0126: Why External Motivators are a Must, and why that’s a problem.
#education #edreform #SOSchat #control
(Please, if what you find below is a waste of time, skip to the *; don’t waste your time on a fool’s attempt to make sense of the senseless. Cheers.)
I want to begin by stating that I am a proponent of a critical internal locus of control for human beings— that would, of course, include students. It’s important to use ‘critical’ as a qualifier, as well, because so much of what we think is internalized has been conditioned and now seems internal. Additionally, ample argument can be made that every action is made externally. By that I mean we are constantly responding to stimuli no matter how we intellectualize it. I will not try to tease out these complications, frankly that would be a trite go at rhetorical masturbation for which I do not have the time.
That said, external motivators are a must for our current educational model of skill, drill, and test to be effective. Students, and teachers, for that matter are not working on anything truly stimulating provided by the state. The curriculum is cold and pointless, schools function more as prisons than places of curious exploration, any attempts to find glimmers of hope are subdued quickly by the pacing guide, the examples are endless. External control is required when forcing someone to be a something. Education, as it is (arguably education in general), seeks to alter the natural flow of curiosity. It seeks to apply discipline to the mind, and discipline is important. Change, growth, transformation all require a level of discipline, a great deal of it, in fact. Intellectual growth, the building of skills, thinking, and so forth all require discipline. But, discipline in itself is not the problem. The problem is, at least, two-fold. First, in our system of institutional function, the discipline, the locus of control, is not returned to the individual without rendering it less that operative. Second, the current system requires a form of external control that will prevent resistance— the content is so numbing, and the structure so dehumanizing that any soul will and rightfully resist. As a result, external motivators are a must in schools, then people can wander aimlessly through the remainder of their existence from institution to institution seeking refuge from any lack of structure. This is not a phenomenon caused entirely by education, but is simply a part of the function of western society. But, back to school. Testing especially has required motivation to be more and more external and punitive. If it isn’t then quotas won’t be made, curriculum won’t be covered (understanding is not a consideration), and testing will not boom. The industry would crumble of we had kindergartens crawling around playing with blocks, and 8th grade biology classes spending several weeks dissecting frogs. The test must happen. That is the aim. All of life is a test— a standardized test. With all this testing, the control can never be returned to the individual. What would they do? Would they rebel? Not if you’ve destroyed the will too. So while the gradual release of responsibility is present in word, if the responsibility was never developed and nurtured, then it may never appear without intensive democratic intervention that seeks to liberate the colonialized mind and being.
*I quite possibly got lost in the circles of rhetoric above, the problems of our education systems and society are multifactorial and interrelated. So, in summation, without extreme external control our education system, with its current goals, would not function. Tests would never be bubbled, remediation and remediation specialists would have no place, reformers would have to do something else, the industry would change. The means is an end in itself. Control people from as early as possible, and they will belong to their controllers forever. Hopefully, they will never even noticed they’re being controlled. I mean what would the world be like if people went around asking questions and making choices? Reasonable, perhaps?
0050: School Architecture and the Zombie Apocalypse
#education #architecture #prison #zombies
I’ve never been to a school that didn’t feel like a school. They’ve all had that icky institutional feel to them, at least the ones built after 1950. I taught in a school that was built around the turn of the century. It didn’t feel so much like a school, but a relic of days past that had been inhabited by children who had been thrown away by a system. I’ve been in classrooms, my own and others’, that have been nicely decorated and maybe even had a desk lamp or two to change the lighting. But, it’s like putting posters on a dorm room wall. There’s still cinder block painted the color of vomit behind them. I’ve visited a correctional facility or two, a few mental institutions. They all look the same. I could teach at any of those places and still have the same vomit colored cinder block walls and try to inspire the same vomit colored cinder block hope. Our classrooms are little boxes filled with big dreams that are deferred for small curriculum. And, the fluorescent lights are mind-numbing. It’s like working in a morgue. Especially if they flicker. Even the nice, rich schools I’ve been in feel institutional. Maybe even moreso. They’re these terrible panoptic structures that look exactly like prisons with bulletin boards. I understand that economics are at hand. And schools are institutions. But they just have that feel to them. It bothered me as a kid, and it bothers me now. It just seems that a place that people spend a quarter of their life in, or more, could feel a little better. But, we are all trapped in little boxes of some form. We live in them, and hang out in them when we die. Maybe we’ll all break out of our boxes one day and walk the earth, consuming brains and stuff, then we’ll destroy our cubicles and classrooms and all the little boxes that contained in life and we’ll be free to wander and wonder and breathe and escape these chains that bind our minds. We’ll form zombie colonies and think tanks and maybe then, and only then will we be more than zombies.
What does your school look like?
