This is a very interesting article because it challenges the “normal” classroom practices that we grow under and went as far as teaching in, for the few that have taught before. It took me back to my days in primary school, where the seating arrangements were according to our performance. We were assigned desks and/or tables and chairs. If you had a chair, we went as far as writing our names on them so that people might know that it was ours! The arrangement was such that you cannot see the next person’s work (“copy”) and everyone was encouraged to do their own work.
The education system has advocated for the development of learners to become individuals and members of the society that they belong to. The idea of individual seating and taking definite ownership of your own ideas has been used as a way of supporting the idea of individuality. Well, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the promoting individuality unless if it means your learners wouldn’t “fit” into the societies they come from. Unfortunately, societies, as pointed out in the article, are usually working in unison. There is a very slim chance of individuality in the school playgrounds and the communities that these learners go back to. The problem with system’s (system refers to the education system and its underlying policies) idea of promoting individualism is definitely not short term thing but something that affects learners on the long run. The long run may be within a few months i.e. Surjeet’s later interactions with Mary. The anxiety caused by the “hatred”, with the lack of a good word, from Mary that may lead to hatred towards her and anyone of her “kind”. This idea of individuality also becomes a problem when the learners move to the next class or grade, where the instructor may be using a different approach to the one before.
This article is based on the observations made by Kelleen Toohey during her longitudinal ethnographic research project in a Grade 1 classroom enrolling L2 learners and Anglophones. She looks at this class using the community-of-practice perspective to teaching practice and she looks at three elements i.e. the distribution of physical (sitting in your own desk), material (using your own things like pencil, crayons etc.) and intellectual (using your own ideas and words). She points outs that as far as these three elements seem to be the best way of doing things but they strategically sideline and disadvantage L2 learners throughout their L2 their learning. To explain this even further, she brings a picture of the seating arrangement in the class of research and points out the “community stratification” (p. 61). The stratification results to the sidelining “of some learners from certain activities, practices, identities, and affiliations (p. 80).
Community stratification is what I saw at this one school I taught at for 2 months; there were three 11th grade classes viz. 11A, 11B and 11C and they were all taking English as a Home language (EHL). The school is a multiracial school with Indians, Africans (Blacks), Colored and Whites (Afrikaans speaking and English speaking). There was a fair distribution of Indians, Coloreds and Whites with a few Black kids who came from wealthy families in both classes 11B and 11C. 11A was a predominantly Black class with four Indians (they appeared to be from families that are not doing too well). Now the interesting thing about these classes is that B and C had a White instructor Ms. Kelly* and A had a black instructor Ms. Sono* teaching the same contents from the same syllabus but exams were set by Ms. Kelly. As it may appear, Ma’am Sono’s class was deemed a poor performing class that doesn’t deserve to take English as a Home Language. I was made to understand, by teachers from other departments within the school, that there were three reasons to this “judgement”; (i) the English department had an attitude towards Ms. Sono because they believed she was “unfit” to teach grade 11 as compared to her counterpart Ms. Kelly who has successfully produced A+ students in grade 12. (ii) The learners is her class were “just black kids who are trying to go up” and they came from “lower” class families. And (iii) the teaching methods in these classes were different such that Ms. Kelly’s classes would do a revision coupled with questions that might appear in the exam paper. And Miss Sono’s class was to study everything they could get their hands on because they never knew the scope of their exam (and that also applied to the Ms. Sono, who never saw the paper until the morning of the exam).
This goes to show that community stratification of this society was that if you have money or if you are from a family that is doing well then you deserve “better” education. It also shows that if say the three classes had to do projects where there should be creativity (in a sense that there should be charts, crayoning and etc.) involved and the learners had to use their own resources. There’s a great chance that the posters or charts from B and C will appear attractive as compared to those of class A. On the other hand, the fact that 11A is viewed as failures by the school society (the teachers) undermines the idea of individuality that the school is trying to promote. How so? Well learners from 11A as seen as grade 11A learners and not as individual learners who happen to be in a class that is underperforming. At the same time, these learners are being rejected by the very society that they are supposed to display their individuality in.
Toohey points out that out that some things are beyond the control of a teacher per se. These include the availability of material (having table at school instead of desks) in schools and the education policies. She also points out that school policies basically says we should assess learners as individuals. She says “despite these perspectives (from TARG members), schools seem to hold that children must learn on their own and display their own learning” (Toohey, TQ Dialogues, p. 94, 2003).
The article raises questions like what is to be done by us, as “informed” educators to better the situations in our schools. This is with the fact that our teaching is guided by policies and rigid-made-to-look-flexible time frames in mind. How do we get the whole society to rally behind us and as some point forget about its expectations (that learners are to display their individual learning)? Do we reflect the learners’ strength in terms of working with others in their report cards?
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people concerned.
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