Sunday, November 13, 2011

You can make a change if you think you can!!!!


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 -

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