McNeil

The first section of this article jumped out at me, due to the fact that it strongly correlated with the article I read for last week’s class. For the second week of March my mother found an article about a young teacher who was temporarily fired for speaking out against the president. In this week’s assigned article, teachers were asked why they did not present all of the knowledge they had on economic and political information. Many teachers avoided speaking out about what’s going on in the government for fear that the class would become out of control if they knew about the injustices that occurred. “Their patterns of knowledge control were, according to their own statements in taped interviews, rooted in their desire for classroom control.” This in turn took away from not only the students but the teachers as well.

 McNeil labels it as “negotiations of efficiencies”. This is the idea where teachers look at the knowledge they have and then from there, they decide what to put at risk in the classroom. The information they are teaching then is not a reflection of the teachers knowledge rather their skill on classroom control. When knowledge is presented as a control factor I do not see how learning can have much of an effect on either side. As the article continues McNeil mentions that students did not buy their teachers lack of knowledge on a subject, this lead to a decrease in the classes motivation to learn.
After reading this article I was very upset at McNeil’s findings and it made me extremely discouraged as a future educator. Was I going to be a teacher that taught in terms of how I could control my students? Was I going to avoid the hot button topics because I would be too tired to deal with the effect? It seems very easy to fall into this defensive teaching mode. Everyone seems to be happy when the classroom is under control, so happy that they are not questioning whether or not the student is actually learning anything challenging or valuable. I feel that defensive teaching in some avenues is a necessary evil, many times you have to teach safe to avoid failure; in your students, you, and  the school. This is why my personal article was so important to me. Mr. Bennish stepped outside of defensive teaching and taught what he felt his students needed to know. Educators should not avoid talking about topics for fear that our students will become cynical, at least they are learning. How can we expect our students to think critically in college if we don’t challenge them in high school.