Reply #3: Great article, got it bookmarked! [View All]

[drokhole]

Thanks so much for the heads-up! Some may not see past the evocative title, but absolutely fantastic points all around (and written much more eloquently than I, by the way). And from the 60s, no less. That's one of the things that always gets me - when you read stuff like this from decades ago, that so clearly outlines the problem and presents better options, yet we remain stuck in the same place we were way back when. Especially considering the problem is realized by the students themselves, who are now the "grown-ups" who have the power to change it, yet still choose to do close to nothing at all. There are probably countless reasons for this (maintaining status quo is generally easier, some who actively want change may be powerless to do so...and the author points out numerous bureaucratic ones as well), but what I mainly see it as is "Senior Syndrome" - where, as a Freshmen in high school, you're generally mocked/ridiculed/teased by the Seniors, and you say to your self "Fuck that, I'm never going to be an asshole like those guys. When I'm a Senior, I'm gonna be nice to Freshmen, because I know how bad it feels to be treated like that." Then, you become a Senior, and you treat Freshmen like shit. It's a crude analogy, I know (and a not very good one, at that), but it's basically about how fleeting good intentions can be - and how, once people reach a certain level of "status," they feel that those who are younger have to go through the exact same shit they did as a form of just-deserves.


One part of the article I'd like to point out (and wish I could revise my original post with, as it's what I had more in mind) is the author's seating method/description of "classrooms":

"Some classes begin to move their chairs around, often within a matter of days, into a sort of loose, pleasant jumble, although they usually maintain a certain pious distance from me, leaving me at the center of a small but unmistakable magic circle."

and

"But why those chairs at all? Why forty identical desk-chairs in a bleak, ugly room? Why should school have to remind us of jail or the army? (A rhetorical question, I'm afraid.) For that matter, why are there classrooms? Suppose we started over from scratch. What would be a good place to learn stress analysis? What would be a good place to study Zen? To learn about child development? To learn Spanish? To read poetry? You know, wherever I've seen classrooms, from UCLA to elementary schools in Texas, it's always the same stark chamber. The classrooms we have are a nationwide chain of mortuaries. What on earth are we trying to teach?

The scariest thing about a classroom is that it acts as a sort of psychological switch. You walk into a classroom; some things switch on in you and others switch off. All sorts of weird unreal things start to happen. Any teacher who has tried simply to be real in a classroom knows what I'm talking about. This is so hard to express . . . you walk in and everyone's face is a mask."


Thanks again, definitely worth the read.