by Meg Petersen
This morning in the returning fellows inquiry group we discussed readings by Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey. Our conversation centered for a long time around the idea of the classroom and the school as a laboratory for democracy. If we think about the idea that education is not a preparation for life, but life itself, then Dewey would posit that how we enact democracy in our classrooms is what really matters in terms of preparing students for future citizenship. If we espouse the values of democracy, but run our classrooms and our schools like totalitarian states, it is the latter that will be learned. What matters is how we live our lives every day in the classroom. In our classrooms and schools, we create powerful microcosms of civic life. Thus it behooves us to create societies that respect the rights of all, especially those with fewer resources and less power. Let us create an ethos where every person is respected and no one is marginalized or silenced, where disrespect for any human life is not permitted and where each person’s rights are respected and protected, where we honor each person’s individuality with the understanding that it helps us to create a stronger community. As I said the first day of the institute, we must live the values of community, inquiry and equity every day.
This morning in the returning fellows inquiry group we discussed readings by Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey. Our conversation centered for a long time around the idea of the classroom and the school as a laboratory for democracy. If we think about the idea that education is not a preparation for life, but life itself, then Dewey would posit that how we enact democracy in our classrooms is what really matters in terms of preparing students for future citizenship. If we espouse the values of democracy, but run our classrooms and our schools like totalitarian states, it is the latter that will be learned. What matters is how we live our lives every day in the classroom. In our classrooms and schools, we create powerful microcosms of civic life. Thus it behooves us to create societies that respect the rights of all, especially those with fewer resources and less power. Let us create an ethos where every person is respected and no one is marginalized or silenced, where disrespect for any human life is not permitted and where each person’s rights are respected and protected, where we honor each person’s individuality with the understanding that it helps us to create a stronger community. As I said the first day of the institute, we must live the values of community, inquiry and equity every day.
I carried these ideas with me to Benjamin Ludwig’s
author visit this afternoon, Ben
presented an interesting and complex view of “voice” in connection with his
novel Ginny Moon. Ginny Moon is an autistic 14-year-old who has
been adopted into a “forever family.” She
has something she desperately needs to communicate, but no one can listen well
enough to hear her. The novel has received
justified praise for the captivating voice of its narrator, but Ben wanted us
to be aware that Ginny really has two voices.
There is her voice as captured in the actual words she speaks, and then there is the
voice that Ben has given her inner self or her stream of consciousness through his writing. I would say that the gift of this novel is
allowing the reader to hear Ginny’s voice, but Ben reminds us that in the novel,
the characters around her do not hear her.
They cannot hear what she so urgently needs them to understand.
The
concept of voice, as Ben presented it, brought me back to our morning discussion
of classrooms and schools. Voice, as Ben
pointed out, seems to be seen as an unqualified good. Everyone should have voice all the time. We grade students’ writing on their “voice”
on six-traits rubrics. But voice is more
complicated. Perhaps we can all have a
voice, but who will be listened to?
Whose voice will be drowned out?
All
of this brings me back to our
core values and to the idea of creating a society of civil discourse in our
classrooms where all voices can be honored, and where those with more power can
learn to sometimes quell their voices and listen to those who have something to
say that desperately needs to be heard.
The whole talk about voice forced me to consider: what am I not hearing in my own life. Not just from my students, but what have I missed from those around me? What have I actively misheard and how much of that was them -- and how much of it was me?
ReplyDeleteAs an ESL teacher, my daily battle is helping students bridge the gap between what they wish to express and the ability they have to express it -- but what could I be missing from them, too? There have certainly been times when the non-natives in my life have attempted a joke or a pun and had a native speaker told me it would have been hilarious but because they are not natives my first instinct was to correct their intentionally flubbed or twisted grammar and vocabulary.
This is a skill we all need to work on -- as people, as society, as community. But hey, at least we're in the right place for it!
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ReplyDeleteWish we'd read Vygotsky and Dewey and the importance of education to democracy when at the summer institute. Instead we read about Common Core, the antithesis of democracy in the classroom. How things change. The idea of voice is a critical part of writing as well as in a democracy. Through writing we find our voice. E.M. Forster once said, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say."
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