by Stephen Hebert on Sunday - 31 January 2010
in Education
In my previous post, I mentioned that the teacher’s role was not to colonize the student’s brain in hopes of creating a perfect clone. This, in my view, is a dysfunctional student-teacher relationship.
Rather, I’d like to promote diversity and independent thinking.
A young mind is so malleable. As a teacher, I have the opportunity to leave a lasting impression on a student. These impressions can come in many shapes or forms: academic, professional, personal, etc. An impression is a two-way street made up both of what I am trying to convey (the message) and how the student receives or interprets that message. Therefore, I am not in complete control of the impression that I make on a given student. This is obvious enough when I walk into my classroom every day. Some students love me; others deplore me. Am I treating those students that love me any differently? Probably not. As a teacher, I am putting signals out there; it is up to the student to receive and interpret. How they receive and interpret is completely out of my hands.
This brings me to today’s thought experiment:
Creating Diversity and Difference.
Excuse the following theoretical digression. It’s going somewhere, I promise.
Personally, I believe that an author is only in partial control over the meaning that is put into a text. The author can try and try and try to create an exact sense of meaning that expresses 100% of his/her thought, but at some point the conversation must be completed by the reader. The text reaches its full, but not complete, meaning at the point in which reader and author connect via this shared experience. Both reader and author are working together to produce meaning.
The classroom is a text. Under traditional models of teaching, the teacher would be considered the author and the students are the readers. As the teacher attempts to convey monolithic meaning, the students receive and interpret the monolith in their own ways through their own viewpoints. Thus, if I have 15 students, then 16 of us are producing meaning: 1 author + 15 readers = 16 makers or meaning.
That’s quite a few viewpoints, and, no doubt, there will be diverse thoughts and opinions. However, in this model, who is able to benefit from those diverse viewpoints? Only one person: the teacher who is the only one hearing all viewpoints. So, from the student’s vantage, only one actual meaning has been produced: the conversation between a particular student and teacher. If we are student-focused in our educational modeling, then we must agree that this model does not afford the student the opportunity to hear from multiple viewpoints. In fact, depending on the student’s academic and mental acumen and leanings, this model in effect creates one monolithic teaching from the student’s vantage.
How then do we overcome this? How do we create an environment in which a student can take advantage of more than one production of meaning? The answer is obvious: open up the text to more authors. If we have 16 people coexisting in the classroom, then it is possible for the student to be participating as a reader/receiver in 15 different conversations at a time as the students publish thoughts through various means (discussion, blogs, message boards, etc.). In this model, an incredible amount of difference is being created. Because meaning is really the product of a handshake between reader and author, each student would be considering 15 different conversations, meaning that there is potential for 225 different interpretations of the classroom-text.
OK. So, we can open up the text, allowing students to take part both as author and reader. Great. What’s the point? How does this serve the student? Is it constructive or chaotic? That’s the next topic…
Footnotes
Tagged as:
author,
classroom,
colonialism,
difference,
diversity,
Education,
educational theory,
meaning,
postcolonialism,
reader,
text,
theory
During a report titled “Aid Begins to Work Its Way Into Haiti” last Thursday, January 14th, NPR’s Jason Beaubien lost composure while describing a little girl that he was watching as she awaited medical attention. Here’s the excerpt from the official transcript of Beaubien’s conversation with Melissa Block of All Things Considered:
BLOCK: NPR’s Jason Beaubien joins us from Port-au-Prince. Jason, describe where you are right now, please, and what you’re seeing.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Right now I’m outside the Villa Creole Hotel, which is in the Petionville neighborhood – an elite neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. And it’s really quite amazing, people have brought their injured children out front here because they know that there are medical – Western medical doctors staying inside. So, people have come here to try to get attention for – mainly for their children. There’s a girl – I’m sorry. There’s a girl right in front of me at the moment. She’s covered in bandages. She’s laying on just some – what are they – they’re from the deck chairs that would be by the pool. She’s naked except for what looks like a tablecloth on top of her. And she keeps lifting her head and her lips are shaking.
(Soundbite of crowd)
BEAUBIEN: Sorry, Melissa.
BLOCK: That’s okay.
BEAUBIEN: It’s heartbreaking what’s happening here. And there are people just in the streets everywhere. When you drive through, there are tent cities that have been sort of set up just in little lots. People are clearly just living wherever they can.
BLOCK: Jason, the girl you just described, is she getting any medical attention there?
BEAUBIEN: She clearly has gotten some medical attention because there are fresh bandages on her. And there are other people who are getting medical attention. But the numbers are just so huge that there are people who are waiting for attention. There’s clearly the expectation that there are people who are still trapped in some of these buildings.
BLOCK: Does the girl have any family there with her, do you know?
BEAUBIEN: I assume that she has family here, but it’s really quite striking. She’s lying out in what would just normally be the driveway and there’s no one around her.
The following day on All Things Considered, the hosts read mail from listeners commenting on Beaubien’s report. Some wrote in to say how unprofessional Beaubien was. A reporter should never lose composure, but should remain objective and not get involved in the story. By losing composure, Beaubien had become an embarrassment to the field of journalism.
I suppose the people that wrote this are Vulcans or something. The censure reserved for Beaubien by these emotionless people surprised me. Go to the link above and listen to Beaubien as he describes the little girl’s quivering lip. How can you listen to that and then get upset with Beaubien’s inability to hold it together?
My reaction to his report was quite different than this Vulcan reaction. It came in two waves:
- A Recognition of the Human Situation. Up to this point, the tragedy in Haiti had been little more than words to me. I have not really looked at images of the devastation, nor have I seen video. Instead, I’ve just heard radio reports. This was the first time that I really felt something, the first time that I was really touched. While Beaubien’s broken voice dripped with pathos, I began to understand exactly what was going on here. This was not Geraldo at the Superdome ripping children from the arms of their mothers in what looked like a horribly transparent attempt to gain viewers and publicity. No, this was an objective, professional reporter putting a human face on a situation for a national radio audience.
- I Grew Angry. Here I am, driving home from work and listening to Beaubien’s report from the comfort of my vehicle. There’s nothing for me to do but cook dinner, read a little bit, and then head to bed. The only way that I can aid this situation might be to send money as I don’t possess any skills that would make me useful there. I’m no doctor, I’m no lawyer. Now I’m listening to Beaubien breaking up as he tells me about a girl that is sitting right in front of him. A girl in need of family, love, medicine, attention. I’m selfishly soaking it up and sympathizing for the child. What I want Beaubien to do is put down the microphone and take her to a doctor or just hold her so that that lip stops quivering. “Jason, put the mic down!” I yell at the radio, but Melissa Block keeps asking him question. Why? Because he’s a reporter and that’s what he’s supposed to do.
Don’t tell me Beaubien is not a professional.
So, where do we go from here? Estimated death tolls are now reaching into six figures, meaning that a large percentage of the Haitian capital’s inhabitants have perished, and that this disaster could go down as the second worst in history just behind the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. What can I do other than listen to reporters and pray? I’m helpless and powerless and that annoys me.
Tagged as:
all things considered,
earthquake,
foreign aid,
haiti,
jason beaubien,
journalism,
news,
npr,
reporting
