Keeping learners in their boxes
Here, some teachers involved in our Learning by Design Project recognise and comment upon the contours of Fordism and didactic education in their own school:
‘So, what does this image say to you?’
A group of twenty-first century teachers were looking at this Image from Michele Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. It shows the prisoners in Fresnes Prison in France in the nineteenth century listing to lecture on the evils of alcoholism.
‘Our class could never be like that,’ Jean says.
‘It would not be a comfortable thing. The children are captured, the teacher is teaching to a head and the teacher is the one with all the knowledge. There are still places where the head is the only thing considered—jam the things into the kids’ heads … but there is no notion that there is anything going on there, that they really understand’.
‘Now look at this picture of our school, in our image there are little people having fun … you see an expanded idea of what it is that’s important to teach … a pleasurable place to be.
‘In fact, look in the pictures of our classrooms’, the workshop participants had been asked to bring in photographs, ‘the teachers are at the edges of the photo rather than the centre of attention at the front.’
‘I know there are teachers who want kids quietly sitting in rows, packing them all in together, they want their classrooms to be like that. But this is not the way it should be.
Jean’s colleague, Thu, responded, ‘yes, but if you don’t know a lot, you need to control. If I’m teaching in an unfamiliar environment with students I don’t know, I’m a chalk-and-talk-teacher, I need that control. It takes time to get used to the culture of the school. Anyway, sometimes It’s ok to do the control thing, some kids work best in this setting’.
‘When I joined this high school, the mindset was about whether the desks were all in rows, so I felt I had to conform. Some teachers from my school would recognise this image immediately. They’d say, “Oh my God, that’s my classroom!”’
Another colleague, Jim, commented, ‘You know, the teacher is the director of everyone … We put people in boxes … I think it’s something we do everyday. I mean, when I start the year with my students I know which box they were going into … and then of course the kids will fit into their boxes … the boxes we give them. You’ve got to look out for that. It’s just too easy to do it.’
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage Books. Image between pp.169 and 170.
Burrows, Peter, Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis, Les Morgan, Kieju Suominen and Nicola Yelland. 2006. ‘Data from the Australian Research Council Learning By Design Project. Unpublished Manuscript.. || Amazon || Worldcat
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