In response to Debate four about ‘Do
schools contribute to social and community cohesion?’, I would say that the
answer is yes to community cohesion but it depends on whether schools work
towards social cohesion or not.
John Preston mentioned that schools have
become the most overburdened institutions of the welfare state because the
educators are playing so many roles to educate students even outside of the
curriculum. Teachers will have to be responsible for the welfare being of the
students as well. I hereby strongly agree to this because teachers are the ones
who have more time with students besides family members. During the age of
having the ability to learn and understand, the teaching of teachers could
strongly impact students’ beliefs. For example, there are many foreign workers
working in many countries, if the teachers teach students to be more careful of
foreign workers and should stay away from them because they are uneducated,
dirty and may create crimes; these students would always have this kind of
perception which created community cohesion. Thus, fear, disrespect, anger and
other negative emotions would arise from the students if they see a foreign
worker. This would even create a stronger community cohesion which is bad for
the students and also the foreign workers in that country. Due to this
community cohesion, the foreign workers may feel inferior, angry and dissatisfied
because they were labelled as bad and problematic people in others’ countries. Who
has started to convey these kinds of messages to the public and schools? Could
they not be the one who always want to secure the security of the country? These
messages are being published in the media about foreign workers fighting with
the citizens, foreign snatchers, house broken in by foreigners and etc. Is this
how the citizen including the students is to be educated? Could harmony be
achieved when there is fear, anger, disrespect of others and disgrace? I would
say that there is overgeneralising and bullying of the minority.
In school, we could also see this kind of bullies
and overgeneralisation in terms of nationality, race, gender, age and student’s
background. There are schools with mixed cultural classroom but only the
majority were given equality. Why have these been happening? Shouldn’t there be
equality in education? Nietszche’s posits that ‘the ear is an unspoken key to
the future of education’ which leads to the questioning of who is listening, to
whose policies, and for whose benefit. Most of the cases are to the people
behind who has the power and want to control the majority while ignoring the
rights of the minority. Namita Chakrabarty stated that happening in schools is
however happening to someone through culture. In order to change the above,
Royle stated ‘Death, then, is strangely at the heart of life, of writing and of
teaching’ (2003, p.51), which means there is a need of death to the historical
catalysts and that is the symbol for change. It is to urge for equality and
without it the death of social cohesion. I fully agree with the theory of
Brecht. I agree with it because it was written as ‘…. Serving the purpose of
leading its audience to a juster understanding of the society in which it
lived, and so learning in what ways that society was capable of change’
(1972,p.82), whereby I do believed that there is no use to negate the problems
from everyone but should let everyone know what the problems are and come out
with a set of rules or solutions which is agreed to everyone to achieved
harmony, social cohesion. It is due to lack of understanding of others culture,
beliefs and their individual perception that one would feel that they are more
superior to others. Teachers should highlights more about the strengths of
others instead of just letting the students know little of others. Teachers
should plan their lesson and manage their classroom well in order to build
collaboration, trust and respect among the students. Could teachers do that?
Yes, I believe so, as to say again what Royles have mentioned. The teachers
should throw away the history of haunting teaching and must be brave, dynamic and
pessimistic enough to learn and change to face and solve current classroom
problems in order to change the cultural capital of the students. Therefore,
the pedagogical used for teaching and the knowledge to be imparted to the
students are really important.
- Eagle -
No comments:
Post a Comment