BATS, institutions, and POC

How do educational institutions function in relation to class, race and gender? Sprague explores how educational institutions have historically been used to reproduce existing social and economic inequities, forcing lower class workers (that tends to include a large number of POC) into routine jobs that require a basic/minimal skill set. Compare this to upper and middle class children that are taught management and leadership skills and are encouraged to have a diverse background of knowledge from a liberal education that included things like history, government, English, etc. Schools follow a similarly model of efficiency that corporations due, because oftentimes, school reform movements are funded by corporate powers (p. 6).

As teachers, it’s important we ask ourselves: what should the role of educational institutions be? Closer analysis reveals that whatever your answer is, it is probably failing to do so to at least some parts of the population. That is how power functions! It would not make sense for a ruling elite class to develop an educational system for lower classes to “perceive social injustices critically” (Freire, pedagogy of the oppressed, p. 102).

Sprague argues that education should be reconceived as a “process of active dialogue and consensus building” (p. 7). Because of institutional constraints, there’s not a lot we can do as TA’s to prevent being “cast in the role of technicians who manage classrooms and implement ‘teacher-proof’ curricula designed by others” (p.8). To get more specific, how do teachers constraint/exert influence over students in the classroom in the face of resistance? Sprague argues that research should be focused on who deserves to have power over students, who decides how that power is used and how students and teachers can be sensitized to alternatives to power. This is because researchers currently do not consider race, culture and class when classroom power is exercised. How power is negotiated with POC of color, for example, has historically been used to oppress and stifle minority voices. Personally, as an educator for communications/comm studies, I will be careful about how BATS (behavior alternating techniques) are used in my classroom, so that voices that students didn’t know they had, can be heard. I consider it my responsibility to make underperforming students shine by the end of the semester, and to hopefully have some sustained influence on their life, since I know first-hand how life changing a teacher can be.

Sprague, J.  (1993). Retrieving the research agenda for communication education:  Asking the pedagogical questions that are “embarrassments to theory.”  Communication Education, 42, 106-122.