This week’s readings contained a lot of information, and when I mean a lot, I mean A LOT of information. But one thing’s for certain: They all discuss one key generalized idea: how to encourage students to be more creative and inspiring receivers rather than controlled, robotic, and mechanical receivers. This comes from the educator being engaged with their students and knowing different methods to create an immersive learning experience rather than being the product of narration sickness.
As students, we typically know that when it comes to school, we need to come to class and be prepared for the teacher to lecture on lessons that sometimes have or don’t have a relation to reality, or our interests, for that matter. As Paulo Freire states, “ His (the teacher’s) task is to ‘fill’ the students with the contents of his narration- contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that endangered them and could give them significance”. What he means is that often, the education system tries to have educators mechanically feed students information that prevents them, or us for that matter, from truly understanding concrete concepts that prepare us for reality outside the classroom. This is what he calls narration sickness and the act of depositing.
When we, as students, start to become products of said education system’s narration sickness and depositing system, our creative power and the ability to stimulate our credulity are often limited or annulled (Freire 73). This could occur when students are using digital spaces, whether to upload documents, publish work, or submit school assignments. As Audrey Watters puts it, “Students have little agency when it comes to education technology-much like they have little agency in education itself”. If schools are supposedly “inspiring and encouraging creativity,” why are they educating students in a manner that prohibits that? What’s so wrong with creativity? And most importantly, why are students lacking agency in education? Well, according to Freire, this comes from “changing the consciousness of the oppressed …for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated”. Essentially explaining itself, the education system, which influences most schools, wants to limit students’ creative power and the ability to stimulate their credulity because it wants to dominate and control their imagination. Without those things, students start to turn into, what Freire says, “ containers and receptacles to be filled by the teacher”.
While the education system still seeks to control and dominate students’ creativity and their ability to stimulate their credulity, some methods or solutions can help enhance students’ learning and teachers’ teaching to make their experience better. bell hooks explains one way that educators can create a more effective teaching practice, one that is “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.” When educators start to realize their possibilities and talents, they can further their education and encourage that to their students. And speaking of educators realizing their potential, possibilities, and talents, they need to be able to take the predefined inputs of the curriculum and change the drive to a more community-engaged curriculum. According to Dave Cormier, “ In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning.” When educators can change and reshape the curriculum they teach, they can enhance students’ creativity and their ability to stimulate their credulity.
Wrapping up everything that was discussed, unraveling the mechanical robotic teaching is something that can help both teachers and students alike. For students, that comes with having the freedom to be creative and can stimulate their credulity, and for educators, they need to be able to self-actualize to change the curriculum that is the base for their teaching. When combined, both will unravel the mechanical robotic teaching method and allow for education to be free of restrictions, and allow for creativity in the minds of students.
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