Jazz at the Improv

Kappa Delta Pi Record, Fall 2004 by Mantle-Bromley, Corinne

What about Luke? He was one of a small handful of African-American students in a predominantly Anglo community. His friends-lovingly, they explained-called him "Nigger." He called himself "The Nigger." He laughed often in his role as the class clown. But how did he really experience school? Did our school-and my classroom-contribute to his development of self, or were his classes just painful hurdles to clear during the course of a day? Does it matter that the adults largely chose to ignore this denigration of self? And what about Luke's friends? In what ways were they developing their sense of selves?

Kerr (1996) thought carefully about how human beings nurture and, perhaps more often, fail to nurture one another. She came to the conclusion that we can be nurturing only in the concreteness of specific actions. In other words, a classroom or a school cannot be "nurturing." Only specific actions and encounters within a school or classroom can nurture. The act of nurturing also requires that certain conditions be met.

Nurturing demands recognition: "I see you; I want to understand you; I hear you." Nurturing demands respect: "I may disagree with you, but I acknowledge and value your perspective." Nurturing demands safety. We must create space in our classrooms and schools for recognition, mutual respect, development of trust, and safety. As Kerr (1996, 48) explained, "to nurture requires that we attend to the content and ways in which the children, as selves, experience their lives."

Schools must be about and for students' learning-not just about the adults who work in them.

I've said that school structures often are designed with adults rather than students in mind. For instance, we sort students into grades one, two, three, and beyond-not because all six-year-olds read at the same level, but rather because this system is thought to be easier for teachers, administrators, and the bureaucracy of schooling. For the same reason, we do a great deal of sorting and tracking, and then claim that it is "for the good of the students" and that it is pedagogically sound.

To clarify this issue, we can turn to the work of Van Manen, who carefully examined the concept of pedagogy. Pedagogy, correctly understood, he explained, cannot possibly serve the tracking function often assigned it. "The concept of pedagogy," Van Manen (1999, 14) wrote, "is rooted in the recognition of the human capacity for learning and in the general human condition of this capacity." The term pedagogy assumes that all humans possess the capacity to learn. Sorting and tracking practices assume instead that we each have some innate talent. Some individuals will succeed because they are destined to do so; others simply do not have what it takes.

Placing the child at the center of the concept, Van Manen (1999, 14) described pedagogy as the ever-present act of "distinguishing between what is appropriate and what is less appropriate for children and what are appropriate ways of teaching and giving assistance to children and young people." To act accordingly, Van Manen stated, we must know and understand the "lifeworlds" of our students. Without this understanding, we can teach content, but we cannot practice real pedagogy.