It’s A Power Thing
by David FrenchAn interesting situation has arisen recently which is quite instructive about what autonomy really means in teaching terms. It made me think that, in fact, the methods chosen by a teacher may have quite minor significance compared to the way the power relationships between teacher and class are set up and how the teacher views the learners as players in the whole theatre of the classroom.
An acquaintance of mine, an adult, is attending an English course in a private language school as a member of a small group. Their teacher, apart from working in that school is also a lecturer at a teacher training college. She is considered to be one of, if not, the best teacher in the private language school.
Recently she gave a handout as homework. The class were supposed to do let us say, exercises 3 and 4 for homework. One member of the class was too enthusiastic and also completed exercise 5. All hell broke loose in the next lesson, the student being accused of destroying the lesson, which was to be based around exercise 5, which was supposed to have been left untouched. “You’re to do what I tell you, not what you decide is right,” more or less ran the teacher’s reproaches.
The following homework was to read a text. Again two too eager students not only read the text but made notes about vocabulary in the margins. “You were told to read the text, not to take notes,” scolded the teacher, screwing the two handouts with the students’ own notes written on them up in a ball and throwing them in the bin. Another lesson sabotaged by insubordinate students.
One of the students’ reactions to all this was to take on the posture of the contrite sinner, profusely apologising and assuring the teacher such behaviour would never happen again. In other words the student reverted to a childish or childlike way of responding, the way a child might react to a parent or teacher in a similar situation. Another member, apart from being amused by the whole thing, wanted to talk it through as an adult and establish a clearer system of co-operation between teacher and class. The teacher made it clear in this discussion that she was the one in charge and the one who would be setting the parameters and procedures for the class.
It seems to me that if I was a member of a class I could handle a pretty autocratic teacher if I was reasonably happy with the lessons. The lessons might be stimulating, we might be active and busy, with the sense of making progress. But I would have to know that the teacher was prepared to listen and able to accommodate students’ suggestions if any situations arose when we had a genuine grievance or a serious issue to bring up. It’s the rigidity and intransigence of teachers in a teaching/learning situations that I just can’t stomach, and what brought me to autonomy above all.
The teacher I’ve been talking about is working with adults, which is not to say we should excuse it when working with children. It makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up to think about the whole thing, including the reaction of the ‘guilty’ student. And comparisons with extreme political regimes around the world come quickly to mind.
David French