Final Reflections

If you wake up in a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

Despite me being possibly the most vocal critic of the required blogging, I have to say I actually have really enjoyed it.  So I thought I would offer one final reflection now that the course has ended.  I can’t really believe what a long time ago the first class now feels.  Not so much in terms of time, but in terms of change. 

 I can't say I've ever taken so much from a class, either academically or emotionally.  I am not really sure why that is; perhaps it is just where I am in my life now rather than when I was an undergraduate, or perhaps it is where I am geographically.  Being forced to face people whose empowerment may come largely from removing what I am and what I represent from their lives was (is) pretty tough to take. But I suppose on a long enough time line everyone’s survival rate drops to zero. 

 As we pushed through the theoretical part of the course at the beginning, I certainly struggled with some of the ideas.  I felt silenced as a 'native speaker' and vocalised as a woman.  Yet, I still felt like we moved forward together and that there was a sense of support for what everyone was trying to do in their own classrooms and their own lives, as every Saturday night we were finding something out: we were finding out more and more that we were not alone. 

And it was precisely because of how I felt as a student that I struggled as a teacher.  My classroom has always been a space where critical thinking has been encouraged and valued.  Yet, as I began to feel isolated in our class, I questioned if activities that took place in my own classroom may work to isolate my students in the same way.  I was even, on a few occasions, at the point of rejecting critical pedagogies all together.  I couldn’t see how I could ask my students to think things if they hadn’t felt them, or ask them to challenge things that they could not change. And I didn’t know how much of what took place in the classroom really translated into the real world. .

Losing all hope was freedom

But then I realised that it wasn’t about raising students’ awareness about all that I see wrong with the world, or worse still what I see is wrong in their worlds.  But it is about showing them that they themselves have the power to change things. It wasn’t about me asking them to feel things that are not part of their world.  It’s about engaging them in process of empowerment, where they do have a voice and they do have a value, which can begin them on a journey where they can create change by themselves.    

So that’s where I am right now. And that’s what I hope to continue to bring to my students, as I can see that each and every one of them is capable of changing their world little by little if that’s what they choose for themselves, so I am going to stop trying to control everything and just let it go!

And finally, did I take a lot from this class?  Absolutely!  Just as Curtis told me I would. 

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

*Thanks Martin for connecting Freire’s ideas to Tyler Durden’s!  It only made me love Freire more.*

Smart vs Educated. Lived vs Learnt

The longer I spend in education, as both a student and a teacher, the more I question its value.  For me, Nate Shaw, was so “remarkable” because he wasn’t educated, not despite of it.  Arguably, being subjected to the school system would have taught him that he was a black, working class man, who should know his position in the world. Yet through working the land, he learnt how valuable he was as he excelled at something that he loved. And despite all the adversity he faced in his life, knowing that he was worth something somewhere, arguably, was why he refused to allow his spirit to be broken.

As I watch my students, there are so many (too many) who are ‘failing’ in school. Failing or, should I say being failed, only because they don’t excel in the academic subjects that are so valued and because they refuse to be trained into obedience.  Their interests are ignored, their smarts not explored and, sadly, they are taught everyday that they are failures.  Yet, these students have so much to offer. They are often the most personable, the most thoughtful and the most interesting. Their lives outside school are fascinating (and often painful), yet none of these things are valued or even considered.  And how can we expect them to value themselves as wonderful and important individuals when, from such an early age, they are positioned as not good enough?  As Einstein said, “everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will go through its entire life believing it’s a failure”. 

And what is waiting for those of us who ‘succeed’ in the school system?  We sit in graduate schools, regurgitating other people’s thoughts (usually white, educated men's thoughts).  Like I said in class, we were only reading about Nate Shaw in the first place because a white, educated man decided he was worthy to be read.  Arts aren’t valued, emotions and feelings avoided and real lived experiences are only valid if they can be supported by some educated person's thoughts (just like I, ironically tried to validate my own reflections with an Einstein quote above).  But George Orwell’s ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ wasn’t such a powerful book because of what he was taught at Eton. It was so powerful because of what he learnt in the world.  Because he lived it, because he felt it was what made reading it so compelling. And still, despite how real this book was, I didn’t learn anything about poverty from reading it. What I learnt about poverty came from what I have seen and what I have felt in the world.  No one could teach me that in a school.

“If I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo?  You know a lot about him I bet.  Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations.  But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.  You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.”  Good Will Hunting.