This week, I started with Dave Cormier’s Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum. I like and agree with the rhizome framework and the principles of rhizomatic education. “In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, and the contextual, collaborative learning experience shared by constructivist and connectivist pedagogies is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises” (Cormier, 2). “This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions” (Cormier, 4). However, I think this is hard to put into practice for the masses. Not only does it ask for the flexibility of the instructor, but how do schools implement their required “one-size-fits-most” curriculum for their teachers? I appreciated that Cormier acknowledged this too. “This kind of collaborative, rhizomatic learning experience clearly represents an ideal that is difficult to replicate in all environments” (Cormier, 3). Nonetheless, I think all instructors should apply this concept as much as they can, to whatever degree possible.
As usual, Bell Hooks came in swinging, making excellent points left and right. I agree that we should take a compassionate approach in schools, ensuring that students’ and educators’ well-being is a priority. Not only are students more receptive when they feel their teachers care, but in a time when educators are more burnt out than ever, making sure people are okay should be the bare minimum. I also agree that education should be connected to students’ identities, as it’s important to make students feel seen. We live in a patriarchal society, dominated by white, cisgender, Western culture, so we need to be conscious of making space for all students to feel welcome and celebrated. It will also aid in the engagement of learning and education as a liberating system, which I agree that it is. Lastly, I loved the emphasis on teachers being reflective. “That means that teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students” (Hooks 15). Educators hold so much power and influence, so it’s imperative that we make sure we’re in a place to provide an environment that not only encourages learning but is a positive, safe place where students can be themselves and be empowered to thrive in the world.
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was another great read. The banking concept is absolutely real and can be seen in most classrooms across the country. “In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (Freire, 72). As mentioned, this framework does keep students oppressed, since it doesn’t empower or give them any authority. “Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists to the fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very pursuit” (Freire, 78). “Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world” (Freire, 79). However, this proposed problem-posing structure does address this concern and would make learning more effective and engaging. A mutual exchange of knowledge not only makes students active participants, but it also asks teachers to be more vulnerable and comfortable with this shift in power. Beyond this, it creates space for educational liberation, which is essential for conscientização. If we want students to be the future we need, we must also want them to raise their consciousness. By doing so, they can be the change they want to see. “Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Freire, 79).
As Audrey Watters’s The Web We Need to Give Students encourages us to reconsider the way children interact with the internet in school, I agree that providing students with domains could have educational benefits. “If a student owns their own domain, as she moves from grade to grade and from school to school, their learning portfolio can travel with them” (Watters, 2015). However, my honest opinion is that I wish we lived in a world where these measures weren’t necessary. In my perfect world, people wouldn’t get access to the internet until college. When we look at studies on children’s rapid serial visual presentation or how their motor skills have been impacted, I believe the bad outweighs the good. I see the value in this digital portfolio, but I don’t think this is what children need. If anything, we need to limit and reel in their interactions, focusing on shaping their cognition and human skills in other ways.
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