Due to the contextual differences in which Christensen, Ayers, and Redeaux speak of community, where it exists in gang laden streets in the Pacific-Northwest, a juvenile detention facility of laconic “yeses” and “noes”, and a run of the mill Chicago Public high school, it would therefore seem that the logical conclusion would be for us to formulate a definition of the term on the grounds of difference rather than semblance: where “we,” the community members, are what “we” are by virtue of some visual or material marker or circumstance that demarcates an “us” from a “you,” and through our (the community’s) ability to control our own narrative; and I take this to mean self-determination, or freedom. So, as I will show, in spite of Christensen’s treatment of community as a unifying tool, we ought to think about how each author perceives this unification with respect to their position in society; how does community look to you when you speak in front of a chalk board, behind a desk, or behind bars? More to the point, I want to argue that larger visions community, understood in Christensenterian terms as a sort of unification through empathy, can only be achieved if the object of your empathy—the wayward, the migrant worker, the homeless, the prisoner, the garbageman, wageworker, or whatever—is also at the same time excluded from participating in the shaping of that community and from reaping the same benefits as those who are included in the community proper.
But how can this be? It would seem that Christensen’s task—“to become a community, students must learn to live in someone else’s skin, understand the parallels of hurt, struggle, and joy across class and culture lines…” (61)—to build student community out of empathy is directly antithetical to founding community vis-a-vis difference. If empathy is this the ability to recognize the problems that transcend visual markers (i.e. move “across cultural lines”), the capacity to understand that the feeling of something like, say, being an exile in America is not endemic to the experience of African-Americans alone, but also to Filipinos a la Carlos Bulosan, it would thus preclude thinking about community in terms of difference and instead favor a community founded on the ability to recognize these similar feelings as well as current and historical material conditions ( the common “struggle” that we all recognize).
Ayers, too, does not seem to suggest that his observations of Mr. B warrant thinking about community in terms of difference. To this point, the students’ poetry project, lyric in its content, is structured in a way that, ironically enough, cumulates in more homogeneity than in idiosyncrasies. The form of the poem is as follows: first, student write their first name as the first stanza, three adjectives about themselves for the second, then three short descriptions about things they love, hate, are fearful of, and hope to change, these comprising one stanza each, and finally they write their last name for the last stanza. But as different as these poems have the potential to become by virtue of the formal requirements, Ayer’s notes that “Everyone reveals extravagant dreams for a future that is surely shrinking before their eyes…And just as uniformly, everyone fears the almost inevitable: conviction, time in prison, death” (83). So while Christensen’s concept of community seeks to look beyond the assumed particularities of a racial experience as a means to build community via empathy, Ayer’s highlights how this community, Mr. B’s juvenile detention students, also come to discover their similarities through poetry, but it's through a recognition of the sheer futility of empathy that contemporary society and history at large has given to these young, imprisoned men in their position. That “the students feel the hold of history over their lives, live with ghosts and debts to be paid” attests to a notion that empathy as a means toward community formation is and has been mere lip-service to boys imprisoned, boys with the full recognition that they are excluded from participating in community and sharing in its riches—thus the longing for “fame, fortune, fantastic movements.” I want to ask if empathy has ever freed an imprisoned boy or, in the words of Brecht, “changed the world… improved relations among men…[or] shorten the age of exploitation?”
In following Redeaux, whom I believed to have the most compelling argument regarding community, we should ask what we as educators can do to unnerve our sentimentality and bolster a consciousness towards recognizing community as essentially composed of fault lines. Putting the problem in a light that, while it may be a truism to all of us who have been beleaguered with the liberal axioms of an English department, is complicated in its practice. So how do we move beyond situations where “we inflict wounds on our students that last longer than even Ellis’s physical scars? [and where] We do this every time we imagine our students to be broken and ourselves to be repairmen, every time we uncritically accept racist and ideologies, every time that we forget that these children are our children?” What do we do when we want to pursue our own individual endeavors in this Disneyland of commodities at the same time as when we want to change the materiality of conditions so that all may share in the richness of history? Do we recommend students to read certain books that address this tension? Should we just watch The Wire? I mean, has anything in the past decade been as poignant as that show in addressing issues of what it means to belong to a community?
Here’s the Brecht Poem:
a bed for the night
I hear that in New York
At the corner of 26th street and Broadway
A man stands every evening during the winter months
And gets beds for the homeless there
By appealing to passers-by.
It won't change the world
It won't improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation
But a few men have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway.
Don't put down the book on reading this, man.
A few people have a bed for the night
For a night the wind is kept from them
The snow meant for them falls on the roadway
But it won't change the world
It won't improve relations among men
It will not shorten the age of exploitation.
And here’s a clip from the Wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjPU-e0gztI
Chris, intense post! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with your last sentiment on Redeaux's proposal of what a community truly is. Is it possible that what we have learned about "community" through society and school is an inaccurate portrayal of what a true (realistic) community looks like? Merriam-Webster defines community as such:
: a group of people who live in the same area (such as a city, town, or neighborhood)
: a group of people who have the same interests, religion, race, etc.
: a group of nations
Perhaps it is none of these things at all; what do you think would be a better way to define it? Perhaps it is not really a group of people who 'live in the same area' or 'share similar interests' rather it is people who are from a multitude of places, with a multitude of interests, who must work together for a common good/goal of something. Perhaps this is too idealistic of a statement, however I'm interested in what others think.
Hey Chris-
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post-
First- The Wire is amazing.
Second-- "So how do we move beyond situations where “we inflict wounds on our students that last longer than even Ellis’s physical scars? [and where] We do this every time we imagine our students to be broken and ourselves to be repairmen, every time we uncritically accept racist and ideologies, every time that we forget that these children are our children?”" -- very moving. Communities may be "groups of people who live in the same area" or "groups of people who have the same interests," but simultaneously as they bring people together, they draw a thick border between themselves and others. Does the same barrier that exists between the Chicago PD and communities like Ellis' exist between teachers and students? I think so, in some situations. When teachers act as "repairmen." When they see themselves as separated from the classroom, from the students. As a teacher I am given power. But the classroom community can only be as strong as I am willing to relinquish that power, to remain level and identify with the students. Like Redeaux does. She states: "I do not locate myself outside my practice." This is paramount. I must constantly remind myself that, and reflect on my practices to ensure that they correlate with this idea. I must ask for student feedback about my practices, to ensure I'm not only hearing my voice being reflective.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteYour post was very intense and thoughtful. What caught my attention though was "we ought to think about how each author perceives this unification with respect to their position in society; how does community look to you when you speak in front of a chalk board, behind a desk, or behind bars?" People tend to judge a book by their cover. Most people would look at a person behind bars and say "that's a bad guy who did bad things" and look at a person behind a desk and say "that's a good person with a good job." People's actions usually speak for themselves, that is why we assume information based off what we see and what people do, but we do not actually know what they have been through or what they really do or did in the past. We need to be together as a community and accept the fact that there is not always going to be good all around us even though that is what we hope for. Like Amanda mentioned, she thinks that a border exists between the students and teachers even though we try to create a community between teachers and students, and I agree with her. I doubt that that that border will ever dissolve. Teachers usually do not live in the same neighborhood where their school is located at because even themselves would not feel safe or comfortable enough living there and that is the reality of where their students live.
Hey Chris,
ReplyDeleteAgreed, even though Chrisensen's teaching methods strive to "move[] from ideas to action, perhaps the most elusive objective in any classroom" it does seem that her lessons are all empathy and no activism (73). You provide a stellar example in the Brecht poem. In the 2nd stanza the poem says "A bed for a night won't change the world but at least a few men will be warm." The 4th stanza rearranges these lines to say "A few warm men in beds will not end the relations of exploitation that create shivering, homeless men in the 1st place." Side note: I wonder, btw, if you got this idea from Jennifer Ashton's nonsite essay? I take your point that empathy won't change the world. At the same time it seems a necessary prerequisite. Brecht too, as a teacher and poet, asks us to empathize in the 2nd stanza. The rearrangement of the 2nd stanza's lines into the 4th challenge us, and provides us with an example of how, to take the world as radically transformable... to move from the realm of "is" to "ought to be." Christensen stops at the "is" realm where the goal is for students to perform a "seriousness with which which [they] understand their lives" (72). This makes students' lives appear immutable to them. The next step might be to ask students why they think social conditions direct students to join gangs, discriminate against other cultures, etc. and challenge them to imagine what a better community might look like and what barriers prevent these communities from appearing.
Chris-
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your efforts in breaking down what a community really is, and the more I read, the more I kept hammering this idea in my head: a community is a very contradictory identification. Are people together? Or are they separate? Is the emphasis on sharing a space? Or sharing a culture? A race? Or is a community all of these things, and how can it be? Christenson's idea of empathy focuses on the differences between individuals who share a community and states that its belief system should be aware of and not ignorant to other peoples' struggles. In other words, until we walk in other peoples' shoes, we can only then empathize and gain an understanding of their situation. From there, we can reach a trust or common ground. I'm not sure if empathy is all it takes, just as I am not sure if that's a realistic goal. It's 2014 and these issues of difference have divided our country for years. How can we be expected to break down these barriers in a school year? How are we supposed to create a community of openness, empathy, and honesty without breaching one of the three? The larger, ideal goal would be to make this possible in every classroom community.
As everything, I guess this is just something we'll figure out soon enough.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteAs Jacki said, "intense post!" In response, I'd like to start by commenting on the poem first. It's an amazing poem, but I find myself conflicted and unsure of the exact message. Is it more so emphasizing that this man who gets beds for the homeless is in fact performing a meaningful act, or is it commenting on the alleged "futility" of his compassion? It is structured interestingly, and the repetitive lines are obviously charged with meaning. I do think that since it ends on the more cynical note, it could be an ultimately cynical mesage--but it does discuss the significance of "a few men have a bed for the night/for a night the wind is kept from them/the snow meant for them falls on the roadway." What is perhaps the best line, "Don't put down the book on reading this, man," tells us that this "book"--of what exactly I'm not sure, but most likely life, society, human suffering--is something to perpetually read, consider, and think about, and never to "close" with one belief.
I applaud your inclusion of this poem because of how relevant it is to the greater conversation about empathy that you have sparked here. I do not think a curriculum based on empathy is the end-all be-all solution to magically build respectful and healthy communities within classrooms. But as Drew said, it's a "necessary prequisite"--aka a damn good start. In no way is the man on the corner of 26th and B'way solving all the world's problems. But he alleviates the suffering for a few, if briefly, and that is critically important, even if it doesn't last. When students practice empathy by telling personal stories, they don't only share their own personal story, but have to relate it to the suffering of another person in history. This is mutually beneficial, as Christiansen says, in that "telling the story does give students a chance to empathize with the loss as well as share a piece of themselves with the class."
We cannot intervene in students' lives and change the larger structures that bind them and keep them "imprisoned." But dismissing empathy as a way to get students to connect to each other and to curriculum is in my opinion, deeply problematic. Students need some way to heal and express and emote and do it in a safe space. They can learn so much from each other and more about themselves, and they can be irrevocably changed, even if that is hard to measure or empirically analyze. There are some experiences I have lived or shared with others that have been indispensable to the growth of my character and my being. If I hadn't lived those experiences, I wouldn't be where I am now. That's how all humans are, including our students.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this post. What I like most about your argument is the way in which you critically indict the notion of empathy writing, “we should ask what we as educators can do to unnerve our sentimentality and bolster a consciousness towards recognizing community as essentially composed of fault lines.” Empathy is something I have always identified as the kind of unquestioned precondition for good teaching. It is the thesis of every single “’philosophy’ of education” I have written (and at this point in the program, believe me there have been plenty). Indeed, if our “gallery walk” post-it assignment in class the other night were a round of Family Feud, empathy or some synonym of it would have been the number one answer for what makes good teaching. Empathetic teaching has become an unquestioned truism to which I have been hypnotized by.
And yet, I of course still believe that empathy is crucial in the classroom. But what does a kind of empathy married with critical consciousness look like? Surely, it ain’t sentimental. How do we instill an ethic of empathy that is a) not “mere lip service” and b) works towards an unpacking of why we can say that these students are outside of a “community” and then, actively fighting against that reality?
Lastly, Christensen’s ethic of empathy, while surely good – we don’t want kids making fun of blind people right! – seems to smack of classroom management, good behavior, and control of the opinions uttered in the space of the classroom. Perhaps it is the narrative in which her essay takes, but the impression left on this reader was that the class was out of control and not idealistic and look how she fixed it! Empathy! Surely, the activism piece is missing. The students are nicer to each other though… Where do we go from there? And what, to Andrea’s point above, do we do if it takes us the entire year to get there?
Anyways. Fantastic post. I wish I had been better about time and could have given a more thoughtful response.
BTW--another fantastic clip from The Wire, which I agree is one of the greatest shows of all time...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1HUlTKvDUI
ReplyDelete