I have a lot to say and reflect on after reading Martin Haberman's The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching. (Click here to read the article). I was surprised when I noted the date of publication was 1991 because so many of Haberman's points are still right on target in today's education debates. He exposes many flaws of our current accepted, inefficient method of education (which he calls the Pedagogy of Poverty), even revealing the alarming fact that this method "is not a professional methodology at all" and "is not supported by research, by theory, or by the best practice of superior urban teachers" (Haberman, 1991, p.292). It begs the frightening question, What the heck have we been doing for the last 2 decades?! He even has the foresight to include "the technology of information access" in his list of "good teaching" features, saying "computer literacy-- beyond word processing -- is a vital need" (Haberman, 1991, p.294). This really stuck out to me as one of my many hats includes "technology teacher", yet in 2014 I still struggle with a lack of access to good technology resources for students to use. "Computer literacy" is as real and vital a need for students as ever, and majorly lacking in many environments, and yet Haberman gave us a heads up about this need 23 years ago.
Very clearly throughout the article, my Freire bell was ringing in the back of my mind. A particularly strong example is when Haberman describes the troubled dynamic in American schools, saying "the classroom atmosphere created by constant teacher direction and student compliance seethes with passive resentment that sometimes bubbles up into overt resistance" (Haberman, 1991, p.291). I have often considered Friere's description of social class inequities as larger examples of classroom infrastructures, where the oppressed are the students and the oppressors are the adults in charge. It seems both Freire and Haberman would like to resolve the imbalance in this dichotomy, and cultivate a class of empowered questioners and thinkers, where “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire, 1970, p.80). Haberman's "good" teacher sounds a lot like Freire's "problem-posing" one, who “constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher” (Freire, 1970, p.81). This last Freire quote is one I use quite a lot, and I am happy to see the idea emerge in Haberman as well. Recognizing this idea's impact on me is also pushing me to turn the question back onto myself: How do I live out this practice of co-investigation when I show up to work each day?
Both Haberman and Freire acknowledge that bringing about the necessary reforms requires overcoming many obstacles. I saw a correlation between Haberman's description of the way students resist school reform with Freire's description of the oppressed doing the same. Haberman says that exemplary teachers "maintain control by establishing trust and involving their students in meaningful activities rather than by imposing some neat system of classroom discipline" (Haberman, 1991, p.293). Similarly, Freire says that “trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust” (Freire, 1970, p.60). These quotes emphasize how reforming education is a lot like reforming oppressive society, and does not come easily. People's thinking stems from old habits and passed down stories (perhaps of the dangerous nature Chimamanda Adichie talks about in her TED talk discussed here?) People's minds on all sides, oppressor and oppressed, educator and student, must be broken free. As Haberman observes, the students themselves often work to maintain the ineffective status quo in education because their "stake in maintaining the pedagogy of poverty... absolves them of responsibility for learning and puts the burden on the teachers, who must be accountable for making them learn" (Haberman, 1991, p.292). This becomes instantly problematic by positioning learning as something an individual can make another do. It goes against everything Freire has taught us about resolving power inequity and honoring people's humanity. But students being stuck in this mindset about their own education is no news to Freire, who asserts that “One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness” (Freire, 1970, p.51). In our floundering educational system, all of our consciousnesses have been submerged in the existing oppressive reality, and our job as reflective teachers is to get ourselves, our colleagues, our students, and their parents out of this dangerous cyclical mindset.
As an educator, I think all of these readings encourage me to continue to challenge and ask questions of myself. It all connects to being a reflective practitioner and recording our reflections each day. To create this improved future that empowers critical thinkers, we have to be critical thinkers in terms of our own practice. We can't get too comfortable and fall into a routine, and fail to work each day to let students find their own voices and work to let those voices be heard.
Teacher self-reflection is extremely important because reflection is the most vital skill we need to encourage in students. As Haberman says, "good teaching... is the process of building environments, providing experiences, and then eliciting responses that can be reflected on" (Haberman, 1991, p.294). I really wish more parents understood this, that quality thinking isn't always something you can average and score. When Haberman writes, "a fundamental goal of education is to instill in students the ability to use various and competing ways of understanding the universe. Knowing how to spell is not enough" (Haberman, 1991, p.293), I wanted to say CAN I GET AN AMEN? I sometimes feel awkward when a parent brings up their kid's spelling as a kind of major concern or measure of ability, because I don't find spelling all that important in the scheme of things, yet I don't want to disrespect the parent's values and concerns. This is why I love encountering my own thinking in the words of others, because it makes me feel more legitimate in my own stance. Reading Haberman's opinion about what really counts in a "good" education makes me feel less awkward in helping a parent recognize the difference between thinking and recalling. One of my major goals for myself in doing this Master's program is to professionalize myself and have the chops to really make my voice heard in the education community and increase my efficacy. When Dr. Lynch responded to my last Position Statement, she wrote something about the role of citation that has stayed with me since. She said when we cite, "it’s not just us; it’s also some widely accepted thinkers backing us up and nodding their heads with us. That lends us authority that we can’t create for ourselves in just a paper or two" (Lynch, 2013, Livetext). I love this so much because it makes me feel like I have an invisible army of smart people backing me up, who have made observations like mine and come to similar conclusions as mine, and we can all add our voices to this debate and hopefully eventually be heard.
While singing the praises of reflection, let's not forget the illustrious Freire also values reflection as a tenement of good education, reminding us that “Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated” (Freire, 1970, p.65). This image of our children turning into objects that could quickly perish in the flames without the means to take control of their own futures is chilling, but Haberman is right behind Freire when he says "graduates who possess basic skills but are partially informed, unable to think, and incapable of making moral choices are downright dangerous" (Haberman, 1991, p.294), perhaps both to themselves and the world at large. My continuing question is what more will it take for us to heed these warnings from as far in the past as 1970? It's a comfort to know my alma mater is making these ideas accessible to more and more practitioners, which I suppose leads me to my next move as a teacher: Keep the torch burning and keep learning about more thinkers who share my views, so we can add our voices up and start to be heard. Maybe in a few more years as we push into a new age of education reform, Haberman's paper written in 1991 (and Freire's in 1970 for that matter) will finally start to feel dated.
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