Education Board
Someday, all my students will graduate. But they will still have been my students, and here is where I must reveal a dreadful secret. One of the aims of education is that it must subvert. Let me elaborate.
All students (whether they know it or not) enter with a specific mindset, a worldview, a frame of reference or of references. It follows then that education, which seeks to add, change, adjust and reframe, must do these things to an established state of being. This, if not involving outright coercion, must involve either conspiracy or subversion. We might call it collaborative or interactive, but this does not change the fact that the teacher wields the power of a privileged position because of societal norms - kratos, if you like.
The problem then is whether you can persuade without overuse of kratos - whether you can carry out the modification process without resorting to positional authority. And here is where there are two rather uncomfortable options, at least as intermediate states: bia - the use of force, brutality, coercion, oppression; and dünamis - the use of personal power, spiritual force, and the power of personality. These aren't necessarily modes we adopt, but they are languages of power and modes of effective operation for many people in many disciplines and vocations.
In fact, the option which makes least use of any of these uncomfortable alternatives is that of subversion - the careful planting of subtext, supertext and context. It is all about nurturing the seeds until the individual matures, and it would be an awful, cowardly, treacherous thing to do - if not for the attitude in which it must be done. For that attitude, as Paul says, is 'a better way'. You can ask students be partners in what is an exercise, really, of love.
This isn't sentimental or narcissistic; this is a respectful grace to be tendered to all because we were loved first. If you believe there is a God, and His nature is to enlighten, to illuminate, and to improve upon - you must love in a way that does these things (or at the very least, attempts to do these things) for others. That is what the core of education is all about.
One of the things I pray for is that my students will realise that they are the board of education, that they have the power to determine how they should and are educated; just as in politics, where the electorate gets the politicians they deserve, so too do students get the teachers they deserve. It is sad, but true. That too is what education entails.
It is this last hurdle that is often the wall of failure. If this board of education fails, those who are bored of education fail. O God, grant that we who are in this world of learning will find enlightenment, store and make light in ourselves, and reflect light into dark corners, all the days of our lives. Amen.
All students (whether they know it or not) enter with a specific mindset, a worldview, a frame of reference or of references. It follows then that education, which seeks to add, change, adjust and reframe, must do these things to an established state of being. This, if not involving outright coercion, must involve either conspiracy or subversion. We might call it collaborative or interactive, but this does not change the fact that the teacher wields the power of a privileged position because of societal norms - kratos, if you like.
The problem then is whether you can persuade without overuse of kratos - whether you can carry out the modification process without resorting to positional authority. And here is where there are two rather uncomfortable options, at least as intermediate states: bia - the use of force, brutality, coercion, oppression; and dünamis - the use of personal power, spiritual force, and the power of personality. These aren't necessarily modes we adopt, but they are languages of power and modes of effective operation for many people in many disciplines and vocations.
In fact, the option which makes least use of any of these uncomfortable alternatives is that of subversion - the careful planting of subtext, supertext and context. It is all about nurturing the seeds until the individual matures, and it would be an awful, cowardly, treacherous thing to do - if not for the attitude in which it must be done. For that attitude, as Paul says, is 'a better way'. You can ask students be partners in what is an exercise, really, of love.
This isn't sentimental or narcissistic; this is a respectful grace to be tendered to all because we were loved first. If you believe there is a God, and His nature is to enlighten, to illuminate, and to improve upon - you must love in a way that does these things (or at the very least, attempts to do these things) for others. That is what the core of education is all about.
One of the things I pray for is that my students will realise that they are the board of education, that they have the power to determine how they should and are educated; just as in politics, where the electorate gets the politicians they deserve, so too do students get the teachers they deserve. It is sad, but true. That too is what education entails.
It is this last hurdle that is often the wall of failure. If this board of education fails, those who are bored of education fail. O God, grant that we who are in this world of learning will find enlightenment, store and make light in ourselves, and reflect light into dark corners, all the days of our lives. Amen.
Labels: Education, God, Love, Subversion
etched with acid at 12:12:00 pm
2 Comments:
Most of the truly subversive education I've received has been outside of that sterile box called the classroom...
"I am the master now,"
Darth Vader to Obi Wan Kenobi.
This post reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World and the idea of the student teacher-relationship. Specifically, that that relationship could generate into a power-knowledge friction or that of blind loyalty or pride (Am i correct? It's a couple of years since I've touched that book)
So anyhow, yes you do have a point. Trouble is how many students view it that way?
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