Education as a Relationship

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Education as a Relationship

In what ways do the teacher and the student become united in the average classroom? The teacher might often be biased towards this or that group or individual. The students might be unmotivated and lazy, belligerent to the teacher no matter how much effort is expended on their behalf. So why then, do we try? Why is education the fundamental building block of any successful society? Education is the viaduct of understanding, and without understanding, society quickly degenerates into a socially darwinistic survival of the fittest. Education might be an imperfect vehicle at best, but it is all we have, and therefore it has become something that we must put effort into improving. All this rests on the precarious relationship held between the student and the teacher.

The student and teacher must work to abolish preconceived notion. The teacher must learn to look past figures, attitudes, and clothing styles they might find to be very alien and negative. They must be willing to challenge the student to discover for themselves the validity of their learning, and never underestimate or dismiss a student’s capacity to comprehend. At the same time, the student must learn to grow beyond his or her own background. Their origins might define who they are, but backgrounds should never inhibit the ability to see the value in an opposing viewpoint. In Mike Rose’s “Lives on the Boundary,” he states, “We are in the middle of an extraordinary social experiment: the attempt to provide education for all members of a vast pluralistic democracy.” (Rose, 117) The experiment he talks about is continuous. It’s taking place in every institute of education in our country and in the world, and these...

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...e their background. Rose said, “At heart, we’ll need a guiding set of principles that do not encourage us to retreat from, but move us closer to, an understanding of the rich mix of speech and ritual and story that is America.” (118) There can be no more goal worthwhile than the increase of understanding in the educational system, and no greater cause that we could dedicate and commit ourselves to. Will America work harder for education? That is a question entirely up to each one of us, and a decision to be made every time we step in a classroom. Like the choir from the beginning of this piece, the quality of the experience will depend solely on the quality of our balance and perseverance.

Works Cited

Rose, Mike. “Lives on the Boundary” The Presence of Others. Ed. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Boston: Bedford, 2000, 105-119.

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