What Kids Can Teach Us
Yesterday, I came across this article via metafilter, and it is easily one of the most interesting pieces I've read in a very long time. In it, two teachers describe how their elementary school-aged after school kids went from playing with legos to deconstructing capitalism over the course of a school year.
Certainly, the ethics of teaching social justice in an elementary school classroom are up for debate, but I'd rather not focus on that here. Instead, what I found striking was the amount that these 8-year-olds were already a product of their environment. I think elementary school interactions socialize kids in broader ways than merely helping them form interpersonal relationships. These kids were clearly savvy to their societal environment. By the age of 8, many were already products of capitalism, completely accultured to the socioeconomic system in which they were growing up. Moreover, as I read further into the article, I realized that they were speaking in terms that were already defined by that system. For American schoolchildren, inequality is a natural way of life.
Back to the ethics of teaching social justice. In college I took a class on the Cold War in which we read a number of texts relating to propaganda. One of the texts discussed how social values are promulgated in small children. One of the most striking examples was how math texts are used to surreptitiously convey values to children. Look at an American high school or grade school math textbook. Look at the word problems. They almost always talk about buying things. Even when people buy them together, they rarely split the cost evenly. This isn't the case everywhere, and it certainly wasn't the case in Soviet Russia, where most math texts involved sharing or producing. So regardless of what teachers do in the classroom, children are constantly being instilled with social values in the classroom.
Labels: economics, education, ethics, journalism, politics
3 Comments:
regardless of what teachers do in the classroom, children are constantly being instilled with social values in the classroom.
Yep. So do you force teachers to teach a particular set of values, or do you just put limits on how overt and forceful the teaching can be? Levels of indoctrination differ.
PP--clearly a valid question. If our primary goal is for students to be comfortable in the classroom, then the answer is we put limits on how overt or forceful that teaching can be. If, on the other hand, our primary goal is unbiased education, then at the very least we ought to make students aware of the biases built into their educational resources.
Advertising studies show, for instance, that people who don't watch television are more likely to be susceptible to advertisements than people who do watch television. Why? The conscious decision to watch television not only includes a conscious decision to watch ads, it also makes viewers more aware of surreptitious advertising (e.g. product placement, promotional giveaways, clothing branding, etc.) outside TV than non-viewers.
So, playing the devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps students are better off (i.e. better prepared to form their own ideological opinions) when they are exposed to overt propagandizing than when they are ONLY exposed to covert indoctrination.
That said, I'd rather avoid, say, religious indoctrination in the classroom, so I don't recommend explicitly teaching values. The "Legos" experiment, while it engages children with values, seems based primarily on discussion and response. While the teachers involved were motivated by value-driven concerns, ultimately the children involved were only forced to concieve their values and articulate them. If their views changed, it was a result of discussion, not indoctrination.
hmmmm.
The "Legos" experiment, while it engages children with values, seems based primarily on discussion and response. While the teachers involved were motivated by value-driven concerns, ultimately the children involved were only forced to concieve their values and articulate them. If their views changed, it was a result of discussion, not indoctrination.
I'm not sure that this is true. I haven't read the article in a while, but I seem to recall the creators being concerned that the game was rewarding a set of individualist, acquisitive values, and reconstructing it to promote collective, sharing values instead. I think values were still, on some level, being indoctrinated.
Having said that, I would agree that the method of indoctrination, involving discussion, response, and genuine experiencing of naturally arising problems, is a lower level of indoctrination than top-down lectures.
I think that this is both more effective and better for genuine pursuit of knowledge.
Still, we're all pushing values. It's simply a question: do we only push one, or do we explore conflicts?
That POV tends to be the kind of thing I take - kind of like, "there is no genuine altruism" and "there's no such thing as manipulation".
Sounds cynical, but really isn't.
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