What are the purposes of schools and what should we be doing as Christian educators in the name of education?
I will proceed to acknowledge and respond to the statements within the construct that follows. I will respond to the second statement first, with the caveat that what schools are purposed to be and what they are in most cases do not correlate substantially. The professed function of a school is to "educate," and that is understood to mean several things simultaneously: Historically the locus has been to transfer knowledge. That has led to a construct that I would describe in the vernacular of my formative culture- as analogous to a chicken in a bread pan pecking out dough. This allows for nurture of human beings worst traits and minimizes others. Competition and validation become their raison d'être. Schools function to validate privilege, but at best this is a provisional validation. The terminal reality of the ways schools work is that human beings are objectified, and the hopeless are discarded and the cream is skimmed. then the cream is indoctrinated to validate and perpetuate the model. Yet the school itself is the culture in which one rises and another sinks.
The educational system of a society can be seen then to function as a means of reinforcing, perpetuating and legitimizing the constructs of that society. Formal education is instrumental in maintaining the status quo of a culture. Resistance to change in schooling is ultimately derived from an attempt to perpetuate the status quo.
Educators must rally in the name of education to promote a more diverse way of teaching and learning that serves the many and destroys the fewest possible. Education is a paradigm of change and change is as destructive a force as it is a creative one. Educators must strive to move from objectifying learners to accord them their due status as subjects, not objects. To accomplish this, educators must thoroughly acquaint themselves with the ideological and political obstructionist structures that serve to impede educational reformation.
Educators, in the name of education must also learn to apply research knowledge in the classroom environment. Teachers are not technical production managers. Critical self reflection, where precritical presuppositions are challenged in a nurturing environment is an important methodology for the educator to practice. This leads to learning, not indoctrination . It enables an atmosphere that is currently too thin for most students to breathe to become a dereified air of mutuality and collaborative inquiry. Teaching and learning become personal and relational, not objectified and enacted transactions.
So this is what schools have become- I will now proceed to dream a bit in describing a schooling that provides society with a whole being who knows place, has and owns identity, reads the world critically, and is serious in their relationship to others and their worlds.
The new school is an environment where all students are smart and successful. Teachers, students, and parents have quit asking, "How smart are you?" and today ask, "How are you smart?" Through the implementation of a multiple intelligences-based curriculum, students could become more aware of how they learn best. The classrooms have come alive takes place as students learn to utilize their avenue. The Ml approach is compatible with cooperative grouping, hands on learning, and performance-based assessment. Teachers and students have found that learning does not always books; but can include movement, singing, group interaction, and visual stimuli. But this is only a tool- albeit a powerful one. However the real changes must come in how the teacher comes to create a learner based environment.
As I have written elsewhere, learning is not authenticated until the learner understands, retains the learning, applies the learning in a real world context and bears fruit. Use good questions to deepen understanding. Questions should be open ended, nonjudgmental, emotionally and intellectually stimulating and succinct. Learners are distinct and unique a multiple intelligences approach simply provides more avenues for success.
Success must not be rewarded by old game show greed type structures. These kinds of rewards actually choke learning. Trophies for trivia is a shortsighted solution. Bribes are distractions that take the attention of the students away from the real rewards of empowerment by learning. The cream rises to the top and the losers sink- and the school becomes the theatre for the conflict. Competition must move towards cooperation.These are geared to the emotions of conquest, failure and the quest for goodies- The school must provide a distinct cultural alternative to a culture that is fraught with these symbols of domination and aggression.
I am not a prophet but I have read enough of futurist writing to know the possibilities. I want to be a part of the solution so to speak. The ability to read the word and the world will be even more important in a society that resembles those that Paul Romer or Peter Drucker envision. The need for interpersonal interaction to offset the droning of society will be critical. New communities of light in the knowledge society could conceivably drive the education community to new heights of importance as purveyors of dignity. It is in the best short term interests of the social sector managers who are joined at the hip with the existing power structures to continue in a transmission mode. The new school will be the focal that will join discrete communities into joint master communities. Transformation begins in the new school.
Learning in such a school focuses on what works for the learners-indeed, learners help construct the learning process. God does not open the brain and pour information into his disciples. I subscribe to a hedonism of learning- learners should derive pleasure from the learning process. Student relevance not only allows the learner to form and define an identity, but by linking the subject matter to the learner's real life, place is also validated. The school is characterized a pedagogy of respect. Everyone involved is brought together with a richness of difference and the commonality of purpose.This does not abrogate the requirement for each to stand in his own critical construct in which precritical judgments are eliminated.
It becomes the teacher's main purpose to be nurturing persons and ideas by authorizing every student to take possession of their lives and thoughts, to value their intellectual power and to make known their own real and powerful presence in the world. We must recall that the etymology of the word "authority" is based in the French root, an old French word that means "to make grow, originate, promote, or increase." Bureaucracies cannot take that power the teacher has away. Educators need to provide a forum where student voices can extend to the edge of their current vision and where they are welcomed into their own authority.
We can work to realize this by making the class a place that will enable students to say what they see and know through their reflection, their research, and of course through their reading and listening to the Holy Spirit as he speaks. This is much different approach than the derivative way I was taught- to learn to recount the teacher's take on the author's take on the subject at hand. The curriculum must be fluid in order to open the way to the creation of new knowledge, to enhance the skill and the efficacy of the student. Or as Friere put it, ". . . to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and not to spoil, to refuse to bureaucratize the mind, to understand and to live life as a process- live to become. . . ." We place ourselves between the dialectic of Heraclitus and Parminides in choosing to be a force of change, of becoming. For this to occur, students must be seen as subjects rather than objects of education. Notions of efficiency based on short term products with limited intellectual challenge must be replaced with active, or rather interactive learning. The process of certification is replaced in the process of authorizing curiosity, exploration, and richness of the intellectual life. Our God is a God who sees in us grand potentialities and we must become sharers in that heroic vision. The weight of glory awaits us. Seek and ye shall find.