Friday, October 3, 1997
Arrangement of power in classroom causes learning
difficulties
ACADEMICS: Little interaction among teachers and
students show a lopsided exchange of information
By Kendra Fox-Davis
This was my dilemma. Outside of the classroom, I was motivated,
dedicated, aggressive and informed. This was outside of the
classroom, where I felt empowered enough to challenge myself
individually to work for collective success. Inside of the
classroom, I was scrambling to keep up with what the professor was
saying as one overhead after another was whipped onto the screen.
Or better, feigning interest in whatever was being said while
writing to-do lists and notes to friends. I wondered what my
problem was.
I could speak at a rally in front of 200 people, and become
dumbstruck as soon as I sat in my seat in a lecture hall. What I
was suffering from was a well-known ailment in those circles where
people know big things. I was academically disempowered. For all my
talk of the "community" and "working so future generations can
succeed," I was failing myself. I was failing at applying the
principles to the rest of my life of self-determination that guided
my political ideology.
I feel better knowing that the campus knows my presence in the
classroom was often a charade. Now I can stop walking around with
those strange, heavy books and just bail to class with no pencil
and a smile. I’m just kidding. The real reason I am writing is not
to air my academic difficulties but to discuss the broader issue of
how power is arranged in the classroom, and how the methods of
reaming we have become accustomed to contribute to our academic
disempowerment.
A good place to start is to examine who has the power in the
class environment and who does not. Certainly we could all agree
that professors and students have a symbiotic relationship; a give
and take between the one who is teaching and the one who is
learning. But could we all agree that this relationship is equal?
That the input of the students who are there to learn is as valued
as the input of the instructor? Probably not.
There is a definite hierarchy in the classroom on the value of
input. The professor is most often there to teach, and not to
learn. He immediately becomes the expert, and we the students are
the ignorant. The professor becomes the one whose knowledge is
valid; consequently they possesses the power to make us believe
what they say is true and essentially, do what they require.
Students, on the other hand, have little opportunity to challenge
the structure of the classroom, to participate in developing course
requirements or to offer their expertise on a particular
subject.
My experience, particularly in general education requirements,
has been that every week, the one professor gets three hours to
talk to 100-300 students about course work they have pre-determined
to be the most important information on a given topic. Every week,
students ask the one professor questions about that material, if
they have time to go to office hours. The amount of time we have to
engage in substantive dialogues with our professors is limited. The
time that we do have is structured to inquire about what we do not
understand. Where is the time to discuss what we know? Where is the
time for the student to criticize the way the instructor has
organized the knowledge students will receive? Where is the time
for students to organize their power as the recipients of
information, to participate in deciding what we should ream?
I strongly believe that there is no time for this type of
interaction between professors and students because the university
is designed to uphold the hierarchy of what is, and what is not,
valid knowledge. Basically, to re-enforce the power of the
privileged, the university decides what knowledge constitutes an
education, who may be considered educated, and how that education
will be delivered.
What I know about the sociology of people on my block, what I
know about the history of my community, what expertise I have as a
woman on what women think, is not solicited in traditional
classrooms as much as my placid endorsement of how smart the
professor is (taking notes). How many of us have ever sat in a
class and stared at the syllabus thinking, "lovely, a class on
American literature with no people of color/women/queer (it goes
on) authors." More of us have experienced a classroom environment
where power is held tightly in the hands of the instructor than
have experienced a classroom where power is shared. A classroom
where the instructor can say, "Look over the syllabus. What do you
think? Is there information you want to know that I may be able to
include? Are there any changes you feel would enhance this class?"
There is a problem in academia when student input, input that could
make the knowledge we receive more representative of the whole
truth, is not a standard part of every classroom.
When I say that I am a disempowered student on the road to
recovery, I mean that I have sat in a lecture hall and felt that
there was no way I could make a change in my classes. It is similar
to feeling politically disempowered, or feeling that your vote will
not make a difference. Many students I have tried to register to
vote have expressed pessimism about the likelihood that their vote,
particularly if they subscribe to a "minority" opinion, will result
in any change. This is the way I felt in class. Yes, I could raise
my hand in the middle of a lecture about "the large body of
evidence that suggests there were numerous consensual sexual
relationships between black slave women and their white ‘masters.’"
I could have voiced my disagreement. But I felt then that there was
no point to voicing my ideas in a setting where the most likely
response is, "uh … see me after class" … Translation: "You are
an idiot. No one in this class cares about what you’re saying. Get
with me after class and we can discuss why you don’t understand
anything."
When students do not feel that their knowledge is valued, they
are less likely to participate in class, less likely to find out
how the material applies to their life and ultimately less likely
to succeed.
I want to make one distinction. Being smart and being empowered
academically are not necessarily the same. Many times I succeeded
in class without once raising my hand to input my ideas, without
ever going for help during office hours, without ever centering the
education I was receiving on myself. Behavior that suggests
academic disempowerment is present in students of good standing and
students in academic difficulty; behavior like cramming, cheating,
inconsistent time management, not engaging yourself with the
material, and not feeling comfortable expressing your opinions in
class.
There are numerous factors that contribute to academic
disempowerment outside of the student-professor relationship. The
university has also created this environment, one that discourages
interaction through large, impersonal lecture halls. Trying to get
in a science lecture in Young Hall is like jumping in a stampede of
mad cows, 300 people, trying to sit in the front row. Somebody has
to die.
While large classes may save time and money for the university,
they often reduce the student to a casual observer of education.
Many times I felt I barely had enough weeks in the quarter to
absorb what was being said, memorize it and reproduce it on an
exam. Forget about understanding, and don’t even mention analyzing
anything myself.
In addition, we have been conditioned to view education as a
competition. I wish all the students that are hollering about
racial quotas would wake up and notice the grade quotas that have
everybody scrambling to get to the top of the curve. Why can only a
certain number of students get A’s, regardless of how well we do on
the exam?
Students should have the power to influence that policy. If
quotas are supposed to be illegal, make them an illegal way of
weeding out students who were smart enough to get in. Is anyone
comfortable with paying thousands of dollars a year to be told,
"Well, only 15 percent of the class can get A’s, so …" Who had
the power to make that decision – not you. It does not seem right
to me that in one of the premier universities in the world, half
the class fails so often that the curve system of grading is
institutionalized. Unless we are all just stupid. Isn’t something
wrong with this system?
It might seem that there are no real alternatives. I don’t
believe that. I don’t believe that, in the midst of a $12 billion
fund-raising campaign by Chancellor Carnesale, money cannot be
found to hire more professors or add more classes. Teachers are the
most valuable resource a country has, yet the methods in which the
incredible amount of knowledge they possess and share has been
reduced to soundbites in a 50-minute lecture. Fortunately, there
are places on campus where students learn to learn differently.
Through receiving peer counseling at the Academic Supports Program
(ASP), one of the retention projects in the Student Retention
Center, I have learned ways I can be a self-determinant student.
This is not tutoring, but tools that I can use in the classroom, in
my life, to control what happens to me. I can fail, or I can
succeed, but I have the power to make either happen.
What I have gained through ASP are ways of learning that are
more cooperative, and an ideology that is about collective success
for my community on campus. The unfortunate thing is, although I
may be empowered individually to succeed in my classes, the
university structure continues to disempower thousands of students
through teaching in a way that encourages attrition. Power is not
something we have just because we get A’s, or just because we are
politically active. We who are students now are the teachers of
tomorrow, and we should question a system that teaches us to sit,
write and memorize in place of thinking, analyzing and really
learning.