After yesterday's rant on the state of the Canadian education system, I think it is only fair to comment on some positive aspects of the enterprise, so in this discussion I'll focus on some of my experiences with students in the social sciences. In yesterday's post I summarized arguments pulled from the talk which referred to contemporary undergrads across Canada; today I will talk about some amazing undergrads whom I've been lucky enough to interact with personally.
Here's my argument: I have found that instructors must humanize themselves and treat students as scholars with worthwhile ideas in order to convince them to engage ambitiously with their own educations... but this only works if they're not still burdened by a misunderstanding of the basics.
As a student of the Freirian method of pedagogy (the theory of teaching), I think that it is extremely important to encourage students to become active in their own educations, and to realize that, when informed, their own perspectives are worth sharing and can contribute to the overall exchange of knowledge in a classroom.
On my first day as a TA with full marking responsibilities, I was given 10 minutes at the end of class to introduce myself. I told the students that they had two choices in their interactions with me; they could choose to keep our relationship professional, emailing me at my official address or see me during office hours with concerns about course material. Otherwise, they could regard me as a human, recognizing that I am a student only several years more advanced than they, and that I am learning along with them. If they chose this latter option, they were free to add me to their MSN contact list in order to consult almost any time, and I would be willing to advise them on general academic issues in addition to those covered in class.
I told them what I believe -- at the University level, education should not be viewed as a uni-linear transfer of information where instructors "fill the students up with knowledge, as though they are empty receptacles" (a classic Freirian metaphor). I then listed my email address and MSN contact information on the board, and told them to feel free to contact me at their leisure.
The prof with whom I worked was amazing and I do not mean to detract from his inspiring presence through a discussion of my role as TA. In fact, the success of my approach was undoubtedly connected to his professorial embodiment of its ideals. He was an excellent and forward-thinking lecturer with the most unique style I've come across. His lectures were delivered verbally, without notes, and inspired much class interaction. The students knew that he believed in their capacity to achieve the same logical coherence and insight that he himself had, and respected him for respecting them.
As his teaching assistant, I was extended the freedom to construct rubrics for each of the assignments myself, which ensured that I would never misinform students through misinterpretation. Before assignments I gave lectures on the exact structure that their essays should take, and the appropriate format of a thesis statement, realizing that many students were uncertain of the basics, and made more confused when the material they were dealing with was very theoretical.
The interactions that I experienced with students at that time were among the best of my career thus far, and it was because I (a) presented myself as an approachable, knowledgeable peer, (b) told them all that I expected the best out of them, thereby inspiring them to live up to their own capacities, and (c) provided them with a solid framework to drop their ideas and arguments into.
My office hours were full of students who wanted to improve their faculties -- seldom did a student arrive with a complaint on his or her lips, or a claim of a mark undeserved, and many stayed simply to talk about their current academic interests and aspirations for the future. While I was happy to see the majority of students exceeding their own expectations of themselves, what rewarded me most was when I witnessed great students crossing over that fuzzy line of a mid-range A into unquestionable excellence, developing an authoritative voice and creatively interacting with material. It puts a smile on my face to think about it... but I know that more students would have been able to excel if they weren't still struggling to understand how to construct an argument. I am not too old, and this was the purview of grade 11 English when I went through, so it blows my mind a little...
In any case, when we're discussing education, I think we need to make sure not to blame students for never having been taught the basics, but we do need to make sure that they are responsible for what they have been taught. We also need to be careful not to blame high school teachers for problems that originate in an overly lenient system. We also can't expect a lackluster system to produce masses of above-average graduates, yet the system is telling us it does -- clearly something here is off kilter.
What we need to do is to teach students responsibility, and to be honest with them about their capacities so that they *can* improve... what we do need to do is to re-imagine the enterprise.
High school must teach students the basics of language, structure and professionalism, leaving them free to develop into the best thinkers that they can be over the course of their University experience. If it doesn't do this, University is a waste of their time and money.
As demonstrated above, Freirian pedagogy has the capacity to motivate arts students who already possess a firm grasp of structure and form, and who take a serious interest in their education, to excel. Since so many students are coming to University, let's help more of them to make the most of the investment by providing them with a free, structured, quality education beforehand, and by encouraging professors to engage with their students on a more realistic level, and to look them each in the eye and say "I know you can master this material if you try. You're not that unlike me".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
One important premise of the argument in this post is egalitarian nature of formal, structured, education. Although in some cases it may be valid premise for elementary and secondary education, it is certainly false in general. Equality of knowledge does not bring about social equality.
ReplyDeleteA fundamental purpose of public schooling is maintenance of the social system. Its function is to implant acceptable ideologies in the masses; e.g., in the West public schooling is used to supply the citizen with a rudimentary appreciation of the law and the democratic tenets. As such, the vast majority of public-school pedagogues are infused with a sense of servility to the state.
Historically, the educated man was regarded as an authority, allowing beneficiaries of higher education raised over the masses. Universal education was therefore the guise for a refined system of indoctrination that sustained the authority of the state under the pretense that knowledge is linked to institutions.
PeterAndTheWolf
This is a very archaic take on education, based heavily in Louis Althusser's conceptions of ideological state apparatuses and repressive state apparatuses, and which cannot be applied equivalently to all forms of education, especially not in 'free' regimes.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I do think that the socializing/normative priorities of state-sponsored education that you pinpoint might actually do some good at the elementary and high school levels. This was what I was referring to in my previous post when I noted that the Canadian Education system once had socializing impact.
You can't think outside of the box until you know what the box is.
Dear Grad Student H,
ReplyDeleteWe have some other archaic observations... 2+2=4, apples fall from trees, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, cancer kills if left untreated, body temperature is 37C, etc... does the timing of discovery makes them incorrect?
If state sponsors education, then there is an ideology concern, otherwise why would the state pay for it? As we know, early development does not require the state or a formal educational institution. Amazingly, kids' brain does all the work, without any regard to the ideology, parents or if US president is Obama.
Don't you think, that attributes of high-school graduates, that upset you, is a programmed outcome of the educational system that the state (provinces in Canada) is happy to sponsor?
PeterAndTheWolf
For your last statement to be true, we would have to agree on the premise that the state continues to take seriously the role of education as a national socializing tool. My concern is that the state has lost sight of the institution's role in this effort.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem at this point is not that the system fails to educate students (although this is soon to become reality, considering the reports I get from friends in Teacher's College), it is that it is too flexible with what it considers to be acceptable effort.
As I allude to in this post, I have met many students who take their educations seriously and have been able to get much out of them. What concerns me is that there are many more students who choose to put in a minimum of effort, graduate with C averages, and dilute the value of their degrees by demonstrating how little one can learn and still earn (pay for) a BA (or BSc, but this attitude tends to be more pervasive among arts students, much to my chagrin).
The idea, then, is to get the state to recognize that transforming high school into a slightly more difficult enterprise could benefit society by eliminating the absolute *need* for BA or BSc degrees, expecting students to have learned their basics at the level below. The government already funds the majority of post-secondary education, so this could save them a substantial investment. Part of me suspects that this has not been done because Canada can claim to be a more educated society if more citizens hold BA, BSc, or BEng degrees -- perhaps it's about the PR. I just don't see how this does anything other than help us to posture if our grads got through their degrees having learned a minimum of anything.
If high schools are reformed, quality of education in Universities would have the potential to rise since they would be less crowded, since instructors and TAs would be less strained, and since the classrooms and lecture halls would be filled--we can hope--with students who are excited about scholarship, rather than with students who are scraping to get by.
Some people say that it's elitist to act as though all people should be allowed to get University educations, because that assumes that people without such educations are less valuable. Before we can combat this elitism, we need to make sure that a high school diploma is something to be proud of.
Dear Grad Student H,
ReplyDeleteDon't you think that current attributes of high-school graduates is a programmed outcome of the educational system that is intentionally ignored (not taken seriously) by the state?
In other words, the state may achieve desirable outcomes by both attending and ignoring the issue.
PeterAndTheWolf
the state continues to take seriously the role of education
That is certainly a possibility, PeterAndTheWolf.
ReplyDelete