TO EVERY SCHOOL-GOING CHILD
2.5 WHAT COUNTS AS EDUCATION
Classrooms should be sites where students can interrogate experiences that shape their identity (Filax and Shogan, 1999). This is a vital part of the political nature of education. Itis through such interrogation of what shapes identity that students can become active agents in changing the course of their own destiny/destinies as privileged or discriminated - from within the classroom to the outer spheres of the wider community and society.
Currently, schools as institutions and the curricula that operate within them are based on theories that suggest how it is that students learn best and what is best to learn. In this way we produce what
Foucalt (1974) describes as fictions that operate as truths. Itis these fictions that continue to support the teaching towards the raising of standards (Cotton, 1998, p36). In this way we produce exactly what the fictions describe, and the circle becomes almost impossible to break. Foucalt (1980) describes how this circularity of truth is formed: 'truth is linked in a circular relation with systems ofpower which produce and sustain it, and to effects ofpower which it induces and which extend it' and this form of truth 'was a condition ofthe formation and development ofcapitalism' (p 133).
Giroux (1988; 1998; 1999) recognises that while it is crucial to see schools as social sites in which the class, gender and racial relationships that characterise the dominant society are roughly
reproduced, it is equally important to make such an analysis function in the interest of developing alternative pedagogical practices. The first step in developing such practices would be to focus on the relationship between the school culture and the overt and covert dimensions of the curriculum on the one hand, as well as the contradictory, lived experiences that teachers and students bring to school on the other.It is in the relationship between school culture and contradictory lived
experiences that teachers and students register the imprints and texture of domination and resistance.
Giroux (1988; 1998; 1999) suggests that for critical teachers working in schools we can make the pedagogical more political by clarifying how the complex dynamics of ideology and power both organise and mediate the various experiences and dimensions of school life ... fundamental (to this) would be the opportunity for students to interrogate how knowledge is constituted as both a
historical and a social construction.
Do teachers question discrimination/racism in education is a question that must be asked especially in South Africa. In asking these questions then other questions are raised such as where do they think it exists in their schools, if at all, and how do they understand it to operate. Do teachers see the racisms as residing in students, other staff, themselves, Whites or people of colour? Do teachers recognise the hidden ways in which a dominant hegemonic power operates in the curriculum and in the various aspects of the school environment - by either denying, tokenising and/or distorting people who are not part of the dominant group? Are teachers even aware of and do they recognize the relational aspects of racism to power, class, gender, religion and language relations in education and in the classroom (Kailin, 1999)? There is also a need to question whether the teachers
themselves play a role in sharpening /reinforcing/diminishing discriminatory stereotypes. Just having contact with others does not lessen discrimination if the quality of the contact does not
counteract the underlying discriminatory social divisions. Most persons belonging to the dominant group, as may happen with teachers, do not recognize themselves as being discriminatory/racist and believe that discrimination/racism exists somewhere else outside of themselves and to be someone else's problem; existing institutional racisms also evades them. In her study Kailin (1999) asked these questions and found that teachers from the dominant group chose to blame the victim whom they identified as the problematic other when faced with the issue of racism in education. For Kailin (1999) the dysconscious racism of teachers was an outcome of the dominant discourse that existed in education.
Education is political in that it is expected to prepare students to become active citizens. For education to count as education, it must provide for an enlargement and deepening of experience - for enhanced understanding of relations or implications not readily available to uninformed perception. A meaningful education speaks to actual experience while also teaching students to examine their experience in terms that press against the boundaries of convention and of immediate perception. Non-educative schooling allows students to pile up facts and skills, yet fail to speak to their experience or understanding; and miseducation confounds understanding and experience, preparing students for a world that does not exist - a world, for example from which social obstacles and economic barriers have magically been erased (Thompson, 1997).
A politically relevant pedagogy (a renaming of the culturally relevant pedagogy of Ladson-Billings (1994) and Delpitt (1995) amongst others) emphasizes political, historical, social and cultural understandings. Itis this pedagogy that for Beauboeuf-Lafontant (1999) is relevant to the political experiences of inequality and disenfranchisement of students. In a politically relevant pedagogy teachers understand the importance of their power and their influence on students' lives. Although such teachers are often unable to influence school-wide policies for their students, politically relevant teachers are invested in their classrooms and to the possibilities they can encourage in their classrooms. They recognise the lack of support for their emancipatory practices and philosophies and therefore operate subversively. They understand their classrooms as sites of resistance and take control not given them in the school power hierarchy. The control translates itself into student- centred classes within what the teachers' perceive to be oppressive, inequitable schools and set themselves up as advocates and 'gate openers' for students. For Beauboeuf-Lafontant (1999)'A major obstruction to teachers' connection with the content ofschooling is that very often public schools silence discuss ions ofpolitical contradictions and the needfor social jus tice' (p716).
Education policy provisions in South Africa provides for student-centred classes. The policy
provisions also provide for politically relevant curricular possibilities through the critical and learning outcomes. Teachers at the school may also influence school policy development since school policy development is seen as that which involves all teachers. Yet in post-apartheid South Africa where the possibilities for legitimated politically relevant pedagogy abounds such pedagogy is rare to non-existent and miseducation dominates. Politically relevant teacher focus remains in the main grounded on employer-employee labour issues. The death knell for a politically relevant pedagogy is spelt out also in the continued persistent labelling of students as culturally different, disadvantaged, English second language persons within English first language aspirations and raced as in African, Coloured, Indian and White. This reveals that the existing culture in schools
continues to centre on the experiences, realities and aspirations of the White middle-class and consequently, public schools silence what then become discordant voices and perspectives.Itis this silencing that affects the daily experiences of students and forces many of them to pawn their awareness of existing inequities for the persona of a good student (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 1999). As shared by Fine (as quoted in Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 1999)
"'Good students" ... trained themselves to produce two voices. One's "own" voice alternated with an "academic" voice. The latter denied class, gender and race conflict;
repeated the words ofhard work, success and their "natural" sequence; and stifled any desire to disrupt ... The price ofsuccess may have been muting one's own voice' (p 716)
This analysis highlights the reality of miseducation. Good students accept the instruction not to question social inequality; they learn to align themselves, consciously or not, with the norms of the schools they attend - norms that perpetuate the existing status quo at the school and its ties to social injustice. In this way students are not educated to see schools and themselves as possible sites for fostering social justice.
Power in the classroom and school is manifested in many ways. One of the ways is through controlling the conversation/dialogue/discourse. This can happen in a classroom from the positioning of the teacher and the teacher who talks, the fact that the teacher talks, the way the teacher talks, when the teacher talks, whom is addressed, the message related, the contents
presented or discarded, who is dismissed, who is validated - all denote power and control. It is this needs to be made explicit by raising it in the classroom (Fernandez-Balboa, 1998).
An education that provides students with the knowledge and dispositions to struggle against the variety of oppressions will ultimately help towards creating a more just and equitable society - on other words an education towards social justice (Gutstein, 2003). Such an education requires taking of differences seriously so that the difference they make and to whom can be seen - though the long-term effects of institutionalised oppression. Difference has to be understood as power-laden social constructs reflecting social position and containing powerful social meanings. In a society where structural inequalities are the norm being Black, female, queer, poor, language 'deficient' etc.
means being less than. Thus, this demands examining head-on the existing, prevalent systems of oppression and means being prepared to see, hear and feel the emotions that accompany the variety of oppressions - both institutionalised and internalised (Kohli, 1996). However, as hooks (1994) reminds us this is a scary arena for teachers because it could mean losing control of the classroom:
'The unwillingness to approach teaching/rom a standpoint that includes awareness o/race, sex and class is often rooted in the/ear that classrooms will be uncontrollable, that
emotions and passions will not be contained' (p39).
Classrooms, however, are not spaces where conflict and emotions are engaged with safely.
Educators try to avoid crises and foreclose stuck places in order to maintain control over what students learn and how they behave (Lather, 1991, P138).Itwould be safe to say that conflict and emotions that trigger crises and stuck places in the classroom are ruled out of existence as soon as they make an appearance through the teacher's authority, the existing school rules and regulations and the school ethos. In South Africa it is the preoccupation with effectiveness, efficiency and performance that continues to be that, which counts as education. However, if we are serious about teaching and educating for democracy and social justice then we need to be concerned with
differences in our classrooms and be prepared for the consequences of taking those differences seriously (Kohli, 1996, p 12).