Many students won't accept the hidden curriculum, and when they don't, we punish them. We send them to the office, we make them write apology letters to the teachers they were rude to, we call their parents in for conferences, and we come down harder, sooner, on their repeat behaviour. In general, we make school rather uncomfortable for them. Then we turn around and ask them to think their way through the problem, there's no one right way to get this answer, what is the author trying to make you think and feel and do you agree - and a host of other questions and modalities that we don't allow them to apply to our behavioural expectations. No wonder they're confused.
I believe in (and teach) several levels of respect. I think all human beings on this planet deserve the first (one of many reasons I'm against capital punishment; it violates that.) The second is given to people in authority over you, and this is the one that kids generally rebel against. The third is respect for character and integrity, and it's earned. I can generally get the third out of my kids, because they know I'll listen to them and seek a path that will be fair and honest to everyone involved. It's the kids who don't really want to be fair to their peers who continue to have trouble with me. With those, I end up falling back on the second level of authority - you'll do this because I'm the teacher and you're the student and this is simply what students do when teachers ask them to do something.
Now I have to seek a way to teach kids who are rebeling against authority without appealing to it, and tie in constructivist principles of knowledge and learning while I'm at it.
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Date: 2010-06-07 10:17 am (UTC)I believe in (and teach) several levels of respect. I think all human beings on this planet deserve the first (one of many reasons I'm against capital punishment; it violates that.) The second is given to people in authority over you, and this is the one that kids generally rebel against. The third is respect for character and integrity, and it's earned. I can generally get the third out of my kids, because they know I'll listen to them and seek a path that will be fair and honest to everyone involved. It's the kids who don't really want to be fair to their peers who continue to have trouble with me. With those, I end up falling back on the second level of authority - you'll do this because I'm the teacher and you're the student and this is simply what students do when teachers ask them to do something.
Now I have to seek a way to teach kids who are rebeling against authority without appealing to it, and tie in constructivist principles of knowledge and learning while I'm at it.