The purpose of this site will be to critically analyze my experiences as a neophyte educator in the realm of education both in the university setting and in public schools. Also, to look at movements towards social justice on the regional, national, and international levels as examples of putting theory into action.
My purpose in posting such articles will be to analyze the praxis associated with them to see if such movements increase the awareness of others in our struggle for social justice and greater realization of what it is to be a human being with and in this world.
Also, my purpose is to look at our world and our place in it as human beings as caretakers of this planet and our role in this. We must ask ourselves,"Is this a role we are doing well?"and, "What more must we do as critical educators to ensure our students' awareness of the world and their ability to change that world for the better is increased?"
The first step, is to help students to be in the world. This is a painful proposition. Many students I have found, like myself, are caught in patterns of subtle avoidance. Our media has so sensationalized the evil that children and adults alike are unable to realize how much goodness and love exists in this world. As educators we are taught only to make sure we teach what is on the test,more and more, and to only look at learning disabilities that take away from test scores, but the greatest disability is avoidance of being in the world. This in a young person can equal lost hope, and lost hope in one so young is a dangerous thing.
As educators we can take back this hope in little ways, yes first by creating safety in the classroom and establishing a sense of ethics based on good manners, but this is only the first step. However, if we look at why consideration of others is a good idea, we get into the premise that others exist. This epistemology in itself is a shock to many young people locked in the subsystem of the imaginary audience where others exist merely as saters of needs, and as a audience by which they will be judged. Moving away from the darkness of the prisoner's cell where requests go out and food and messages are slipped under the door in itself is a brave move for most students. As educators we must see how and why this happens for our students and for ourselves.
It is not a win-win situation. With the current situation in public schools, we all begin to feel isolated from our comrades, locked in cells of doubt, afraid of the next inspection; but this is not reality. The reality is no matter how cut off we may be in our seperate classrooms there is the lifeblood of the students that carry wisdom and ignorance from classroom to classroom. Who see through our masks to our true hearts underneath. We can not hide from them our true intentions, rather we should make sure that there is hope in our hearts, and that this hope is born out in the belief that each of our students will increase the amount of goodness in the world each day they are in it.
The first thing to model is that it is okay to make mistakes as long as they do not harm others deeply, but even then we must atone for our mistakes, and that forgiveness can come easily. Once we create a classroom that allows mistakes, but based around the integrity and honesty that we can speak respectfully about ways we may be hurt by others, or when we are afraid in whatever form is appropriate for the culture of ourselves and our students, we can begin to melt the bars which prevent students from seeing each other as human beings like his or her self.
The second thing is to reduce fear of the world and the future by focusing on the good things of the world, and poetry and philosophies people have established in facing the world. The world is not the cess pool some conservative politicians would have us believe, and contrary to such hedonistic philosophy each person does have goodness in them, not everyone is out to get something at every moment in time. It is strange to have to reprove that which was secured by the Humanist Movement so long ago, but these facts bear repeating.
The evidence shows that we are surrounded by the kindness of others, the clothes we wear, the cars and roads we drive on and with, the sidewalks, the buildings, all of these things were built through the kindness of others. Many of them doing a good job past what was asked of them out of the kindness of each of their hearts in wanting to do a job well done. From the time we were in the crib, a helpless thing, we have been cared for by others; yet we are told to trust no one.
In actuality we have relied on the kindness of strangers again and again and were saved from harm. Yes there are those who perform wrong actions, and we should be alert to those who show anger or other irrational minds who can harm us at some point, but that does not mean such people are intrinsically evil, just that at that moment in time they are capable of evil and best avoided, but not permentently. We ourselves also often fall into emotions which rob us of our better sense, and can act carelessly, so it is best to avoid wrongful actions of both ourselves and others, but without permenent judgement.
Permenent Judgement is just another ring of bars which seperate us from others. Often teenagers make an opinion of another, and can not change that opinion, cliques are formed off these presumptions of others, and often such judgements against others can cause a lifetime of harm in habitual attitudes. This is where stereotypes kick-in. Bottom line, there are no absolutes, there is not an absolute wrong or right action. There is no permenent action that will always bring about wellness, and another that would bring about pain. Even a doctor may need to use a knife to bring about wellness occasionally. The skill is to know what is appropriate and when, and never to permenently judge another by one quick act alone, but to recognize the behavior patterns of another, positive and negative to see what is to be avoided and what is to be tolerated, and to apply this knowledge to our own actions so that we might be more skillful.
The last realm of this awakening is the most subtle, that is creating a new more positive reality for our planet than this industrial nightmare struggle between labor and capital, between factory smoke and withered trees, between birds and airplanes. This involves the greatest task of all, looking at our own selfish wasteful behavior, and limiting our needs, slowing our lives down, and walking away from the "jet-setter" lifestyle that makes slaves of us all in search of shiny objects like magpies, and zombies wandering in search of elusive rest.
We are entering a realm where those at the top of industry would make of the Earth a slave planet. Where immigrants to the Global North would be forced back to their home countries to labor in free trade zones for products for the Global North, and those in the Global North would exhaust their new found wealth of the last 50 years on worthless products, sure to break in a few years, only to be forced by rampant underemployment to serve again as cheap labor for the global machine.
Meanwhile, our planet grows more and more polluted, even the airwaves are crowded with business transmissions, making money clogs our rivers with slime, and the last clean water is begining to be traded on the stock market like gold, oil, or tin foil. This is the great darkness which many children see as being hopeless to combat, and it's why many of them do not want to grow up.
One can not blame them, I did not wish to grow up in a post-nuclear world in the 80's, and my fear led me new ideas and new forums of expression, whereby I met many great leaders who would speak out against oppression in this world, but a leader is only one person, and we are many. We must find small ways everyone everyday to increase goodness and wholeness in this world. We all know what is right in our hearts, good earth in our noses, growing things, birds, butterflies, reminding our children of these things and continuing to fight for their prevalence is a fight we may find many hands with.
This is why I endorse place-based education first, only by being brave enough to be in the world and with the world can children become brave enough to acknowledge that yes they are alive in history, and therefore unlike celloid are susceptible to harm and history, but there is something else, in being part of history they are capable of making history. It is my goal that the history I make with my students is that they can not only know what to strive for that is goodness and justice in this world for all beings, but they have something to hold on to, the Earth, and the belief that both in the hearts of men and women and in the Earth, Goodness will Prevail.
No comments:
Post a Comment