Excerpts from the RC journal CLASSROOM
The Oppression and Liberation of Teachers
In March, 1989, I led a workshop on teaching, at which we came to an agreement that teachers, especially classroom teachers, are oppressed by the society in much the same way parents are. Teachers are asked to do an extremely demanding job, with terribly inadequate resources and incorrect theory about learning and about human beings, and are then blamed for the ills of the society. We also reviewed the new theory about middle-class oppression/liberation and looked at the oppression/liberation of teachers as a particular variety of that. ...
Many of us as teachers have discovered a gap between what we would like to be able to accomplish - what we dream of being able to do as teachers, the goals we would like our students to be able to achieve, our vision of teaching - and what we find we are actually able to do. Many of us have seen ourselves as the problem, even while we have known that things are not as they should be around us. ...
On the one hand, much of this seems obvious, given the recent developments in our theory. On the other hand, I think it may be a turning point in the educational change work. Most of the work that I have done with teachers has focused on how teachers can apply RC and be less oppressive to students. I think as long as the focus has been primarily on students, I haven't been able to fully contradict how bad teachers feel about themselves. ...
Russ Vernon-Jones
Classroom #9
Swedish Students Unite by Eva Amundsdotter
One big thing we worked with was a campaign called "reveal the school." That dealt with what school really is teaching people: to obey without questioning, to learn to compete, that children from the working class were systematically put down by the system. That was important work to break the isolation about what actually is going on.
Eva Amundsdotter
Classroom #9
Parenting My Children in the Public Schools
Having my children in a public school in Chicago for the last five years has been, overall, a positive experience for them, but one that has challenged me and called upon all my resources - my parenting and counseling skills, my knowledge as an educator, my understanding of political structures, and my ability to work in a group, to support and organize others, and to stand up for what I believe must happen.
Amidst all the activism at the school and system levels, it is necessary to return to the starting point - my children - and ask how they are getting along. The answer is that they are doing fine. ...
The other question is how I am doing amidst all this activity. At times it's much more than I bargained for. ...
Beth Tamminen
Classroom #9