools are too strong to resist. The students in this study are all minorities, and are mostly working class. They attend an urban school which, as reproduction theorists such as Jean Anyon (1980) and Bowles and Gintis (1976) argue, serve to place working class students into their working class position in the division of labor. Anyon and Bowles and Gintis reveal the "hidden curriculum" of schools, which teaches working class and minority students to become obedient workers, while students of higher social classes are taught more critical and intellectual skills that will lead them to professional and managerial jobs. We see evidence of the hidden curriculum at Oakland Tech in the overwhelming testimonies of students who report that they are not asked to think critically, to engage in intellectual work, or to do anything at all in Class 2. Understanding that schools function in a larger structure to reproduce social inequality can be immobilizing for teachers, and can lead to the mentality that "you can't beat the system." But both Giroux (1983) and Apple (1982) argue that we must always remember that teachers and students do resist. Teachers, while part of a system of social reproduction, must not become agents for such reproduction. By evaluating the dominant ideologies of school culture, Giroux says, teachers can "move beyond the role of being agents of cultural reproduction to being agents of cultural mobilization" (1983, 68). He urges teachers to evaluate their own assumptions about education, how those assumptions play out in the classroom, and what the consequences are for students. If we view power dialectically, we see that "power must be seen as a force that works both on people and through them." Structures and ideologies are not simply imposed on people, as students and teachers both reproduce and resist such structures through their own contradictory lived experiences (Giroux 1983, 63). For example, students are supposed to believe that if they work hard in school, they will obtain a high paying job. Their lived experience proves that this is not the reality, as high or even decent paying jobs are not available in excess, and since education no longer guarantees job success. "When students look at their communities, they do not see high-paying, high-wage jobs waiting for them if only they stay in school long enough to qualify. Instead, they see high levels of youth unemployment, factories closing, and corporations restructuring with fewer employees" (Shannon, 67). As Shannon argues, if the purpose of school is to get a good job, and there are few good jobs available, why go to school? Instead, we need to "reorganize schools for the purpose of helping students become more active in the civic life of their neighborhoods, their communities, and the larger world" (68). The key is for teachers and to understand that our work is undeniably political, and to think critically about what kind of people we want to develop in our students. Education should encourage students to question incessantly, to believe in their own power, to strive to induce change, and to intervene in the making of history. Students must understand why things are the way they are, and how they can actively change those things. While we cannot, as teachers, "necessarily compensate for structural inequalities that students face outside the classroom, (we) can, to the best of (our) ability, help students deal with injustices encountered inside and outside the classroom" (Bartolome, 44). We can talk with students directly about their experiences and use that as a basis for learning. We can create a truly democratic learning environment in which every person is a valued and equal participant. Here I wish to advance the idea that as teachers, we should be encouraging students to become agents of change. How can we do such a thing? First, students need to be encouraged to look beyond what they "know" to see what lies beneath the surface. This can be difficult, since most students are not encouraged in our society to work together to analyze or change their own situations. Too many structures are in place that eclipse reason and rationality, and the anti-critical forces of the United States are bountiful. Mass-media, reification, mystification, idealism, and pseudo-science are among the delusional ideas that serve to manipulate and control people, resulting in false consciousness and irrationalization. People become conditioned to police themselves by internalizing the ideas of the ruling elite. "The great power of dominated thought is that people deny the means of their own liberation while taking responsibility for acting in ways which reproduce their powerlessness" (Shor, 55). In other words, it is much easier to keep things the way they are when inequality is not only unquestioned and unrecognized, but reproduced by the very people who are being oppressed. A society of unequals is most easily prevented if those at the bottom are unaware of how they got there - or that they are there at all. For example, blame is often placed on the group or individual for failure in a society which supposedly offers "liberty and justice for all." Charles Lemert explains that people are often "left with the belief that the troubles in their lives are their own doing, or perhaps the result of some abstract fate; but, in either case, they feel that these are matters with respect to which they should, and do, feel guilty" (12). To overcome poverty, people are led to believe that they need to change themselves, not the material forces that oppress them. Likewise, students who do poorly in school or on standardized tests are made to feel that they lack intelligence without considering the institutional racism that affects their performance. Part of the goal, then, of teachers should be to dispel the myths that invade, close, and inactivate students' minds and our own. Students and teachers must first separate themselves from their specious perception of the world and then reexamine it rationally. The traditional passive structure of teaching that disengages students and actually encourages them not to think critically must be challenged. Moreover, students' life experiences need to be a part of learning, not a separate issue. Students clearly recognize irrelevant curriculum, and though they are not blind to its absurdity, they sometimes accept it as what school is supposed to be. It isn't. Further, while dialogue in traditional classrooms immediately implies suspicion, I argue that it is essential to learning. In too many classrooms there is an enforced silence which keeps people from having group discussions about anything important or relevant. Students like Danielle who talk a lot are regarded as guilty of conspiracy and are sent to be disciplined in the office. Teachers control talking to keep order and to maintain their superior status as the bearer of knowledge and the sole regulator of discussion. But the more students talk with the teacher and with their peers, the more likely they are to escape the magic box of idealist tricks and enter the world of critical reality, which is where we want them to be. Such discussion requires an emphasis on group work, not individual success or competition. Collective work increases solitarily, leadership, decision-making, and activity. Action is a vital part of learning, because "human knowledge is at no point separable from practice" (Fremantle, 202 ) Theory and practice are presented as isolated and independent in too many schools and classrooms, which again leads students to passivity. Therefore, teachers should constantly promote action and social relationships within the classroom and community. They should utilize discussion and project work, both as a class and in small groups. There should not be an emphasis on competition; but on working together to decipher the world and re-examine how we want to live in it together. Parallels should consistently be drawn between literature and students' lives in a comprehensive manner that leads to the careful analysis of the past, present, and future of our own world. Students need to be constantly asked to relate literature to their own experiences, encouraged to find their own meanings, and probed to stand back and rethink the ordinary. Racism and class oppression must be attacked directly by examining and rejecting the illogical and oppressive ideas behind them. Individualism must be discouraged on the basis that it prevents collective work and divides people. A truly educational atmosphere is one that promotes unity among students, among teachers, and between teachers and students. "We are all fellow travelers along the way, and all must learn to respect and act in a true, unsentimental plural" (Lemert, 190). Before we can embark on the journey to provide better
education, we
need to reevaluate our perception not only of our role as teachers, but
of students themselves. They are people who have thoughts and
feelings
and conflicts, just like the rest of us. It is vital to understand that
we are not here to teach them a body of knowledge. Our foremost job is
to help them develop the ability to self-evaluate, self-teach, and
self-explore.
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