Reading/Theory Group
Will focus on theoretical issues related to social difference and social justice, will provide educational materials to the Network, and will coordinate conference presentations and publication of materials related to our work.
posted by adam at 8:07 PM
4 Comments:
If I may, I would very much appreciate continuing to learn from Adam and Dr. Brown by participating in this group. I feel that my own personal journey will be enriched in continuing to struggle at your sides. I say this not only as a progressive, but also as a man who learns more each day about the benefits of celebrating and affirming diversity (especially in these hateful times).
Thanks to you both, for what you do and in advance, for what I can learn.
Yes--We will continue the discussion here. I'm about to take this book up with my undergrad curriculum design students. As I lead them through the text, I will post prompts on the blog as well to generate some discussion.
As I mentioned to you, I am currently re-reading Ayers with my undergrad curriculum design students. To be sure, they have re-awakened possibility in me as they have so critically engaged the material this semester--much to my surprise, based on my experience teaching this course in the past. As I read the middle two chapters of Ayers, I actually found myself hopeful at the prospect that many of these students are going to go out and do this work. I also read these chapters with the faces of many of you affixed to the stories that Ayers shares. You embody the spirit of the freedom teacher and I am made more whole, more human, more finished, more possible because of you. Below, I've broken chapters 2 & 3 of Ayers down into a few themes and pulled some passages that really stood out to me. I would invite your feedback on these or would be interested in other passages that resonated with you.
Taking the side of the student
• To become teachers we must become “students of our students” (p. 42). This provides us a compass and a guide.
• “Teachers who commit to teaching toward freedom find themselves thrust into a field of conflict, hope, and struggle. This often painful, lonely, always difficult work can be accomplished best by teachers who have a sense of themselves as moral agents, ethical actors, thinking people grounded in commitments that they can call upon to guide them through the unpredictable and often treacherous terrain of schools. Moral commitments operate on a different level and, ironically, on firmer ground than, say, skills or even dispositions of mind. The first commitment is a pledge to take the side of the student. . . .We advocate for knowledge and liberation. A second . . . [is to] create a space where a republic of many voices might come to life, the ‘uniculture’ opposed, and the suffocating sameness of the domineering voice resisted” (p. 69).
• “Loving our students requires us to help them nourish their own self-love and self-trust. If I hope to be a good teacher, I must defend my students, especially against myself. I will teach then, not credulousness but critical awareness, not easy belief but skepticism, not blind faith but curiosity” (p. 93).
Unfinishedness/humanization
• Two crucial tasks: “One, there is no such thing as receiving an education as a passive receptor or an inert vessel—in that direction lies nothing but subservience, indoctrination, and works” (p. 33). Two, in our interactions with students, we have to demonstrate “that they are valued, that their humanity is honored, and that their growth, enlightenment, and liberation are the paramount concern” (p. 34).
• “To be human is to be on a voyage, to be a project, imagining, reaching, changing oneself and the world” (p. 59).
• “Teaching toward freedom is always more a possibility than an accomplishment, more a project of people in action then a finished condition. It requires a continual identification of what is to be done, a constant process of unfolding and moving forward” (p. 81).
• “We are in search of a pedagogy of experience and participation, a pedagogy both situated in and stretching beyond itself, a critical pedagogy capable of questioning, rethinking, reimagining. We are looking for teaching that is alive and dynamic, teaching that helps students grapple with the question, ‘Where is my place in the world’” (p. 84)?
Dialogue
• To develop a voice, one must develop an ear (p. 36)
• “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge” (p. 53). Our language often inhibits us. Need to turn “at risk” to “children of promise.” What would that mean in our consciousness?
• “The freedom teacher vows to build an environment where human beings can face one another authentically and without masks, a place of invitation, fascination, interest, and promise” (p. 69)
• “Dialogue is a collaborative enterprise, a communal endeavor, a participatory event. In dialogue we speak with the possibility of being heard, of touching hearts and changing minds, and we listen with the possibility of altering the angle of our own regard. . . .Dialogue is a democratic impulse, a participatory gesture based on faith in the capacity of each person; it is a responsive recognition of the claims of others, as well as a recognition of one’s own incompleteness” (p. 97).
Respect, Relevance, Revolution
In Ayer’s final two chapters, he builds on his earlier themes of “taking the side of the student” and “creating a republic of many voices” to include “feeling the weight of the world.” In these chapters, Ayers encourages us to “pick up our lanterns” and poke them into the dark corners—to explore the unknown, to ask questions, to seek out new and deeper answers, to learn, to experience….
Throughout, Ayers encourages, like Milton, that there is no there. This is process. Our activism is a pedagogical event that opens up new vistas, new and wilder possibilities, new visions for the future. This activism, indeed, is teaching against the grain, stepping off Johnson’s “path of least resistance” and feeling the full force of a humanity marching lockstep, heads down, eyes glazed toward an inexorable future of unfulfilling consumption and enslaving notions of (perceived) freedom and individualism. Stepping off this path is the link between consciousness and conduct that Ayers draws us toward. As Nieto points out, we cannot become multicultural teachers until we become multicultural people. Likewise, we cannot become freedom teachers until we, ourselves, are free (For an interesting contemporary commentary on this issue, I’d highly recommend “V for Vendetta.”). Finally, like Freire, Solnit, and others, Ayers claims that we must believe that the change we seek is possible. To this end, he suggests, “If society cannot be changed under any circumstances, if there is nothing that can be done, not even small and humble gestures toward something better, well, that ends the conversation. Our sense of agency shrinks, our choices diminish, and our obligation to our fellow human beings end” (p. 151). Like Ayers, and like you, I refuse to give up my agency.
Ayers concludes his spirited call to become freedom teachers with a final chapter that revolves around three new r’s for education Respect, Relevance, and Revolution, similar to William Doll’s (1995) four r’s in a postmodern curriculum: richness, recursion, relations, and rigor. Ayers claims that “our responsibility is to stay wide awake and engaged” (p. 155). Continuing our dialogue here in the PrESS Network is one way to stay wide awake and engaged. How has Ayers affected you? Your pedagogy? Your path? How have you conceptualized the freedom teacher? What do you see as the promises and problematics of becoming this freedom teacher? Who do you see as a freedom teacher? Who are your guideposts? What breakthroughs have you made with your students teaching against the grain? Who/Where is your hope? Can you feel the revolution?
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