Lorena González Preconcepts to learn english

For my thesis project I don't have a research question, but I would like to work on a critical pedagogy issue, focused on the limitations students have for being in a good predisposition to learn English, identifying what are the factors that may lead to lack of motivation in class, pointing out their social context as the basis of some negative behavior one could identify in the classroom, as the lack of discipline, for example.

Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Seminario Interdisciplinar VIII

Lorena González Penagos

Cod: 20082165027

Possible thesis project issue to work on:

Power relationships among teacher and students in the English class

It is interesting to research about the power relations among the teacher and students in an English class; taking into account society is divided in social classes. Ruling class has a particular ideology that is taught and reproduces in all spheres of thinking and society organization. School is one of the ideological state apparatus that instill moral values, insights, behaviors, patterns that guide society and that are reproduce in schools. Students learn to follow those guide lines and this is shown in the classroom and the different relationships that exist among students that at the end are relationships of oppression in all kind of levels.

Mariategui (1970) states that the current educational system is based on the idea of secular schools, in which the objective is to educate hard working people and that follow the crowds without questioning. The result of that is masses lack of individual freedom, autonomy, critical thinking, and dissent because school is just a suffocating barrack, reducing humanity to a submissive flock  that does not know how to think without following the sign and the will of the dominant class. Students go to school alienate themselves and continue the pattern that society gives them through the culture, like that idea that men are superior to women. In Karen Gallas study sometimes I can be anything power, gender and identity in primary schools this gender situation affect the power relationship’s among students. Male students most of the time are the ones who exert control over women and established and authoritarian figure in the classroom, their goal is to be superior to others, either by controlling the dynamic of interaction or by withholding participation (Gallas, 1998),  affecting how others act which relates to academic performance since some students feels isolated in the classroom.  Situations that we can see in our culture and is transmit in the mass media for example:

 In power in the classroom: how the classroom environment shapes student’s relationships with each other and with concepts research by Lindsay L. Cornelious. Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl. They present three manifestation of power that could be found in any interaction and relationship in the classroom. One can be related to the gender union that is partisanship. It describes relationships of power among students that can develop through their interaction with concepts and with each other. Preexisting relationships among students can influence these lines of solidarity (Cornelious., 2004). Another manifestation of power is the ownership of ideas. The idea of ownership will influence the relation that students have to others partners. Knowing which areas of knowledge belong to some people more that others  becomes a central determinant of the kind of learning in which children will engage  (Goodnow, 1990). The last manifestation of power is the persuasive discourse. It relates the idea that certain ways of communicating can in themselves affect the relationships of power among people. Use of a persuasive discourse to convince limits students’ power. These kinds of manifestations of power relationships are the result of as Mariategui said (Enseñanza única y enseñanza de clase 1970) the lack of freedom of teaching and the crisis of school which is a moral crisis from students to teachers and so on is more broadly a political crisis, so it is a mayor error to analyze the issue of power relationships as some symptoms or isolated behaviors with no relation to a bigger structure, that’s why even feudal ideas are nowadays taught in the classroom an it is a bigger mistake and  a contradiction because It goes against historical development, an there is no logic in following that kind of patterns and guidelines. That’s why when Freire in Cartas a Quien Prentende Enseñar he mentions the urgent necessity that we as teachers need to understand students roles and the different interaction that may appear in classroom among them reproduced by the ideological state apparatus. 

The author Castillo Rios did a research in which he analyses the Chinese education in the 70’s and from that it is relevant to point out the statements that Chinese people propose as the very base of the problem totally related with the power relationships in the classroom and the low performance of students, they said that not all children are equal in the learning process. Some of them have been private of quality education, expressions like accumulate, solid, safe secure, that is accumulation of knowledge, students are mediocre, they fall into bullying acts, oppression towards women is present in any given classroom, an so students are locked into a room all the year and they just learn outdated issues from past centuries, and so they become stupid’s beings, education is apolitical and then students do not reflect upon their situation, their role and behavior in society.