Our schools in this country are supposedly failing, right? Kids aren't being made ready for the "Globalized" 21st Century, and such. If that is truly the case in nearly every district, town, city, county, and state throughout the Union, then the problem is not our teachers, students, or their parents. The SYSTEM is broken! So many folks say this is the way stuff is going down- that "the system is broken." I, for one, don't buy it. I think it is working perfectly.
Sounds crazy, right? Think about this: If I can walk into any school in the United States of America, look at the demographics (class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender breakdown, etc.) and with accuracy (+80%) predict which groups of students will succeed and which will fail (as a percentage) then there are forces at work here that prove the system is working exactly as it is supposed to; the system is not broken and is instead running smoothly.
It's like this: go to a light switch and flip it up. What happens? The lights turn on. If you push the switch down, the lights turn off. A system is defined by its predictability; the light switch is a very basic system because it has a reliable set of predictabilities inherent in its function.
Coming back to education- if I can look at the data and predict what is going to happen to any number of the demographic groups, then the educational system is working like it is supposed to. It is not failing. Our students are not failing. Our teachers are not failing. They're all being set up to fail by a system that is INTENDED to disprivilege certain segments of the population while affording unearned privilege upon the lives of others. So I feel the system is working perfectly. It is not fair, but the people in charge are getting exactly what they want- which the rest of us pay for. Bastards.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Friday, December 8, 2006
The Essence of What We Do as Educators
The essence of what we do as educators is to seek out, share, and engender hope. This essential element of our humanity cannot exist without empathy, compassion, and love. All our inquiries must begin and end in communion with this very basic ideal.
Yes, we must teach content. Yes, we must contend with standards. Yes, we must figure out how to exist and struggle against a system that seeks to make us and our students objects of those in power, i.e. things (not unlike a saw or a hammer) that perform a function. The intent of this objectification of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves is nothing short of making us human chattel. We do not thrive and we cannot survive as a species in such an environment. We women and men are not slaves.
We cannot shed the bonds of the status quo by relying on spreadsheets, databases, and bubble exams to tell us how well we are teaching. If we allow it, these things will only serve to distract us from our inevitable obsolescence. If we become blinded by these shiny toys, these fancy tools of assessment, we are going to bring the temple down upon our heads. This horrifying potential is not a reality I kindly favor. Something must change.
Since change always brings about conflict, and conflict either precedes or follows change, we educators must seek to bring about the existence of these joined brethren. This indicates we must first discover and uncover that which stands in the way of conflict and change. We must search for their opposites.
What is a force that opposes and/or contradicts change? Inalterable stagnation.
What is the opposing force to conflict?
- It is not peace. Peace is simply an agreement to be in the absence of war.
- It is not agreement. Agreement is unnecessary without some type of conflict to overcome.
- It is not harmony, for humans are not human in the absence of dissonance.
What then is conflict’s opposite? I believe the answer is radical love.
These two things, radical love and conflict, cannot be truly separated from one another. Their opposition implies that together, the two make up a larger whole. This means that if we educators seek to bring about change through conflict- without the co-existence of radical love- we will prove unsuccessful. At the same time, if we have radical love absent of a desire to conflict with and oppose the ideas and structures that stand in the path of all human liberation, here too we will prove unsuccessful.
It is through this co-union or communion between radical love and conflict that we can change our world for the better. It is this idea we must nurture so that we may begin to engender hope in our classrooms. This we can do. This end we must pursue.
By seeking to exist in a constant state of compassion, empathy, and love with (not towards) our students, we may begin to perform the impossible: We may begin to move our world to a safer, healthier, and more spiritually minded place- one in which we may walk and talk not for this force we call God, but alongside and within it. I hope to commune in reverence with you now. Let us begin to seek that type of change. This struggle for hope is the essence of what we do.
Yes, we must teach content. Yes, we must contend with standards. Yes, we must figure out how to exist and struggle against a system that seeks to make us and our students objects of those in power, i.e. things (not unlike a saw or a hammer) that perform a function. The intent of this objectification of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves is nothing short of making us human chattel. We do not thrive and we cannot survive as a species in such an environment. We women and men are not slaves.
We cannot shed the bonds of the status quo by relying on spreadsheets, databases, and bubble exams to tell us how well we are teaching. If we allow it, these things will only serve to distract us from our inevitable obsolescence. If we become blinded by these shiny toys, these fancy tools of assessment, we are going to bring the temple down upon our heads. This horrifying potential is not a reality I kindly favor. Something must change.
Since change always brings about conflict, and conflict either precedes or follows change, we educators must seek to bring about the existence of these joined brethren. This indicates we must first discover and uncover that which stands in the way of conflict and change. We must search for their opposites.
What is a force that opposes and/or contradicts change? Inalterable stagnation.
What is the opposing force to conflict?
- It is not peace. Peace is simply an agreement to be in the absence of war.
- It is not agreement. Agreement is unnecessary without some type of conflict to overcome.
- It is not harmony, for humans are not human in the absence of dissonance.
What then is conflict’s opposite? I believe the answer is radical love.
These two things, radical love and conflict, cannot be truly separated from one another. Their opposition implies that together, the two make up a larger whole. This means that if we educators seek to bring about change through conflict- without the co-existence of radical love- we will prove unsuccessful. At the same time, if we have radical love absent of a desire to conflict with and oppose the ideas and structures that stand in the path of all human liberation, here too we will prove unsuccessful.
It is through this co-union or communion between radical love and conflict that we can change our world for the better. It is this idea we must nurture so that we may begin to engender hope in our classrooms. This we can do. This end we must pursue.
By seeking to exist in a constant state of compassion, empathy, and love with (not towards) our students, we may begin to perform the impossible: We may begin to move our world to a safer, healthier, and more spiritually minded place- one in which we may walk and talk not for this force we call God, but alongside and within it. I hope to commune in reverence with you now. Let us begin to seek that type of change. This struggle for hope is the essence of what we do.
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