The universal patient : Schooling

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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep. ~W.H. Auden

I believe you have NEVER EVER seen a student fall asleep in the classroom, because teachers are educated and trained individuals who really love their job and know how to make the lesson interesting... Aside from joking, what I saw in my visit at schools in the (greek) classrooms during my training last week (A' phase training where we watch teaching and write down our impressions and try to learn how to make a lesson plan) was frustrating for many reasons. Not because I didn't know that schooling hasn't changed basically much since last century, although there are so many new teaching methods out there, but because I realised that teachers as human beings with feelings and thoughts haven't changed and because it dawned on me how much we idealize our own teachers from our childhood...

So, on this post I'm going to talk about

• my one-week experience in schools, my feelings and thoughts on it,
• the difference between schooling and education
• what education should be. what education is and how it can be changed (content, goals, methods)
• and of course about teachers, students and parents, since they are the ones mainly involved, even though there are 'outside restrictions' -don't forget that education in schools is an institution designed by a state and confined by laws and politics.

Naturally, some people know better than me, so I'll let them speak in my place through quotes and videos.

So, I'll begin with my impressions from the aforementioned visit. In first level I'll try to just present you the images I received, trying to be objective -although words very often show attitudes from their own- and then I'll move on to my comments. Here is what I saw:

• teachers ignoring my presence
• teachers talking to me about their students and activities
• teachers yelling
• teachers dictating the whole lesson
• one teacher separating the students into teams and checking the lesson in a game style
• one teacher having assigned fitting to each student's character 'ministries'
• teachers being ironic
• teachers working with the pupils in groups
• a teacher asking why the same hands keep being raised, while she hadn't realised two students hadn't brought their books till half the way of the lesson and she did nothing about it
• a teacher singing songs with her pupils to learn easier grammar (A' grade)
• classrooms like narrow boxes, where the students were packed 'onto each other'
• classrooms outside the school building in cheap tin constructions
• a classroom where the teacher had totally lost the control and the pupils were wandering in and out of classroom
• students looking bored as hell or in trance 'in another world'
• a student trying to correct his dictation with blanco under his desk
• students with learning difficulties being always late or left behind or roam in the classroom
• paintings hang on walls about Alexander the Great and the Greek Revolution as well as festivities about the genocide in Pontus taking place

Where shall I start? Difficult question...Let's begin from non-human factors like school buildings. It doesn't need much contemplation- infrastructure sucks and although that's not the most important factor contributing to an efficient learning, it does create problems when its not there and it forms one part of the atmosphere in the classroom. At least, an effort of making the class more beautiful through the kids' drawings and handcrafts was visible. New media are also absent from most of classrooms (only 6th grade has a projector and internet connection).

What I encountered in a 21rst century class

...and what it should have been.

And of course I don't proclaim that by adding technology, suddenly everything will change for the better. Technology is a tool, that's more attractive (images, sound, videos, games), that allows freedom of choices in learning (see hyperlinks) and 'mobility' of concepts. What I mean with 'mobility' has to do with the results of a research about some softwares on geometry like sketchpad. The students by changing and 'playing' with the size tool, they could see the alterations on the shape in real time, in a smooth motion, with some other helping facts on the screen, like the calculator of the volume. This prooved to improve the understanding of students on geometry exercises. Technology will have results only when teachers know for what specific reason they will use it, what results will achieve and with what way it will be integrated in the lesson. If technology is going to be used just instead of the blackboard or the photocopies, then we are just fooling ourselves that we've put New Technologies in the classroom.

Next, I must admit I got annoyed and sad by ethnicistic decoration and festivities. It's fine to love your country and to be a responsible citizen, but that's not cultivated this way- by emphasizing that the 'Other' were bad people who killed us, by victimizing us or glorifying personalities in history who in fact were at the end of the day killers. In today's society we want peace, we struggle for it, yet we insist on underlying battles in the wrong way and neglecting the history of civilization. When I asked the teacher, what happens with kids that come from other countries and are raised in a different culture at home, she answered that they are too young to apprehend their difference...Do you know how I felt that moment? We, teachers, think even with the best intentions that because the students in front of us are young, they are ignorant and can be fooled... There's a tolerance, not acceptance. We deny or are scared to bring the 'other's' civilization into the classroom. We keep praying every morning before lesson in the schoolyard and this pray is the christianic one. While there are students with other religions as well...Firstly, school should have nothing to do with religion -except teaching all the religions in a multicultural frame- and secondly, if the need of praying is so compelling and the system can't change so fast, why can't there be a prayer to 'god' generally? Not to Jesus or Allah specifically, but something that embraces all the religions.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily. ~Thomas Szasz

I guess that it isn't necessary to analyze every dot, because everyone can understand which observations are 'biased' in a positive way and which not, no matter if I tried to hide it. That's why I'll try to be as laconic as I can be and analyze only a few - what struck me more. What saddened me the most, was that after 9 years of having finished the 6th grade and after watching my own teacher teaching, the teacher whom I adored and praised as one of the best teachers I ever had, that image fell apart. I cannot deny his knowledge, yet his irony hurt me very much. I suddenly realized how blind pupils are and how deaf they can be when the teacher shows a certain not so friendly attitude towards your classmates but praises you... I was a good student, an 'honorable' one, so I erased from my memory everything else, because I didn't know how teachers should be, I hadn't much experience, because the insults didn't concern me...Almost the same happened with my sister's teacher, wife of mine, who taught and teaches 2nd grade. I remember that my sister always referred back to her teacher for many information ,she had given them and that was the reason that I wanted to write the protocol about her. I have to tell only one thing: I 'pissed' on me by her yells and wanted desperately to leave that class after the first 2 hours; there's no way I could stay with my nerves calm and intact with that woman teaching. Oh! There's a cherry on top: she had learned the class to sing a song to anyone who would go absent-minded...she wasn't just ironic with them, but also put everyone to be ironic with one another... How do teachers expect respect and good results, when the 'massacre' children this way? When they codemn mistakes and scare children?

Children have more need of models than of critics. ~ Joubert

The other thing that sent me in despair was the class, where pupils did whatever they wanted ,there was a kid that had special needs and roamed inside the classroom, and the teacher hadn't any help. In those 2 hours I was there and gave a helping hand, although I got exhausted, I understood 3 things very well: firstly, teachers expect children to be interested in boring things just because school is obligatory. Even us, as adults would never attend a theatrical performance or a movie in which we weren't interested. Or in the case that we should attend, we'd fall asleep. I saw many pupils asking me explain the exercises after I tried connecting their reality (e.g. chewing gums) with the subjects (here was maths- abstraction). I also taught geometry to one kid that was making a 'rope' from wet handcerchiefs and he exclaimed that it was a kite's tail (I showed him the geometrical construction of a rhomb)- he was excited! Secondly, teachers neglected trying to learn new methods and get easily despaired as a result. If a person doesn't possess something, then (s)he can't give it .Thirdly, some classes require two teachers to function as they should. But, there is not enough money for extra teachers (now they try uniting classes in becoming one with 30 children in it!) and often there is hostility, fear and a superstition against a second teacher in the classroom. Some are scared that a co-teaching would mean we aren't sufficient on our own; other feel threatened because they perhaps don't do their job well and avoid interaction not to be judged (although teachers in my country are never evaluated and no one can move them from their permanent 'office' position)... But a teacher's job is a very tough one. People should understand that we need help and that's it's not bad to be offered help.

If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job. ~Donald D. Quinn

The effective teachers who loved what they did were few, but gave me a small hope. Especially, the one who had made the lesson seem as a means to play games was young and that can be interpreted as new knowledge from university finding a place in practice. Yet I can't forget either that there were also very few professors who taught as constructivism, team working etc. and didn't just preach but made us work in teams ourselves. We don't learn by listening. We learn by what we experience.

Eternally true...we have to make it turn a lie, if we want a brighter future

Now, let's move onto how education and schooling is defined, how schools should be and how they are. i'll let the 'big heads' speak.

How education in schools is

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. ~Albert Einstein

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~Mark Twain

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards. ~ Mark Twain

In England … education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.~ Oscar Wilde

From Mark Twains sayings we understand 2 things: firstly how much he liked school and secondly that education is something wider than what is provided inside school -that's why the term schooling was developed. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, comments on how education isn't liberating and equalising as it claimed to be.

How education should be

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ~ William Haley

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. ~ Sydney J. Harris

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. ~ Robert Maynard Hutchins

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~Victor Hugo

Learning makes a man fit company for himself.~ Anon

To delve deeper...

They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing. ~Richard Yates

Quantity doesn't equal quality -most of the times. Same applies to education. If you're fed more rubbish than before that's not what can define as a progress. We've stuck as a society to old thoughts. The school still smells antiquity and books. The spirit of the society of information in which we live in hasn't permeated schooling.

An encyclopedia is a system for collecting dust in alphabetical order. ~ Mike Barfield

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.~ Benjamin Franklin

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~G.M. Trevelyan

So what should school provide? What is important?

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. ~ Jacob Bronowski

And there's also the issue of correspondance of school and job market. Many claim that school shouldn't be a mere tool for the job market. I understand that children should get a wider education. But there's no point in it, if this education isn't useful to them at all (e.g. philosophy makes us doubt things and help us start contemplating on whatever we normally take as granted). Theory and practice complement each other. No one wants to feel (s)he wasted time in anything that didn't give him/her pleasure and any gain. Conclusion? School is there to supply us with cognitive and social skills and build up our self-esteem.

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D. or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have J.O.B. ~ Fats Domino

The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions. ~Bishop Mandell Creighton

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ~Alvin Toffler

It is not the IQ but the I WILL that is most important in education. ~ Anonymous

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. ~John W. Gardner

The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with; and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. ~Lewis Carroll

It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry…. I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not… ~ Albert Einstein

I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life. ~ Petronius (d. circa 66 CE) The Satyricon.

And the biggest martyr inside school is creativity.

Education is one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. ~ Bertrand A. Russell

The human brain is special. It starts working as soon as you get up and it doesn't stop until you get to school ~ Milton Berle

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.~ Helen Beatrix Potter

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.~ Mary Flannery O'Connor

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.~ Bertrand Russell

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion. ~Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The next biggest issue are teachers. We are said to be the last to make decisions in a macro-scale, yet we have the power to change many things or just sit in that comfortable chair, drink our coffee during breaks and not care at all. Our job is one based on human relationships. And if there is determination and love, then we can achieve the impossible.

You can follow the next motto...

There are three good reasons to be a teacher - June, July, and August. ~Author Unknown

And be a 0, someone who isn't useful to society, who isn't even useful to himself/herself.

Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.~ Oscar Wilde- The Decay of Lying.

No wonder teacher knows so much; she has the book. ~Edgar Watson Howe

We think that children don't catch a glimse of our true selves of our intentions, feelings and attitude, but how wrong we are... Children know when we're lying and know that we don't know where we're going and where we are leading them.

What a teacher doesn't say is a telling part of what a student hears. ~ Maurice Natanson

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. ~ Yogi Bera

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. ~Kahlil Gibran

The more whimsical and cantankerous a teacher's grading system, the less the chance of her being replaced by an Apple II computer. ~ Art Peterson

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. ~ Mark Van Doren

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater~ Gail Godwin

Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place. ~ S.I.Hayakawa

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William Arthur Ward

A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must holds his audience's attention. then he can teach his lesson. ~ Hedrick John Clarke

Some may protest and question why all these? If you really care, then you'll understand that...

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books. ~Michel de Montaigne

It doesn't make much difference what you study, as long as you don't like it. ~Finley Peter Dunne

I was asked to memorize what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner. ~ Aleister Crowley

I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learned. ~ Patrick White

There is one more party involved that we shouldn't ignore: parents. They more than often value schools not as a place where their kids can learn useful things and offer to society afterwards, but as a 'baby-sitter'. Of course, I don't imply that women (mostly they care about kids) don't have the right to work and be in peace of mind that their children won't be taken care of, but that's not what there is only to it. The law should assure and protect women's right to work and to rest in more than one ways and parents should appreciate more education- and not just papers (because there is this trend as well).

Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day. It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken. ~Bill Dodds

The founding fathers... provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called education. School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you. ~John Updike, The Centaur, 1963

Education can get you the only thing that really matters in today's world: an assigned parking space. ~ Gene Perret

One last thing: parents, like teachers, should trust children and be guides, not interferers to what children dream and plan.

The toughest thing about homework is getting mom and pop to agree on the same answer. ~ Joey Adams

The function of the child is to live his own life- not the life that his anxious parents think he should live. ~ A.S. Neil

I'll close with two more quotes for contemplation.

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? ~Erich Fromm

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.~ Thomas Dewar

See you next time! :D (I hope you don't hate me for the large post *sweatdrop*)