Humanistic Teaching

An approach to learning English

Words fail me, or rather the ways that I know how to use words do. It's been a shocking week. Oh, what an inadequate sentence!  I thought I would just be stringing a few sentences together to round up and round off what I drew together last week. I thought I would mention how I was having difficulty with one mother who was quick to admonish and slap her child. I thought I would briefly discuss the research by University of New Hampshire professor Murray Straus that concludes that children who are spanked have lower IQs. I thought I would tie in some of the ideas for teachers presented in one of the books by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, How To Talk So Kids Can Learn. That's what I thought. But then I happened to come across a Truthout article by Henry A. Giroux about the pedagogy of school violence in the States and my jaw dropped. The article includes a video of a police officer attacking a special needs student because the student's shirt was out. The student is smashed into the floor with a "face down take down" technique which is banned in some US States because it has caused fatalities. Scratch that, killed people.

Of course, it must be a rogue cop, one apple gone bad. After all, the video is edited for dramatic impact. There's an unedited version that can be found here, and somehow that's worse. It shows people walking past as if the incident is as every day as talking a dog for a walk. It shows that far from being the action of one police officer there is a group of adults that act in what seems to be a very orchestrated way. It shows physical violence as routine and this is the thrust of the Truthout article. Schooling, itself, becomes a form of criminalisation.

Yet, distressing and surprising as the video is, it did nothing to prepare me for this week's real incredulity. I switch on the TV after a long day to catch the end of a news item. President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not going to write any more. I feel a sudden need to reread Nonviolent Communication: A language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg Ph.D. I'll end by simply asking you to read War And peace prizes by Howard Zinn.

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