The Personal and the Political: Part II

 

In my previous post, I discuss personal liberty as a cognitive, emotional and spiritual experience that impacts and guides externally directed political thoughts and actions. The post is intended to evaluate and complicate my reflections on the political divide that has seeped into so many parts of life. This post is a follow up to the previous but is also written as a stand alone piece. To read the first in the series, click here. Otherwise, proceed with caution. 

Part of my job as a teacher is to tell students what to do, when to do it, where to do it, how to do it and why to do it. If my students really listen to me, they find out I don't care much about the specific, arbitrary rules I am telling them and, in general, I prefer creativity and original thinking. Unfortunately, I almost always get work that reeks of compliance. 

This tendency to do what they are told strikes me as curious given many students' equal and opposite tendency to ignore what I say. The endless variety of ways in which my high school students collectively and individually find ways to both comply with and ignore my direction is mind bending. But such is the infinitely complex and contradictory nature of individuality and youth. 

My impression is that most students (and most people) feel comforted in the unpredictable environment of high school by knowing their restrictions: clear rules and expectations. I once had a colleague that told me, "A happy dog is a dog that knows what to do and when to do it. " And while the comparison between students and canines falls a little flat, I understand the point. Rules and directions give us boundaries which make us feel more safe and stable. Even if we choose to ignore a rule, we think others won't, and that creates the impression of predictability.  When I hand a student a worksheet, my student wants to know what I want her to do with the worksheet. After that, she decides. Or she doesn't. Either way, she's headed down her own path.

But that's just it, isn't it? There is no way of getting out of responding. Whether students listen to directions or don't; whether they engage, question, argue, or don't; it's all a response that affects their future responses. The decisions my students make mold the way they experience and develop their own agency or lack thereof. Most of the time I don't think students even consciously decide. They just react. But each decision or lack of decision reinforces some kind of synaptic path. 

In light of this, I often try to teach my students to break the rules. One of my most cautious calculations with each student is what to teach him first, the rules or to break the rules. Some students are so stuck in unconscious reaction that if I can convince him the worksheet I just gave him isn't the only way or even a good way to learn something, he feels empowered and free to engage the material in a way that better suits him. On the other hand, some students want to know the rules of the worksheet so that they are empowered to "do well" on the assignment. Again, either way the lesson gains power when students recognize and exercise their own agency. Sometimes they learn content; sometimes they learn freedom.

Because real freedom doesn't exist in choice, it exists in making the choices. And I mean this in both the sense that one must choose from a variety of options and invest themselves in that choice, but, more importantly, I hope my students learn that we can often manufacture our own options in life. We don't have to be content with what others present to us as our choices. While there are obvious limits to this assumption, true liberty is in manifesting choices even when it appears there aren't any and then choosing wisely, in a way that reinforces dignity, compassion, beauty and community. 

In light of this, I try to consider student reactions to being told what to do through the lens of their personal liberty, trying to think of their choices as extensions of the need to exercise their own liberation. If the student "buys in", "pushes back", "goofs off", "never listens", it could be that the student is making a powerful and healthy choice by making "the wrong choice".  In other words, sometimes meeting a student "where they are at" isn't at all about academic skills but about something deeper: personal agency. 

Our system tends to overplay the hierarchical, authoritarian administrative approach that delivers good order followers at the cost of free thinking, creative and empower young people. I recognize these two things are not entirely mutually exclusive. I recognize that I'm writing briefly about complicated phenomenon. However, I think we can also safely recognize the immense influence of the Prussian military structure and capitalist need for workers stemming from the second industrial revolution has had on the nature of "modern" educational practices, emphasizing order and orders that prioritize property over people. 

The real twist is that this priority of property over people is obfuscated by a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of political liberty. It's as if the structures at play in the modern school system suggest that as long as one's political rights are stressed, the individual is free. To put it another way, schools often privilege the right of a student to say something over the right of the teacher to question what or why the student is saying it. Or another way: we privilege one person's public, political liberty at the detriment of the deeper, internal personal liberty. In practice this can appear as nasty comments, inflexible teachers or administrators, punishments disconnected from behaviors, or any number of power based interactions focused on property protecting compliance. 

It could also appear as tolerance. And tolerance is terrifying because it always retreats and reacts. It is the enemy of growth.

Again, if you're reading this, you've joined me on what amounts to a think aloud. I recognize there are limits to the ideas and connections above. They aren't based on years of research or consulting experts. At the same time, representing the organic observations that arise when we scratch beneath of surface of our traditional educational mode is key to a sincere understanding of the way our educational practices both reflect and shape society and the individuals that bring it to life. This is not to suggest the above is the only, best, or even complete frame of understanding. But I hope it encourages you to reflect on the relationship of authority, agency, liberty and community as it influences the thinking habits of our young people.