A debate is raging in Dominica over Universal Secondary Education (USE).Underlying most of the issues we raise in this respect is a fundamental question: What kinds of children are we getting into the school system? To me, the larger question is, what kinds of children did we expect to get when we spent generations keeping their parent, grandparents and great grandparents out of school or shortchanging them through labels?
It is easy to blame the voiceless- those who cannot defend themselves and children by nature of who they are, will always be defenseless against adults. It's easy to see them as the problem forgetting that "a bad workman still blames his tool" but the purpose here is not to blame but to establish the forum for rethinking and reflecting on how we prepare the generation who will take over from us, govern and manage and who will be in charge of our lives and our welfare. We have no control over the natural progression. We age, we retire, they take over. What have we taught them about civility and intergenerational responsibility, and accountability when we have not held or willing to hold ourselves accountable for what happens to the them and we wonder why we are at pain to find the next generation of leaders?
We gloat about pass marks and percentages not realizing that what matters is competence - the ability to be good at whatever one does, despite what it is. Therefore, an even larger question is, what kind of teaching are our children getting? Notice I did not say teachers because how students come to know is no longer confined and increasingly so, to the classroom. The School of Continuing Studies, Dominca and UWI Open campus like many institutions worldwide are making teachers redundant thriugh distance learning, especially past high school, and many students whom we once thought would not get far are online moving ahead while we battle about who should be admitted into our high schools. And to think members of the media are at the forefront of that crusade is shameful, and is reflective of a desperate attempt to cling to days long gone - a pre-Obama age, I call it.
Education as the result of selective criteria is over and we have to deal with it. Accessibility and networks is what is important and disconnected people are out of touch and out of the loop. A friend was surprised to find me on Facebook; another scoffed that he did not have the time, and I run into some lecturers of mine who do not even want to have a conversation about online or distance education. I was pleased when I saw of them working hard to come to terms with his IPhone. He had just gotten it, he said. He understood the world that was mushrooming around him.
I can travel anywhere in the world and have a meeting with my advisor using Cisco's WebEx that furnishes both audio and video communication, whiteboard, document sharing and ability to make a presentation as if I were in a boardroom, all from my laptop. Move over office space and supervisors intent on supervising people rather than work.
The question then is what kind of teaching are our children getting rather than what kind of children are our teachers getting. I would hope since we all are different, teachers would come to work expecting to get all kinds of Dominican children.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Forgive and Forget
As Michael Vick emerges from the debacle of dog fighting, I recall arriving home one day to discover that someone had poisoned our four dogs. I watched as my son sobbed uncontrollably over the deaths. I still carry that pain. What Vick did is horrendous but I believe he deserves redemption, he deserves to be forgiven. He deserves to be given the chance to prove that he has learnt from the experience because none of us is without flaws. I also believe that such attitudes should be extended to children as well. The ones we deemed failures long before they complete primary schools. The ones who are incarcerated.
We cannot teach people the power of forgiveness, if we have not allowed them to experience forgiveness. Forgiveness impacts the receiver as well as the giver. No one is without faults whether in the open or secretly and the difference between many of us and the ones at whom we point fingers is that we have not be caught. We all need redemption both from ourselves and others. In Merchant of Venice style we always seem to want our pound of flesh. We cannot be so driven by justice that we forget the tempering effect of mercy.
Vick deserves a second chance and so does every child in America and anywhere in the world. Second chance means support to get back on the right track again. It means giving up on our animosities, treating the wrong doer as he had not done wrong. The last few weeks is beginning to make me feel pessimistic about that, given the rage and anger unleashed by our most senior citizens with something an inanimate as health care. I think of the many children who watch as these are replayed on television. My children watch and they have their opinions on the behavior. They are learning lessons that I would not teach on civility, second chances and redemption. They are learning that when we fail to forgive, we become victims of our own animosities and I am learning we cannot build enough prison to incarcerate everyone who has done wrong and fall shot of our high standards of perfection. We might as well learn to live with each other - faults and all and that means forgiving and forgetting. There is no better lesson we can teach our children or pass on to succeeding generations - that is Ok not to be perfect. It is ok to falter but I am here to help you get back on your feet, despite how long that may take.
We cannot teach people the power of forgiveness, if we have not allowed them to experience forgiveness. Forgiveness impacts the receiver as well as the giver. No one is without faults whether in the open or secretly and the difference between many of us and the ones at whom we point fingers is that we have not be caught. We all need redemption both from ourselves and others. In Merchant of Venice style we always seem to want our pound of flesh. We cannot be so driven by justice that we forget the tempering effect of mercy.
Vick deserves a second chance and so does every child in America and anywhere in the world. Second chance means support to get back on the right track again. It means giving up on our animosities, treating the wrong doer as he had not done wrong. The last few weeks is beginning to make me feel pessimistic about that, given the rage and anger unleashed by our most senior citizens with something an inanimate as health care. I think of the many children who watch as these are replayed on television. My children watch and they have their opinions on the behavior. They are learning lessons that I would not teach on civility, second chances and redemption. They are learning that when we fail to forgive, we become victims of our own animosities and I am learning we cannot build enough prison to incarcerate everyone who has done wrong and fall shot of our high standards of perfection. We might as well learn to live with each other - faults and all and that means forgiving and forgetting. There is no better lesson we can teach our children or pass on to succeeding generations - that is Ok not to be perfect. It is ok to falter but I am here to help you get back on your feet, despite how long that may take.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
We may have gone to the dogs
I recall an incident for which a young boy, 13 years old was recommended for expulsion. In Dominica once one is expelled, this is it. Unlike here in the US one can apply to a new school district. We do not have this option. The education tribunal having adjudicated this boy's case concluded that the he would not be expelled and recommended counselling given some of the coping difficulties he had including his coming to terms with the condition of a father who was recently paralyzed from the waist down. Leaving the father to attend school 13 miles away became a huge burden fr that boy. According to his parents "the paralysis changed their son." No one in the school had inquired to find an explanation for the boy's behavior and they were furious about the Tribunal's decision. We brought in a lawyer-former teacher and high school principal to meet with the staff. During that meeting he made a statement that has remained with me. He said "The law exist and is invoked when and where relationships fail and its purpose is first and foremost to restore these relationships."
I have since reflected on the merit and truism of that revelation and I have come to realize that impatience, indifference, intolerance and reluctance to acknowledge a child's presence in the classroom are probably the biggest hindrances to building relationships. To think that we are now using dogs to teach prisoners how to forge relations has something to say about our failure as a society to inculcate in man of our young this basic component of civility. To think we have to use animals to teach and reteach these men and women how to build bonds is a reflection of how our education systems - formal, informal and non-formal have failed. We have reduced relations to familial ties and therefor are tentative in forging links to the emotions of other people children placed so trustingly in our care.
We are more than teachers. We are the curators of the next generation. The continued presence of civility rest on us and while we can instruct the rudiments of maths and language, we cannot teach relationship because it is forged. It is a connection and therefore it is created. It begins first with the teacher and with seeing each child as a person, a citizen. As each child reciprocates, he learns how to care and appreciate himself and others, and how to forge links with them. He begins to sees himself as others. When that child errs, he learns how to deal with the erring through our dealing with his erring. He learns his attitude toward others through our attitude towards him. He learns to be compassionate through our compassion. He becomes part of the society as we incorporate him into ours. A child in our class in a small human being for whom we are responsible in part to make a big one, a mature one, a developed one. Among human beings this is a shared responsibility and as teachers we cannot abdicate our part in this process or place blame on parents. We reponsible for them while they are in our care, hence we are accountable for what happens to them there.
The parents role is to ensure that they have all the accoutrements for school; that they are fed; clothed but during the time they are in our presence it is our responsibility to make ensure they can live among their peers. Because parenting is mostly home-based they are taught how to live among among their family and neighbors - relations. Once they leave those confines for school, those school roles becomes societal, community-based, that is why they occupy school spaces with their peers as they will at work, in the hospital, in the community, neighborhoods, on the bus, in the park and where ever else people from different walks of life gather - shared spaces and it takes community relations to share these amicably.
Teachers have to do more that teach. They must be. They must be the things they want their children to be and if they are not they must become. They must forge relations with children in a way that they feel related to without indignity. Again the law have severely hampered the process and again it is because it sought to address those few broken relationships but in doing so, fear became an issue for the well intentioned. Because that law is free of passion and compassion, good teachers have set limits on buiding these relations, severely handicapping the social and relational development of succeeding generations. Those handicaps are now being repaired in some case by dogs. Literally, we may have gone to the dogs. Have we become so dysfunctional that we have to turn to animals to build human relations? As that approach becomes popular, I want to commend those who are making the effort to repair the breach but I think we need to learn how to prevent things not fix them. It costs less. In the meantime, we need to give teachers the permission and space to build dignified relations with their children. The future and civility of our society rests on these relations.
I have since reflected on the merit and truism of that revelation and I have come to realize that impatience, indifference, intolerance and reluctance to acknowledge a child's presence in the classroom are probably the biggest hindrances to building relationships. To think that we are now using dogs to teach prisoners how to forge relations has something to say about our failure as a society to inculcate in man of our young this basic component of civility. To think we have to use animals to teach and reteach these men and women how to build bonds is a reflection of how our education systems - formal, informal and non-formal have failed. We have reduced relations to familial ties and therefor are tentative in forging links to the emotions of other people children placed so trustingly in our care.
We are more than teachers. We are the curators of the next generation. The continued presence of civility rest on us and while we can instruct the rudiments of maths and language, we cannot teach relationship because it is forged. It is a connection and therefore it is created. It begins first with the teacher and with seeing each child as a person, a citizen. As each child reciprocates, he learns how to care and appreciate himself and others, and how to forge links with them. He begins to sees himself as others. When that child errs, he learns how to deal with the erring through our dealing with his erring. He learns his attitude toward others through our attitude towards him. He learns to be compassionate through our compassion. He becomes part of the society as we incorporate him into ours. A child in our class in a small human being for whom we are responsible in part to make a big one, a mature one, a developed one. Among human beings this is a shared responsibility and as teachers we cannot abdicate our part in this process or place blame on parents. We reponsible for them while they are in our care, hence we are accountable for what happens to them there.
The parents role is to ensure that they have all the accoutrements for school; that they are fed; clothed but during the time they are in our presence it is our responsibility to make ensure they can live among their peers. Because parenting is mostly home-based they are taught how to live among among their family and neighbors - relations. Once they leave those confines for school, those school roles becomes societal, community-based, that is why they occupy school spaces with their peers as they will at work, in the hospital, in the community, neighborhoods, on the bus, in the park and where ever else people from different walks of life gather - shared spaces and it takes community relations to share these amicably.
Teachers have to do more that teach. They must be. They must be the things they want their children to be and if they are not they must become. They must forge relations with children in a way that they feel related to without indignity. Again the law have severely hampered the process and again it is because it sought to address those few broken relationships but in doing so, fear became an issue for the well intentioned. Because that law is free of passion and compassion, good teachers have set limits on buiding these relations, severely handicapping the social and relational development of succeeding generations. Those handicaps are now being repaired in some case by dogs. Literally, we may have gone to the dogs. Have we become so dysfunctional that we have to turn to animals to build human relations? As that approach becomes popular, I want to commend those who are making the effort to repair the breach but I think we need to learn how to prevent things not fix them. It costs less. In the meantime, we need to give teachers the permission and space to build dignified relations with their children. The future and civility of our society rests on these relations.
Guns in our children's bags
A school district here in Pittsburgh is surprised that a 7th grader showed up with a gun in her bag, by sheer accident. With the proliferation of guns here in the US on account of the Second Amendment, and the election of President Obama; who it appears many fear he may institute gun control laws, I am surprised that school official are surprised, that guns are creeping in "accidentally" into their corridors and class room.(Heard of assault weapons being found in a student locker at one of our universities in the city) The poor girl could explain how she came to possess the gun as investgations continue. As the appetite for gun spreads, one should expect to see more of them turning up on school property. Law makers have already inserted into a recent bill legislation that would allow for guns in the national parks. Recently a guy walked into a church and shot a doctor on account of abortion and yesterday another walked into the Holocaust Museum and started shooting, killing a security officer. Recently a young man in my neighborhood having lost his job and fearing "they' we going to take his guns, opened fire killing three police officers who had shown up for an apparent domestic dispute between him and his mother.
Unless we understand that children live what they learn, we will continue to be surprised when those lessons are really learned. Unless we learn that we are the curators of the next generation and that the prevalence of guns threaten to make this country and any where they are aplenty, ungovernable, we will be surprised. Many of those who today promote guns, run the risk of having unsettling retirements. We have been so self absorbed with our desires to have guns that we miss the greater good of making sure civility prevail. A man who spewed so much hatred in print and online should never have been given the opportunity to possess a gun far less to walk into a museum in plain sight of children and start shooting. It is the intention, the criminal mind one may argue but it is also the gun that creates the criminality.
It is the sustainability of civility in the face of armed citizens that bothers me most. It is the expansion of the gun laws and the stealth, the surreptitiousness with which it done that remains a threat to that continued civility as well.It is access to these guns that may be contributing to the criminalization of our children.
Somebody needs to stop the brooding Wild West mentality. It starts by refusing to buy that one gun and leaving our protection to the police and the armed forces. its star by accepting and believing in due process and in its outcomes. While the jury system in the US is hailed as one of best in jurisprudence, often I hear private citizen express dissatisfaction with its verdicts. There is also a due process for challenging these verdicts without being combative. If there is any lesson we can truly teach succeeding generations within our democracies, it's the importance of due process. It remains the core of civility. Relationship is its inner core
A right to bear arms, then does not mean, a prerogative to possess them. Besides, most people in the US do not now possess guns but should those who do pose a threat to those who do not, we run the risk of expanded possession and the law is already an accomplice. I fear our children will live that learned behavior - the right to bear arms. So for their sakes and our sakes, we need to lay down the arms - all of us.
Unless we understand that children live what they learn, we will continue to be surprised when those lessons are really learned. Unless we learn that we are the curators of the next generation and that the prevalence of guns threaten to make this country and any where they are aplenty, ungovernable, we will be surprised. Many of those who today promote guns, run the risk of having unsettling retirements. We have been so self absorbed with our desires to have guns that we miss the greater good of making sure civility prevail. A man who spewed so much hatred in print and online should never have been given the opportunity to possess a gun far less to walk into a museum in plain sight of children and start shooting. It is the intention, the criminal mind one may argue but it is also the gun that creates the criminality.
It is the sustainability of civility in the face of armed citizens that bothers me most. It is the expansion of the gun laws and the stealth, the surreptitiousness with which it done that remains a threat to that continued civility as well.It is access to these guns that may be contributing to the criminalization of our children.
Somebody needs to stop the brooding Wild West mentality. It starts by refusing to buy that one gun and leaving our protection to the police and the armed forces. its star by accepting and believing in due process and in its outcomes. While the jury system in the US is hailed as one of best in jurisprudence, often I hear private citizen express dissatisfaction with its verdicts. There is also a due process for challenging these verdicts without being combative. If there is any lesson we can truly teach succeeding generations within our democracies, it's the importance of due process. It remains the core of civility. Relationship is its inner core
A right to bear arms, then does not mean, a prerogative to possess them. Besides, most people in the US do not now possess guns but should those who do pose a threat to those who do not, we run the risk of expanded possession and the law is already an accomplice. I fear our children will live that learned behavior - the right to bear arms. So for their sakes and our sakes, we need to lay down the arms - all of us.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Reaching our children
I believe that nations whose welfare are tied to those of their children place a high premium on building relationships with them. This is probably even truer for adults whose welfare are tied to those of their children. Parents who need their children take care of them ensuring that these children are well placed to do so. I wonder what would happen if the future of teachers particularly beyond retirement were tied to the future of their students. I believe they would have vested interest in the lives of these children and what happened to them.
Our welfare is no longer tied to those of children because we live long enough,work hard enough; make money enough, and we are healthy enough, and for longer to take care of ourselves. Who needs these children? We can secure our own insurances and governments have taken over our social security. We have 401Ks and retirement funds, who needs children? Children, therefore, have become liabilities not assets. This perception of children appears to permeate our values.
Increasingly, I am beginning to believe that our security and safety are tied to those of our children - the next generation. We have a responsibility to teach them our values and reach them or risk them adopting the value of others or being reached by others. The best way to reach them is to befriend them, treat them with appreciation, treat them like they matter and that they occupy places in our classrooms that no one else can duplicate. To feel loved, appreciated, wanted and celebrated is what draws children to us as educators. This leaves them open to our guidance and prodding and influence. We must reach before we can teach them. It is in reaching that our welfares become entwined. After all they will become what we are to them.
Our welfare is no longer tied to those of children because we live long enough,work hard enough; make money enough, and we are healthy enough, and for longer to take care of ourselves. Who needs these children? We can secure our own insurances and governments have taken over our social security. We have 401Ks and retirement funds, who needs children? Children, therefore, have become liabilities not assets. This perception of children appears to permeate our values.
Increasingly, I am beginning to believe that our security and safety are tied to those of our children - the next generation. We have a responsibility to teach them our values and reach them or risk them adopting the value of others or being reached by others. The best way to reach them is to befriend them, treat them with appreciation, treat them like they matter and that they occupy places in our classrooms that no one else can duplicate. To feel loved, appreciated, wanted and celebrated is what draws children to us as educators. This leaves them open to our guidance and prodding and influence. We must reach before we can teach them. It is in reaching that our welfares become entwined. After all they will become what we are to them.
Building relationships with students
There is a reason why our kids keeping falling behind their international counterparts. I believe it is the same reason they are dropping out and the same reason they are not meeting the grade. You see, education is a social and cultural construct. It was never designed for the economic cure-all many have tried to turn it into. Schools are about children and their future. It is in schools we determine what they become but more importantly who they become. It is in schools we pass on our our legacy and our values to the next generation. The hope is that those values are shared and that they are common among those who inculcate them, and that the recipients are treated as equals. It is in schools therefore, that social and cultural transfers from one generation to the next are made. In is there then that most children acquire their social and cultural inheritance. Relationships therefore, if one thinks carefully of the concept of inheritance, is the basis for this transfer. Blood relations transfer material inheritance. Social relations transfer social and cultural inheritance. Schools are spaces where this social and cultural transfers are made.
What is wrong with our schools? Nothing! It is our relationships with children in schools that has gone awfully wrong. To build relationships is to establish connection; to build relationships is to care about a child and what happens to that child. To show interest in his life outside of school; his pains and hurts; his difficulties; after all he is just a child and like all other young species, need the nurturing of adults - teachers in his life to show him how to survive among his peers. Other species get it right. Because children spend most of their waking and receptive hours in our presence, we as educators have a responsibility to bond with them. It is with this bonding we can truly reach them and teach them
So you are wondering what happens to all the money we spend on education. Well they go to pay salaries, build state of the art structures and procure equipment but they aren't spent on building relationships. I wonder what would happens if we were to pay for caring and relationship building in schools.
The rest of the world does not have the financial resources we have nor do they spend as much as we do on education but I believe they spend time, they care and they know that relationships are the foundation for success and they use it.
What is wrong with our schools? Nothing! It is our relationships with children in schools that has gone awfully wrong. To build relationships is to establish connection; to build relationships is to care about a child and what happens to that child. To show interest in his life outside of school; his pains and hurts; his difficulties; after all he is just a child and like all other young species, need the nurturing of adults - teachers in his life to show him how to survive among his peers. Other species get it right. Because children spend most of their waking and receptive hours in our presence, we as educators have a responsibility to bond with them. It is with this bonding we can truly reach them and teach them
So you are wondering what happens to all the money we spend on education. Well they go to pay salaries, build state of the art structures and procure equipment but they aren't spent on building relationships. I wonder what would happens if we were to pay for caring and relationship building in schools.
The rest of the world does not have the financial resources we have nor do they spend as much as we do on education but I believe they spend time, they care and they know that relationships are the foundation for success and they use it.
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