Note - this post is more judgmental of the term "social justice" than I would like it to be. Please consider this writing to be a mode of processing for the author - as always, the thoughts here will evolve.
As I've been writing this thesis, I've increasingly been wanting to define my stance as an educator: why do I feel compelled to write this thesis, specifically? In a nutshell, my teaching profession is a spiritual path for me, and the subject of understanding and alleviating prejudice is a spiritual subject - a subject that allows us to more fully see and understand and support other human beings, a subject that allows us, via witnessing the web of human imperfection, to see deeper into the richness and complexity of humanity. Understanding prejudice is primarily, for me, an act of care: and it is not as simple as caring both for those who suffer because they hold prejudices and those who suffer because they are oppressed by them; many people are in both positions, including myself.
While I express this in my spiritual community, I have chosen to not express it in my professional community, despite the fact that my spirituality is at the core of my professional identity and is what inspires me to teach well. I am sometimes concerned that expressing my spiritual perspective on education will alienate some of my colleagues, and I am also concerned that some of my colleagues may view me skeptically. However, my spiritual path is what gives me clarity and insight - not only into myself and other people, but into pedagogy. Increasingly, I feel the obligation to communicate it clearly when the situation is appropriate. Perhaps people are skeptical of spirituality because it suffers from being communicated poorly.
I've also increasingly been realizing that people situate me within the social justice tradition of education; to me, the social justice tradition only finds its power when it taps into spiritual realization. Although clearly everything I do is for the sake of social justice, I don't feel a personal connection either to the term or to the social justice community as I have seen it. The spirituality - the striving to understand the depth of humanity and of being, and the striving to be ever more supportive and compassionate - is missing from both the term and the community, (in my experience).
The term has felt polemical to me. Even the word "justice" just doesn't ring right - the tone of the word is one that is meant to rile the crowd, it serves to motivate, but through anger rather than through understanding, fixing, healing. As such the term strikes me as unmindful and un-insightful. I associate the term with the Left, with the raised fist, with a Howard Zinn type of clear-cut, black and white, good and evil presentation of human beings and society that strips away depth, complexity, and thus the ability to understand how human beings and societies actually function. (I'm not alone in this judgment of Zinn - Zinn is like the Joseph Campbell of leftist history, adored by the public but not taken with any seriousness by scholars. But these popular figures, much like historical movies, are where we get our popular notions of history!)
Perhaps this is an unfair judgment of the term "social justice". The judgment is based on a few conferences attended and a few dozen papers read, both popular and academic... conferences I walked out on and papers I didn't finish. I didn't walk out because I experienced anger in my own heart, but because I encountered an amateurish and immature polemics of anger and judgement that my time is too precious to waste on, considering there are plenty of means to gain real insight into how injustice functions and how to rectify that.
I tend to associate anger as coming from an ungrounded place - an angry tone automatically causes me to doubt the wisdom of the speaker or author. I realize that many people disagree with me on this. I know that many people working with inequity become rightfully angry (including myself), and know that just because they are angry does not mean they do not see things clearly. I realize that a tone of anger can even be a tactic to emotionally engage people in the cause for social justice. Or it can simply be part of how a social milieu speaks. However, while anger may be legitimate and facilitate engagement and action, it doesn't facilitate clarity, which should be the ground for engagement and action that we strive for. Even if an angry speaker does see things clearly, anger makes it hard for the audience to understand things clearly. Politicians use anger all the time for this reason: it is a tool for obfuscation; anger makes it easy to take sides, to form judgments, in other words, it works against clear insight.
Encountering anger and agitation in social justice and activist contexts doesn't make me upset, but untrusting. Being present to anger is, for me, a beautiful spiritual practice: if I wanted to avoid anger, I wouldn't have entered into social work. As a spiritual man, when I'm around anger and agitation, I feel that my task is to be fully present with it: can I see the anger clearly? Where is it coming from? How can I care for the one who has anger? How can I care for myself as I receive the anger? I consider this a mature way to process anger, and when it comes to scholarly work, I feel it should display the same emotional maturity - if it does not, I feel I have good reason to be skeptical.
Despite all this, my work is without a doubt for the sake of social justice. I want to help my students become insightful, resourceful, caring people. I believe that history can provide them with insights into what it is to be human, and to how this society functions. My work right now is about helping students understand prejudice, which is for me, about helping students more fully understand what it is to be human. Understanding prejudice does not mean, for me, to judge those with the prejudices. It has nothing to do with good and bad. It has to do, simply, with understanding how human beings work. While helping students gain an understanding of prejudice is certainly a political act and a contribution to social justice, it is also a spiritual act, an act which helps students simultaneously understand issues of justice and the complexities of humanity.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
How I describe my thesis...
Every other day, someone asks me what my thesis is about, and I've begun taking this approach to describing it:
"Well, it's about helping adolescents understand prejudice". To which they reply something like, "Oh wow, that's really cool". And then I say, "It's about how history teachers can help adolescents understand prejudice".
And finally, "It's about how history teachers, using the tool of historical contextualization, can help students understand prejudice in the context of ancient civilizations".
Going step-by-step seems to make this less of a mouthful. But contextualization - and why ancient civilizations? - requires some explanation.
"I think that contextualization is important for understanding prejudice, because that it how we understand why people think and feel the way they do. What is it about a persons environment that creates the conditions for certain prejudices to take root? That's what I want to help students figure out. And I think its really cool to do this in an ancient civilizations class, because that gives students the opportunity to examine and compare many forms of prejudice. Because students can't trace prejudices in the contemporary world back to the prejudices of ancient civilizations, its an emotionally safe way to explore the topic, and gives them time to practice exploring prejudice before jumping into American history. And if students get to contextualize a few different prejudices, that way of looking at prejudice may sink in and transfer not only to other history classes but to their own world: hopefully I can help them get into the habit of contextualization - not only asking why people do what they do, which students tend to think of as an individuals responsibility, but what is it about the persons environment that allows for a prejudice to make sense. I think that without this contextualization, its easy to judge people and hold anger, and difficult to come up with solutions that will alleviate the problem of prejudice".
"Well, it's about helping adolescents understand prejudice". To which they reply something like, "Oh wow, that's really cool". And then I say, "It's about how history teachers can help adolescents understand prejudice".
And finally, "It's about how history teachers, using the tool of historical contextualization, can help students understand prejudice in the context of ancient civilizations".
Going step-by-step seems to make this less of a mouthful. But contextualization - and why ancient civilizations? - requires some explanation.
"I think that contextualization is important for understanding prejudice, because that it how we understand why people think and feel the way they do. What is it about a persons environment that creates the conditions for certain prejudices to take root? That's what I want to help students figure out. And I think its really cool to do this in an ancient civilizations class, because that gives students the opportunity to examine and compare many forms of prejudice. Because students can't trace prejudices in the contemporary world back to the prejudices of ancient civilizations, its an emotionally safe way to explore the topic, and gives them time to practice exploring prejudice before jumping into American history. And if students get to contextualize a few different prejudices, that way of looking at prejudice may sink in and transfer not only to other history classes but to their own world: hopefully I can help them get into the habit of contextualization - not only asking why people do what they do, which students tend to think of as an individuals responsibility, but what is it about the persons environment that allows for a prejudice to make sense. I think that without this contextualization, its easy to judge people and hold anger, and difficult to come up with solutions that will alleviate the problem of prejudice".
Monday, February 13, 2012
Developmental Mismatches in our Schools
I'm going to fire this blog back up but will be shifting its orientation. As a I write my thesis, I have many side-thoughts I would like to flesh out. Many of them don't have to do with world history. This blog may become a space for my general pedagogical reflections - a space for me to work out my thoughts (and hopefully to get feedback on them).
I spent the morning reading a chapter from the truly remarkable Handbook of Adolescent Psychology - basically its an up-to-date (2009) encyclopedic review of the subject. Because adolescents spend so much time in schools, there is a chapter on how schools influence adolescent development and motivation. Obviously, schools have a significant influence on a teenagers sense of autonomy, self-esteem, ability to work with others, (including how they view and work with others across demographic lines), etc. The chapter breaks down what factors in schools influence development, starting from the classroom and moving out from there to the school, district, and then to state policy and the place of school in society.
This chapter expanded my understanding of how to care for teens by pointing out a plethora of developmental mismatches in the way schools are designed. Many are utterly simple, but I've never considered them. For example, teenagers need more sleep than kids. At the same time, the natural sleep cycle of teenagers is shifting to staying up later. Yet, they are asked to start attending school earlier when they go to middle-school. I'm guessing this is because adults feel that as kids reach adolescence, they should take on more autonomy and responsibility.
On that note, as kids enter adolescence and go to middle school, they are given more autonomy in the form of attending much larger, less intimate schools, where they spend only one hour a day with their many teachers. It's as if our society has equated autonomy with having less support and intimacy. The middle school structure being so much less supportive and intimate is so normal that I didn't realize what an obvious developmental mismatch this was - but if I hadn't been through it myself, and had some distance from the system, I think the mismatch would stand out starkly. We've set up a system where kids get deprived of close adult relationships - of teachers who know them inside and out, who can give them life advice, who understand their learning needs - right at that developmental moment when kids need it most. As the Handbook of Adolescent Development puts it, in middle school it becomes
"...very difficult for students to form a close relationship with any school-affiliated adult precisely at the point in development when there is a great need for guidance and support from non-familial adults. Such changes in student-teacher relationships are also likely to undermine the sense of community and trust between students and teachers, leading to a lowered sense of efficacy among the teachers, an increased reliance on authoritarian control practices by the teachers, and an increased sense of alienation among the students". (p.420)
Clearly, teens should be given more autonomy and responsibility - that's what is developmentally appropriate. A teen who is not given autonomy, responsibility, and meaningful tasks is a teen who will likely disengage and dis-identify with school (as I remember rather vividly from my own experience). Teens need autonomy with support, autonomy with guidance and care. I hope to post more about teaching practices that counteract these developmental mismatches and support healthy autonomy in the near future.
I spent the morning reading a chapter from the truly remarkable Handbook of Adolescent Psychology - basically its an up-to-date (2009) encyclopedic review of the subject. Because adolescents spend so much time in schools, there is a chapter on how schools influence adolescent development and motivation. Obviously, schools have a significant influence on a teenagers sense of autonomy, self-esteem, ability to work with others, (including how they view and work with others across demographic lines), etc. The chapter breaks down what factors in schools influence development, starting from the classroom and moving out from there to the school, district, and then to state policy and the place of school in society.
This chapter expanded my understanding of how to care for teens by pointing out a plethora of developmental mismatches in the way schools are designed. Many are utterly simple, but I've never considered them. For example, teenagers need more sleep than kids. At the same time, the natural sleep cycle of teenagers is shifting to staying up later. Yet, they are asked to start attending school earlier when they go to middle-school. I'm guessing this is because adults feel that as kids reach adolescence, they should take on more autonomy and responsibility.
On that note, as kids enter adolescence and go to middle school, they are given more autonomy in the form of attending much larger, less intimate schools, where they spend only one hour a day with their many teachers. It's as if our society has equated autonomy with having less support and intimacy. The middle school structure being so much less supportive and intimate is so normal that I didn't realize what an obvious developmental mismatch this was - but if I hadn't been through it myself, and had some distance from the system, I think the mismatch would stand out starkly. We've set up a system where kids get deprived of close adult relationships - of teachers who know them inside and out, who can give them life advice, who understand their learning needs - right at that developmental moment when kids need it most. As the Handbook of Adolescent Development puts it, in middle school it becomes
"...very difficult for students to form a close relationship with any school-affiliated adult precisely at the point in development when there is a great need for guidance and support from non-familial adults. Such changes in student-teacher relationships are also likely to undermine the sense of community and trust between students and teachers, leading to a lowered sense of efficacy among the teachers, an increased reliance on authoritarian control practices by the teachers, and an increased sense of alienation among the students". (p.420)
Clearly, teens should be given more autonomy and responsibility - that's what is developmentally appropriate. A teen who is not given autonomy, responsibility, and meaningful tasks is a teen who will likely disengage and dis-identify with school (as I remember rather vividly from my own experience). Teens need autonomy with support, autonomy with guidance and care. I hope to post more about teaching practices that counteract these developmental mismatches and support healthy autonomy in the near future.
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