Above all, the room shows that we are a rectangle-making people. The room and virtually everything in it (except for the people) are rectangular. Concrete blocks, blackboards, books, paper, maps, desks, seating charts, calendars, the ubiquitous cell phones--everything proclaims that the rectangle, with its "right" angles is the "correct" shape, and if something is not right, we will rectify it. The word "right," and the root "rect" originally come from Indo-European riht, meaning "straight," and "rich" comes from the same root. Our assumptions are obvious here: straight, right, correct, erect, rich--these define what we value.
August 25, 2008
Deconstructing the classroom
The Problem of the ClassroomAt the beginning of my American and American Indian literature courses, I ask students to look at the room we are sitting in: "Imagine that you're anthropologists from Mars. What cultural assumptions about the world in general and about education in particular can you find here?" At first they are not sure what I am talking about, since finding assumptions in architecture is usually new to them, but as they catch on, they begin to see that most of what they have experienced as education is built into the room. The shape and arrangement of the room say that knowledge is something the teacher possesses and they will receive. If they want to see another student who has something to say, they have to fight against the linear, rectangular layout. The desks say that bodies do not count--education is purely intellectual, and we have to be more or less immobilized to participate. The gray, unadorned walls and the windows (always at the back of the rooms I teach in) say that learning is serious (and probably boring) and can take place only in the absence of "distractions" such as varied colors and natural phenomena--grass, trees, sky. Learning is divorced from place--what we are doing could be done equally well if we were in a similar space a thousand miles away--and, of course, similar discussions are going on in similarly disconnected spaces even as we speak.
Above all, the room shows that we are a rectangle-making people. The room and virtually everything in it (except for the people) are rectangular. Concrete blocks, blackboards, books, paper, maps, desks, seating charts, calendars, the ubiquitous cell phones--everything proclaims that the rectangle, with its "right" angles is the "correct" shape, and if something is not right, we will rectify it. The word "right," and the root "rect" originally come from Indo-European riht, meaning "straight," and "rich" comes from the same root. Our assumptions are obvious here: straight, right, correct, erect, rich--these define what we value. Comment: For more on the subject, see A Shining City on a Hill: What Americans Believe.
Above all, the room shows that we are a rectangle-making people. The room and virtually everything in it (except for the people) are rectangular. Concrete blocks, blackboards, books, paper, maps, desks, seating charts, calendars, the ubiquitous cell phones--everything proclaims that the rectangle, with its "right" angles is the "correct" shape, and if something is not right, we will rectify it. The word "right," and the root "rect" originally come from Indo-European riht, meaning "straight," and "rich" comes from the same root. Our assumptions are obvious here: straight, right, correct, erect, rich--these define what we value.
Writerfella here --
ReplyDelete"Anthropologists from Mars...?" There MIGHT be zoologists or biologists or even exobiologists from Mars but never "anthropologists,' which means the study of man. Martian words, that is if there were Martians, would arise from what they called themselves. In any case, alien visitors would study humans but they would not make the weeningly oversimplistic judgment calls made by that less-than-erudite teacher. Rather they would see and recognize that humans once lived in caves and that the enclosed houses and buildings mean that they still live in caves. They would see and recognize that humans evolved during the Ice Ages and that the supposedly more advanced societies still depend mightily upon refrigeration and air conditioning. And the most glaring oversimplification is that the teacher actually believes that the classroom environment bespeaks knowledge and the impartation of same. What an ego! LIBRARIES imply knowledge and the impartation of same but never classrooms where one single individual exercises absolute power over the immature. The classroom is an artifice, an arena of fiat removed from the real world and purposefully so. The last matter about "Indo-European" tells the real tale...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
You presume that someone has to be human to study humans. Not so. An alien anthropologist is perfectly possible.
ReplyDeleteYour comments miss the mark on several points. Caves aren't rectangular rooms with four walls, so they don't resemble classrooms. Traditional societies generally don't build rooms to teach their children; they're more likely to gather outdoors in a circle. Air conditioning is the norm in industrialized settings because people don't like the heat, not because their ancestors lived through an Ice Age.
So there's little or nothing about an American classroom that evolved from our origins. That means the educator's position is a lot more erudite than yours is. Try again, and better luck next time.
Correct me if I am wrong, Rob, but I doubt there was any time when any but a few people lived in caves. There just aren't that many caves. Weren't the vast majority of humankind's ancestors out on the savannas, on the plains, or in the woods?
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to being some sort of completely trogloditic species that eventually moved out of the caves.
Right, DMarks. That's a fundamental flaw in Russ's thesis.
ReplyDeleteOur ancestors lived outside in the heat without walls or air conditioning for something like 99.9% of their existence. It's ridiculous to think our cultural patterns were imprinted on us only during the brief Ice Age period and not before or since. Even during the cold spells, most people lived in the warm equatorial regions, not in icy caves.
I also dispute the second part of Russ's thesis: that learning takes place only in libraries, not classrooms. Learning can happen in both settings, obviously. Some people learn best from audiovisual presentations and some from the written word.
When we talk about classrooms, we're really comparing Western to indigenous modes of learning. Most traditional societies didn't have libraries--unless you butcher the definition by claiming nature is one big "library" of information. So what is Russ saying: that his ancestors were uneducated because they didn't have books? Wow.
That may explain why Russ is so uncritical of movies such as Apocalypto, Comanche Moon, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He really believes Indians were ignorant savages and the white man brought them civilization. No wonder he thinks Gibson, McMurtry, and Spielberg are the Indians' friends and McCain is as good as Obama.
Writerfella here --
ReplyDeleteMartians, if they existed, would study mankind as just another animal species. Period. There are no flaws in writerfella's thesis, as writerfella is a science fiction writer, and you are not. SCIENCE is the main ingredient of SCIENCE FICTION. Dismiss that and you cannot understand, therefore...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Writerfella here --
ReplyDeletePOSTSCRIPTUM --
dMarks, you just won 10 points for the word 'trogliditic.' Love it, love it, love it...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
So being a science fiction writer makes you a scientist, Russ? Wow...talk about your logical fallacies. What a pathetic joke.
ReplyDeleteMy comics are as scientifically oriented as your fantasy fiction. More to the point, I've written nonfiction articles that deal with subjects such as anthropology, the environment, and computers. That makes me more qualified than someone who makes up science for a living.
Moreover, I'm a wordsmith and you're not. I know how to use a dictionary and you don't. So color me unimpressed by your worthless "credentials."
An alien race would recognize the human race as sentient beings, not as animals. If the aliens wanted to study Terran biology, exo- or xenobiology would be the correct term. But if they wanted to study "the science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind," they'd become anthropologists.
P.S. Glad to see you didn't bother defending your goofball claim that classrooms come from caves and learning occurs only in libraries. What a waste of time that was.
ReplyDelete