Commentary – Ferguson

It’s a cliche in crime dramas to say that a murderer wasn’t a murderer until he killed someone, but it is true. The circumstances that led up to their decision can be traced back to the playground at school, or the neighborhood where they grew up. Most of the things that children believe about themselves is told to them by adults. We must be aware of the things we would have them believe and trust that these things will have an effect on their development into adults. There have been many studies done in numerous schools that conclude that those students who succeeded in school were those receiving constant positive encouragement, and those who did poorly were tracked into ‘basic’ classes, treated as though they were stupid, given repetitive memorization drills, and sent to detention whenever they acted out, usually out of boredom and frustration.

Adults in schools track ‘basic’ students and ‘problem’ students into lower levels within the system easily and without thought to the consequences. If they are doing poorly in school in second grade, put them in the basic readers’ group, and if they are acting out and causing problems in the classroom, send them to detention. This seems like an obvious solution to the problem. However, If we were to refuse to believe that these children were ‘destined’ to be poor readers or ‘bad’ kids, and if we steered them away from these seeming inevitabilities, we may find that we had preempted their education and labeled them too soon.

Ferguson talks about a child she worked with who had been labeled a major problem student by most of the staff. “I often found [Horace] exasperatingly  determined to control the conditions of his after-school tutoring sessions. But I recognized that he was leaning on the side of ‘humanizing’ our relationship, while I was bent on making our time together as ‘productive’ as possible. I was out to ‘teach’ him something. He was carefully laying out, testing, and undermining the original terms of our relationship, in which I had all the power and respect and he had none.” In these interactions, Horace is actively democratizing the space, creating for himself a dialogic between himself and his instructor. As Ira Shor argues in Empowering Education, If we allow for a free-flow of information between teacher and student, in which each has some say in decision making, we are more likely to learn from the other and to make that learning meaningful. While Shor is the first to admit that instructors cannot give away their power within the classroom, they can create a space in which students feel that their opinions, ideas, and knowledge are valid, important, and useful. It is this conception of the teacher-student relationship that Horace has naturally adopted, and which is not understood by the many faculty who see him only as troublesome.

it is very important for us in our observations of the classroom and of the students we encounter there, to be aware of where they might be coming from and what experiences they are bringing with them. When we ignore the intelligence and experience of our students, or label them deficient when they are simply different, we do so at our own peril, that of the student, and of the classroom as a whole.

3 comments for “Commentary – Ferguson

  1. iderfnam
    May 5, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    I agree with you completely. If we do ignore the intelligence and experience of our students, that is a recipe for disaster inside the classroom. How can we grow as teachers by doing that? I also fear that students can get labeled too soon. It seems that they then don’t have a chance to change because that is what they’ve always know about themselves. Great essay.

  2. mariashreve
    May 15, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    The different experiences students bring to the classroom is extremley important, as well as the various intelligences they bring with them. We’re doing “Demo” (demonstration) speeches in my class, and it amazes me that students who struggle with reading and writing, are so skillful at expressing themselves verbally and in a tactile manner as well. It probably should not amaze me. As teachers we need to remember that students have different intelligences, and we need to think about that in our teaching.

  3. mcalou
    May 23, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    you said something Amble that really stuck with me, “While Shor is the first to admit that instructors cannot give away their power within the classroom, they can create a space in which students feel that their opinions, ideas, and knowledge are valid, important, and useful.” For some reason, I don’t know why, the word “space” never occurred to me. I think teachers are control freaks because they feel that control is the only way to get students to learn: control is not the only way. What you and Shor advocate is a space where the student feels empowered and he might even learn more if he has this space. I agree, handing over all control to the student is senseless, but a “space” is reasonable.

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