tarynhope
thoughts[media]nonsense
today a random professor yelled at me and a few of my fellow students for moving desks around in a class. our class does not have a formal professor anymore and we have adopted a tribal learning style. for this entire school year we have been moving the desks around to fit our educational needs and we have never had so much as a peep of a complaint until today.
this professor came in and ever so rudely yelled “could you move the desks back so that my students don’t have to come in a move them back EVERY FREAKING DAY!?”
we all kind of looked at each other and hastily threw tables around the room to make this lady shut up. after she yelled she was clearly embarassed and sort of shrunk behind her podium of power and we all shot her looks and immediately started bitching about her.
what really bothers me is in this class we are learning that traditional pedagogical and societal power structures really mean nothing and we have every right to learn as we learn best. along with these ideas we (in the class) have come to unearth the need for basic common decency in order for the organic principles of a true education to come forth. this woman epitomizes the lack of this and the basic problems that our society faces; she was uncomfortable with the change in the physical space of a classroom so much so that she felt her power in the classroom was threatened by the fact that we move desks around. the traditional form of a classroom was not there and so she felt the best way to reclaim authority was to yell at people who do not have the same amount of institutionalized authority as her. her approach to teaching is what we are trying to dismantle and prov we ineffective. but we still moved the desks. it’s really hard to escape from that authority. in our classroom we have created a safe space for everyone to be able to teach themselves and each other but everytime we open the door those traditional pedagogical practices come strutting in ready to protect the power they have so painfully obtained by jumping through institutional hoops.
this class has made me a much more aware person, but I still see that even I bend to the will of authority when push comes to shove. I am not sure when I will finally put my money where my mouth is or will I continue to go through life claiming I have learned so much and have had as true an education as I can but still not really living up to those principles I study and discuss at length?
that professor very much startled me and I hope thanks to her I will start living out the ideas that I study because they will make me a much better person than she will ever be.
at the very least I won’t be threatened by a classroom where the chairs don’t face the front.
