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Talking in class
Do children’s contributions count?
The talk in classrooms between teachers and children is important because
it defines what knowledge will become a part of ‘school-related
knowledge’ and whose voices will be allowed to shape this. The
value is in more than simply allowing children to speak and share their
experiences. When children’s talk is heard in the context of an
ongoing discussion they realise that their experiences and perceptions
are important and develop the mental skills needed to think and reason
independently and to construct knowledge. This is particularly important
for children from rural and underprivileged backgrounds. As their cultures
are often poorly represented in official school textbooks, classroom
talk could play an important role in including their knowledge and life
experiences within their education.
Indian classrooms, like those of many Asian and developing countries,
are known to be dominated by the ‘textbook culture’, where
teachers use their authority to ensure learning textbook knowledge remains
the focus of classroom activities. One would therefore expect to hardly
hear children’s voices in classrooms, except when they answer the
teacher’s questions. An ethnographic study from the University
of Delhi of an Indian village primary school, found that classroom negotiations
are not always so simple.
Silencing tactics
Observations made over six months, of the classroom transactions of
children between 9 and 11 years old, revealed that some teachers used
a great
deal of information from sources other than textbooks. Their classrooms
were also quite noisy, but although children said a lot, the teacher
used subtle techniques to ensure that their contributions were excluded.
For example, a teacher might ignore a child, to suggest that what he
or she was saying was not worthy of consideration: commenting on a
student’s contributions might suggest that there was something
of value in what was being said.
Other tactics observed to exclude children’s voices were:
- bracketing out the child’s voice, claiming that he or she was
breaking a communication rule, with comments such as ‘Is this a
class or a playground? (He) talks too much’.
- disqualifying the information, claiming it was based on false
criteria and therefore invalid knowledge. For example, a class were
reading
about Martin Luther King:
Teacher: His only sin was that he was black.
Manoj: Discrimination
on the basis of colour ji!
Teacher (mockingly): You were not born then.
How do you know?
The latter technique was particularly effective in silencing the child’s
voice, because the teacher suggested that the speaker had pretensions and was
lying.
Children’s observations ‘hung around’ the ongoing lessons,
never becoming a part of ‘official knowledge’. It seemed that their
knowledge was not valued by the school. These tactics did not silence children
completely, yet most of them seemed to believe that knowledge was primarily
information to be gained from others ‘who know better’, like teachers
and officers. Students also seemed to believe that knowledge is information
to be memorised, rather than understood. A small minority thought out answers
for themselves, but most children believed it was essential to repeat only
those dictated by the teacher. This occurred to the extent that the few children
who reasoned and wrote their own answers were thought to be immoral and trying
to find easy ways out.
Separating knowledge
A further effect of the way the curriculum is structured, with teachers
excluding children’s voices, is that school knowledge remains
separate from everyday knowledge. While in school, students would say,
for example, that all plants grow from seeds, but outside school, they
asserted that weeds don't grow from seeds but come up on their own.
When students were asked to locate their own village within the geography
of India, some students were surprised by the mention of their village
with reference to knowledge that seemed to belong only within school.
The research indicates a need for encouraging teachers to become more
sensitive to and respectful of children’s learning. However, the
practices which cause children to be passive learners and separate school
knowledge from everyday knowledge are supported by shared beliefs of
teachers, community, and even the children themselves, about the nature
of learners, of learning and knowledge. Alternative practices will only
become possible when there are alternative belief frameworks to support
them.
Padma M. Sarangapani
T: +91 80 360 4351
F: +91 80 360 6634
psarangapani@hotmail.com
See also:
'Constructing School Knowledge: an ethnography of learning in an Indian
village', by P. M. Sarangapani, New Delhi: Sage, 2003
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