Violence in the Classroom Hyperbole Syndrome
Sorry for disappearing but Wilma wreaked havoc with downtown Miami…some parts still don’t have power.
When I finally got back onto Bloglines I had over 3500 unread posts to catch up on (…sigh…). So, where to start? Well, the ESL folder of course, and, alphabetically, Autono Blogger came up first, which is a great way to start, since he’s been on a roll recently, with some great stuff on the nature of teacher authority, classroom management, and a teacher’s role in a learner-centered classroom. I was reading along with pleasure, scrolling down the posts, when…No! It can’t be! It’s spreading! The viral “violence in the classroom” hyperbole is still propagating!
If you’re not familiar with Violence-in-the-Classroom Hyperbole (VICH) syndrome, anyone infected will grotesquely stretch the word “violence” to describe what our educational institutions do everyday to students. Following the highly contagious patient zero, who stated that “any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence”, VICH sufferers believe that “standardized testing and being forced to submit to institutionally defined learning objectives without [the students’] informed consent, that is violence”.
The main symptom of VICH is a loss of perspective, and is manifested by an obsessive fixation on university students in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the US. Instead of recognizing that these students have won the lottery of life, with opportunities and wealth beyond the wildest dreams of 99% of humanity, VICH sufferers bemoan the “organized child abuse” of “compulsory training in subordination” which leads students to behave like “domesticated livestock”.
The VICH syndrome is dehabilitating for a number of reasons. First, by (mis)using the word “violence” when referring to non-violent behaviour, those infected desensitize others to the word and more importantly the meaning of violence. The tragic paradox of the VICH syndrome is apparent here, because although the infected may be the first to condemn violence against the young, they are the first to equate violence with, say, the TOEIC, thus depreciating the word and those who truly suffer from what the word means. Secondly, due to this misuse of language, those infected lose credibility as change agents (and again the paradox: they are therefore less able to improve the very thing they are criticizing). Thus, late-stage VICH sufferers are reduced to a state of impassioned impotence.*
I am however a bit worried, since, in terms of VICH syndrome, I’m definitely in the high-risk population:
+ I’m a true believer in the need to change the way we educate
+ I agree with much of what VICH sufferers complain about
+ I majored in philosophy at university, fervently discussed Fanon (a Freire fellow-traveller), and wore black clothes and rimless glasses while passionately arguing the failures of the capitalist-industrialist complex.**
So I’m definitely in danger of VICH infection. But, fortunately, I was inoculated in my youth. You see, I went to a public school in Salina, Kansas, where I was subjected to the “Six Lessons” that according to chronic VICH sufferer John Taylor Gatto*** lead to “moral and intellectual paralysis”: I had a classroom, classes were announced using bells, the teacher was in charge of classroom and curriculum, I got a report card, and I was supervised. Oh the horror. I guess I’ve repressed memories of the violence I was subjected to, because 30 years later it seems to me that, far from being a victim, I was blessed with a wonderful education. I suppose though that VICH sufferers would counter that my warm memories are proof of the brainwashing I experienced.
* Apologies for linking to myself twice in the same paragraph.
** Actually as I wrote this I realized that I’m still doing all that.
*** Gatto is a study in contrasts. Although a long-term VICH sufferer, he left the System to teach at the Albany Free School, which rocks. And he is an amazing wordsmith. Check this out on the tyranny of bells (one of the Six Lessons):
The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
Man…I wish I could write like that! “The secret logic of schooltime …that inoculates each undertaking with indifference.” Whoa! In fact it’s so good you could almost fail to notice that it’s absolute bullshit.
Semantic arguments aside (Ill avoid using the word violence), I must say that I went through the same US public school system and it sucked.
As an adult, Ive also worked with various public school systems in the US and would say that they sucked too.
The most useful things I learned as a child were reading (taught to me by my Mom), basic math (again, taught to me by my Mom), and various social skills (parents & peers). Reading, in particular, opened the way for me to educate myself. I was blessed with parents who loved books and therefore provided any book I wanted.
When I review the massive number of hours I spent in school from age 5 to 22 (not counting grad school),… Im shocked at just how little relevant, interesting, or useful information/skills I learned.
Perhaps your experiences were better… but the school systems Ive experienced have all (ALL) been Meccas of Mindless Mediocrity.
Comment by AJ — November 4, 2005 @ 2:33 am
Yeah my mom taught me to read as well. And I’ve always said that I learned much more by working since age 15 than I did in the formal education system.
But I also had some kick ass teachers: Mrs. Burch in 5th grade, Ms McCarthy in 11th, and some rock star lecturers in University. I can still picture the passion that Tom Auster gave to his lectures on Kant; I still get goosebumps when I think of how Kant resolved the debate between British empiricism and continental rationalism in his Critique of Pure Reason. And Dr Hatch’s lectures on the history of science were killer: diagramming how Tycho Brahe’s hybrid cosmology was a brilliant resolution of heliocentrism and geocentrism, despite being totally wrong.
Anyway, maybe I was lucky. (Or maybe I’m confused and they were lousy teachers. After all, they used a sage-on-the-stage approach, so they couldn’t be any good, right
And as I wrote above, I’m the first to agree that we need to dramatically improve education and that much of what we do isn’t very good. But to use the word violence in this context is absurd and irresponsible. Worse, it’s counterproductive.
Which is why I’m so concerned that we’re compromising our effectiveness as change agents by using language loosely. You can’t “put semantics aside”. Aaron’s original post stirred up some attention, and not much of it was analytical - it was “hey, this is interesting”. Check out the trackbacks. And you know why it was interesting? Because humans are hardwired so that neurons fire off when when presented with violence - it’s stimulating. But stimulation’s not an argument, anymore than professional wrestling is, and it’s certainly not going to be convincing to anyone that isn’t already convinced.
Comment by Cleve — November 4, 2005 @ 10:13 am
Kick-ass comeback, 360!
So what are we saying here? Clearly, different people have different experiences. Perhaps the lesson here is that you can’t pin it all on “the institution”, or “the system”, coz there are some beautiful people who work in the system, and then there are your complete bastards…
I don’t go as far as Aaron on the “violence” bit, tho I sometimes think it’s a toss up between “brain-dead” and “traumatized”…;-)
but it still seems to me that the institutional setting is designed for convenience and ease of use; except neither of those are from the learners point of view. I mean, if you wanted to design a place which made it as difficult as possible for real learning to take place, yet at the same time a place that looked convincingly like a place where learning happens, you’d end up with something pretty close to our present school and university systems.
Comment by Marco Polo — November 6, 2005 @ 10:52 am
I would just like to state for the record that John Gatto never taught at the free school. He endorses it and he’s been there, but never taught there. You’re right about violence. And Gatto, yeah, he generalizes a bit, but I wouldn’t dismiss his thesis on the basis of one good experience with the system. Where I went to school, even if I disregarded my own hard feelings, I couldn’t help to notice that the one thing the majority of students shared was a potent combination of apathy and digust at all things “school”. And I was on the AP track.
Comment by Ted Becker — November 21, 2005 @ 5:53 am
Thanks for the comment and correction Ted. I’m on really thin ice here as I have little knowledge and zero experience as an educator in US, and so I probably shouldn’t have referred to Gatto at all here, for those reasons, until I know a bit more.
From the little I do know, I think I may agree with his overall thesis. My objection is that overly strident rhetoric can be counter-productive when communicating that thesis, and I picked up on an example of that with Gatto. And unfortunately I confused my point by getting into whether my experience was good or bad, when all I really meant was that, whether it was good or bad, violence wasn’t a part of it.
But anyway…back to the good vs bad: I went to 3 different elementary schools and 4 high schools, so had contact with I-don’t-know how many thousands of students, and I just didn’t pick up on the apathy and disgust you mention, other than the generalized apathy and disgust that all adolescents feel, especially for all things adult. On the other hand that was 30 years ago (!) so maybe things have changed.
And when I got to university, I got a course catalog with hundreds of classes, and I could choose to study whatever I wanted! Anything! And if there wasn’t a course I wanted I could invent my own via independent study. Talk about self-directed learning. And this was at a huge public university, filled with bureaucracy. I certainly wasn’t a traumatized zombie that lurched to a new class cell upon hearing the Pavlovian bell, as some would have it, and I really don’t think anyone else was either.
But I’m a special case, not because of the schools I went to, but because everyone’s a special case. We all have an absolutely unique brain chemistry and environmental background. So what may have been bad for some was good for me. I agree with Marco Polo that therefore that we need to take some of the burden off the “system” and put it back on teachers, who are the only ones who can recognize this uniqueness in each student and teach to it….
…which would entail small classes and single/small groups of teachers per grade level, and a more individualized approach of relating to each student as an individual and equal…and, there! I’ve argued myself right into agreeing with your overall point. Damn.
Comment by Cleve — November 21, 2005 @ 1:03 pm