> I can offer my personal observations about preservice teachers that I
teach
> to refute each of the points. Let me start in the reverse order. In my
> view, I, as a SOE instructor, struggle exactly with my students being
very
> school-successful. They are often ones of the best. And this is the
> problem (for me). They have very high grades (and GPA). They study and
> work for grades. This is not just my observation but their own testimony
> articulated in our class and web discussions. They often have never
> experienced academic learning for pleasure and they think, at least
> initially, that it is impossible.
Why should academic learning be fun, and if we are concerned with making it
fun for whose benefit? Is it for the students or ourselves? I get a
wonderful feeling when child is actively involved and enjoying what there
doing, but is not that too reproducing a certain - middleclass - way of
approaching education. Learning for the sake of learning is an
enlightenment ideal that not everyone feels.
For example my SOE gave grades for participation and if you did the work
you petty much got an A or B. Since an A was guaranteed it allowed me to
take risks, be creative and the freedom to pursue the enlightenment ideal
of learning. But, a lot of the other students this lack of motivation,
partly due to hectic teacher education schedules, often translated into
only doing what was absolutely necessary for the grade. Blaming the lack of
the enlightenment ideal about learning on education or society may not be
entirely fair, the enlightenment ideal might be a motivation or assumed
motivation of the upper intellectual middle class than society at large.
Like it or not more and more jobs require a university education in which a
larger proportion of our society needs the university for job training.
Many see the enlightenment ideal a waste of money and time. While we
should always strive for environments that are humane, I do have concerns
with the way we tend to try to reproduce an enlightenment way of learning
in SOE.
I often question if SOE's do more bad than good. It definately created a
paternalistic ideal that children need to be protected from the great bad
society or parents. Success or normalization is entirely defined from some
sort of middleclass standard. If the poor, minorities do not fit into that
ideal they are in need of being fixed. The so called "community
involvement" reinforce their previous schemes of normacy and leave with a
sense of urgency in saving all those poor, minority children from those
environments. Is the active child who enjoys and takes responsibility for
learning a similar construction that normalizes the middle class ideal of
normacy.
I don't mean to be overly negative, but I think we need to question what is
seen as normal - an active child, SOE students who love learning etc. and
realize they are not simply acknowleding needs and interests but also
contructing them. Some students like to do worksheets, listen to long
boring lectures at least in those environment their soul is not at stake.
I knew one child, who I see from time to time that loved those standardized
tests because at least while he was taking that test his feelings,
thoughts, dreams were his own and not an object of inspection by me via
journals, asking how he personally related to a particular character, not
accepting 4x4=16 but wanting to also now the process of his thinking.