Oppression in Education

I can’t believe that we have been here for a week already! Time is going very fast and it has been an enriching and engaging experience thus far. My time in Mr. P’s classroom has allowed me to learn a lot about classroom management as well as how to teach reading and writing workshop. Each morning begins with a morning meeting where the students can ask any questions and share how they are feeling. It is also a time for Mr. P to address any issues that are going on in the classroom. For example, this morning he said that he noticed students on the playground making fun of each other because they had a crush on each other. He then took the time to share a story from grade school when someone made fun of him because he had a crush on a girl and how that made him feel. He told the students that it made him feel bad and that when someone is having that “special” feeling to allow them to do so and not make fun of them. Mr. P likes to throw in a lot of life lessons as topics come up in the classroom.

I have been able to attend a seventh-grade math class and a fifth-grade Spanish class over the last couple days. The math class was set up in a collaborative way with the students at tables with groups of four. They could talk with each other when working through the problems and worked through many word problems that had real life application to them. The teacher also had access to an iPad that she could write on and it would project onto the board. This use of technology was especially useful in her classroom because she was then able to walk around the room and check on students work. She could also take a picture of a students work and then insert that into her lesson on the board.

In the Spanish class that I observed, the students were excited to tell me about the history of Peru in Spanish. The teacher would hold up a picture of the different colonial ages and then the students would share what they knew about them. I could understand most of what they were saying but wish that I would have kept up with my Spanish right after high school!

I have also been able to attend the seventh grade science fair and the third grade market place this week. These events are projects that the students have been working on all semester. The seventh grade science fair encouraged the students to create a project related to a social issue affecting the world today. They were encouraged to create something that would improve their community and could actually be implemented in the future.

The third grade market place was an opportunity for students to create trinkets or games to sell to other students and parents. They worked all semester to create homemade products and got to decide how much they wanted to charge for what they created. They also had to try to attract their customers by having a booth that was appealing to the customer and had to encourage people to buy their products. The students had a lot of fun and seemed like they learned a lot from this experience!

Based on what I know about the education in the United States and in Peru, I do believe that contemporary teaching oppresses learners. A lot of the teaching that I see in the schools is along the lines of the “banking” method, where the teacher just inputs information into the students and hopes that it sticks. With this teaching, the students are unable to think critically and engage in fruitful dialogue with each other. They are focused on learning the information to pass the test, rather than learning the information because they want to be more knowledgeable. Freire would encourage teachers to place themselves on the same level as their students and be “co-investigators” with them. The teachers can learn alongside the students and should push the students rather than just presenting them information in one way. To oppress the students in this way, would be to only provide students with one viewpoint on a specific topic. In a classroom that does not oppress the students, the teacher would encourage the students to look at all the perspectives of a specific topic. They would encourage the students to do independent research and inquiry and have them present their findings to the class, rather than the teacher just lecturing at the students with facts to memorize.

When the teacher lectures the students, and is not making the learning student centered, they inhibit learning. The teacher also inhibits learning when then don’t encourage students to interact in dialogue with each other. The students should be allowed to have their voices heard and should direct the conversations with each other. At Colegio Roosevelt, I have seen Mr. P encourage the students to engage with each other and I do not believe that he oppresses his students. He allows his students voices to be heard and encourages his students take charge of their learning. It was a great first week in Lima, and I am looking forward to more adventures!

Here are some photos from the third-grade market place:

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