A principal reason for coming into the 21st century with this blog is an attempt to give wider circulation to ideas, mostly on education, which I have been bouncing back and forth with colleagues over the last six years through other e-channels. Naturally, my friends are part of the blog conversation as well and will undoubtedly recognize the substance of what I say, if not the same exact wording, and gloss over it as my wife has been doing for some time since she has heard it all before, many times before. Still, it is hoped that I will be forgiven and the meaning of all said will not be lost for it being repeated. And for those coming fresh to the subjects of my past dialogs, well, I ask you to take it in, let it roll around a bit, let it resonate which ever way it does and then respond accordingly.
Way back in graduate school when I was looking at the effects of acquiring reading and writing on us humans, I came across studies-whose chapter and verse now I have completely forgotten-which detailed what were called "schooling effects". Schooling effects, as I recall, were behaviors such as an enhanced sensitivity to time leading to the ability to intentionally parcel a day into many discrete parts each containing specialized activities, or-and this is a biggie-the cultivation of proper attendance while forming and being "in-line", or-another biggie-the delayed gratification of waiting your turn. But, I think the biggest of the biggies is the development in each child of obedience to authority. While almost all subject content is forgotten the moment after the necessity of knowing it for the test, this instilled behavior remains. Obedience to authority is just one subject in the hidden curriculum.
My father kept on wondering even into my adulthood what my mother and I found to talk about so soon after awakening for the day. And it was true, my mother and I would start chatting with one another from the moment we first said our “Good Mornings.” My father would hold his conversational appearance until much later in the day. Yet, here it was: the family who loved conversation. This was the way it was for as long as I can remember and it seems to me it started even before I knew how to talk. Thus, when I went to nursery school-a combined pre-school and kindergarten-I wanted to talk. Back then such schooling took multiple aspects of play by which to develop emotional, social and cognitive readiness; consequently I was provided frequent opportunities to engage my vocal acuities, which I did with relish. But then I got into first grade.
Now, memory is a tricky thing at times, so it is possible this incident happened in the second grade, but it was definitely something which did happen. I was an obedient boy in school. My family had a reverence for people in religious orders, nuns, brothers and priests; and since I was attending a Catholic school, I found it natural to pay the most deference to my teachers, all nuns. Yet, when it came to exchanging points of view with my classmates, well, that impulse seemed at times to over-rule the impulse to being obedient. So, there I was seated in my row desk, talking away with the classmate in the next desk along side of mine when the teacher asked the class to be quiet. I guess I didn’t hear or chose not to hear. Anyway, I kept on talking. Being so engrossed in what I was saying I didn’t see the nun coming close until I felt her fingers grabbing my right ear and lifting it as high as she could. Along with this display of physical acumen, she was scolding me for not paying attention and continuing to talk when she required silence. Well, I guess I learned a lesson that day.
This definitely was in the first grade as it had to do with the first grade Christmas play. With the exception of two-and-a-half years between the ages of 18 and 22, I have always been overweight. (I like the description of “chunky but cute”.) Being that I fit the part, I was chosen to play Santa. The nun who was directing the play, in which all first graders were obliged to be, called for a full dress rehearsal a couple of days before the big performance. Well, I forgot my Santa suit at home. Not only did I get scolded for being so forgetful, I had to phone my mother at work to fetch the costume. While waiting for her and the suit, I was “put in solitary”, exiled to a special room where I was all alone! I guess I learned a lesson here as well.
As an educator, a father and a decent human being, I can say with confidence that there should be a law against homework. Naturally, there are solid educational reasons for such a view (which in future blog posts will be elucidated). But I have to wonder if at base I am still reacting to the mountain of work our first grade teacher demanded we do. Again, as an obedient child I did my work, which I found easy to do but completely unchallenging, boring and time consuming. As the work held little interest-I was doing it to avoid punishment by the teacher, mostly, but also to avoid parental disapproval-I would begin to nod, not a few times outright falling asleep with my head on my bedroom student desk as the hour of the day grew late. Most nights I didn’t get to bed until well after , this is, having started the homework at six. Every day our teacher would make a big deal when collecting the work so as to be sure that everyone was completing the assignments. She would single out for admonishment those who were neglectful. So, I guess I learned a lesson from that as well. Oh, my father, a high school English teacher, paid a visit to this nun. It turns out this was her first time teaching first grade whereas up until then she had been in charge of sixth, and she had expectations of us six year olds which were the same as the eleven year olds she was accustomed to ordering around. Whatever my father’s argument was, it was successful in she reduced the load by quite some. But she still demanded on pain of all sorts of hell and damnation that what she assigned be done to completion.
While my parents were the first to instruct on the meaning of obedience to authority, meaning, obedience to themselves, the experiences within such a highly structure world of obedience assured that there was no overt resistance to what the teachers thought best for us kids. And while Catholic schools even today have the reputation of being the most efficient world of obedience, the rest of the schooling field, public and private, is equally structured that way. Indeed, of the many values and behaviors our schooling structure inculcates, that which our hidden curriculum teaches, the most important is strict obedience to authority.
Leo... I was a mostly obedient student too, at least until high school when I started venturing into running my own life, even at school, to a larger degree. Looking back, all that inculcation to random authority, which I had no say in, was something it took me many years to unlearn.
ReplyDeleteLooking back, it seems very ironic that we have such authoritarian schools in a democratic society.