The Classroom is a Political Space
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education.
The classroom is a political space. The choice we must make is whether we want our classroom to be one where the pursuit of the universal project of becoming human is oppressed, or one where our learners are at liberty to pursue it. When ‘the science’ is leading us to oppression, we have an ethical duty to ask why, including whether its conclusions are as certain as they are said to be. There is nothing neutral or apolitical about that choice, or our classrooms.
And so, when I added this to the end of a SET Journal article about a Year 11 cross-curricular course anchored in learner agency (called Shape Your Future), it was mostly as a reminder to myself of the ethical foundations of my practice:
Jane’s (name changed) experience in SHAPE is an example of the power of taking a holistic approach to the development of learners through creative agency. She entered SHAPE a troubled student, perhaps more familiar with the door of the dean’s office than most classrooms. She left school at the end of 2020 to enter into tertiary study, full of confidence in who she was and that she had a place in the world. The following is her story, as told in conversation in August 2020.
“[SHAPE] took a lot of stress out of my life. I used to dread coming to school. Now I have the control to be able to make sure I find what I’m doing purposeful to me.
“You sit in another class. You get given a sheet. You work through it. Teachers help a little bit, but most of the time they ignore you. I’ve just done a whole page on how something works in science but that will be the last time I hear anything of it.
“Everyone has to do the same thing. You have to learn it in the way they want you to learn it too. Like, there’s no learning through doing things. If you want that you have to request it and most of the time you get ignored anyway. It’s very stressful.
“I think the teachers in SHAPE care a lot more. I’m going to be listened to. My belief in myself has strengthened because the teachers care. They encourage. They care more than teachers; feel like a relative, looking over your shoulder. Care has a lot to do with learning. Not everyone has this at home, someone who believes in you. This inspires you.
I feel more appreciated. Feel there’s a reason to be confident. Before I felt like a dumb rock. Now I feel intelligent. I felt stupid any time I sat down in a class. Now I know how to teach myself. Now I feel more confident.
“SHAPE said it was OK to try doing other things in different ways. SHAPE says people with diverse learning needs can learn.”
Can you feel the weight in her words?
The answer to our education woes, we are being told, is a return to the basics. But when young people like Jane say things like this to me, I can’t help but think that perhaps the basics aren’t what we think they are. How we feel about learning matters. For Jane, and countless others, learning feels like control, oppression, and isolation. These feelings shut kids down. These feelings mean we don’t get to see who these kids are. When kids feel like this, it’s hard to learn anything, even The Basics. And yes, Minister Stanford, especially when they’re delivered via a knowledge-rich curriculum anchored in the science of learning.
Let’s be honest – what Jane describes here are the emotional undercurrents that the education system elicits, and the reason why so many kids disengage. This undercurrent is being strengthened with Stanford’s curriculum. Let’s not be too afraid to name this truth. We all know that learning doesn’t happen without first attending to the emotional undercurrent. And this means the classroom is a political space.
“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.”
Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Minister Stanford is relentless in positioning herself as a saviour of education in Aotearoa, speaking loudly of the urgency with which we must act to save the children. She speaks of potential and being ambitious for kids, of doing all she can to ensure the paramount objective that they achieve well academically is met, with the implicit assumption that this will lead to ‘options’ in the workforce (which I guess is her version of liberation). And yet, if you look at the ‘scientific’ methods she is convinced by, I see nothing but tools that control, oppress, and isolate. And as with all tools of this nature yielded by the powerful, the science isn’t as certain as is portrayed and its touting reveals the nature of the political project it is being used in service of.
For example, the idea of cognitive load is a key concept in Stanford’s ‘science’. Learning unfolds in a controlled, step-by-step manner, according to script, we are being told to believe. Know more = do more, but not before. Her curriculum, mapped out by the great saviours, has been carefully designed to ensure that the learning doesn’t get too overwhelming (uncontrollable?). Step-by-step, learners will march to success, I guess, under careful instruction. Learners in this conception of education are objects, acted upon by a nicely designed scientific sequence.
“Rather than being files to be accessed, memories are representations and to see them in our mind’s eye requires us to re-live the experience, often with a wealth of emotional baggage attached … Berggren discovered that trait anxiety places greater pressure on cognitive load, thus reducing the ability to focus on the task in hand (Berggren, Richards, Taylor, & Derakshan, 2013). Ojha found that negative emotions increase cognitive load of individuals (Ojha, Ervas, & Gola, 2017).”
The Emotional Learner
Our mind is not like a computer – a metaphor the saviours lean on heavily; learning is not merely a process of memory building and retrieval, only constrained by cognitive load and space in the brain’s memory. For, it’s never information that makes me feel cognitively overloaded. It’s always negative emotions.
The idea of cognitive load, as presented by ‘the science of learning’ advocates, is part of a reductionist, impoverished view of children and learning which betrays a lack of trust of the very people Stanford says she’s on a mission to save. Guy Claxton has referred to this approach as ‘educational brutalism’. It’s brutal because it doesn’t give the learners a say. Problems to do with learning are defined and solved by those who aren’t learners.
What we are teaching: people or subjects?
Freire argues that there is one project that all people are involved in, and that is the project of becoming human, in all its wondrous shades. This is not an optional project. Fundamentally, it is a project rooted in the pursuit of liberation which, if not squashed, leads to the flourishing of a person as they build upon their unique strengths, culture, dreams and inclinations. Is this something schools should be actively involved in? I think so. Schools are full of people, after all. But a view rooted in educational brutalism disregards this and reduces learning down to a ‘core’ of subjects – eg, The Basics – to be approached in a way that squashes that project of personal becoming in service of one aim, determined by the powerful.
To set up conditions that limit, impede, or deny the pursuit of this project is a political choice, despite its presentation as ‘the science’. It’s one that shuts down the pursuit of the project of becoming human, warping it instead into a project of becoming a pleasing image of the desire of others. It’s one that rests on a bed of oppression.
What are the conditions that impede the pursuit of this project of becoming human? They are environments where:
An external authority has control over one’s experience: what I do, when and how often I do it, how I do it, why I do it. Jane had no say.
There’s a reliance on fear / coercion / force to keep one focused and productive. Jane had to do everything as planned.
One is seen as an individual unit to be progressed through something deemed important by someone else. Jane’s needs were ignored.
One’s academic achievements are valued more than one’s emotional experience or any other form of learning. Jane felt like a dumb rock.
Control. Oppression. Isolation.
These are being writ large in our education system now – for learners, leaders and teachers.
You’ll never get a glimpse of anyone’s ‘becoming human’ project while these emotions reign. Maybe that’s the point?
We are human. Emotions matter when it comes to learning, for they lead us to feelings of oppression or liberation: do we feel constrained, or free to be; comfortable, or uncomfortable? We learn more when we are in spaces of freedom and comfort because those are space where we feel good. This is a basic fact. Imagine kids engaging in learning with those ‘basics’ attended to.
A good guide, I’ve found, as to whether the emotional tenor of the room tilts towards oppression or liberation is if I get pleased or delighted by what kids do.
We are pleased when things go according to plan, when things pan out as we expected.
We get delighted when someone does something unexpected.
On balance, I want a classroom where I get delighted more than one where I am only ever pleased. Delight is a signal that learners are stepping forward. It’s a signal that the fundamental project we’re all engaged in – becoming human – is being pursued in the room. We only step forward in this way when we feel good, where we read the space as safe to do so, where we see it as a place where we’ll be cared for and our risks valued: you know this to be true. Isn’t it the basic foundation upon which all learning that matters can occur, regardless our age?
So how do we get surprised more often?
Jane, our guide at the start, gives us some clues.