The “Good” Student

What does it mean to be a “good” student according to the commonsense?  Which students are privileged by this definition of the good student?  How is the “good” student shaped by historical factors?

To be a “good” student, according to the commonsense, is a student that is able to succeed through traditional teaching and learning styles.  In chapter 2 of Kumashiro’s book, Against Common Sense, Kumashiro shares his experience of a student who does not respond well to traditional methods.  “For me, M’s behaviour was a sign that I was not being an effective teacher, that I was not reaching M, and therefore that M was not learning and becoming the kind of student that I desired.  It was not that M did not want to learn or was unable to learn.  Rather, there was something about what it meant to learn in a traditional classroom that did not work for M, and M’s way of communicating that mismatch played out as ‘misbehaviour” (pg. 20).  All too often this happens where a student does not respond well to a traditional teaching style and the students is labelled as “unteachable” or a “problem child”.  Instead of trying to find a solution to the problem, the student gets the blame placed on them and they are largely forgotten about. 

The privileged students are obviously the ones that do respond well to a traditional style of teaching and learning, but it runs deeper than that.  The Canadian education system is largely based on a European, white perspective, and even though Canada is a large, multicultural country, the system has largely stayed the same way for many decades.  It would be unfair to say that every student in Canada is on an even playing field when much of the system is based on a completely different perspective then what many students are accustomed to.  Marginalized groups, like First Nations people for example, are at a huge disadvantage compared to white students when they are in a traditional, European classroom because that style of teaching and learning is the exact opposite of the teaching and learning style used in First Nation cultures.

“In this classification no account is taken of uncivilized peoples, since education with them consists almost exclusively in the training the body for war and the chase.  Their education is this too primitive in its character to bring it within scope of our present undertaking” (pg. 8).  This quote comes from an 1886 book called A History of Education, written by F.V.N Painter.  This quote sheds some light on how our education system came to be dominated by a Eurocentric, white ideology.  When the European countries colonized other nations, they believed they were vastly superior to the people they came across.  They believed that their way of educating was the only right way and that the only people worth educating were those with a white skin tone.  Now, obviously the education system today is not as discriminatory as it once was, but it is still largely based on a European perspective.  We have a long way to go before we can consider our education system inclusive of all groups.