It's become a cliche to say the world is polarized. Whether it is the divide between left and right, rich and poor, black and white, or old and young, we have become people who decide we are correct, and every other view is wrong. "It's my way or nothing" has become our default position as though the world is really that simple. Most things, however, boil down to balancing the perspective of many people, not just adopting the preference of the loudest person in the room. The either/or mentality has toxic effects that we are only just beginning to experience. It led to, among other things, the events of January 6.
A few days ago, I read this tweet from a teacher. "Classroom management is not about having the right rules. It's about having the right relationships." While I don't think this was a person who would advocate not having rules, there are people who think that way. They believe that if they invest all of their time in personalized handshakes and playing the music their kids like and talking about popular television shows, their students will want to please them so much that they won't need rules. If you think that sounds nuts, connect with some teachers online because they are out there, and they are super-passionate about it. Both ends of this spectrum are damaging to you and your students, as I learned during my student teaching experiences. The first teacher I was placed with had been teaching for 30 years, and he was burned out but didn't know it. Structure was everything to him, right down to the fine-tipped black ballpoint pen he insisted I use to take attendance. His students barely spoke in class, and, when they did, it was to answer a question with what they were certain was the right answer. There was no joking; there was no curiosity. His students were well-behaved, and they may have learned some physics; but I doubt any of them are out there right now telling their children about their amazing physics experience. My second placement was with a pregnant, basic-skills-science teacher for whom "winging it" was a daily event. She had a loose idea of what she wanted to cover, but there were no rules. She spent most of her class time just chatting with students. She knew everything about their lives, from who they were dating to who was on drugs. While she probably helped a lot of her students through some personal decisions, they did not learn much about science; and no substitute ever wanted to be placed in her class because the kids were accustomed to bouncing off of the walls. I had to reflect on both of these experiences as I entered my own classroom, and I recognized that I could not be either one of them. While I want to build relationships with my students, my role in their lives should not be the same as their friends. It is important that our relationship exists within proper professional boundaries and that they are confident that I am the authority in the room, but it is also important that my students feel free to show their individual personalities and that we laugh together. That balance is how students feel intellectually and emotionally safe in my classroom. It's not either rules or relationships. It's both rules and relationships.
I also see a lot of either/or mentality when it comes to curriculum and student choice. There are schools in which standardized tests are so high-stakes that no one ever dares to stray from the curriculum. Teachers exhaust themselves and their students, trying to stay on pace with the set curriculum. They do not entertain student questions if they are not aligned with the curriculum. They are not able to be creative about projects or labs or topics that might inspire their students because they must prepare their students for the test. I cannot imagine being handcuffed in that way. However, the backlash to this seems to be a trend toward not having a curriculum at all. The theory is that students will decide what they should learn on their own and not be required to learn anything they don't want to. This is, of course, as ridiculous as it sounds, and we would never attempt this in other areas of their life. No parent would say to their child, "Oh, you are thirsty. Any liquid will do. You have an innate understanding of what would be good to drink." If they did, we would have a lot of five-year-old alcoholics and kids who drink antifreeze because it is as sweet as Kool-Aid. What a parent might do is give their child a choice between a bottle of water, a juice box, and carton of milk, providing them with choice within a safe and nutritious set of boundaries. Education should be that way as well. A teacher with professional judgment knows what is essential in the curriculum and what has inspired students in the past. They also know what skills can be developed using different kinds of projects. Why wouldn't they use all of that knowledge to set up a project in which students can choose either from a variety of topics or a variety of methods, allowing choice within a set of boundaries? It doesn't have to be a strict adherence to a confining curriculum or a free-for-all with little content learning. It can be helping students develop curiosity about topics they wouldn't have even known they could have chosen without your example.
It seems that the biggest controversy in America right now is the teaching of Critical Race Theory. I confess that I know little about the theory itself. I know that it was developed in the 1970s and has been taught most to college students, majoring in history or philosophy. I have not spent enough time learning about it to know if the allegations that it is based on Marxism are true, but I also don't believe the majority of people screaming about it online have put in that time either. But, here's the point. If it turns out that CRT is a horrible thing to teach kids younger than college, that doesn't make the other alternative ignoring history and pretending that slavery, voter suppression, Jim Crow, and hate crimes never happened. My fear is that completely appropriate teaching of American history, including our racial sins, will now be labeled CRT and protested because no one wants to take the time to find out what they are objecting to. It doesn't have to be either CRT or nothing. It can be a curriculum that acknowledges the good America has done in the world without turning our founders into demi-gods. It can be teaching that includes our maltreatment of Native Americans, Japanese internment camps, and slavery without ignoring the progress that has been made. You don't have to assume that every white American is a violent racist to recognize that some of our legislators were Klansmen. Our country's history isn't either/or, and our instruction about it shouldn't be either.
Let's stop treating education as a simple thing. It is a group of complex and flawed human beings being taught by a group of complex and flawed human beings about complex and flawed topics. Let's start doing the intellectual work it takes to treat it that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment