Bud’s podcast post inspired me to write this evening. I’ve noticed a few things over the last few weeks that I’m going to pull together here. I hope I don’t get bogged down in too much detail, but I think that there may be a relevant point that is being touched on in various forms, but not explicitly identified. I hope I can make a constructive contribution to this discussion.
From David Warlick’s, response to Marco Polo’s post about the contradictions he sees in both being and mistrusting authority figures, I was reminded of some reading I did about the tension between freedom and authority that many teachers who aspire to a democratic practice face each day. Bud’s audio post concerned his decision to give his students a choice of books and the opportunity to visit a bookstore where they could select them. His experience in this was altogether positive and he used this as an occasion to talk about the merits of students having choice and voice in educational decision-making. Bud was commenting on Miguel Guhlin’s recommendation that schools “set up our own blogosphere–severing the connections to the ‘real’ blogosphere.” I enjoy reading Bud’s blog, and I am fairly awed by his willingness to think aloud (in a first draft, as he called it) and publish it as a podcast. The key thing that Bud said, I think, is that
as a teacher it’s a really hard balance for me to figure out where the line is between being a responsible adult and denying students opportunities or access.
The unifying thread to what I see here is the contradiction between freedom and authority that progressive educators face in educational decision making. Ira Shor, a critical theorist, in an article called What is Critical Literacy. says
The risk and difficulty of democratizing education should be apparent to those who read these lines or to those who have attempted critical literacy, perhaps encountering the awkward position of distributing authority to students who often do not want it or know how to use it….Dewey saw cooperative relations as central to democratizing education and society. To him, any social situation where people could not consult, collaborate, or negotiate was an activity of slaves rather than of a free people. Freedom and liberty are high-profile ‘god-words’ in American life, but, traditionally, teachers are trained and rewarded as unilateral authorities who transmit expert skills and official information, who not only take charge but stay in charge. At the same time, students are trained to be authority-dependent, waiting to be told what things mean and what to do, a position that encourages passive-aggressive submission and sabotage.
Here we can see that this is not a new problem. Dewey wrote “Experience and Education” in 1938. What we have now are a new set of tools that seem well suited to subvert the system and short-circuit the power dynamic that has frustrated progressive educators for decades.
Marco Polo wrote that “probably due to their incarceration in high school, my students have developed bad study habits and self-sabotaging behaviour.” Bud Hunt said that “when you don’t get the opportunity to learn how to make a good choice you don’t learn about how to do that and we release adults into the population that aren’t ready to be there.” It’s an interesting choice of words by both of these teachers, who used language that associates schools with prisons. I don’t want to read too much into this, but I’d say that we are dealing with some fairly serious power dynamics, and everyone recognizes it, either consciously or unconsciously. I don’t mean to criticize their choice of words, either, because I think many of us see the truth in what they say. Whether we see ourselves as jailers or liberators, though, we should recognize that we are involved in a political struggle. It doesn’t matter whether we filter or not, whether we give students choices or not, we are imposing our values and ethics regardless. It’s unavoidable. There is no such thing as a politically neutral classroom.
We have to engage students in discussions about things that matter to them and act as guides and interpreters to the world they are living in. Choices, yes absolutely. It’s how students learn. Authority, yes as well. It’s our duty. Kids need all manner of guidance, and they look to us for leadership. They also trust us to keep them safe. We owe them the benefit of our experience and our knowledge of the world. The balance between responsibility and the need students have to take a risk is real, but it’s not a static limit. It shifts and moves with each individual. None of the institutional barriers restricting access to information will matter if we are truly engaged in honest dialog with our students. I don’t believe there is a choice for us to make between one extreme or another. I think we have to be both ally and authoritarian, depending on the circumstance. Dialog is key. When we speak from our hearts to theirs they know we care. Our challenge is to help students imagine a better future than the one that will be handed to them by default. How we do that is a creative process that nobody – to my knowledge – has mastered.
7 Comments
Doug, what an eloquent post. There are real power issues in schools, and teachers can easily be dismissed from service for blogging about them. Even Bud’s podcasts could be seen as reflecting negatively on the existing policies of the District he works in.
For politicians, as well as school administrators, perception IS reality. It took me a long time to understand that as I moved from teacher to district technologist to administrator. But, this is understood. Not all teachers are as conscientious as you or Bud. This means that not all will supervise students in their forays into democratic thought, preferring their own authoritarian rule.
That’s why, as you say, the instructional barriers restricting access to information won’t matter if we engage in honest dialogue…and honest dialogue has not been restricted in classrooms, only access to inappropriate web sites that facilitate a “low-level” of dialogue that allows children, young adults, to connect to each other with sexy looking photos and trash talk, no matter that this is acceptable within our culture at large, but not in K-12 education system.
Thanks again for a wonderful post.
Wow. Thought-provoking stuff, Doug and Miguel. “serious power dynamics” is right. Gatto’s “Underground History of American Education” takes a (very) good stab at identifying these dynamics. Well worth reading. It has certainly helped me understand the different forces that impinge on my classrooms and mould my and my students’ behaviours and even thoughts.
Thanks for taking the time to articulate this perspective clearly. One point which is implicit in your post deserves to be made explicit. You correctly advise teachers to “recognize that we are involved in a political struggle.”
But this political struggle is not the simple one of populist fantasy – poor innocents locked up and indoctrinated by the bad schools – freedom loving souls convicted only of youth sentenced to 13 years of irrelevant and boring classes when they could be having wonderful experiences in the greater society, working on sailboats or something (eg Gatto).
No, the political struggle of a radical teacher is often directed at the students. Students’ addiction to pop culture, disrespect for clear thinking, inability to do research, utilitarian/capitalist orientation, etc. contradict the vision of a democratic learning community far more powerfully (in my current school) than the Bush administration, the high stakes tests, or the power elite. The students are not captive masses yearning to breathe free! They are captive masses much more interested in comparing evaluations of new Nike sneakers, the latest video game systems, and the merits of relative hip hop artists (overwhelmingly, but not (thankfully) in all cases).
We analyze how schools and culture deform the students, but we don’t want to admit that we consider our students deformed.
This political struggle with students (not together with them against the administration, military recruiters – but against the mainstream students themselves) does not and can not take the form of “discussion” between two equal participants. If we are really trying to work towards awakened intellectuals in our classrooms, liberatory “spectactors” in the world, then we will not give equal time in our curriculum to playing Playstation (student choice) and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (teacher focus). Though we can (and should) link the two, our focus will be on helping the students perceive that they are deluded and pacified and dumbed down. This brings to mind the story from Idras Shah about a man breaking into a very old prison to help the people escape. The people asked, “What do you mean escape – what is a prisoner?”
By the way, “The Matrix” is a very important tool in this political struggle against the current subject-positions of the students.
“Discussion” and “honest dialog” sounds pretty innocuous. Planning curriculum to convince students to change their orientation to the world starts to sound a little uncomfortable, doesn’t it?
We start to think of Clavell’s “Children’s Story”.
But this is the game we’re playing – trying to awaken people (including the ability to think critically, choose, decide for themselves) that are living in zombie land.
I agree that there is a constant shifting between “freeing” and “leading” in this game.
In my classroom, 12th grade Humanities at a small school, I propose an agenda everyday, and the students clarify, modify, and vote on it. One time (only) they voted to scrap the learning and just “hang out”. If that happened several more times I would quickly abandon the formal democracy so as to maintain the possibility of awakening.
At the local “Free School” there was a controversy over the use of video games. The school finally voted to allow them – what about porn and pot? Jon Kozol wrote eloquently about this in “Free Schools” and “The Night Is Dark And I’m Far From Home” in his younger days. We have ethical obligations to make sure that our students are aware of a variety of viewpoints – don’t we also have ethical obligations to keep kids from sniffing glue (literally and metaphorically)?
As a teenager I was quick to see the hypocrisy in everyone but myself. Now I wonder, who among us is free of contradiction? Learning to sort through your values, the choices you freely make, and those which leave you feeling compromised is a hard discipline. I wonder how many people can do that?
The problem you’ve identified exposes a tension that teachers confront between our obligation to lead without indoctrinating. The conventional view of our role is as neutral agent in the “delivery” of a “neutral” curriculum. Recognizing that there can be no such thing, what are we to do? If we preach a set of values and “convert” students to a different, more “correct” point of view through some means of persuasion, have we succeeded in teaching them to think critically? You might be interested in this article about conflicting logics in education.
Thank you for your comment. It was a good one. It got me thinking about the limits of our commitments, and what freedom might really look like.
I followed the link from your signature, but there was a problem with the URL, which I’ve tried to fix. RadicalTeaching looks like an interesting site. I’ll spend some time looking around there.
What I call “benign dictatorship”.
Somehow in ALL my reading here , I missed this. It’s great. One of the hardest things to “own”.
Just this week my husband commented I was one of the “free-est teachers” he ever met,” That made the children sit like robotic zombies while reading my Thoreau books. ” Adding of course, “Write that.” I suppose one day I will be forced to reconcile and write to a few of the basic contradictions in my classroom. I want to allow for freedom and make sure we are all entirely involved. Hypervigilance is my methodology much of the time.
I really enjoyed this, again I always find your site continually renewing, challenging, a credit to teaching and insightful. Sarah
Sarah, we are all hypocrites somewhere along the line, especially in the classroom. The difference between the genuine commenters here and the trolls who drop in on Doug’s blog from time to time to “point out the right way” is the ability to admit hypocrisy – human beings are all flawed in some way and admitting that as a teacher means we always strive to do better, but know that there are no absolute answers in this profession.
There are days Graham when I know so little it can’t fit on the head of a pin.
But I will shout out again that reading here, and the places this has flowed to, has done more to restore my sensibilities as a teacher than any ‘session” I’ve been a part of , or been sent to see.
( Just as a side note I kept reading all of you regarding Smart Boards and other tech issues such as blogging of course completely “disallowed ” in my district-and to my delight in my husband’s district at Mesa he’s envisioning and full steam on putting this into the classes.(he’s the super.) I like to think I had a small part of that by listening and reading here…..)
I come to learn, not really to convert another. And following this set of thoughts-caused me to once again start at square one and consider my relationship to what i’m doing each day….with these kids I so at this point just treasure working with and figuring out how to teach.
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