Camden’s Blog

From the beginning, schools were expected to operate as socializing agents for community and to make children into responsible, productive members of society.  The words may change, the methods may change, but for the most part teachers still often cite this as one of the goals of their teaching.  Lipton and Oakes lay out a historical map of the different methods and purpose of discipline, and management but in truth, much of what is practiced today in school is a conglomeration of many theories, ideas and methods.  In my opinion, just as we teach what we know, we discipline/manage what we know unless we make a conscious effort to really transform our classrooms into socially just communities of inquiry.  If the students are authentically engaged, they learn to “manage” themselves with little thought given to it. They are too busy learning about their lives and each other rather wasting time on “bad choices”.  One has simply got to provide respect and understanding in order to inspire it in their students.                          Now that sounds simple but there is very-difficult-to-manage foundation that must be laid first. Lipton and Oakes discuss briefly effective teaching, “with it” teachers, and teachers who make lessons interesting  – these three qualities go a long way to laying this foundation.  These were qualities of teachers I had in my own childhood and I do try to incorporate in my teaching.  It was no surprise to me that the 1970’s were listed as the time these ideas came into play since I was a child of the 70’s.  Moving on to contemporary theories of classroom management, Lipton and Oakes discuss other qualities that are important to laying this foundation – Caring, Respect and Democracy.  And again, these ideas are not new but in an educational setting that is more diverse and unequal than ever, they are more needed than ever and must be present in classroom management for it to be successful.  Without a teacher’s sponsorship and commitment to these additional three qualities in their teaching, the students will have little of these qualities in their behavior and learning.   The power of relationships is crucial for establishing the key component – that of trust.  So if one’s students do not think their teacher cares about them, respects them, or provides room for their voice, they will never trust their teacher enough to allow them in.  A community cannot form or gel from a group of lone wolves or outsiders.  So I am back to the statement – we manage how we know to manage – and Mauro Bautista in this chapter eloquently asks “How would I want an adult at a school setting to treat my own son?”  Yes, I do care for my students as I would care for my sons.  I respect my students as I respect my sons.  And I listen to my students as I listen to my sons.  I celebrate my students for their authentic self as I celebrate my beautiful sons.  It’s amazing how golden that rule really is isn’t it? 

At first I thought I would comment on these readings separately but on looking more closely I can see their connection to one another.  Briefly, I want to comment on the Pedagogy of the Absurd, specifically with regard to NCLB and it’s now two years post article.  It is so easy to follow the progression of events through NCLB and the public education’s response to it as laid out by this article.  I am pretty much a “conspiracy theorist” at all times – must be that left-wing liberalism in me but I really do not believe that things do not “just happen.”   Whether or not it is conscious or not, forces that enact this type of change require motive.  So we should have asked ourselves at the time: What else could be the motive of companies to involve themselves so deeply into any public policy if it is not profit?  Isn’t it the very definition of special interest group? And why do we allow anyone but educators to make these decision in the first place?  Do we allow morticians to make decisions for surgeons?  Do we allow real estate agents to decide lending practices?  If they stand to gain from the failure of an enterprise, they should have no imput to the outcome.  This is a no-brainer, yet the voices of reason now must wait for this absurdity to self-emplode while the damage is being done to our students and to our many would be fantastic teachers who threw their hands up and crawled up out of the rabbit hole from Wonderland. 

Despite my tendencies toward left-wing tendencies and am not in favor of the Us vs. Them mentality that divides our making true progress in this country.  Perhaps it’s because I have conservative relatives that I know are good people and care about their fellow men and women.  So, I really didn’t like the format of this chapter in TTCTW – Traditionalists vs. Progressives.  If we seek to look at the discord in education, I believe it does little good to make it into a two-party system.  Zeba Palomino writes about mathematics in this chapter in much the same way as I look at education: it’s not a right or wrong answer.  It’s connected to a foundation, and dependent on philosophy, communication, art, science, langauge, and more.  We need to be careful not to quiet the voices of anyone.   In the discussion of reading, there is an attempt to “balance” the two perspectives for the good of instruction and it seems as if the subject lends itself to a conciliatory approach.  In Lipton and Oakes discussion on Social Studies, again they return to the two-party discussion and while I do tend to agree mostly with their bias toward progressive education but they tend to muddle their description of traditionalists with conservative politics, and sometimes overgeneralize to the point of presenting an opinion as fact.  “They suggest that emphasiss on the process of doing social science and constructive teaching methods has altered what history instruction is supposed to accomplish.  Many object to the term “social studies” because it conveys neglect of the traditional disciplines.”  I think the authors could have made statements like this more valid with some sources – they assign a lot of negative views to this group without supporting their arguement.  In the long run, it sets up a divisive atmosphere that interfers with the progess and future of  change in instruction and learning with multi-perspective.  It weakens the argument if you fail to responsibilty present perspective when you discuss the importance of perspective. 

Wow, I have to start all over on this one, I don’t even know how I lost it but it is completely wiped clean when I published it   It was good too

In Freire’s discussion of Fear he says there is always a relationship between fear and difficulty.  All truly great activists realize this and examine it in their work.   All the truly evil rely on it to do their work and utilize it to paralyze those that might impede their work.  Our insecurities can rob us of our courage if we are not careful.  So what to do since we all have fears?  Freire insists that we must think about and examine our fear carefully by:  objectively dissecting the reasons/sources, searching the possibilities for overcoming them, plan for overcoming them, plan again, grow our capacity to respond, and most importantly enlarge our ability to evaluate.  He warns that panic will paralyze us and provides us with illustration through our biggest fear – that of being a scholar.  Here Freire actually frees my own spirit and fear.  I relate to the examples he discusses in the fear of not understanding what we read.  It reminds me of the law school professor in Respect who felt as if he was a fraud as a scholar despite the accolades of his peers.  Only through pushing past those fears and writing did he finally feel worthy.  I really related to him and I believe that Freire recognizes this as a common fear of educators and that is why he tackles it head on in this letter.  He tells us that ” fear itself tends to be overcome and one is free to attempt to invent the meaning of the text in addition to just discovering it”  I absolutely agree that it “must be every author’s true dream – to be read, discussed, critiqued, improved and reinvented by his or her readers”.  It certainly isn’t to be feared.  So of course our challenge is to become activist within ourselves to inspire that in our students, who must have the same fears we do as scholars. 

The other aspect of Freire’s 2nd letter is that of difficulty.  He cautions that one’s ability may be less than what it takes to meet the challenge and then one becomes immobilized by their fear.  Which is not what happened to Jaeger in his article Silencing Teachers.  I found this article very interesting because I was part of a pilot program that trained on Open Court.  Now this wasn’t by choice because the school that I interned at was under initial stages of being “taken over” by the state and we were mandated to train in this program.  I spent two weeks in the summer of 2000 with this scripted program and naively embraced as a godsend to a novice teacher.  I spent the first half of the school year though undermining unconsciously by never following the script.  I religiously read every page each week ahead of time, pulled out all of the literature, poems, songs, writing and art projects.  I never went by the phonic script except during dictation for learning to blend.  I could easily see where these teachers had had enough after 3 years!  I would definitely have written this letter and the only difference here in Georgia is that I would have had plenty of company.  In Georgia, my fellow teachers will think it but because of the lack of representation they would face the elimination of their job in a second.  So we have to learn to be activist in a world of silence or we will have not platform from which to at least incorporate sign language.  As Martin Luther King Jr. says “ The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”  I look for ways to face these moments of difficulty through evaluation not fear and struggle not to get too comfortable.