Last week, in educational studies class, we watched a movie named "The Class". Before analyzing the movie in terms of Classroom Management and/or Klafki and Thomas Ziehe's ideas I want to summarize the movie:
Teacher François Marin and his colleagues are preparing for a school year teaching at the very beginning of the movie.The school is in Paris and in this school, François is a French teacher who tries to get through his students. Sometimes, he is quite successful but, still, sometimes it results in failure. The school has a multicultural atmosphere with the immigrant students in France. Although there are many strict disciplinary rules - in a sense unwritten disciplinary rules relating clothes and so-on- in this school , it has a kind of fair system since the representatives of students are allowed to be in the Student Evaluation Committees. When it comes to "the Class" itself, it seems to be quite complex to get through since there is a great deal of issues and problems relating to the discipline, classroom management, diversity in the classroom and so-on. If you also think about the teacher's expectations, from their students and the way they influence the students with the "labels" they have for the students, it becomes even harder to explain the consequences and results in a certain way.In the movie, as I mentioned above, there are many issues to think and talk about. There occurs a lot of problems - deriving from a large scale of reasons e.g. ethnicity, teacher's expectations and beliefs about students namely the labels students have, family influence and so on - relating the classroom management. Then, what exactly would explain the problem or the case so that it would give us a better insight of "the Class" itself and a viewpoint of being a teacher in a multicultural class? The conflict between the school culture and the popular culture - I mean the culture of the students? The students' being so inappropriate? The diversity in the classroom? The lack of classroom management? The answer would be relating almost all of these and many others in many cases in the movie. It is quite hard to explain the movie in general since it is so complicated but we can summarize some important points with the examples from the movie so that it covers the movie in general.
As the movie starts with the meeting between the teachers of the school, there appears an important point to think about: Teachers' expectations and beliefs about students; namely "labels" teachers have for their students. It is obvious that even teachers themselves influence each other in shaping the ideas about their students. To illustrate, at the very beginning of the movie, some of the students were being labelled as smart,or troublemaker by the teachers who met students before. The teacher was introducing the students to a new colleague with the labels he has already been familiar with so that the new teacher had an idea about his new students. But, unsurprisingly, it was not the way it goes all the time. As Chapman states labels has a social-control effect. It may stop the student to behave in the way he was labelled or may amplify the behavior. The movie includes examples of both situations. A student called Carl, who probably was expelled from another school, was labelled to be not a very smart student by the teacher and then he turned out to be competitive by doing his homework. On the other hand, the teachers' labelling Souleymane as limited accademically provoked many problems and all resulted in his being fired from the school. Of course there were some other reasons which let this happen but the important point is that teachers' labelling their students would affect them very easily.
In the movie, François, the teacher, was sometimes quite good at classroom management but, still, he had many problems, deriving from different reasons. For example, he couldn't manage the time very well in some cases. Sometimes he had endless arguements with students. The arguements might not be created by the teacher himself; but, instead of sharpening the conflict between the teacher and the students by continuing the arguements he could easily make the students remember the task they were supposed to be dealing with. I simply do not mean that everytime teachers should focus on time-on-task and avoid discussions.Of course it is important to answer the students' questions and discuss about their ideas about what is going on in the classroom; but, it is also important that teacher would explain it in a way which directs the students back into the task so that there occurs no endless and meaningless arguements between teachers and students.
( Angelica : Tell me, when was the last time you heard someone talk like that? ) the teacher's explanation was insufficient ( François : "Yesterday, with friends, we used the imperfect subjunctive" and then contradictorily "All right, it's true not everyone talks that way" ) and contrary to what Thomas Ziehe suggests in such a case.
The last thing I want to mention about the movie is the discipline and the democracy issue. There was a kind of Student Evaluation Committee in the school and the representatives of students were allowed to be in that comittee. If the teachers are to talk about students academic level and social behaviors at school, it is almost impossible to expect students to be as objective as their teachers are. To illustrate, in the movie, the main conflict between the teacher and one of the students, Souleymane, derived from the representative students' telling their fellow students what was talked in the committee; namely it derived from their misrepresenting. That would be a good example to think about the question of "What extent democracy" or "How to determine school structure".
There are many other important issues to talk about but mainly we can summarize that one could get a lot from the movie in terms of classroom management and all of the topics that we have been discussing so far. All in all, The movie "The Class" is a good starting point to see to what extent theory owns its place in practice.
Hi Ugur
ReplyDeleteyou state that:
"According to Thomas Ziehe, kids are very much centered on their own worlds and everything that is not compatible with their self world seems strange to them. To illustrate, the students were once complaining about using a certain pattern of the language because it was not the way they used the language in their everyday life. At this point, Thomas Ziehe says it is the teacher's job to open the students to be willing to leave their self worlds. The teacher could try creating "artificial islands". That would mean not getting closer to everyday lives of students but instead offering situations and topics different from student's self world so that they would be a part of high culture or be willing to know about high culture. If we were to turn to the case in the movie, when the students were complaining about that language pattern and asking the teacher to relate it with daily life conversations"
These "artificial islands of intensity" or what he also labels "well-dozed strangeness" seem as useful terms or methods to address nowadays students? But is it just an illusion? Can it be done in reality? How can you for instance teach Shakespeare using well-dozed strangeness in order to make the pupils leave their self-worlds?
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteI just agree with the idea that pupils, today, are not always willing to learn about the high culture as long as they do not relate it to their own self worlds somehow. I also agree with the point that sometimes teachers need a kind of strangeness -well dozed strangeness as Thomas Ziehe states- to create artificial situations and topics so that students are open to learn the high culture. But the question is "Can a teacher create that artificial islands of intensity all the time?".
Expecting teacher to create that kind of strangeness with artificial situations is a very hard job for the teachers because it is not always easy to find artificial situations related to every single topic. At this point, I would prefer a kind of combination of being close and away from the student's everyday lives so that it would not only be relevant to student's interests but also carry a kind of strangeness in itself. That will make the student willing to learn the high culture, as well, since it is related to their own self worlds and there is also something new or different or something strange in it. For the example of Shakespeare, a teacher can easily create the strangeness in this way: Imagine that pupils are supposed to read one of Shakespeare's plays. The teacher would assign them to create their own play on the condition that they are bound to the original plot and the characters, which would probably be interesting for them. The teacher could make a kind of rule here: he may ask them to include modern world's elements
to the play. So, it would carry a kind of strangeness in itself and open the students to leave their self worlds. It would also make it interesting for the students since they would add something from their own worlds.
Hi Ugur,
ReplyDeleteIt is a very good idea that you started your article with the summary of the film,which will be quite beneficial for your readers to understand your evaluation of the movie.
As far as I see,you are supporting your ideas with really good examples from the movie.Also you are quite good at relating your ideas to the theories of Thomas Ziehe.
Relating to what you mentioned about "the discipline and the democracy issue", do you think it would be a good idea to have representative students present at a Student Evaluation Committee in Turkish schools?(Keep in mind that the understanding of the students` of the discipline in Turkey is quite different than the ones in the movie)
P.S. Your blog is nearly as awwwwsome as mine :))
Hi Müslüm,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. As nearly no one is interested in my blog (almost no comments except for Peter's), I couldn't realize that you commented on my blog. So sorry for my late respond, and thanks for showing interest.
When it comes to your question, I think we should explain how disciplinary our schools are. Generally, students are respectful to teachers; and they cannot refer their teachers directly with their names. I mean there is always a line between teachers and students and the students are not expected to go beyond that line. And although it is not written, it is a kind of rule that students do not criticize how teachers teach in the classroom. Students are expected to obey the rules of the school and the classroom, be respectful to the teacher, help the teacher to teach effectively(by not causing troubles in the classroom for exmple). They are also supposed to ask for permission to stand up or to go out. After all, I think you might be right to say that it is a good idea to have representatives of student as a means of spokesperson. I mean, in this way , they can let the teachers and the school know what they expect from their teachers, what their problems are. I think it may also help Turkish schools not to be labelled as too much authoritative. However, when it comes to Student Evaluation Committees, I don't believe that students should be there while teachers are evaluating the students. It may still cause problems like in the movie no matter how disciplinary the school is.You cannot expect the students to be as objective as their teachers.It is also the teacher's job to observe the students and evaluate them. There might be another solution: teachers could be alone while evaluaing but they can still ask the representatives to say if they have a word.Then, teacher's could look at the situation from the view point of students and it would cause no problems at all.
P.S. I'm trying to be as awesome as you are. Thanks bro :)