'Expanded Learning Time' in US schools: Teacher, leave them kids alone..
This is something I wrote as a comment on an online article. As you can see, it's a long rant..
When I was five or so, I remember getting really worried and ashamed about what my teachers thought of me. My mother told me: "Do you really think your teachers go home and night and say to themselves: 'Oh, that girl. I'm so worried about her.."
Of course they don't. I stopped essentially listening to or caring about anything teachers told me, then. When I was a child, my mother loved me and held my interests in heart. However, a teacher could only love me in the abstract.. A teacher cannot hold in its mind the interests of the individual child, but only the IDEA of a child, the 'template child' whose qualities are prescribed by and for the school agenda.. It would seem that if a teacher starts genuinely caring for one particular child (rather than the abstract 'children'), in that moment, they cease to engage with that child as a teacher and revert to engaging as their whole, human, individual selves - since, of course, the feelings, problems, and dimensions of an individual child can only be meaningfully engaged with by another person on the individual level.
The school instution does not, in its theory or in its ordinary daily functioning, acknowledge the reality of the individual child. At school, the here and now, flesh and blood unique child who turns up to class is cast into the role of the generic, theoretical Student. If the child does anything that doesn't fit this role, 'Teachers' (another template identity mask which individuals put on while at school) come down HARD. This idea was manifest in my experiences of school and I'm certain it was manifest in those of many other people.
Human beings, wearing the template identity (or in the role) of 'Teacher', attempt to forcibly graft onto the child (who is, again, real, individual, unique) the mask of the generic, abstract 'Student'. The Teacher's business to make - that is, MANUFACTURE - 'Students', whether good or bad (for it can't be denied that Tesco, Walmart, and McDonalds needs a LOT of the latter). I think they try to do this this by:
Attempting force upon me the prescribed motivations of the 'Student': whatever 'Teacher'/'Boss'/'State' decides will reward and punish me (gold stars, good grades, or detention and "I'm so disappointed.").
Attempting to force upon me the values of the 'Student': don't be 'weird', don't be a 'loner', don't care too much about anything. It doesn't even really matter whether you care about schoolwork - but woe betide you if you care about YOUR OWN THING INSTEAD. That's what's REALLY dangerous to School, because for School to work at all, a child must place their effort and interest and intelligence and pleasure and pain under the direction of school. The message, beneath and despite the tinsel and civilities and happy posters on the walls, seemed to me to be essentially to be one of servitude: "The boss/teacher/principal/external authority has the right to direct your feelings and abilities. The external authority has the right to assemble your life's meaning and purpose for you. Your fulfillment is held in the external authority's hands to be doled out or withdrawn as decided."
I was once with my younger sister when she was going to a new school. She was being introduced to her homeroom teacher. I am paraphrasing this, but anyway, she said: "I don't care whether you get good marks in my class or not.." Though that was paraphrased, this is exact: "As long as you do your best, that's all I ask for."
http://www.timeandlearning.org/?q=set-high-expectations-0 This coercive attitude is mirrored here on the 'expanded learning time' lobby group NCOTL's website. I have highlighted the parts I take serious issue with.
"Leaders of successful schools invest heavily in creating a school culture of high expectations and accountability, and a school climate that supports learning and achievement. An expanded school schedule can help teachers and administrators establish and maintain this strong school culture. With more time, for instance, schools can introduce activities and routines intended to reinforce school values and offer programs that teach behaviors and attitudes necessary for success such as hard work, perseverance and responsibility. For example, schools can offer orientation sessions that establish expectations for student behavior (note: that is 'student' behaviour, not individual behaviour - everyone MUST act like a 'student', apparently, whatever boss decides a 'student' shall be) and effort, advisory programs that teach core school values, and community or town hall meetings that showcase and reward individual and collective student achievements and improvements. "
Whether a child wants to put effort into school or not - and BLESS, BLESS those cunning, crafty, smart, self-empowered children, like my mother and several people I know, who realise that they can get something THEY know they want, like qualifications, or history or maths knowledge etc, out of school by 'playing the game' - these children didn't CHOOSE to be here. The law and/or their parents' financial status forces them to attend literally 'whether they like it or not'. You do not have the right to ask any child to do ANY SUCH THING. BY LAW, the only right you have over these children is over their attendance. You can offer a child the state's idea of an education (which the state has got a monopoly over, as if I needed to mention), by making them attend class. You're allowed to expel them or attempt to stop them if they're preventing you from offering your idea of an education to those children who actually WANT to take what you're offering.
But damn it all before you're allowed to force a child to swallow your idea of an education. Your job is to lead the horse to water, and whether the horse drinks is entirely his business. I hated school. I hated homework reaching into the free time which I could have spent following my own interests and getting to know my family - as a child, I spent more time in institutions than with my own parents, who were of course busy in their own institutions working to support me. Most of all, I hated being treated as if did not know my own priorities, and as if I should have no interests, motivations, thoughts, dreams outside of academic ones - that is, servile ones.
Thank you for reading this. Also, I'm a bachelor of Philosophy at the university of my country's capital city. If anybody is interested in what I said, I would highly recommend the writings of John Taylor Gatto, and his essay "We Need Less School, Not More" would also be relevant (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/)
