According to Kumashiro’s Chapter 2 of commonsense, being a “good” student meant that your behavior conformed to whatever benefited the classroom. With the example of student M, we can see that a lot of teachers did not grasp and understand what it meant when a kid was struggling with behavior. It did not mean that a student was not smart or lacking social cues, we can actually see student M’s awareness when they ask if they have “been bad today?” This is because they saw the different behavior and reactions of the other kids around them, but even more so they were able to pick up on the teacher’s annoyance and lack of patience toward them. Being a “good” student was not defined by your ability to learn but rather your ability to conform and suppress your urges to move around, or talk and ask questions out of pure curiosity, at least for the hours you were inside the walls of the school.
The students that are privileged by this definition of a “good” student are the ones who have naturally good attention spans and the skill of being able to sit still and focus for a long duration of time. I remember from my own experience in elementary school there was always a group of roughly 4 students who were categorized as “bad.” They were always the class clowns, and the ones with the most high strung energy. On a moral scale of course they were not inherently “bad” kids, but the teachers treated them as such. The punishments for these behavioral actions were completely arbitrary, having timeouts in the corner or not being able to go play outside for recess. These only make the situation worse by adding to the student’s pent up energy while also imprinting the idea that they are “bad” and deserve to be punished for something they don’t have complete control over.
My grandmother attended Normal school in Saskatchewan to be a teacher and I know first hand from her stories that those teachers were not given the skills necessary to deal with students that had attention deficits. They did not know how to find a way to give them alternate instruction.
In our other reading we can see how the “good” student is shaped by historical factors because it highlights the prejudice towards people of colour. It assumes that other cultures’ educational systems were nothing in comparison to the white American way. It also teaches teachers that based on the colour of one’s skin you can automatically judge their personal background, geographical characteristics, and home life. This reading highlights the truly disgusting habits that teachers were expected to embrace and enforce.
Hello Nicole,
I appreciate you bringing up how students with different behavioural norms are still bright like their peers, but societal standards do not express them as smart. I appreciate the clarification there. Are there ways we can normalize a variety of behaviours as the norm? As well, thank you for sharing about your grandmother’s experience. It really gives us more insight into how past educators were taught and how real these past programs were.
Hi Nicole, I liked the way you shed light on the problematic definition of a “good” student and how it affects students who don’t fit into that mold. Do you think there any specific strategies or ways that teachers can use to better support these students in the classroom?