Department of Educational Leadership & Cultural Foundations
University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Fall, 2007
In this essay I will discuss the labeling
of children in schools. My concern here is the need for humanization of the
school environment, especially those schools in economically poor communities.
Unfortunately, for many children growing up in economically poor neighborhoods,
the labels “poor,” “minority,” “special needs,” have become the outward symbols
of internalized oppression that weighs heavily upon the child’s
sense of self and their relationship with the world in which they live. For
being labeled “poor” already carries with it connotations about children’s
social location, connotations that prefigure, fix and formulate their entire
family into a stereotype. Here, being
poor and a child of color becomes an indictment of the family and its poverty--
an indictment which many people of color have little control over, especially
within a system that is set against them.
As an educator and psychotherapist working
with high school age students of color in
Many of the stories I hear of urban school
life in economically poor neighborhoods are unfortunately all too familiar,
especially to those of us who have read Jonathan Kozol’s classic text, Savage Inequalities (1991). Kozol writes
of the plight of children of color in the economically devastated neighborhoods
of
Four
little boys are still asleep on a green rug an hour later when I leave the
room. I stand at the door and look at the children, most of whom
are sitting at the table now to have their milk. Nine years from now, most of
these children will go to
If
one stands here in this kindergarten room and does not know these things, this
moment seems auspicious. But if one knows the future that awaits them, it is
terrible to see their eyes look up at you with friendliness and trust- to see
this and to know what is in store for them. (Kozol, p. 45).
Indeed, this is a
horrible thing to witness. Outraged, Kozol wonders why the injustice continues,
for “these are innocent children, after all:”
They have done nothing wrong. They have committed no crime. They are
too young to have offended us in any way. One searches for some way to
understand why a society as rich and, frequently, as generous as ours would
leave these children in their penury and squalor for so long- and with so
little public indignation. Is it just a strange mistake of history? Is it
unusual? Is it an American anomaly?”(p.40).
Unfortunately, the answer to Kozol’s queries is an
unequivocal “No!”
Educational
historian
Racist and elitist
notions are woven into the very fabric of the American educational enterprise.
Spring declares,
It
is my hypothesis that the educational crusade for the religious and cultural
conversion of Native Americans contributed to the nineteenth-century vision of
the public school as a primary means for ending crime, poverty, and social and
political conflicts. As I will argue…there was little difference in the minds
of the nineteenth-century Protestant public school advocates between ‘savage’
Indians, unrepentant criminals, the rebellious poor, and the ‘heathen’
Irish-Catholic immigrant. In fact, the English and Protestant sense of cultural
superiority originally developed during the twelfth-century English invasion of
The “grid,” if you will, for racist labeling in public
schooling has as its earliest template the overlaying of the term ‘savage’ onto
all who were not a part of the dominate English, Protestant elite. This grid
early on was targeted especially at Native Americans and the Irish Catholics.
For the English hatred, for the Irish becomes the paradigm for the treatment of
“the Other,” especially Native Americans, in colonial
society.
This practice of
racist labeling of “the Other” as “savage” is
accomplished through a series of substitutions in identity: the “savage” Indian
becomes identical to the “savage” Irish; one identity is erased and negated for
another. In essence, both the Native American and the Irish were turned into
objects by the English elite; objects whose humanity was denied. No longer able
to name themselves, as subjects in the world, the Native American and the Irish
are named, labeled as less than human, and hence not deserving to be treated
with either dignity or respect. Indeed, Spring
continues to note that these racist attitudes towards people of color and the
poor were common among the founding “fathers.” “Many European Americans,”
writes Spring,
envisioned
To make room for the white race, the mode of operations were
either genocide or containment of native Americans on
small farms and reservations (Ibid.). Here we see the attitude and treatment of
Native Americans (and others) as the primary paradigm for all who were
non-white and labeled ‘savages.’ Given the pervasive atmosphere of hatred in
the colonies, it is legitimate to wonder about the ‘toxic’ effects of
internalizing racist labels for Native Americans. By ‘toxic’ I am referring to
labels that have the power to oppress and thwart one’s humanity, those labels
that have the potential to poison the soul, so to speak. For needless to say,
within the constellation of human affairs the process of labeling is a complex
and often a contradictory practice, where not all practices of labeling people
are necessarily toxic or oppressive.
Here also, as Paulo Freire (1997) defines, “any situation in which ‘A’
objectively exploits ‘B’ or hinders his or her pursuit of self-affirmation as a
responsible person is one of oppression.
Such a situation in itself constitutes violence . . . because it interferes
with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully
human.” ( p. 37).
For the labeling process to be oppressive, or “toxic,” it must
demonstrate a moment of exploitation where one’s ontological vocation – being
fully human – is hindered. Here such acts of toxic labeling are acts of
violence against the person.
Today within modern societies, practices
of toxic labeling operate within complex historically-defined relations of
power, systems of representation, and sites of identity formation-- sites where
those in power have the privilege to frame the identity of those unable to name
their own world collectively. For Freire, this means the oppressed. As Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow
(1993, p. xvi) point out, “issues of identity and representation directly raise
questions about who has the power to define whom, and when and how.” Here I
want to emphasize that those who are oppressed and marginalized in society –
because of a number of factors, including race, class, gender, sexual
orientation, age and national origin – often do not have control over the
production of images of themselves, rather they are labeled instead. The issue
is precisely: who labels whom and for what larger, political purpose. This is a knotty problem on many levels.
To illustrate the
“toxic” effects associated with the internalization of racist labels, I want to
continue to focus on the plight of Native Americans, who with the Irish have
experienced the earliest forms of labeling. Specifically, I want to focus on
the writing of contemporary Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko who
captures the insidious workings of labeling on Native American students who
have internalized the dominant ideology’s images and values at the cost of
their own humanity. To begin, consider two passages from Silko’s novel Ceremony (1978) to illustrate the effect
of toxic labeling on economically poor Native Americans today. In the first
passage I will present we find Little Sister, a young woman who is at odds with
herself: she hates being an Indian, and struggles to become white. As we enter
the scene Little Sister wants to leave the reservation, and her older sister
(Auntie), who feels shame at Little Sister’s indiscretions, is unable to stop
her on her path to destruction. (I will
quote at length to give the texture of the scene and a lived sense of how
through labels one internalizes of the image of oppressor.)
…When Little Sister had started drinking wine and riding in the cars
with white men and Mexicans, the people could not define their feeling about
her. The Catholic priest shook his finger at the drunkenness and lust, but the
people felt something deeper: they were losing her,
they were losing part of themselves. The older sister had to act; she had to act
for the people, to get her back.
It might have been
possible if the girl had not been ashamed of herself. Shamed by what they
taught her in school about the deplorable ways of the Indian people; holy
missionary white people who wanted only good for the Indians, white people who
dedicated their lives to helping the Indians, these people urged her to break
away from home. She was excited to see that despite the fact she was an Indian,
white men smiled at her from their cars as she walked
from the bus in
But after she had been
with them, she could feel the truth in their fists in their greedy feeble
love-making; but it was a truth which she had no English words for. She hated
the people at home when white people talked about their peculiarities; but she
always hated herself more because she still thought about them, because she
knew their pain at what she was doing with her life. The feelings of shame, at
her own people and at the white people, grew inside her, side by side like
monstrous twins that would have left her in the hills to die (p. 68-9).
Little Sister is divided within her soul; she is at war with
herself. Here we see how Little Sister
has internalized the struggle between her own people and the white teachers and
missionaries. Caught between the shame of her people and the racism of the
white teachers and missionaries, Little Sister’s response is one of shame and
self-hatred. For Little Sister, to be an Indian is about shame, not
self-affirmation. Having internalized the white definition for Indian she can
no longer see value in her own heritage. The white label “Indian” sinks deep
into Little Sister’s definition of self, and this is not only tragic but more,
it is an act of violence perpetrated by a toxic label aimed at all Native Americans.
Notice
that Little Sister’s torment creates an internal duality within her-- that is,
she is unable to bridge the “gap” between who she is (Native American) and who
she would like to be (white). “The oppressed,” writes Paulo Freire,
suffer from the duality which has established
itself in their innermost being…They are at one and the same time themselves
and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized. The conflict lies
in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided…The central
problem is this: …Only as they [the oppressed] discover themselves to be
‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their [own
liberation]. As long as they live in duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible”
(1997, p.30).
It is clear that Little Sister’s suffering is established
within her innermost being where she “hosts” the oppressors’ image of herself.
For Little Sister, to be liked is to be like a white women,
because this is an historic impossibility, she has no inner peace with her
dream.
In the second
passage below, I focus on Rocky, Little Sister’s nephew. In this passage,
Rocky’s mother (Auntie) is proud of her son. She takes pleasure knowing he has
been raised “properly,” for Rocky wants go to college and make something of himself. As this scene begins, Rocky is eating dinner with
his mother and uncles, and gets drawn into a discussion about the breeding of
cattle, pitting “Indian methods” against “the scientific way.”
Rocky dunked his
tortilla in the chili beans and kept chewing; he didn’t care what they said. He
was already thinking of the years ahead and the new places and the people that
were waiting for him in the future he lived for since he first began to believe
in the word ‘somebody’ the way white people do…
[As
dinner proceeds Rocky enters the conversation about breeding cattle. His father
Josiah is speaking]… ‘I guess we will have to get along without these books,’
he said. ‘We’ll have to do things our own way.’…
Tayo
and Robert laughed with him, but Rocky was quiet. He looked up from his books.
‘Those
books are written by scientists. They know everything there is to know about
beef cattle. That’s the trouble with the way the people around here have always
done things- they never know what they are doing.’ He went back to reading his
books. He did not hesitate to speak like that, to his father and his uncle,
because the subject was books and scientific knowledge-- those things Rocky had
learned to believe in.
…What
did they know about cattle raising? They weren’t
scientists. Auntie had been listening but did not seem to notice Rocky’s
disrespect. She valued Rocky’s growing understanding of the outside world, of
the books, of everything of importance and power. He was becoming what she had
always wanted: someone who could not only make sense of the outside world but
become part of it. (p. 73, 75-76).
Here, Auntie’s dream for Rocky-- to become a part of the
outside world-- embodies a contradictory message. Namely, to be a somebody is to be like the white scientist; and to be like
the white scientist, Rocky must deny his heritage. In this passage we see Rocky
negating, disrespecting his father. But unfortunately, Auntie doesn’t mind
this, for she herself has also internalized the white
image of success. To be Indian, in this
context is once again to be at odds internally with oneself, with one’s
culture. The irony, of course is that Rocky never makes it to college. He
believes that white culture is superior to being an Indian. And hence, when a
marine recruiter comes to the village, he enlists-- to be “a
somebody” in uniform-- and eventually is killed during WWII in the South
Pacific.
For both Little Sister and Rocky the internalization
of the white image of Indian is toxic. In each instance we see a “gap” between
who they are (Native American) and who they want to be (a
somebody). They struggle to bridge this gap, to become complete by
attempting, struggling to become white. In each instance they “host” the
oppressors’ image of themselves, and in subtle (and not so subtle ways) do the
oppressors’ bidding. Further, we must see the place of schooling in the
formation of the toxic label. In both instances, the school is an important
site for the articulation of the “host.”
For the practices embedded in “schooling” refers to the political and
historic realities that accompany the institutionalization of learning to meet
the demands of society. Schooling has a
history, as we’ve seen. Schooling is about helping to create and maintain a
workforce. Schooling is about power relations and its function to sift, sort,
and select students through testing and evaluation. Schooling is about
certification and credentialing students for various professions in society.
Schooling is about transforming children to “students.” It is through the
creation of a “student” that schools are able to mold, shape, and hence lay the
groundwork for the “host” in children. Behind the seemingly “benign” label—“student”
– is a complex process of dividing the child’s consciousness.
Within the context
of contemporary schooling, Michael Apple’s Ideology
and Curriculum (1979) also investigates, in part, how children are labeled
through the hidden curriculum, through the processes of sifting, sorting, and
selecting to meet the demands of the larger economic order. Apple explores how
schooling processes not only affect knowledge, but people as well. Focusing on the kindergarten experience,
Apple (with Nancy King) shows how becoming a “student” entails not only
learning attitudes and behaviors that serve as a foundation for the years of
schooling to follow, but further entails learning social categories--
definitions that serve as organizing principles. These principles provide the
foundation for one’s success in school and subsequently in the workplace.
Something as seemingly benign as being labeled a “student” entails a complex
process– a complex fusion of knowledge and behavior in the formation of a
social identity such that “the social definitions internalized during one’s
initial school life provide the constitutive rules for later life in the
classroom. Thus, the elements needing
examination are what is construed as work or play, ‘school knowledge’ or merely
‘my knowledge,’ normality or deviance.” (Apple, 1979, p. 51).
Notice that Apple’s socialization process includes the learning of norms as
well as definitions of organizing categories, such as work and play. These categories come to define for the
kindergartner what it means to be a student.
The social identity of becoming a student is itself grounded upon
socially accepted definitions that are woven into classroom environments in
ways that are congruent with teacher expectations. At issue, in broad terms suggested
by Apple: Does the process by which children learn to become
”students” affirm or deny their sense of self? Is becoming a “student”
(with its attendant label), a matter of benign or toxic labeling? Is being
labeled a student an act of oppression or liberation?
In their classroom observations, Apple and
King note that the assignment of meaning to various classroom
activities for each child are linked to how that child “uses” materials
and the quality of their participation in classroom activities. Over time, for
example, “when asked about classroom objects, the children responded with
remarkable agreement and uniformity. The children divided the materials into
two categories: things to work with and things to play with. No child organized any material in violation
of what seemed to be their guiding principle” (Apple, 1979, p. 54). Apple and
King report that the meaning of classroom objects and
materials is linked with the use of such material in day-to-day activities.
The process by
which the child’s experiences in school are separated, segregated and labeled
are categorized into two broad social categories: work and play. “Work includes
any and all teacher-directed activities . . . To work, then, is to do what one
is told to do, no matter the nature
of the activity involved . . . all work activities, and only work activities,
were compulsory.”( p. 55). What is labeled “work” includes school
knowledge and all teacher-directed activities, and is compulsory. Regarding the
organizing category “work,” Apple observed, “the point of work activities was
to do them, not necessarily to do them well . . . Diligence, perseverance,
obedience, and participation were rewarded.” (p. 56) This
is to say, the child’s relationship to work-defined activities is one of
compliance. Work engenders compliance on
the part of the child. The social identity of becoming a “student” entails an
aspect of compliance, of being externally motivated, externally regulated.
In contrast, play in Apple’s study is a
marginalized experience: the child’s own free-flowing activity. The category of
play is often split off and segregated from the child’s experience in the
classroom. What is labeled “play” is defined as “only free-time activities.”
Within this classroom context, the burgeoning student comes to understand
normality as work-related activities; and outside the norm, deviance is labeled
‘play.’ Play is “merely my knowledge.” Play-related activities – “my”
activities – are relegated to the margins of classroom life. To become a
“student,” then, means to learn and live out within the school context the
social and epistemological distinctions between the organizing categories of
work and play; between school knowledge and “my” knowledge; between compliance
and self-affirmation. This means that encountering what is labeled as “work”
and “play” entails a complex social, psychological, and epistemological
process, where children must
learn and accept as natural the
social distinctions schools both reinforce and teach between important and
unimportant knowledge, between normality and deviance, between work and play,
and the subtle ideological rules and norms that inhere in these distinctions,
they also internalize visions of both the way institutions should be organized
and their appropriate place in these institutions. These things are learned somewhat
differently by different students, of course, and this is where the process of
labeling becomes so important to social and economic class differentiation. The labeling of students . . . has a strong
impact on which students accept which particular distinction as natural. (Apple, p. 142)
Becoming
a student entails a life lived through what may seem to the child an endless
series of compliant acts to meet the demands made by schooling. To be sure,
children do resist this process of compliance through contradictory behavior,
yet the point here is that the demands on them are unending, and to a greater
or lesser extent, schooling can become alienated labor. To be a student entails
holding together a divided, dual inner life where the poles are “my knowledge”
(my culture, my family, etc.) on the one hand, and official school knowledge on
the other. For the successful student will be able to balance
out this inner polarity, and this will be especially the case with children
whose family values and dispositions mirror official school conventions.
Here the inner tension for the student may be minimal if home and school
ideologies are in closer alignment. For the children of the poor, the marginalized,
the oppressed, there is often a greater degree of dissonance between home and
school ideologies. School based values may be perceived by children and
their families as the ‘host’ of the oppressor. To complicate matters, in
families such as Rocky’s where Auntie, at the expense of her native culture,
colludes with the dominant ideology, we find violence towards self and others
in the form of shame and hatred.
In light of this, we must ask what happens
to the child’s interior world as their knowledge, “my knowledge,” is split off,
dislocated from the schooling experience?
What happens to the child’s inner world as it is cut off from the
knowledge that connects “me” to my self and others?
For therapists Ann and Barry Ulanov
(1975), the response is located in children finding value in their reality.
They write,
Being alive is
more than being healthy. Feeling real
involves more than functioning adequately.
Believing life is worthwhile goes far beyond simply feeling able to cope
with stresses and strains . . . It is true that psychotherapy . . . does two
important things . . . it strives to remove the blocks that obscure a person’s
vision of himself or herself as real, as fully alive, and it points the way to
value . . . It finds value in reality . . . Healing has, properly enough, long
been thought of as a way of recovering a sense of reality, not simply being
restored to health . . . Healing recovers a relationship between dislocated
elements. It does not just paste them
together, but rather establishes among them a new and conversant relationship. ( Ulanov, pp. 171-3).
How
do we establish among the dislocated elements of what are labeled as “work” and
“play” a new and conversant relationship?
A healing relationship?
One response is Paulo Freire’s notion of “true words,”
which stands in opposition to the toxic
labeling that stereotypes and oppresses all who are marginalized. Furthermore,
Freire’s notion of “true
words” and the practice of labeling can be said to be related to each other,
but not reducible to each other. Both true words and the process of labeling
share a common characteristic: they both name aspects of the world through
processes of separating, sorting, and differentiation; but while true words and
labels share this common characteristic, they can hardly be said to be
equivalent. The social practices attendant with true words aim at affirming the self
in spiritual communion with others. The
social act of labeling does not affirm the self, nor is labeling usually thought
of as a sacred communal effort.
Paulo Freire writes about the “true word”
in his seminal work, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (1997). In Chapter 3 of
this text, Freire stresses the central importance of dialogue in “human
phenomena,” stating that the essence of dialogue is the word. He makes an analytic distinction between the
true word on the one hand, and an “unauthentic” word on the other. Unauthentic words, like toxic labels, may be
likened to “false” words, those linked to a kind of false generosity, a false
charity towards others. Pedagogies, for
instance, cloaked in false generosity begin with the egoistic interests of
those in power and are used as “an instrument of dehumanization” (Freire, 1997,
p. 36). In addition, unauthentic words are unable to transform reality, for
they lack connectedness to the world and to the lived experiences within which
they are spoken.
In contrast, Freire defines “true” words
as consisting of two constitutive elements: reflection, and action. These two
elements are woven together “in such radical interaction that if one is
sacrificed – even in part – the other immediately suffers.” (1997, p. 68) The
relationship between reflection and action, which together constitute the true
words, exists as an “ecological” balance between these two elements. If either of these two constitutive elements
is missing or diminished from this ecological balance, the true word is
violated, and hence, no longer able to be transformative in reality. That is, if the balance between reflection
and action is altered, this ecological system falls in disarray, reducing the
true word to either empty verbalism (chatter) or activism (thoughtless
acts). “When a [true] word is deprived
of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the
word is changed into chatter, into verbalism, into an alienating ‘blah’” (ibid., p. 68). Likewise, when the true
word is stripped of reflection, the word is changed into activism – action for
action’s sake – which “negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible.”
(ibid., p. 69)
Freire conceives the true word as praxis
itself: “There is no true word that is not at the same time praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform
the world; . . . action + reflection=word=work=praxis.” (ibid., p. 68) The true word provides concrete encounters between
individuals in the act of transforming the world. This act, transforming the
world, humanizing it, is our true vocation as human beings. The “act” of transformation is initiated
through the use of true words to name the world. As Freire says, “To exist,
humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in turn reappears to
the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.” (ibid., p. 69) Thus, the world,
constructed out of true words, is identified in naming. However, what is named is rendered
problematic; the new name becomes a problem itself, to be built upon, acted
upon, and changed. This process of
change and transformation is historical in nature, occurring over time and
through the efforts of human beings working collectively.
Viewed from another perspective, the
psychological aspect of naming through true words entails ego development and
growth, becoming an individual through a dialectical engagement with the world;
an engagement of differentiation, of sorting, of separation from the world.
This separation from the world is an aggressive action on our part as
individuals, an aggressive moment of pulling away from the undifferentiated
contents of our experiences in order to make sense of them. In naming, we differentiate ourselves from
the world. As such, we become individuals in the very act of articulating our
relationship with the world. Being an
individual does not mean we stand alone in the world. Rather, as individuals we are now able to act
and relate, to “use” the world in meaningful ways. But further, as therapist John Tarrant points
out:
To name is to bring an
attitude of wonder to the work of sorting . . . When we can name what is
happening to us, we are no longer wholly identified with it and have begun to
separate from the grasping dark. If what
we feel is known and named to be a tiger, then the whole world is not tiger. We can divide the compulsion and the image,
action and the emotion. There is a
landscape through which we move, trees casting their own stripes on the forest
floor, places where the tiger is not . . . Separation gives us being and world
. . . when we give names we devise an intimate link with what is named; we
incur obligations that serve to establish us more steadfastly. . . . To name is to offer a piece of ourselves to
the world . . . Later what has been separated out may come to be seen as too
solid and will need to be dissolved. (Tarrant, 1998, pp. 99-100, my
emphasis)
To
name the world through true words is to create an “intimate link with what is
named.” In this act of separation, between the naming and the named, we, as
individuals, become a part of the world itself, for “to name is to offer a
piece of ourselves to the world”-- a piece which if too solid, “will need to be
dissolved.” The world is not simply us;
rather, in naming we become a part of the world, connected to it in thought and
action. When we name with true words,
then we see ourselves in the world,
and through the very action of naming. As we name the world we name ourselves.
Through naming, the individual becomes a subject who literally articulates and
authors him- or herself into a world, and authoring
oneself in this world affirms one’s own existence: “I am.”
This complex, multidimensional process of
naming the world is never fixed, final or turned into an idol to be
worshipped. Rather, the humanization of
reality, through praxis, is an ongoing dialectical process between reflection
and action: thinking about the world critically, then acting to transform
oppressive situations. Within this
context, pedagogy becomes a vehicle for developing our problem-posing capacity;
“problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality.” (Freire,
1997, p. 64) The process of humanizing the world is never settled, but is
rather an ongoing project for humanity.
Further, problem-posing – rendering problematic the name – is a
dialogical encounter between people. In
dialogue, we encounter each other in history as active subjects, together
naming our world. As Freire notes, “Consequently, no one can say a true word
alone – nor can she say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others
of their words.” (ibid., p. 69) True
words call us to the existence of others in the world and the necessity of
joining with them in the act of humanizing reality. This call – which acknowledges others and
their importance – elicits hope in us, where “hope is rooted in man’s [sic] incompletion, from which they move
in constant search – a search which can be carried out only in communication
with others.” (ibid., p. 72)
Our calling as human beings, then, is to
find ourselves in the presence of others: “a search that can be carried out
only in communion with others.” True words elicit such communion with
others. This communion is never a
neutral enterprise; rather, it is both political and moral-– for the liberatory
project is marked, in its effort to humanize the world by transforming
oppressive structures and situations, by conflicting power relations between
the oppressed and the oppressors.
Through dialogue (and true words) children
can begin to learn how to regain the reality of their lives-to feel alive and
real in the world, to name for themselves the world
and not be named by another. They learn to reclaim themselves and in the
process redefine conventional labels such “student.” Imposed from the outside,
living the label “student” can also serve an important purpose: to provide
boundaries – it limits and defines the learning realities children must face
within the school environment. Indeed,
both Freire and D.W. Winnicott are aware of the necessity of external forces
pressing upon us– as limit-situations or through the “reality principle” –
dynamics which have the capacity to both relieve anxiety or
impinge on our lives in ways that oppress.
Paradoxically, both would argue that is through our very engagements with the world and its pressures that we
come to learn and realize that we are not the whole picture; we are not alone;
others do exist. Confronted by others,
we begin to understand that compromise and negotiation are not evils in
themselves but rather necessary for dialogue to proceed,
dialogue grounded in the exigencies of everyday life. Within this dialogue with
others the child begins to explore the school environment. Here the encounter
between teacher and child is necessary for growth. The open question is the
quality of that encounter. For example, is the child able to respond back to
what the teacher demands, or is he or she silenced either in overt or hidden
ways?
Learning, for both Freire and Winnicott, also involves
confronting limit-situations in terms of impingement, the walls that impede.
The importance for Winnicott is not the existence of an oppressive other, who
is starkly “not-me,” but rather the humanity of the “good enough” teacher (and
the “good enough” school environment) in the response to the child. The “good enough” teacher and school neither
impinge nor allow limitless freedom for all impulses to be expressed. In
dialogue with the “good enough” teacher, children realize that they are not the
whole picture, but an integral part of it - neither omnipotent nor powerless,
but part of a relational give and take.
How does this happen? Interestingly
enough, we find a solution written 2600 years ago in Plato’s Republic. In his
discussion of educating the children of the republic, Socrates states, “no free
person should learn anything like a slave…nothing taught by force stays in the
soul…Then don’t use force to train the children in
these subjects; use play instead.” (Grube, 1992, p.208). Indeed, use play instead to find meaning in
their lives.
In his classic book, Playing and Reality (1996), Winnicott explores the therapeutic
search for ourselves and others through the complex
and multilayered activity of playing. I
will draw on some of the more salient aspects of playing as a way to bring this
essay to closure, keeping in mind that my discussion here is but an opening
look at such a rich domain. Winnicott writes: “it is in playing and only in
playing that he individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the
whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual
discovers the self” ( p. 54). For the student, the
categories of work and play become reintegrated through the activity of
playing. This activity, however, is not primarily pedagogical; rather it is
itself therapy, in that playing does not necessarily have a goal, nor a product
attached to it. Instead, in our search
for the self, creative play emerges as we begin to reconnect to ourselves, to
communicate with what leads us to feel alive.
“In the search for the self the person concerned may have produced
something valuable in terms of art, but a successful artist may be universally
acclaimed and yet have failed to find the self that he or she is looking for .
. . The finished creation never heals the underlying lack of sense of self” (p.
55). For Winnicott, playing is about
healing, and not simply about becoming a creative artist, producing a product
for the world.
Rather than being an act of producing
artifacts, playing is associated with relaxation and trust; hence its
therapeutic capacity. Relaxation refers
to free association, where the subject is “allowed to communicate a succession
of ideas, thoughts, impulses, sensations that are not linked” to any specific
purpose beyond activity itself. Playing
is to be relaxed, like the child in the sandbox. Playing is a creative outlet for
communicating with oneself. For the
child in this context, playing is an end in itself. Playing is relaxing despite being active. It is relaxation in the sense of the child at
rest and at peace in the world, secure enough, trusting
enough in his or her environment to let go of defensive postures. Within such a facilitating, trusting
environment – an environment that “holds” a child or student safe – this
resting state, in turn, produces a
“creative reaching out” whereby in the act of using external objects (for
infants) or naming the world (for children and adults) through play, we offer
the world pieces of ourselves. As we see ourselves, find ourselves once again
in the world, we lower our defenses.
Playing is both restful and energizing.
Through it we feel at home in the world.
Hence it makes us once again feel real and alive. It restores our hope and faith and opens us
to the larger world. Winnicott writes:
“cultural experience begins with creative living first manifested in play.” ( p. 100)
Finally, Winnicott views playing as a
third space, a transitional space, in between inner reality and external
environment which expands into creative living and into the whole cultural life
of and where,
The potential space between
baby and mother, between child and family, between individual and society or
the world, depends on the experience which leads to
trust. It can be looked upon as sacred
to the individual in that it is here that the individual experiences creative
living.
In contrast, exploitation of this area leads to a
pathological condition in which the individual is cluttered up with the
persecutory elements of which he has no means of ridding himself. (1996, pp.
102-3)
Along similar lines of
thinking, Paulo Freire writes,
Perhaps it was during my
distant childhood that I developed the habit that I still carry today of
occasionally surrendering myself to profound contemplation, as if I am isolated
from everything else, the people and things that surround me. I like to think I find myself in the play of
losing myself. I often find myself in
this contemplative state while doing research or in my office. (Freire, 1996,
p. 14)
Indeed,
playing can be looked upon as a space of rest and activity, a place where one
can trust in the world as oneself – acting without pretense or compliance. Through “playing,” the child-as-student
locates that space in between the categories of play (“my world”) and work
(external reality).
What is labeled “playing” is not the solution to all problems attendant with schooling or living. Through playing one does not remove labels such as “student.” Through playing, however, it is possible to recommunicate with ourselves beyond the ‘toxic’ label, and to realize that beneath the label there is something more: a place where we can once again feel alive and real, feel at home and once again trust in ourselves. Perhaps we may begin to feel the courage to live our lives to the fullest, the courage to live our lives as authentically as possible, to once again trust in another, so that “we” may continue the struggle together to humanize the school and the world.
References
Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and Curriculum.
-Freire, P. (1996).
Letters to Christina: Reflections
on My life and Work.
-Freire, P. (1997).
Pedagogy of the
Oppressed.
-Grube, G.M.A. (1992). Plato’s Republic.
-Kozol, J. ((1992). Savage Inequalities.
-McCarthy, C. and W. Crichlow (eds.) (1993). Race, Identity, and Representation in Education.
-Silko, L. M., (1977). Ceremony.
-Spring, J. (1997).
The
-Tarrant, J. (1998).
The Light inside
the Dark.
-Ulanov. A. and B. Ulanov (1975). Religion and the Unconscious.
-Winnicott, D. W. (1996) [1971]. Playing and Reality.