Ceres
April 24th, 2008, 10:14 AM
This is an interesting article by Alfie Cohen about how schools are managed:
Choices For Children - How and When to Let Students Decide
It begins with an interesting quote from John Dewey, which should be fascinating for those who believe there was once a golden age in which kids behaved better and schools didnt have to think about how they were run as a result:
The essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution to a group interest, and to partake of its activities in such ways that social guidance shall be a matter of his own mental attitude, and not a mere authoritative dictation of his acts.
- John Dewey
Democracy and Education
Here is a bit from later on in the article:
Several years ago, a group of teachers from Florida traveled to what was then the USSR to exchange information and ideas with their Russian-speaking counterparts. What the Soviet teachers most wanted from their guests was guidance on setting up and running democratic schools. Their questions on this topic were based on the assumption that a country like the United States, so committed to the idea of democracy, surely must involve children in decision-making processes from their earliest years.
The irony is enough to make us wince. As one survey of American schools after another has confirmed, students are rarely invited to become active participants in their own education. (1) Schooling is typically about doing things to children, not working with them. An array of punishments and rewards is used to enforce compliance with an agenda that students rarely have any opportunity to influence.
Think about the rules posted on the wall of an elementary school classroom, or the "rights and responsibilities" pamphlet distributed in high schools, or the moral precepts that form the basis of a values or character education program. In each case, students are almost never involved in deliberating about such ideas; their job is basically to do as they are told.
Moreover, consider the conventional response when something goes wrong (as determined, of course, by the adults). Are two children creating a commotion instead of sitting quietly? Separate them. Have the desks become repositories for used chewing gum? Ban the stuff. Do students come to class without having done the reading? Hit them with a pop quiz. Again and again, the favorite motto of teachers and administrators seems to be "Reach for the coercion" rather than engaging children in a conversation about the underlying causes of what is happening and working together to negotiate a solution.
Earlier this year, the principal of a Brooklyn high school told a New York Times reporter that he lived by "a simple proposition: This is my house, I'm 46 years old. A 15-year-old is not going to dictate to me how this school is run."(2) But even educators who recoil from such a frank endorsement of autocracy may end up acting in accordance with the same basic principle. I have met many elementary teachers, for example, who make a point of assuring students that "this is our classroom" - but proceed to decide unilaterally on almost everything that goes on in it, from grading policy to room decor.
The full article is: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cfc.htm
Choices For Children - How and When to Let Students Decide
It begins with an interesting quote from John Dewey, which should be fascinating for those who believe there was once a golden age in which kids behaved better and schools didnt have to think about how they were run as a result:
The essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution to a group interest, and to partake of its activities in such ways that social guidance shall be a matter of his own mental attitude, and not a mere authoritative dictation of his acts.
- John Dewey
Democracy and Education
Here is a bit from later on in the article:
Several years ago, a group of teachers from Florida traveled to what was then the USSR to exchange information and ideas with their Russian-speaking counterparts. What the Soviet teachers most wanted from their guests was guidance on setting up and running democratic schools. Their questions on this topic were based on the assumption that a country like the United States, so committed to the idea of democracy, surely must involve children in decision-making processes from their earliest years.
The irony is enough to make us wince. As one survey of American schools after another has confirmed, students are rarely invited to become active participants in their own education. (1) Schooling is typically about doing things to children, not working with them. An array of punishments and rewards is used to enforce compliance with an agenda that students rarely have any opportunity to influence.
Think about the rules posted on the wall of an elementary school classroom, or the "rights and responsibilities" pamphlet distributed in high schools, or the moral precepts that form the basis of a values or character education program. In each case, students are almost never involved in deliberating about such ideas; their job is basically to do as they are told.
Moreover, consider the conventional response when something goes wrong (as determined, of course, by the adults). Are two children creating a commotion instead of sitting quietly? Separate them. Have the desks become repositories for used chewing gum? Ban the stuff. Do students come to class without having done the reading? Hit them with a pop quiz. Again and again, the favorite motto of teachers and administrators seems to be "Reach for the coercion" rather than engaging children in a conversation about the underlying causes of what is happening and working together to negotiate a solution.
Earlier this year, the principal of a Brooklyn high school told a New York Times reporter that he lived by "a simple proposition: This is my house, I'm 46 years old. A 15-year-old is not going to dictate to me how this school is run."(2) But even educators who recoil from such a frank endorsement of autocracy may end up acting in accordance with the same basic principle. I have met many elementary teachers, for example, who make a point of assuring students that "this is our classroom" - but proceed to decide unilaterally on almost everything that goes on in it, from grading policy to room decor.
The full article is: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cfc.htm