{Silence}
This is one of the first lessons that
students learn from an early age—how to be silent: sit still, fold your hands, listen. If you want to speak, raise your hands. Wait for permission. Be quiet when the teacher speaks. Too often,
the teacher’s prejudices come to bear as to who will speak. Experiment with this—take a gender
tally. You will notice that boys/men
tend to be called on more frequently than girls/women. In social situations, it’s not uncommon for
the women to be silent when men are telling (and retelling) their stories. Jokes out of context? That’s the men’s specialty. More lessons:
males own air space. Notice how
these dynamics function when it comes to race, age, beauty, sartorial
preferences.
Yes, there is something to be said for how silence bespeaks of courtesy
and listening in the classroom, but really—why
must the teacher be the recipient of most of the courtesy and listening-to? Teachers
talk/talk/talk. Students learn what they
do—shut up when the teacher is speaking. Let’s not be surprised when they don’t
instantly jump into impassioned discussion when they’ve been veggying in their
seats, practicing silence.
As teachers, let’s say less.
Say nothing. Treat silence as Japanese
artists do space—something to create and shape.
***
Yes/No
Dualism
At this stage, we buy into a bipolar
cosmology—the world neatly divided into clearly defined extremes: Teacher/Student,
Powerful/Powerless, God/Man, Man/Woman (gays and trannies aren’t real), Black/White—remember
George W. Bush’s swagger when he bragged “I don’t do gray”?—and, of course, the
almighty Right/Wrong. Children, insecure
teenagers, and stunted adults yearn to live in this universe—it’s safe, solid,
permanent—please, it has to be. And in this world we get to have someone—the
person or deity in charge—to take care of us.
Symptoms of Yes/No dualism in the classroom?
Teachers who specialize in “I’m right/you’re wrong,” devising paintball
hunts to splotch student “errors” with the favored color of ink or highlight—the better to grade you, my dear. Such a
great way to serve (as administrators are delighted to call it) “the needs of
assessment”! Let’s wheedle yes/no answers from students. Hooray for Multiple Choice! Hooray for rote! Hooray for quantification of
qualities! Ask them questions they are
likely to get “wrong” so we can tug-of-war them back to the sunshine of
“right”!
Students in the Yes/No classroom acquire a mechanical attitude toward
learning. They can become anxious, bored,
competitive, combative, and non-responsive in response. A polarizing atmosphere
fosters hierarchies and animosities between students and breeds prejudice.
Students learn to ask teachers the most
foolish of questions when they are forced to live in or aren’t guided out of
the false security and therefore terrors of Yes/No
dualism: Can I ask a question? What do
you want? How many pages? (I’ll elaborate on those in another post.)
***
So-So What? Relativism
So-So
What? Relativism is also
known as “sophomoritis.” No longer a hazed and vulnerable newcomer needing the
certainties of a bipolar universe, once sophomores pay backward the
humiliations they suffered onto new freshmen, they may swing to the safety of
solipsism: I live in my universe—you live
in yours. Don’t bother me with your
point of view. With apologies to Descartes, this translates to I think it—therefore it is.
So-So
What? Relativism in the
classroom? Teachers who specialize in
being popular, anything goes, and coasting. In writing classes, these teachers will
praise everything—challenge no one.
Students learn little when they aren’t
drawn out of the So-So What? Relativism stage. They go slack. They can’t
focus. They become entrenched in whatever, and are likely to revert to Yes/No.
***
It
Depends Contextualism
It
Depends Contextualism
embraces ambiguity, flexibility, democracy, and uncertainty. It’s what John Keats said William Shakespeare
“possessed
so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of
being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact and reason.” This is the
danger zone of scholarly adventure, creativity, experimentation. It cannot be easily assessed.
In this stage, truth and
morality are treated as a function of context.
It challenges Kant’s categorical imperative, which I translate as “what
if everyone were to do this?” Well, if
someone came into my classroom in a rage and asked, let’s say, for Terrence—I would
instantly lie that there was no Terrence present. I would, of course, be breaking the
categorical imperative for honesty. So
be it!!!
Students who are
encouraged to contextualize may baulk at having to abandon the certainties,
prejudices, and arrogance of the Yes/No
and So-So What? stages. But the benefits of It Depends Contextualism—freedom of thought, creativity,
flexibility, new experiences, depth of ideas, friendship, collegiality, and
community—are immeasurable. Contextualism
fosters What If?—which is the
foundation of civilization. It is to be lead forth from the shadows of Plato’s
cave. It’s what “education” means—“leading
out.”
***
How do you move
among these stages?
©
2014 Susanna Rich
