engagement

Fresh out of a university held in high regard – and famous for its protests – I craved a certain standard in an individual’s politics. I wanted to know their position on this or that Marxist thinker, or what Ambedkarite feminist zine they were reading. I wanted friends who were edgy, intersectional and radical, even as they went about earning their livelihoods in the utterly corporatised urban market.

But even my artist friends fell short of my “revolutionary” ideals. The frequent debates – okay, shouting matches – I had had with my parents over the patriarchal, Brahminical order once rang as earnest as a coming-of-age novel, but I was now of “adulting” age. I had to coexist with people outside my newfound circle of artists. The horror!

I needed to shed the logocentrism of academic thought and become someone that does not differentiate – in an assembly-line like manner – thought from action.

At first, I resisted. I cringed when fellow teachers said, “Boys are always so distracted!”, or “What did Mummy cook for you today?”

Their politics is non-existent, I would think, and work myself into a tizzy. Are we ever going to raise a generation that is truly gender-inclusive and egalitarian? I was too embroiled in the seriousness-of-revolution to see that what I really wanted was a world where everyone thought and acted like I did.

Slowly divesting myself of the impulse to “correct” the adults around me, I became privy to everyday wonders. The preschool where I worked revealed an intimacy that eludes most male-dominated workspaces: coworkers talked freely of their pregnancies and difficult teenagers.

Meanwhile, I recalled how conversations at university had turned dour – how I rolled my eyes at those whose politics was not as crisp, whose aesthetics not as refined, as the slick-yet-grounded public intellectual I had hoped to become.

Also read: An Epidemic of Unconscious Art

Now I reconsider this wordy model of collective action – intellectual snobbery only makes people feel guilty and ashamed, and not supported in larger politics. A friend shared this brilliant essay in which the late Mark Fisher reminds us of

“this grim and demoralising pass, where class has disappeared, but moralism is everywhere, where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent.”

Given the scourge of police violence rocking the front pages today, I can’t help but extrapolate “class” to mean race, religion, caste… As a non-black non-American, how much can I say about race? As a cis woman, how can I envision the feminist world I want without echoing my childhood hero, whose tweets over the last few months have, sadly, clarified that she is a TERF?

As an English-speaking, savarna woman, how can I speak to the casteist reality that I most certainly continue to propagate? If I must educate anyone, it has to be my own self: I need to read and read and listen and listen, because only then I will be able to amplify without a show of intellectual muscle (or a spectacle of self-victimisation).

Recently, something pricked my resolve to listen. Someone asked me why Zoom’s reaction emojis have so many colours. “For some racial diversity,” I said, trying to hide the volcanic surge of #BlackLivesMatter babble threatening to erupt out of my skull.

“So someone from Africa can say ‘thumbs-up’,” laughed another person, making my skin crawl. They didn’t say that “flesh tint” (remember your oil pastels?) represents the spectrum of human skin colours; they also didn’t mean that all dark-skinned people are African, or that Indians are all the same shade of brown. And yet, had they considered racism and colourism – both of which are rampant in India – they might have measured their words.

Maybe a teacher who is invested in a gender-equitable home will not ask what your mummy cooked, but who cooks your lunch. But would they even be invested in dismantling a power structure, especially if they work in a “good” school that pays well, finally making teaching a viable career?

When I came back home after Jawaharlal Nehru University, I sought people with progressive politics. Four years later, I scratch my head at the very possibility of an individual politics: retweets? Participatory action? Union strikes?

Also read: The Lure of the Subculture of ‘Dark Academia’

But like most millennial Indians born roughly around the 1991 economic reforms, I trundled into the workforce when private organisations already had a firm grip on our economy and lifestyles. The market is open; the world is your oyster – but trade unions are undoubtedly on their way out, and employers do not want them around. You don’t do “politics” as an employee because the corporate structure simply doesn’t allow you to belong to a collective.

Instead, it furthers the myth of the private individual – think “confidential” agreements rather than union-approved salaries; think insulated offices where you can only speak about the management in whispers, and not in a legitimised forum that looks out for your collective interests.

If you stand to gain, why bother about anyone else? Isn’t this what we have borrowed from the American dream – work hard, earn your material wealth, and shake your head at those who don’t? If someone gets sacked, it’s a pity; no more. And so it becomes immensely desirable, this exclusive-access travelator, which takes you noiselessly from private school to university to job, while those with heavier bags are left to lug them the same distance.

No need to participate in politics, which is for gundas and wayward students anyway. You emerge squeaky-clean and “apolitical”, proud of an illusive state of neutrality that masks your underlying complicity in a system that literally places your net worth in your productive capacity.

In the hope for a breakthrough, I return to Mark Fisher, who reminds us that

“[w]e need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other.”

The virtual “public” space of social media allows several of us to believe that we have become activists, enabling us to level moralising accusations against our “silent” friends. But ours is the harder work of recognising that political praxis is polymorphous.

We must go beyond our textbooks and back into our living spaces; we must free ourselves of the guilt and superiority of language; and we must certainly laugh at our failures in order to look ourselves – and our aspirations – in the eye.

Anishaa Tavag is an independent dancer and editor based in Bangalore.

Featured image credit: author provided

Classroom management is consistently seen as a source of stress for beginning teachers. It’s also one of the main reasons cited for teachers leaving the profession.

So, it’s no surprise teachers try to use classroom management strategies that appear to be effective at changing problematic student behaviour.

Group, or collective, punishment is one such approach. Collective punishment in schools is when a group of students, for example a whole class or a whole grade, is punished for the actions of a few.

Common examples include minutes being taken off recess or lunch break if a class is noisy, or the whole school being banned from using the playground if it’s too messy.

While group punishment is used in Australian schools, it is unfair and unlikely to improve behaviour – so why is it still acceptable in most education department policies?

Why do people use collective punishment?

Collective punishment appears to be immediately effective in promoting compliance. For instance, making the whole grade pick up rubbish instead of having free time is likely to result in a clean yard, and probably less rubbish the next day.

All punishments rely on the idea the experience imposed by the teacher will be unpleasant enough to condition the students to modify their behaviour in the future.

Behaviourists first used this technique successfully with rats and other animals in the 1960s. Behaviour modification strategies were then adopted into classrooms in various forms and are still used extensively today.

As well as the idea of punishment modifying behaviour for individuals, collective punishment may be seen to be even more effective due to peer pressure. Collective punishments take some of the heavy lifting from the teacher and place it on the peers to impose social sanctions.

No one likes the kid who takes away their lunchtime.

Another reason teachers might use collective punishment is, ironically, to promote a stronger sense of cohesion in the class. The idea is that by the whole group taking responsibility for each individual’s actions, the group will be brought closer together.

This is a common strategy in sports and the military. In a classroom situation, the theory is that the whole class may bond and will accordingly act more responsibly in the future.

Also read: My Classroom Was Sexist and Undemocratic – And I’m a Product of It

Why is collective punishment a bad idea?

While we might see initial compliance from collective punishment, there are two main reasons why this strategy should be dropped. First, it’s morally questionable and second, it’s unlikely to produce more positive behaviour in the long run.

The idea a group should be responsible for the actions of an individual is fundamentally at odds with the theories of individual responsibility in western, liberal societies. Legally and morally, each individual has ownership for their own actions and must bear the consequences of those actions individually.

On a more basic level, it is not fair or reasonable to punish one child for the actions of another. Both of these moral concerns would not be acceptable in wider society, so why would they be acceptable in a school environment?

Second, there is now clear evidence punishments are not effective in improving problematic behaviour.

Research suggests punitive responses actually increase future problematic student behaviour. A student often misbehaves when they feel disengaged and disengagement can come from feeling excluded from peers and teachers.The negative peer pressure associated with collective punishment compounds the likelihood of further social exclusion exacerbating the transgressing student’s disengagement.One imagines this would especially be the case for students being punished for something they didn’t do.

Also read: ‘Education is Supposed to Enlighten, Not Frighten’, Says a High School Teacher

What other options do teachers have?

Teachers mainly use collective punishments when students are disruptive such as when the class is noisy, or students aren’t completing work, dropping rubbish and talking out of turn.

Because such behaviour happens mostly when students are disengaged, the first thing schools can do is actively promote engagement. Engagement includes students’ sense of belonging, enjoyment in class and the value they place on education.

Ways to promote engagement include prioritising individual student well-being, explicitly designing classes to be interesting, and creating a safe and enjoyable learning environment. If a student wants to be at school, he or she is much more likely to behave well.

Teaching practices such as universal design for learning (which includes giving students various ways to acquire knowledge), or inquiry based learning (where students are helped to make meaning out of what they learn), and cultivating an inclusive, positive school climate, may result in fewer behaviours that come from disengagement.

When disengaged behaviours do occur, teachers need to implement strategies that don’t further disengage students, such as rule reminders or quiet chats. These strategies should be tailored to the individual students to address the underlying causes for the behaviour – which may be something outside of the student’s control.

After all, it is possible the reason behind the misbehaviour was a previous collective punishment.

Jeffrey Thomas, Lecturer in Behaviour Management, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Featured image credit: Flickr