Subject: Role of a Teacher

Posted by Ed Johnson on 11/28/2004
In Reply To:Role of a Teacher Posted by John Gunkler on 11/26/2004

Message:

Might K-12 kids be just as quick, if not quicker, than adults to "complain" and otherwise stand up for themselves? And might the problem for us, the adults, be to come to see just how kids stand up for themselves and then to learn how to improve the learning environment in response?



Consider that the adults' stand-up-for-yourself worldview likely comprises aspects of confrontation, competition, and rugged individualism. For the K-12 kids, however, might their worldview be that of trust-seeking and when they judge the learning environment untrustworthy, they disengage? Real quick?



Because school embodies a captive environment, authoritarian and compulsory, kids standing up for themselves just might manifest as self-protective behaviors to include cutting up, acting out, dropping out, bullying, and, in the insidious case where kids who have come to see themselves belonging outside the dominant culture, rejecting academics as "acting white."


Ed Johnson

Follow Ups:

Role of a Teacher - John Gunkler 11/28/2004