Cycle 1 Reflection
In exploring the readings for Cycle 1, I found that they not only resonated with my personal experiences and philosophy of teaching, but with my core motivation for becoming an educator in the first place. I did not choose to pursue teaching because of a love of curriculum or state standards, objectives or assessments; I wanted to help my students become the best versions of themselves. So much of my teacher preparation was focused on the how of teaching within the current system, essentially how to get the most out of the status quo, but the questions of what and why were not explored much at all. Kieran Egan raises this issue in his work, and comes to the conclusion that “we turn our attention increasingly to what questions and present strong arguments for or against specific curriculum content” (Egan 16). But this questioning, as Nel Noddings points out, needs to be asked along with the question of why. How can one have discussions of what should be taught or how it should be taught without first considering the purpose of school itself? I have found myself asking this question a lot over the course of my life, both as a student and, with greater perspective, as a teacher. However, so much of a teacher’s energy goes into navigating the maze of the education system and the curriculum as it is, that even finding the time and energy to consider the questions of how to change it can be daunting. I also find that many people in my school, from administrators to teachers, have different beliefs about the role of schools. How can we hope to provide the best environment for students if we can’t even agree on our aims?
In our current national climate, I find the issues raised initially by Plato and Socrates, and expanded on by Nel Noddings, of whether the purpose of school should be centered around creating an educational system to produce individuals for the desired state or creating a state and educational support system to best support the individual to be really interesting. I found Noddings critiques of the capitalist focus on education as a means of creating the best workers to be especially interesting. I have had many teachers say that they did not talk about the Black Lives Matter movement or the insurrection at the Capitol because they or their superiors believe that our job is to teach the state standards and nothing more. I find that response to be very dehumanizing. I cannot understand how ignoring major national events because they may be difficult to talk about is helping our students. If our goal is the development of human beings, I have always felt that empathy is at the heart of that pursuit. How can we expect students to empathize with others when we do not give them the opportunity to express their views or their questions or their pain? If teaching during this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that community is at the heart of student learning in any meaningful way. In order for students to be able to pursue their happiness as Noddings defines it, I think that they must feel supported and be valued as individuals. Curriculum without community is merely programming; it is the set course of hoops for students to jump through without much of an understanding of what is is they are doing or why it matters beyond that jumping through one hoop helps them jump through the next.
Noddings raises a critique of American education minimizing the concept of students “natural equipment” and this same critique is found, in a different form, in Joseph Santini’s video on autonomy for dead students. Santini discusses his own need to leave public school because it would not accommodate his needs. But his deafness is his “natural equipment;” the schooling system should have responded to accommodate his learning, at least allowing him the autonomy to navigate the curriculum with the accommodations he saw fit, as opposed to essentially telling him he could not conform to their structure because he could not do so in the way they standardized. Santini also discusses the importance of representation for deaf students. His comments made me consider representation in many ways and how much it is lacking in my own school. About 98% of our staff is white, yet only 85% of our students are white and our school is continuing to diversify. The importance of racial representation in their teachers for students of color has been well documented, but Santini made me also consider the importance of representation for aspects of identity that may be less apparent than race such as being on the Autism spectrum, having ADHD or being neurodivergent in some way. I know there are teachers who are neurodivergent, so why isn’t that acknowledged or even celebrated? If we want students to feel comfortable to be themselves and pursue their own interests in school, shouldn’t they be able to every student be able to see someone they identify with as successfully navigating the same system they are navigating? What positive impact could that have on their desire, not to conform, but further explore their own unique “natural equipment” and what life path it may lead them on?
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ReplyDeleteHi Tom,
Deleteit was such a pleasure to read your post. Thank you for sharing your motivation for becoming an educator, which reminded me of mine too. My motive for studying education was also to learn about how to support students to become their best versions. But, I turned to NPOs as I did not want to follow the rules in the official educational system, which can be often dehumanizing. However, I found out that the dehumanizing and programming element of education can exist regardless of the environment depending on our understanding/definition of humans and the world. Given this, I continue to question myself, is there an alternative way of teaching that humanizes both teacher and student? I have not found my answer yet.
What stood out to me in your writing was that you understand students as whom have "natural equipment" as called "autonomy" but school/curriculum turns into mere programming, which is of course dehumanizing, as it represents the diverse needs of the individuals who are unique in their own ways. I also love your connection to self, curriculum, and community: "Curriculum without community is merely programming". Given this, I would like you to think about the reason (at least in part) why the current curriculum is dehumanizing. Is it because all of us in the field do not agree on the aims of schooling, or is it because of neoliberalism and capitalism? If we see the needs of the community and individual are (equally) important, what will be the question we should ask to resolve the dissonance? Or can mindfulness-related practice be a one way to humanize the schooling? If so, how?
Ji Soo,
DeleteI appreciate your thoughtful reply and am happy that you enjoyed my post. There was so much I wanted to say about this subject and these readings, I had trouble containing it in one post. The question that you raised about ways of humanizing both teacher and student is one that I consider a lot. In fact, in one of the teacher Facebook groups I am a part of, I recently posted about how I feel that the A/F grading system has detrimental effects on the mental health of both students and teachers. I believe it really limits the creativity of both parties to pursue what they decide is best in collaboration with one another. One thing that really stood out to me in Kumar and Downey's work is the way in which they emphasize inquiry as a way to better know the self, as opposed to just knowing the content. Their work values knowledge of the self, but I don't believe most public schools do, beyond the idea of trying to get students to specialize in an academic field early, which really seems to still be very much externally driven by things such as social expectations. Just as curriculum implementation can focus on "covering" content without considering or explaining to students why it matters, I think students focus a lot what grades they are getting and what they are completing as opposed to why they are pursuing one type of academic focus over another. Or, what seems to be quite detrimental to mental health, pursuing every possible course at the highest level regardless of their interest because they believe it is giving them the best chance to get into the college they want. The motivation, the locus of control, seems to be external: the purpose of academic success as measured by grades is that it leads to a highly ranked university, where academic success is motivated by the desire to get a certain job. The self seems to be merely a passenger on a life path, believing always contentment or happiness will come once one arrives at the next stop.
I have used mindfulness in my classes, if I'm being honest with myself, as a way to cope with the stresses of the world and the classroom, but I have not truly used it as a teaching method in and of itself. I think that teaching mindfulness as a way to help students navigate a curriculum where they are guiding their own learning more could be very powerful. I think a lot of teaching, as Noddings addresses, boils down to if we put the "right" knowledge in students heads then they will have critical thinking skills and higher education opportunities, giving them the ability to do with their lives what they want. But if that is uniformly a right approach, then why are do many young people feel lost and suffer from anxiety and depression after college? Let alone all those who do not or cannot take the college path for myriad reasons. The skills that school curricula emphasize may be important and even necessary for creating workers for the various fields the economy requires, but they do not provide the skills to find happiness via self-worth within oneself and self-knowledge.
If students learned to find contentment within themselves and determine what they believe to be contributions that are meaningful to society (which can come from more than just a job), I think maybe both our Gross National Happiness and GDP could increase, but I don’t think GDP growth should be a goal. I actually am very interested in the concept of the circular economy as opposed to the linear one that most countries focus on, which I guess pushes back on the economic beliefs of neoliberalism. As Noddings says, schools essentially hope that they pick the right skills to instill in students and believe those skills will give them the ability to navigate the world and find happiness on their own. But happiness is so often associated with financial gain and material wealth. Somewhat ironically, in a country as independent-minded as the U.S., there has not been a lot of value placed on the individual discovering his or her talents that cannot easily be commodified, such as strong interpersonal skills used for community organizing or providing companionship to those in need. For example, volunteer work is extracurricular and for a resume in school just as it is usually regarded as something additional to a job, not as something that has equal value to the individual and society.
DeleteI don't know exactly how to make schools less dehumanizing. It is much easier to say what to stop doing than to determine what should take its placement. In some instances, there may not be a tangible replacement; it may be the absence of intervention in students’ lives, of scheduling them down to minute, that is the best way we can facilitate their self-discovery. All I know for certain is that I was very struck by Nodding’s description of our education system as one of “coercion;” it put a word to a lot of the feelings I’ve had when I feel that I’m not doing what is best for my students as a teacher. So I think that we need to all closely analyze, at the aims, standards, curriculum, and pedagogy level, where we are coercing students and how that affects all students, whether or not they can academically perform in that environment. I have been asking myself for the past few weeks, “Is what I’m saying or doing or this lesson design coercing students? How so? What can I do to give students more choice is what and how? What can I do to explain more of the why? To find the why together even? So I hope to keep asking those questions and learning from this course, through the readings and in conversation with my peers and you.
ReplyDeleteHi Tom, I loved your thoughtful approach toward education and curriculum. Thanks for sharing your experience about using mindfulness in class as well. And please don’t be harsh on yourself. Humanizing education is an ambitious project for all of us as it is not so much different from to humanize the society we live in. Dewey once said that the classroom is a small microcosm of the society we live in. Khrishnamurti and Kumar claimed that our individual consciousness is reflected in our social consciousness. As far as I understand, what this means is that the changes should be made in each of our consciousness first, then the society and education will follow. And to do this, we need to understand how self and destiny is understood in the field of education, and by ourselves.
As Caitlin in our class has mentioned, many Western (or at least in the U.S. context) philosophers have understood destiny is something that can be achieved through our free will and it has influenced a lot in our current public schooling, which is well described in “American dream”. In the capitalist world, the mysteries of connection between destiny and human free will have been lost, as most people do not believe in god anymore. (I think people believe in economic prosperity instead of god). Now this free will seems like a great opportunity to achieve success but it is actually a huge burden that makes us blame ourselves whenever things go out of our control, when the fear comes in. As Han (2020) notes, this fear is actually fear of death.
“The society of production is dominated by the fear of death. Capital acts like a guarantee against death. It is imagined to be accumulated time because money allows you to have others work for you, that is, to buy time. Infinite capital creates the illusion of an infinite time. Capital works against death as absolute loss. It is meant to suspend the temporal limits of a life” (Han, 2020, p. 80)
We forgot how to let it go as we never think of death as part of our destiny. In our class, it is difficult to distance ourselves from the fear of losing control we have over students. As for me, this losing sense of control is deeply related with the productivity we are forced to perform in capitalist society. We are only busy with performing while having no time to fully enjoy the moment of freedom. Students in school learn this implicit principle of the society of survival: Be productive, Control ourselves, and Spend less time doing something useless (which are often fun)
There is no time to see what we want in ourselves because there is no time to do it (!) Current education system rather convinces us that what we want is something out there. Likewise, we as teachers often want to change something inside the child while not being able to see our inner selves. Are we, as teachers, fully aware of what self or destiny is? I think humanizing education sheds light on this kind of topics: self, life, destiny, and death.. Love to hear more about what you think.
Han, B.-C. (2020). The disappearance of rituals. Polity Press.
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