Receptors and Disengagement

Over the past few weeks in our CP3 classroom setting, a certain schism has made itself rather apparent amongst our community. There are the talkers, and then there are the listeners, the haves and have-nots, so to speak. We have addressed this issue several times in the classroom- are there people whose voices are not being heard, or are they choosing not to speak? This question tries to go beyond the phenomena of "I don't like to speak up in class" or " I may act this way in the classroom, but it does not define who I am." I'm getting a little weary- not of hearing the same active voices over and over, but rather not hearing the passive students' voices in the classroom. I have to ask myself an important question- are the students who are not being active really being silence, or are they just disengaged from what we are doing within and without the classroom?

Being disengaged is easy to do when one hasn't done their readings, when homeworks from other classes are due that day and the classroom is the only place to finish them. Sometimes I just have to think to myself "just do the class a favor and don't come if you are not ready to participate." And participation does not mean having something to say. Participation is having that fire burning inside of you that probes you to ask who? what? when?. It means coming to the classroom with a something to share. If you are just coming to go through the motions and hopefully be inspired by classroom discussions/ activities, then what is the point of going to class at all? It may seem harsh, but your physical body does not account for you being present. Education is about taking in all that we hear, read, see, and processing it into our own unique views. When Woodford references the writings of Dewey, he uses the phrase "passive receptacles" as those who simply received information but did not process it, simply stored it. We must turn our passivity into action, for without each of our views "society would be deprived of potentially valuable ideas and resources. Individuals might not be especially wise or talented, but they were positioned to reflect on, and to act intelligently to improve, the quality of their own lives and of those around them." This shows that Dewey has faith in the human race to be able to become learned citizens, to not just take everything at face value, but rather to mold it and while not taking anything away from what it "is," we can reshape it to conform with our own ideas. Knowledge is not a series of rights and wrongs, like bricks that are weighty and solid in mass, but rather knowledge is like water, able to move in between small areas, acquire great mass and force, and is also able to cool or be heated. When I think of traditional education, I always come back to one of my favorite anarchist pieces "The Wall" by Pink Floyd. This work faces the issues of the theoretical "wall" we build around ourselves by closing ourselves off to new experiences, to making a safe haven of what we know to be right and disregarding what must be false. After a while, we all just become bricks in the wall, we are the faceless mass to which facts and "knowledge" have come to be. Soon we found ourselves lost and eventually suffocated by our own closing off of the outside world.

Education is not just about learning what we do not know, it's about reshaping what we assume to be true and taking the elements of what we have learned to help shape our own personal outlooks. But that first comes with knowing what it is we are talking about. It is about absorbing those previously held notions of what is right and becoming extremely comfortable with them before we can reject their value. We are so fortunate to be able to be cognizant of the fact that facts are not facts (ok?) but rather what is assumed to be true over a given period of time. It is exciting that our minds might be those that shape new directions of growth and change. We can see that as evident in our current presidential election. There is on one hand a radical thinker, who wants to reshape our world to help shed it of its 20th century skin. There is another candidate who wants to preserve traditions of how things have worked in the past and have proven themselves true. Each candidate is valid in their viewpoints, but only one is looking to promote change of a positive variety. Change is what can make something grow, otherwise we are just repeating the past on a larger scale. Maybe if we changed the way our country (or classroom) was structured, we would be able to bring new ways of strengthening our bonds to light. Maybe its time for our classroom to become more proactive in changing how we govern ourselves and those around us. It is so important to be flexible and yielding, to try to approach everything with a positive attitude and to try to be helpful to others. It is with an open mind and heart that real acceptance and love can move us forward into new ways of thinking.