High praise from Eugene Kowch:

"A respected colleague of mine, Dr. Yvonne Hebert, was gracious to share your "pegagogue / dialogue" with me online today: http://thepedagogicaldialogic.blogspot.com/

I found it a treat to read, and a very clever and elegant innovation. My congratuations to you for such an accomplishment, Ryan. I can not recall such a dialogue opportunity provided by an undergraduate teacher, and I think this is just great work and thinking.

Gene. "

While I fully appreciate the complement and fully agree that the blog format creates a unique and interesting public space to share ideas and thoughts, the problem comes at this point to "create" dialogue. This notion of "creating" or "producing" dialogue is a difficult one, since dialogue needs to come authentically and naturally and cannot be provoked. We can see what provocation does in the world when we turn our eyes to the news media covering the war. I was going to raise some more issues around that difficulty, but the response I receives from Christine Lee raises a number of issues that need to be addressed if dialogue is to happen:

"Fitz,

This can happen in any classroom where there is a lack of dialogue. Are you able to create a “safe” environment where people can voice their opinions without fear of negative feedback? Is it possible to establish this dialogue and foster its participants to engage in constructive criticism and feedback?

Under a pseudonym, I can voice, rant, bitch about almost anything because I feel safe using a different name. Another question is how many people know about the pedagogue/dialogue blog? Encourage your classmates and peers to volunteer ideas, opinions, etc. Someone once said that my voice over the telephone didn’t match up with my munchkin like stature; therefore, I must be compensating for my height through my voice unlike the boys who compensate for other bodily parts through the mufflers on their riced-out vehicles.

If children and adults can be socialized and trained to be silent, it is worth contemplating to undo the “damage” and let them have the opportunity to find their voice (it’s not destroyed or created at this stage, I’m assuming). I think my own teachers and professors would be thoroughly disappointed in me if I sat there complacent in silence worrying about what other people think of me.

A likely comparison is that I am no timid little rabbit, but rather the rabbit like beast who lives in the cave of Caeor Banorg in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I have nasty razor sharp teeth *motions indicating razor sharp teeth*.

Christine"

Thanks again, Christine! You "rule" the school!

While I'll disagree that Christine is exactly like the rabbit-like beast from Monty Python and the Holy Grail the issue she raises is interesting, and one I'm not sure she is aware of. The "rabbit" is the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing, seemingly soft and harmless, yet violent and defensive. While I know that Christine's use of the metaphor of rabbit-beast is one of assertiveness (her tongue placed firmly in cheek), I read the metaphor as one of a guarded and defensive aggressiveness, something that is not desirable in creating a space that supports a dialogue.

The issue of safety is an important one I think. A safe space is one that allows students to take risks. If risks can't be taken in opinion, then how can true dialogue occur. What might happen is that students will repeat back the words of the teacher (the "just give 'em what they want" syndrome) in fear that if they don't, the beast will leap forward and correct them. To requote Paulo Freire, "To speak a true word is to change the world"; the world will not be changed by the voices of talking heads and dictators.

Keep writing. I promise I won't bite

But how do you create a dialogue when there are no other voices? This is the difficulty of trying to build a base of discussion over wires and screens instead of over voices: technology distances us. The further displaced we are from the one voice speaking (some of you might not even have an image of me) the less likely we are to speak. Our voices are dispersed into the air, vanishing in the air, molecule to molecule. The voice that speaks consolidates its power in the silence.

But how do you create voices? People have the right to speak but do they feel right in what they are speaking. Often people will only say what they think if they know that they won't look stupid. So maybe "creating" voices isn't the issue since all the voices already exist. Maybe the issue is getting those voices to speak. Small children don't censor themselves in what they say until they are socialized to silence themselves, so why do we, and why do we sit complacent in our silence?

In lieu of doing my lesson planning for case and because Yvonne Hebert requested it, here is a "pedagogy" poem. It's by my friend Julia Williams from her chapbook the sink house*.

"leak

all my life I thought keys were keys

I thought critically

what can I say of twelve years in a cell

a slat underwater, a niagra box

these gaps implicate me

what is twelve years but a stunt

all my life I called a trick a trick

a thin trickle says sealant is porous

walls bend and angle my posters

but this is not criticism

I could be less happy, less homey

I could draw on my legs and carve scales in my forearms

all my life the window just bubbled

the sealant just poured"


While this isn't a poem about education expressly, the metaphors are certainly applicable. I find myself immediately drawn to the repetition of the word "twelve", a number as important to the span of education as "24" is to the span of a day. "Twelve" is described as both time imprisoned and as a "stunt", both giving "twelve" a negative connotation. The space of the poem is claustrophobic, with images of sealant pouring around the speaker, images of cells, images of boxes.

But there is an opening in the sealed room coming in the form of the leak. With sleight of hand, the speaker can open the "niagara box" and exit the sealed room. "sealant is porous" and the pores come with the effect of critical thinking. There's a bit of that cliche "thinking outside the box", but a questioning of how to begin thinking outside of the box. "all my life I thought keys were keys": this line fully exploits the double meaning of the word key (especially if we take the piece within an educational sense). What if the key (to the test) is the key (to life)? This can't be the case as there is always the problem of the subjective, of the disagreement, of the leak. The "trick" is what must be avoided. Life is not a series of "tricks" and so education should not be a series of "tricks". How then can the student slide out of the box when the bobby pin doesn't break the lock? There must be other ways to negotiate a way out.
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* Williams, J. (2001). leak. In the sink house. Calgary: Self-Published.

Christine Lee, a second year MT student teaching secondary math, writes

"On What kind of dialogue is this?

I respect that the teachers have taken a stand for what they believe in, but I think it would have been more effective to have the student produce a dialogue about the issues that have lead to the current situation in the Middle East which would require a look at culture, religion, and history. Let the students raise their voices to the issue.

As for Duffy, the first year teacher, it was probably more foolish on her behalf because you can’t step on any toes during the first few years of teaching until you are established and have a permanent contract, teaching certificates etc."

I agree completely that it will be like walking on eggshells for that first couple of years, but what we're talking about seems to run a little deeper than whether or not the issue was controversial. I agree that as teachers we cannot force opinions upon our students but to not debate those opinions honestly with our students would be a travesty. Let's turn back to the article for those who haven't read it:

"Carmelita Roybal, a ninth-grade English teacher, was placed on leave with pay Wednesday after refusing to remove a black-and-white "No War Against Iraq" poster from her classroom. Art teacher Heather Duffy was asked to leave Thursday and suspended with pay for refusing to remove a similar poster. About 45 students walked out in protest Thursday."

What I'd like to ponder is whether or not we can confuse a poster with an enforced political viewpoint. It's hard to tell what was going on in these two classrooms, but to suspend teachers over a poster seems ridiculous. It reminds me of the story of the man who was arrested for wearing a pro-peace t-shirt into the mall he bought it from. Where does this kind of censorship stop and where is the line to be drawn.

I completely agree with Christine that the best way to deal with the problem is to let the students parse the issue directly.

But, what are we to do when faced with the extreme nationalism coming from our neighbours to the south. I got a little chill everytime they would play the national anthem on monday mornings this semester at Lord Beaverbrook, something that was instituted only after the attacks of 9/11. It's not because I am not proud to live in Canada, but because the playing of the anthem felt like a cheap attempt at nationalism rather than an authentic show of patriotism (there is a razor thin line between these two things, so much so that I find it hard to tell them apart sometimes). I do find it interesting how this kind of political debate can enter into the classroom, not just as subject area content, but also how it can affect the school community.

And what kind of dialogue is this?

“You have spoken well, Govinda, you have remembered well, but you must also remember what else I told you – that I have become distrustful of teachings and learning and that I have little faith in words that come to us from teachers. But, very well, my friend, I am ready to hear that new teaching, although I believe in my heart that we have already tasted the best fruit of it.” *

As I listened to these words being read aloud by Dale Wallace to his class, I began to realize how there needs to be a willingness to listen to others ideas for dialogue to happen. It is a lack of faith and trust that causes true dialogue to fold inward to monologue. This is true of the teacher-student relationship in both directions: teachers must trust in what students have to say and students must trust in what teachers have to say. There must be a belief that each person will do what is best for the group. This cannot be confused with a version of “groupthink”, but instead must become an active negotiation of what it means to live in the world, with each person actively voicing and questioning her beliefs. I realize that this is an ideal but tempering a controlling pragmatism with an idealism can, I think, lead us toward a better world.

What struck me during Dale’s reading of Siddhartha was his willingness to open the text to discussion at multiple points, which was different than any other way I had been taught a text (but completely natural to the way I read). I feel that this lowered the authority of the author to allow multiple voices into the text. Instead of the text being the clear focus of discussion, it becomes a hub for multiple readings, allowing both personal and critical discussions of the novel.

And the wonderful thing about reading literature is that sense of the multiple reading. That things aren’t necessarily fixed. It seems such a beautiful place to begin that realization that the world is socially constructed by the decisions we make. That we can construct the truths of our worlds out of what is given to us is an enlightening position to start off at. Why are we confined to the truth handed to us when we have the power to renegotiate and change that truth?

________________________________
* Hesse, H. (1951). Siddhartha. p.22. New York: Bantam.

Sorry about the week between posts. Immersion week was busy and I was teaching at 100%.

Last night, I watched a conversation explode. From the corner of my eye the space changed and we watched as he blew up, “you fucking europeans”. It seemed out of nowhere at the time as my friends Aaron and Kyle were subjected to a simple conversation gone awry. Comments were made and emotions boiled over.

And this made me think. What are the weaknesses of conversation as a pedagogical methodology? Is it too much of a risk to touch on controversial topics (like the war on Iraq) or is it better to confront those issues in a thoughtful way? My gut says to confront those issues, but every once in while, when things get out of hand, I begin to question.

Like last week. My partner teacher had decided to deal with a number of literary theories with our English 30-1’s, one of which was psychoanalytic/Freudian theory. While they watched this film The Mind’s Eye to analyze it, my partner teacher started pointing out phallic symbols. Some of the students took great offence to this, even trying to get my partner teacher in trouble. The question that comes out of this for me is whether or not my partner teacher should have avoided those topics despite the fact that they are a part of the extended discipline of the study of English literature?

After a presentation in my case class this week, my instructor Darlene Abraham noted that when I was speaking all of the statements tended to be “I statements” (I will, I wish, I am going to). Her assertion threw me at first, but as I sat with it I realized that as I am learning I have this anxiety: an anxiety I hope most student teachers have. I am afraid that I am not doing the right things when I stand up at the front of the classroom (rather than the side) so I worry about whether I am doing the right things or not. This problematic naval gazing no doubt affects how the classroom runs, because the teacher’s focus becomes the teacher. Though I have started to move away from this naval gazing, I need to become even more aware.

Most in my ProSem and Field classes will have heard my theory of the “leak”, but let me dig into it here. My fave French Post-Structural Theorist Roland Barthes draws out a metaphor of teaching that I have found extremely useful:

“Thus, in accordance with psychoanalytic description . . . when the teacher speaks to his audience, the Other is always there, puncturing his discourse. Were the discourse held tightly fastened by an impeccable intelligence, armed with scientific “rigor” or political radicality, it would nevertheless be punctured: it suffices that I speak, that my speech flow, for it to flow away. Naturally however, though every teacher occupies the position of a person in analysis, no student audience can claim the advantage of the opposite situation: firstly, because the psychoanalytic silence has nothing pre-eminent about it; secondly, because it happens that a subject, carried away, emerges and rushes to burn on in speech, to join in the oratorical promiscuity (and should the subject remain obstinately silent, this is simply to give voice to the obstinacy of his muteness). Yet for the teacher, the student audience is still the exemplary Other in that it has an air of not speaking – and thus, from the bosom of its apparent flatness, speaks in you so much the louder”*

I think that Barthes would argue that a movement away from a psychoanalytic model is needed and I would argue that we need to become acutely aware of this perspective if we are to run learner-centered classrooms instead of teacher-centered classrooms. Ultimately, we need to realize that the “leak” is not problematic; instead, it is and entry into the dialogic and is the place where those “teachable moments” happen.

Also, I think that the “I” cannot change into a focus on the “them”, but needs to become a “We”.
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*Barthes, R. (1982). Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers. In Susan Sontag Ed. A Barthes Reader. (pp. 378-403). New York: Hill and Wang.

I’d like to start with by presenting a couple of ideas. The first comes from Paulo Freire’s discussion of dialogue in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is
more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its constitutive elements. Within the word we find two
dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed – even in part – the other immediately suffers. There is no true
word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. *

Freire’s conception of dialogue as a world-changing tool clashes with Michel Foucault’s discussion of a “discipline-based” society from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison:

The chief power of the disciplinary power is to ‘train’, rather than to to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more.
It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them. Instead of bending
all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and
sufficient single units. It ‘trains’ the moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual elements – small
separate cells, organic autonomies, genetic identities and continuities, combinatory segments. Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific
technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a triumphant power, which because of its
own excess can pride itself on its omnipotence; it is a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated, but permanent economy. These
are humble modalities, minor procedures, as compared with the majestic rituals of sovereignty or the great apparatuses of the state. And it is
precisely they that were gradually to invade the major forms, altering their mechanisms and imposing their procedures. The success of disciplinary
power derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments; hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and their combination in a procedure that
is specific to it, the examination.**

Wow, that was a long quote, but necessary for where we’re headed. What I’ve laid out are what seems to be the extremes of spectrum that stretches from pure dialogic (the utopian vision) to pure monologic (the dystopian vision). Teacher-centered learning leans toward Foucault, whereas student-centered learning leans toward Freire, yet in practice, it seems neither extreme is fully adopted; we are always stumbling in between the front of the classroom and the side of the classroom.

But I think that where we lie as teachers upon this spectrum shows to others (students, administrators, parents, other teachers, ourselves) how we see the world and how we want the world to be. If we expect students to be prepared to not just live in the world but change the world, the classroom needs to become a utopian vision. This is dependent on our views of the world. Because I call teacher-centered learning a “dystopia” does not mean that it is to every teacher. I know some teachers who think the reverse, that the chaos of dialogue removes a level of control from them; this comes from the weight of history.

Let me say that as this project unfolds, I hope it will turn and morph from its current heavy monologue into a rich dialogue. I encourage anyone who is reading to respond via my email rcfmod@hotmail.com and I will try to respond as best as I can.
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* Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. p. 87. New York: Continuum Press.

** Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. p.170. New York: VIntage Books.