The Day of Knowledge was introduced to me with flowers and
poetry when I was a ninth grade English teacher in Odessa (within the country
formally known as Ukraine). Time changes
borders, nation names, and devices for communicative purposes; but, this Day to
celebrate what humanity has developed to hand off to future generations is
essential to the well-being of a society.
When the entire culture prepares their children to arrive at school with
a spirit of joy and beauty, the mindset of the people is tuned to a music
playing on the river of life that exceeds the temple of the fleeting person’s
experience. We create; therefore, we
be. (And we be laughing regardless the
lost ones who do not understand.)
On this Day of Knowledge, on September 1, 2015, I begin this
(we)blog because I want to try to focus on teaching/learning from my
perspective as a professor of education and the parent of a 7-year-old. I wanted to title this blog “Professor
Parent” as if Parent were a surname, but feel “Parent-Professor” is more
appropriate since I sense that I am a parent first and then I have a job which
happens to be a professorship in teacher education. However, I am typing this in Word so do not
know what title will be available until I figure out the mechanics to make this
go live. Thus, the title you see may be
the result of my technical troubleshooting.
My discontent with my daughter’s school prompts my need to
write this blog. No school is perfect
anywhere in the world; but, as a specialist in education, the decisions of
administrators that must be acted upon by teachers can be infuriating. For example, a teacher sent home a sheet
explaining how my family could get online to enroll my daughter in a
behavioristic awards-based website for correct institutional behavior. My response was an email to the teacher that
read something like this:
“Dear Teacher, You do NOT have
our consent to enter information about our daughter into the data set for Dojo.
No information is permitted to be released about our daughter into that online
context. If the company is willing to pay our daughter for her information,
then please forward their offer to our family. The data-mining that is now
possible through such interfaces is (in my and some Russian scholars' view
including Alexander Sidorkin) is a form of labor exploitation. Although Dojo
may market itself as being "free", it is not. It is a primitive form
of barter where in exchange for information on people you get to use it.
Additionally, it is behaviorism at its base and while this philosophy is
popular in America, the Russian psychologists were never interested in applying
it to people (though it was their dog that started the movement along with
Pavlov). I would much prefer that you work within a socio-cultural perspective
that encourages learners and creates an atmosphere in which the students want
to read and write. Behaviorism, like Dojo, is for the dogs. If you have any
issues with Vika's behavior, please feel free to call my husband or me at the
phone number the school has on file. My husband is the primary caregiver and
can respond most immediately. Again, you are denied consent to enter
information about our daughter in Dojo or any other online interface allowing
for massive data collection. BTW, Vika also will not take any of the
standardized measures such as MAPS and DIEBELS. You are the teacher. You came
out of a teacher education program and should be qualified to educate my child
without appealing to the norms of big (non) profits--whose profit is a
data-base for mining, merchandising, and marketing. The only assessment of my
daughter that should be taking place is that which informs your practice so
there is no need to report it to third parties. Feel free to call me if you
wish to discuss this further. Maggie Berg”
Approximately two days later, I received a copied letter
from the same teacher telling our family that we should sign our daughter up
for “readingrewards.com”. It would
appear this teacher did not fully understand my philosophical issues against
(1) behaviorism, and (2) labor exploitation of children. However, the enthusiastic embrace by the school
leaders for so many of these sites makes me realize the roots of careless, capitalistic
habits that undergirds our culture. This
teacher has chosen to relinquish her right to a relationship of loving support
for my child (and others) to a machine that can simply “track trends”. My daughter is to accept that she must give
her labor to outside persons with no pay.
It may be that the children become convinced that they have received something
worthy only because they have received something—never mind the uselessness or undesirability
of the item. Therefore, our children
learn supply and demand in a perverse way: They do not learn to demand a higher
level of respect and dignity for people in order to gain a supply of better
food at lunch or to have more books in their classrooms. Rather, the technological-elites demand children
fill their forms and our child supply the information for minor, material junk. As they move into adulthood, they may
continue to settle for trash and to unquestioningly fill the tech-elites
corporate accounts. We short change
ourselves when we settle for such programs in our schools.
The education my daughter will receive requires human
relationships that demand negotiation, mutual understanding, and hopefully
love. We have to do a lot of
compensation work at home, for example, the reader’s journal I am teaching her
to keep in lieu of the “readingrewards” program. The rewards of reading will not be pizza
coupons and plastic whistles, but the knowledge necessary for greater human
compassion and love. This knowledge is
priceless and only cheapened when we treat children like dogs that should
salivate at the sound of a tinkling trinket.
