My last day of tutoring in a Lansing middle school raised a question in no subtle way when a student asked me the following: “Miss Morris, are you ready to be a teacher?” In the situation involving such personal questions coming from a student, I have found that I have no problem coming up with a concise and sometimes witty response that does not reveal too much personal information yet adequately addresses the inquiry. After a quick, automatic smile, I searched my brain for anything to use in response; I was met by absolute speechlessness. This question would lead me to challenge my way of thinking by applying the knowledge I had gained from studying various topics in education to the experience I had gained from tutoring in an urban middle school.
My viewpoint on education has always involved a focus on creativity. Perhaps, as a student in Music Education, this should come at no surprise. My philosophy of education is oriented toward allowing the individual to express himself in a means that works for him – if this means includes music, I become excited. I know that I have the chance to mold this student’s potential into something unique that distinguishes him from the rest of the student population. While I used to believe that creativity was only an aspect that could be applied to the fine arts, certain readings in educational theory, philosophy, and practice have altered my concept of what is possible in other forms of education.
Central to the concept of creativity is the role of the individual. David Labaree discusses the implications of three different goals in education: democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility. I believe that the last of the three has the most potential when it comes to fostering the success of the individual. Democratic equality promotes the creation of the ideal citizen, while social efficiency aims to ready each student for the workforce; each of these approaches ignores the input of the individual and instead portrays education as a collective, public good. While these consequences are not necessarily negative, they fail to address the promotion of the individual’s interests and desires; in this way, they limit student choices and are relatively oppressive.
I maintain that the student must be able to express himself in the way that he chooses to in order to feel responsibility for his accomplishments and that this is made possible through adopting the social mobility goal. This educational approach fosters the success of the individual and allows them to own their accomplishments. As Labaree states, “From the perspective of the mobility goal, the outcome for the individual is precisely what matters most. The result is an emphasis on individual status attainment rather than the production of human capital” (p. 51). As a sort of private good, education is represented as a source of cultural capital. Once something takes on such value, it becomes a sought-after commodity; the individual is thus motivated to gain as much of this commodity as possible to ensure his success.
Unfortunately, some will receive more than others and this implies that there will be varying levels of mobility as Labaree addresses in his discussion of downfalls of social mobility. As the term “mobility” implies, individuals are able to rise in the pyramid of educational and eventual vocational achievement based on their performance in school. Many students end up viewing school as a way to prove themselves capable of being the best instead of a community in which to actually learn. They excel in becoming “well schooled and poorly educated” (p. 68). Thus, the question becomes how do we give students an education that will give them freedom to choose their own course as well as acquire a comprehensive and broad base of knowledge? To find the answer, we must turn to Brophy.
Brophy’s ideas for motivating students are extremely thorough and address each type of learner. He distinguishes performance goals from mastery goals by discussing the lack of learning involved in the prior; that is, performance goals would be common among students in educational systems that promote social mobility. As educators, and even as part of his community in general, we have the responsibility to direct the student’s effort toward mastery-oriented goals. This support is necessary to ensure that the student’s drive to obtain education as cultural capital is not a shallow one – actual learning must occur!
To do this, we must scaffold the student’s interests and achievements. A good place to start would be to let the student know that he has control over his success in acquiring knowledge. Brophy discusses the entity theory, in which students view knowledge as a fixed entity that they cannot alter, and the incremental theory, in which students understand that they can increase their knowledge incrementally. Of course, a learner’s community must foster the latter theory to help the student feel empowered over his own success. Brophy continues to state, “You can encourage the incremental theory of ability and a mastery orientation toward learning activities by portraying these activities as opportunities to acquire (not just display) knowledge or skill and by giving feedback to students in ways that reinforce this idea” (Supporting, p. 60). The student must know that gaining knowledge is an educational process, not merely an end.
One more influential way to encourage learning is to make the information meaningful. I experienced this firsthand as part of my tutoring process. The teacher in the middle school at which I tutored, let’s call her Mrs. Jones, was extremely effective in this area. By giving personal stories as part of several English lessons, the kids were more attentive and understood her on a much deeper level. I was able to take a lesson from Mrs. Jones in this area and help one student with a “How-to” paper that required them to write about a quote written somewhere around the room. One student chose to write about the quote that said “A smiling face makes this a happy place!” On the surface, I thought that this sixth grade African-American student who made it clear he was uninterested in the assignment was not going to probe his mind to find any connection with the quote. When I asked him what the quote meant to him, he stared at me blankly, wearing anything but a smile.
But then I asked him to think about why this quote was in the room – why would some lame smiley face and a quote on a poster change someone’s day? With a slight smile, he told me that it probably made someone happy to see other people smiling. I asked him if he’d ever experienced this sensation personally, and I was afraid to be answered by laughing and criticism; instead, he told me “yeah, like when I go to McDonald’s, everyone smiles and it makes me feel more comfortable and like I want to buy stuff.” Perfect! I thought to myself and out loud. “Yeah, ok, so I guess it does make me feel better when other people are happy,” he continued, “and maybe if I show others that I’m happy, I can make a difference in their day too.”
At first, I thought that he might be using sarcasm to enhance his display of disinterest – but then I saw him nodding his head as he wrote down sentence after sentence on his formerly blank piece of paper. He showed a sense of understanding and appreciation that was not there when we started talking. This young man’s perspective was changed by something that was meaningful to him – a McDonald’s restaurant. Our conversation seemed to motivate him to find some connection with the assignment that originally started out as dull and meaningless to him. Of course, once the student is motivated to learn something, one is faced with a glaring question: just what is it that we want him to learn? I have experienced one defining moment that has influenced the most basic aspect of my views on education: how to define literacy.
In music, literacy might be considered the ability to interpret notes on the page – that is, to use the correct fingerings, follow the correct dynamics and other markings, and perhaps even bring an unwritten interpretation to the piece that is unique to the individual’s concept of musicality. By using a prior knowledge foundation to interpret material and ultimately make statements that extend beyond what is explicitly written, we discover a description is perhaps applicable to all areas of literacy. Steven Tozer identifies four contemporary perspectives of literacy: conventional, functional, cultural, and critical. Each vantage point seems to become more complex than its predecessor. The first represents the most basic question of one’s ability to read and write, and generally describes what most people would consider the traditional definition of literacy to be. However, it is simply not enough to stop here; we must press on to include more complex aspects of comprehension in literacy.
Functional literacy addresses a social practicality that focuses on understanding the significance of what is being communicated. This type of literacy, as the term would suggest, refers to the skills required for a person to function as a comprehending member of society with the ability to balance check books, understand events in the newspaper, etc. This view is limited in completeness however, as it fails to address a sense of worldly context that cultural literacy provides. For instance, beginning to form opinions based on social and political factors in one’s environment would imply that one is culturally literate. And finally, the ability to recognize injustices and emancipate oneself from them is recognized in the critical literacy perspective.
I think that this last view is perhaps the most complete description of my goal as an educator, although perhaps not the most convenient to use in discourse involving the term literacy. For example, I feel I should be able to use the phrase “computer literate” to imply that one is capable of using a computer to express his own ideas – this necessitates the idea that literacy is a measure of one’s proficiency in performing certain actions. It is not enough to be able to turn the computer on and off – this is what conventional literacy might imply. However, I do not think that many things about computer literacy are oppressive and require emancipation, as the critical view describes. In terms of literacy, I believe that an individual must be informed about contextual norms and truths in order to make sense of the information he acquires through a given form of “literature” to be considered fully literate.
It is one thing to explain the many facets of my personal philosophy of education but an entirely different feat to assimilate such ideas into the real world. It is therefore necessary to consider the role of the school systems in determining what students learn and how they learn it. In their article, “Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits,” Nicholas C. Burbules and Rupert Berk compare and contrast aspects of critical thinking and critical pedagogy. While there are many differences between each of these views, they share an essential element: “For both critical thinking and critical pedagogy, ‘criticality’ requires that one be moved to do something, whether that something be seeking reasons or seeking social justice” (p. 51). Regardless of whether one wishes to adhere to the critical thinking or critical pedagogy viewpoint, the important aspect of each of these ways of thinking is that they require action.
One of my first priorities as an educator will be to create a classroom environment that is oriented around discussion, not test-taking. I believe that discussions can be just as effective, if not more, as tests are in evaluating student performance. While discussion-based activities will most likely be few and far between in the music classroom, they would be crucial if I ended up teaching my minor, Secondary English. I think that more subjects should model themselves after many English classrooms by cutting down on tests and increasing the focus on participation in group discussion. So much more can be learned when everyone shares his ideas with his peers than when he is required to write them down in an allotted amount of time on a multiple choice exam. As a critical thinker, I am preparing myself to become a critical pedagogue – that is, the energy I expend toward cognition currently is in preparation for the modifications I hope to implement within the school system.
This movement would seem to draw the focus away from the emphasis on the individual, as I have up until now been trying to sell. But upon further examination, I am confident that the approach would imply a more individualized attention when executed properly. Instead of supplying students with questions pointed toward certain answers, I hope to foster their creativity in allowing them to form their own questions about issues and establish their own answers individually. It would be important to subsequently have them share their ideas with a group of other students in order to allow cognitive development to thrive. Tozer’s conception of literacy applies here in full force: these students would be responsible for understanding the material’s context in order to truly process it.
Burbules and Berk note that a critical pedagogue would supply their students with questions to which they already have specific answers mapped out, while the critical thinker might instead hope to accomplish new feats by illuminating novel questions in the quest to discover the truth. This is where I would side with the critical thinker – I want my students to make their own insights; each student has his own experiences to bring to the table, so each will have the facility to add a new perspective to the collective. I aim to take Brophy’s words to heart and scaffold each student’s ideas to foster their ability to make meaningful connections, thereby learning the material instead of regurgitating it or circling a letter on a “multiple guess” test.
As a future educator, I am prepared to take responsibility for becoming a change agent. Whether through holding discussions with my class on the social and political implications of a publication of recent events or encouraging them to bring their own interpretation to a piece of music, I want my students to be able to think for themselves. My overall goal is to therefore bring out the unique aspects of each student’s thought processes while motivating him to think critically. I hope I have shown how the different facets of Labaree’s social mobility, Brophy’s learning goals, Tozer’s literacy, and Burbules and Berk’s criticality have combined with my own experiences to create a rather eclectic but comprehensive representation of the educator I have started becoming. To answer that one middle school student’s question, I am ready to be a teacher. Do I think I am done learning? Not by a long shot.
Bibliography
Brophy, J. (2004). Supporting students’ confidence as learners. In Motivating students to learn (2nd ed., pp. 55-86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Burbules, N. C., & Berk, R. (1999). Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: Relations, differences and limits. In T. S. Popkewitz, T. S., & L. Fendler (Eds.) Critical theories in education: Changing terrains of knowledge and politics (pp. 45-65). New York: Routledge.
Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 39-81.
Tozer, S. E., & Willis, A. I. (1995). Liberty and literacy today: Contemporary perspectives. In S. E. Tozer, P. C. Violas & G. B. Senese (Eds.), School and society: Historical and contemporary perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 247-264). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Response to Royce’s reading
April 9th, 2006 by Jenni · 1 Comment · Personal Comments
This is a response to Royce’s commentary on this article posted on CNN’s website. When I first read Royce’s post, I focused on how his opening created an undeniable emotional connection with the text. “Wow,” was his first sentence. This really caught my attention and made me do exactly what he told me to do in the next sentence: read the article.
I was elated to find out that the rest of Ian’s article regarded writing style for a few reasons. First off, writing style was the aspect that initially drew me in to Royce’s own reading response. By beginning his writing in a commanding tone, I did exactly what he told me to do, and was glad that I did so. Secondly, I was hoping that he was not emotionally reacting to the content of the article: a professor maintaining that overpopulation was causing a problem that could perhaps only be solved by “death for most of the human population”. I had hoped that this was not the case because the article, once I read it, seemed so blatantly out of context.
Luckily, Royce and I share the same view and have the same reaction toward the article: what stands out is not the strikingly inhumane content, but the way in which the content was presented. Ironically, the article begins with noting that this professor’s comment was out of context before it continues to take more and more of his statements out of context. How does this make sense? The author must have decided briefly that something should be done about ensuring that people who support this professor don’t rise in outrage, so he inserted a courtesy statement. And yet, the rest of the article continues to suggest that this author really doesn’t care about context.
There is something to be said about persuasive writing – I think that this article creates an opinion in the type of reader who fails to look beyond the subjective matter of the article. For people like Royce and I, the content of the article is only half the story; the political writing style is the remaining issue. As critical thinkers, we find value in analyzing how the author uses subconscious writing techniques to convey his point. It would be a more interesting article if the author displayed complete quotes and included references to other issues that didn’t make this professor sound completely crazy.