Decolonising teacher, student relations

25 Sep, 2016 - 00:09 0 Views
Decolonising  teacher, student relations Socrates

The Sunday News

Socrates

Socrates

One of the major pitfalls of Western philosophy and education is that it is deeply ideological; it almost always has something to hide and to protect such that it becomes an exercise in concealing rather than revealing some truths.

As large philosophers as Socrates and his student Plato spent their lives believing and teaching that knowledge came from the gods and that only a select few human beings had the ability and the right to know. In a way, the Socratic philosophical era pioneered the colonial model of education that privileges the few educated people in society as elite companions of the gods who think on behalf of the rest of society as philosopher kings and queens. When, in reality every man and woman in society is capable of literacy, numeracy and intellection, given a chance.

Credit is given to Socrates for canonising the question and answer or interrogatory style of teaching and learning. Plato made famous the mode of dialogue and exchange as a technique of teasing out answers and unearthing truths. No matter how democratic and empowering the teaching and learning instruments of Socrates and Plato were, even those of other Western philosophers, they were educational tools embedded in a social and political system that believed that other people were born slaves and others were natural masters, a colonial and slavish world order.

In colonial missionary schools of the Global South, the teacher was a representative of God, feared and venerated, and the student a hapless native to be civilised by the missionary. It was a decolonial moment in 1968 when Brazilian philosopher, Paulo Reglus Neves Freire published the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a book that fleshed out a philosophy of education from the vantage point of the Global South. In the book whose translation from Portuguese to English by Myra Ramos appeared in 1970, Paulo Freire overturned and effectively decolonised the Socratic, Platonic and other methods of the colonial education system, especially the teaching and learning encounter, relations between students and their teachers, and the place of education and the school in larger society.

Left unchecked and undecolonised, relations between teachers and their pupils, supervisors and their students, can be very toxic, colonial and dangerous power and social relations that can do more harm than good. As usual, a multiplicity of Western and Eurocentric educationalists have since tried to adopt and adapt the pedagogy of the oppressed, to debunk it here and distort it there, to usurp and plagiarise it even, but due to its philosophical stamina and epistemic durability, and the fact that it is a philosophy that seeks to solve human problems and not to joke and jest, it has remained triumphant.

Teachers possess power in and outside the classroom. That power can be used to inspire learners, discipline them and motivate them for success, or it can be used to dominate them, crush their confidence, inject them with inferiority complex and bury their academic and intellectual careers forever.

The intellectual, academic and social influence that teachers have is a tool for construction or a weapon of destruction depending on whose hands it is in and how it is mobilised and deployed, in service or disservice to the learners. Many a brilliant and gifted person roam the streets today, as beggars and tramps, because they dropped out of school, failed or were totally discouraged because a teacher told them they were dull, they will come to naught and they are useless. Teachers can be that poisonous and destructive, finish off the spirit and the confidence of the learner, making education itself appear as punishment when as Paulo Freire insisted, it is liberation and humanisation of the previously disadvantaged and oppressed.

Teachers, in a decolonial context, should watch themselves, listen to their students and the students must watch their teachers, that the teacher does not say or do anything that should demotivate, discourage on inject inferiority into the minds of the students. A liberating and liberated climate of teaching and learning, free of fear and prejudice, is the first condition of a decolonial school.

A Tale of Two Supervisors

From South Africa and indeed Africa, Archie Mafeje is one example of a vigorous intellectual and rigorous academic. The writer of the famous article: The Ideology of Tribalism. He lived and died in the midst of scholarly controversies and debates.

He developed a combative and thorny manner of argument and caused as large scholarly figures in Africa, as Ali Mazrui sleepless nights. For his Masters Degree at the University of Cape Town in the apartheid South Africa of the 1960s, Archibald Boyce Monwabisi Mafeje was supervised by Monica Wilson, a leading white anthropologist. She had the courage to let fly Mafeje’s intellectual spirit, curiosity and courage. She gave him access to books and to scholarly networks and made him believe that the sky was the limit for him, even as blacks were suppressed during apartheid.

Together they jointly published articles and books as fellow scholars. Until his death in 2007, Mafeje refered to Monica Wilson either as Prof or Aunty, endearing and warm references, especially coming from Mafeje, who did not establish any reputation for politeness. After his graduation, on Monica Wilson’s recommendation, Mafeje joined Cambridge University in the UK for his doctoral studies under the supervision, this time, of Audrey Richards. Audrey Richards publicly wondered what all the fuss was about Mafeje.

She always got not only surprised but even irritated when Mafeje’s brilliance and excellence was mentioned in speech or in print, and she was sure to throw caveats and many buts and becauses about his intellect and work. If his writing was admired she condemned his speech, if his speech was adored she lampooned his writing. If he delivered a good seminar she asked about his conferencing, she built a new goal post after each and every academic goal Mafeje scored, eissh, Professor Audrey!

Audrey Richards prophesied that Mafeje would come to naught in his academic and intellectual career. When eventually Mafeje exploded out of Cambridge as a leading international anthropologist, it was inspite of and not because of Audrey Richards whose comments on Mafeje’s work were crushing indictments and humiliating expletives meant to immobilise than motivate him.

When negative comments on Mafeje’s work, even if it was subjective critique, Audrey Richards would relish them, go to town about them, throw a party, magnify and amplify them, and even laugh out loud with an “I told you so” condescending attitude. Audrey Richards did not protect Archie Mafeje’s feelings and intellectual ego, she bruised them, and within his earshot, she would complement less gifted students and prophesy their destiny of success, just to brutalise Mafeje, who took it all with amazing emotional intelligence. Students need to be emotionally equipped and fortified against such intellectual undertakers as Audrey Richards, who are good pall bearers of even the most promising careers.

The Egopolitics of Education

Out there in schools, colleges and universities students either have a Monica Wilson or an Audrey Richards for a teacher or a supervisor. The Monica Wilsons are liberating and liberated teachers and supervisors who motivate and promote their students to the skies themselves. Woo is unto those students who have an Audrey Richards for a teacher or a supervisor. An Audrey Richards has a fragile ego, lack of confidence and begins to academically and intellectually compete with own students instead of complimenting them.

This type of teacher and supervisor does not have the emotional literacy and numeracy to hear even his or her own student being complimented and encouraged; it is taken as a challenge. Under an Audrey Richards, the classroom or seminar room becomes a shrine where the teacher or supervisor must be worshipped. If the student is seen talking to another teacher or another professor, the assumption of the fragile Audrey Richards is that he or she is being discussed and condemned. This kind of colonial teacher and supervisor wants to turn students into disciples, not scholars.

Students must read, write, speak and teach the way he does, if they don’t then they will come to naught, he or she says, reproducing disciplinary decadence. He or she does not stop comparing students to him or herself, the teaching and supervision encounter is punctuated with “I” to the end. It might be in the character or personality of the teacher to now and again threaten students with failure, or tell them that they are incompetent or inadequate, whatever the reasons and circumstances, it is a colonial habit that makes the teacher a god and a student a native under divine judgement of the master.

Great is the teacher and supervisor who even brings out the hidden talents and potentials of even the humblest of students.

Greater still is that teacher or supervisor who can motivate and promote even those students that are different from and better than him or herself, and many are such students in the world.

True to Paulo Freire, education is a process of humanisation and liberation and in it both teachers and students should be subjects and none should be reduced to an object.

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic based in South Africa: [email protected].

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