I think that at least in the international BP program referred to before,
some of these methods coming from other countries are not 'new approaches'
hatched by researchers in hothouse conditions with very special teachers,
but have indeed become relatively commonplace and part of normal teaching
culture in their home regions. That at least is in their favor.
On the other hand, we do still have the issue of possible cultural barriers
to importation of teaching practices from one educational tradition to
another. I would certainly still like to hear any comments about that. I
think that one reason people may be reticent to take up this issue is that
we are still haunted by the ghosts (not to mention the still-walking
corpses!) of cultural imperialisms. All cross-cultural comparisons tread
dangerously on the edge of the 'North-Euro-American good, all others
deficient' precipice from which we have only so recently backed away.
But Gordon also points to the contradiction in many programs for teaching
change that the methods they espouse for students are not the methods they
employ for teachers.
Here again I can't help but suspect that where teachers are held in lower
esteem in the wider culture they are also treated more as passive conduits,
as instruments to be re-tuned and re-adjusted, rather than as prestigious
members of the community who engage with other professionals and who make
their own good decisions (perhaps even consulting students).
So I have another cross-cultural concern. WHY? and historically HOW? have
some cultures come to high status attitudes toward teachers and others come
to relatively much lower status esteem for them?
Commonly, status is taken to be a function of relative income and relative
level of education compared to both the general and the dominant elite
populations. There is also an explanation based on stereotypes about the
level of 'respect for education' in various cultures, though I have my
doubts about the reliability of such views; I suspect they are mere tokens
in the definition of group identities, and are usually based on prejudice
rather than observation.
So let me be provocative as usual and add a very dangerous hypothesis. The
status of teachers may depend primarily on the status and value and general
adult attitude toward children in a society. I have long suspected that
many US adult cultures, and at least some European ones, actually fear and
resent 'children' and younger adults (specifically those in roughly the age
8-18+ range), despite loud protestations to the contrary. Once children
cease to be household 'toys' or 'pets', especially dominant adult males in
these cultures tend to find them either a burden or a threat. Schools
become in effect daytime concentration camps, or youth ghettos,
resource-deprived; and those who teach and ward in them have a status that
depends on the status of their charges. Teachers of the young, oppressed,
and miscreant have the lowest status; teachers of adults and of future
power-wielders have the highest status. But the average esteem of teachers
is a function of the average level of esteem for, and indeed of liking of,
the young in general in various cultures.
In case this seems unreasonably far-fetched to those who find it hard to
accept that any cultural group might dislike, much less hate, children in
general, and even its own, I would just mention a few social facts: the
high levels of child abuse across all social classes, the starving of
education of social resources in general, widespread age-segregation
practices, denial of rights of property, self-determination, etc. to the
young solely on the basis of age, formerly (and still in many places)
exploitation of child labor, (paradoxically) exclusion of the young from
the labor market where economically possible (i.e. denial of the right to
an independent income), the low amounts of time reported that adults spend
with children and young people in non-work settings ... the assignment of
childcare and early education as a feminine responsibility and interest in
children/youth being considered un-masculine in many subcultures ... the
structure of sexual taboos regarding older and younger adults ...
Of course I recognize that framing the issue in terms of individual affect
(liking, resenting, fearing, etc.) itself reflects a cultural bias, but it
is the relevant form in the cultures I know where I suspect negative
adult-youth relationships. In other cultures there may well be quite
different reasons why status, esteem, affection and resources are or are
not conferred on or distributed to the benefit of the young. But my thesis
is general across these cases: the esteem of teachers and the resources for
education follow the general pattern of more positive or more negative
adult-youth relationships.
JAY.
PS. A note on terminology. English has no common terms to distinguish
age-groups in the way I would wish to do. Culturally there are many more
distinctions than the terms 'infants' 'children' 'young people'
'adolescents' discriminate. And biologically these do not map onto critical
issues of either neurohormonal or sexual maturity. The present categories
are themselves relatively recent historically (see Aries' _Centuries of
Childhood_) and derive from numerological schemes that are at least
medieval if not antique in Europe (i.e. magic ages of 7, 14, 21). Here I
will only observe that the dominant cultural tendency I observe is to
down-classify: the term 'children' is often used for people far too old for
it, and the term 'adult' is often reserved for people very far past the age
at which any systematic criteria would define maturity. I would consider
even these categories and their typical patterns of use in various groups
to constitute evidence for my thesis of the stigmatization of the young.
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
---------------------------