In a very recent
Facebook response came the word “institutionalized” describing
the behavior of undergraduate college students about whom I was
complaining. I had reported that in my most recent college course,
the desk chairs I had arranged in a horse-shoe to promote
conversation among the students were being constantly re-arranged
back into rows. More, I charged, even with the horse-shoe, what I
got from the students were eyes on me and mouths firmly shut. I am a
firm believer in the power of the environment to structure behavior
and one classroom environmental cue to expectant conduct is desk
arrangement. However, here and in other colleges, the horse-shoe
arranged desks couldn’t overcome the institutionalized roles of the
passive, compliant student and lecturing teacher. And the kicker of
it all is that for the umpteenth time over the last ten years when I
violated the role expectations of student and teacher, especially in
initiating experiential and cooperative means of unfolding course
content, the young adults while compliant in class with my pedagogy
complained loudly to other faculty including the Deans of the
universities in which I was temporarily employed! Institutionalized,
indeed!
So, okay, when I was
instructing audio control techniques, I can understand a certain
sharp curtailment of conversation. But, even here there was more
than ample opportunity for students to interact with each other in
assuring the uptake in proper performance, not to mention off handed
remarks over any number of immediate undergraduate concerns. Indeed,
once, twice, perhaps three times demonstrated, I, then, would let
them on their own working to their own mind images of my techniques.
However, each looked for me and at me for assurance. More, doubts
were directed to me rather than querying fellow students. Further,
conversation of immediate social dramas was entirely absent.
In such courses as
audio documentary where I wished students to have conversations on
their and each other's work, they completely deferred to me and my
critiques, no conversation. Yet again and again when examining
radio/tv law, television and print advertising, human communication
between two people or within groups, political speech, and every
other aspect of the Communication Arts and Media Studies courses I
fielded, every student fixed his/her eyes on me keeping his mouth
quiet and her thoughts to herself.
Now, pre-service
college teachers are taught how to research, not to teach. To teach
they rely on how they were taught, essentially following the same
technique as my chopping wood, i.e., duplicating as much as possible
the mind-image of their student experience of being taught. My
student experience, for sure, was for many years one of “teacher
says...I do”. However, with graduate school being so congenial to
my penchant for conversation, I began following the grad school
method of “teacher asks questions and students discuss”.
However, I found that asking questions regardless of my intention
never provoked discussion, rather it was taken by students as yet
another unidirectional process of teacher asking a student for the
correct answer. What was so frustrating to me beyond the
institutionalized behavior was that in many cases there was either no
“right” answer or there were many “right” answers; but,
students were always wanting to give the single “right” answer,
and not a few were crushed when I redirected questions back to them.
I had several young women come up to me recently nearly in tears
because I did not say that their answers to my inquiries were always
correct!
As it turns out, I
saw from where all this collegiate institutionalized behavior
emanated as in between college course appointments in the early
1990's I taught in a Brooklyn public high school. Although I had
been a teacher for ten years, I had to return to undergraduate school
to complete my methods requirements for to assure teachers in public
schools possess a minimum competency, public authorities required a
number of college courses in the teaching arts which I did not have.
I completed the courses and was duly State certified and City
licensed as a high school Social Studies teacher. (How it was I
became a Social Studies teacher is a long story for another day.)
The fellow who was
my principle teaching instructor was then the Social Studies Chair of
Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School. Chairs of departments are
able to assign themselves their own classes and this fellow loved
teaching honors classes. He was so taken by his methods of honors
teaching he taught us to instruct in the same manner. He called the
method “Developmental Lesson Planning” which relied on, of all
things, a series of pivotal questions students would answer in a
manner to induce in class discussions. Each class, in essence, was
to be structured as a collective investigation of a topic question
exploring why something important happened. To say I took to this as
the proverbial duck to water is a gross understatement.
But when as a
student teacher I put Developmental Lessons into practice with the
group of seniors in a Principles of Government class, I found it
didn't work as advertised. First off, students were to have read the
assigned pages in the text so they could have the information readily at hand for discussing the material covered
the next day. They didn't; so they had no prior information from
which to engage in conversation no less answer a question. Second,
you know that classroom scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when
the teacher asks a question and gets silent stares, well, that was
what was happening in these classes. Finally my cooperating teacher
said that I was working way too hard in a dismal attempt at moving these students to discussion and for me to change my
instructional approach. I kept asking pivotal questions, but in a
fashion enabling me to answer them for the class rather than having
to rely on the students.
And
then I was let loose on four Global Studies classes of ninth graders
and one Principles of Government class of seniors at Erasmus Hall
High School. The conduct of the ninth graders was typical of the
age, which meant they had to be disciplined sternly (more on that in
an upcoming blog) so they could stay silent, in their seats and
attentive to my instruction. The instruction the school's principal
told me was to consist of solely my transferring the material in the syllabus I
was given directly into the brains of all the students of my classes.
No conversation, no discussions, just here are the facts, read them
in the text, copy them from the board and give them back on the
tests. The seniors were well institutionalized by the time they came
to me, so their conduct was quite orderly. In fact, they were so
orderly in the entire process they did as told without a peep.
I
quickly tried to break away from the oppressive routine in which I
was engaged. I attempted an experiential activity with the ninth
graders to instruct on the Animist religion in ancient Africa. They
were very compliant and they appreciated the break in the routine.
But, it put me so far behind the other Global Studies classes in the
syllabus that I felt I needed to quickly repair “the damage”.
So, I did a marathon of board notation which ruined whatever had been
gained by the experiential exercise. I should also report I tried
doing Development Lessons with the Seniors. But, it generated the
same results as the student teaching experience.
So,
here it was, the institutionalization. Boiling it down it comes to
that teachers have a curriculum syllabus whose content they are
required to transfer into the minds of their students through
techniques which require students to be seated, silent and attentive.
Students are to talk only when given permission to talk and,
largely, the student talk must be in direct answer to teacher
questions. Any other talk, either extraneous to school topics or on
school topics which is not a direct consequence of teacher demands is
not allowed and must be actively discouraged or punished. For one
who has a near compulsion for conversation this is just intolerable!
More, for the sociable creatures us humans are especially in
adolescence, having to be disciplined into silence is as equally
intolerable. Yet, a good number of children, adolescents and young
adults have so internalized the required behavior as to have come to
expect it as the way it all should be. On the other hand, there are
quite a few, like me, who refuse to go against their biological
imperatives to be social, to converse on all matters of interest,
school and non-school related, that they are made crazy, or drop out
or in some other way become injured. It is we of this bent to whom I
search for a congenial means of formal education. And it is we of
this bent I've conceived this learning institution.
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