Teaching and Learning: Not a Parrot in a Cage
This semester in the IPS Foundations of Social Justice course, students began the semester by thinking about what it means to teach and learn. They were challenged to not only think of themselves as students or learners, but also as teachers who will share the knowledge they learn as they practice social justice in their communities. This week we’re featuring some of their reflections on teaching and learning at IPS.
Many people praise the unique capability of the parrot to reproduce faithfully different sound, even of human beings. My education, in most cases, expected me to memorize and repeat information uploaded into my head by the teacher. In general the pedagogy applied by my schools system did not instill personal and social transformation. I deal here with a rare occasion that transformed me and how it is relates to our course readings.
The image of parrot is a good symbol of for my education as a “recording machine”. Most of the time in primary, high school and at university in DR Congo, a student is required to read, memorize, and reproduce – without mistake – volumes of books, which often are dated from the last half of the last century. This education is a colonial heritage, and it has never undergone any major change since it was designed. The system never intended to form independent persons capable of transforming society. The intention of the designers of the educational system to which I was exposed was not to foster a critical mind but to prepare people who will fill the gap in the colonial administration.
In this regard, my experience in this area is similar to bell hooks’ experience after the racial integration period: ‘The banking system of education (based on the assumption that memorizing information and regurgitating it represented gaining knowledge that could be deposited, stored and used at a later date) did not interest me’ (bell hooks 1994, 5).
The learning experience that deeply transformed me happened in a workshop prior to an internship experience in South Africa. During this meeting, I was expecting the speaker to lecture us on a set of methods, attitudes, and formulas to say to people, much likemy previous educational experiences. On the contrary, he talked only for fifteen minutes, and what did he say? “You are all that these people out there need. They need your compassion, your energy, your creativity, your intelligence – and your silence, if words are not enough or if you don’t understand the local language (this was my case). After these few words, the group was set to start the experience.
I was shocked and disappointed with the speaker. I asked many people wondering if that is all that he had to tell us. I became very insecure because he shared so little information. But when I arrived in the terrain, people didn’t come with problems related to philosophy or highly disputed theological topics. They came with daily living situations: unemployment, hunger, and sickness; the stigma of HIV/AIDS, of having been raped, of drug addiction. Confronted by these existential problems, neither words nor theory was enough. What was most important was simply being present. It is then that I understood the relevance of the speaker’s words, his simplicity and lack of an authoritative tune. I understood that I am the first asset needed in that context – not an encyclopedic knowledge, but my wholeness. This experience changed my view on what the world is expecting from me: to be present not only with my head but my whole person. I related this newfound understanding with my faith experience. This is exactly what Jesus professed in coming to stay with us:
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God’ (Hebrew 10:5-7).
God made me in His image with freedom and free will. Why then should I be imprisoned by a ‘banking system’ education? These readings made me aware of the disastrous effects education based only on memorization has had on my life. It prevented me from believing in myself. Instead I trusted more in the “information” received. Now I was beginning to understand my discomfort with the shortness of the instructor’s presentation. My reaction was the consequence of my education background which Paulo Freire called “banking system”. This system produces:
Intellectuals who memorize everything, reading for hours on end, slaves to the text, fearful of taking a risk, speaking as if they were reciting from memory, fail to make any concrete connections between what they have read and what is happening in the world, the country, or the local community”(Freire 1998, 34).
I want to regain my dignity, the right of being the primary agent of my formation and transformation. God does not desire sacrifice or burnt offerings. He desires me. He desires a human being, He gave me a body. Through critical pedagogy, I am empowered, my capacities are valued, and I am challenged to challenge the world where I live. I fulfill my destiny, which in St Iranaeus’ words is God’s glory.
The parrot is admired for its capacity of reproducing sound and its place apart from the forest is in the cage. But I am a free man. Not made to live in a cage. My place is in the heart of human failures, struggles and conquests. That is why I would like to forgive my previous school systems, which caged me and made me a dominated person who is ‘crushed, diminished, and converted into a spectator, [maneuvered] by myths which powerful social forces have created’ (Amsler 2013, 70). I ought to follow the example of bell hooks and Sharon D. Welch, who have constantly reflected on their educational heritage and have found creative ways to make difference in history.
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Gauthier Buyidi, SCJ is a first-year MASJCD student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who seeks to place faith, poverty, justice, peace, development, reconciliation, and conflict resolution in dialogue with one another, particularly in the context of his home country.