Classroom and Power -- An Overview

Posted by Anonymous on
"I Paulo Freire Colloquium"

Regardless of heritage culture, each society maintains a metaphor of teacher-student that directs power originates from the teacher. Unfortunately, some teachers misunderstand learning as a process of enfranchisement, meaning that the whole purpose of student-hood is to gain increased power. We call that power in intellect, social skills, academic skills (writing, math, other disciplines).

In some rare opportunities, a student actually has more intellectual and social power than the professor, and the student responds:

  1. the student might persist in patience,
  2. the student resists in sarcasm and other acting-out (I find that rare), or
  3. the student abandons and disappears.
After all, the students need credits, and usually choose options #1 or #2 to maintain their degree/certification plan and maintain their GPA.

Aside these rare already empowered students, most students wonder what the heck the course is about, what we refer to discipline 


discipline (n.) Look up discipline at Dictionary.com
early 13c., "penitential chastisement; punishment," from Old French descepline (11c.) "discipline, physical punishment; teaching; suffering; martyrdom," and directly from Latin disciplina "instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge," also "object of instruction, knowledge, science, military discipline," from discipulus (see disciple (n.)).
("Discipline")
My concern is that some teachers/professors forget that original idea of growing student power, and some professors have habit to keep power to themselves.

In short, we have a spectrum of teaching attitudes in our classrooms, from what educator and philosophical Paulo Freire called the "banking model" and the "critical pedagogy model." I intend to discuss the banking model and critical pedagogy thoroughly in future blog posts. But here I want to introduce the frame of relationships of power between students and professors. Some basic truths:

  1. The community college intends to support community students with "success" (and we need to discuss that, too)
  2. Most professors are very, very supportive for students to success, but
  3. All professors are real, breathing humans who are underpaid, overworked, with over-populated student enrollment in their classrooms. This means, that real, breathing professors sometimes lose the focus of empowering students.
  4. Just as the community college, and just as the professors expect resources to help students successful, students must be proactive, engaging, even aggressively with their learning process before, during, and after the class time. 
It's #4 that brings us back to Freire -- that students must have their voice. When we talk about "voice," I understand including experiences, opinions, heritage language skills, growing social skills for collaborative learning.

I want to keep this blog posts short, so I end with two sections:

Student Learning Involvement

  1. What have students felt empowered in their classroom? Describe this, and explain what the relationship built power for you?
  2. On the other hand, where have students loss power in the classroom? Describe, and explain. You can post on this post, or you can email to me. Either way, I'll respond, anonymously, to student descriptions.

Professor Learning Involvement

  1. Based on those feedback posts, I'll respond and look for future research. 
  2. In a near post, I will share suggestions for students in a) the critical pedagogy classroom and b) "banking model" classroom.

Follow posts:

Resources

"Discipline." Online Etymology Dictionary. 2015. Web. 3 January 2016.
"I Paulo Freire Colloquium." 2012. Web <http://bulletin.unifreire.org/issue02/?p=45>. 3 January 2016.

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