Students as real people

dadasy | 21 Septambra, 2006 19:05

Indro ary ny asa aroso voalohany. Nisy ity boky iray ity novakiako mikasika ny fanabeazana izy io. Indro ary arosoko eto ny fomba namintinako azy.

Sometimes, when people teach, the think they give an education for students to be followed, they think that they feed the students knowledges. This way of conceiving teaching and students is criticized and corrected by Rob Anderson, in his book students as real people. And he proposes that the students should be considered and taken as "real people."

Education should be a way for the students to know that they are ‘a person’. And through education, they should realize their personality or ‘person-ness’ according to the word of Rob Anderson. To be a person is not a fact that we were already obtained but an on going process. The person is to be built through education. Education should be a communication and more precisely an interpersonal communication. This interpersonal communication has to be practiced between the teacher and the students first, and among the students after.

First between the students and the teacher: there should be a dialogue. Dialogue is the foundation of the communication in education. To dialogue is to listen to each other and to find a common meaning in what the two discuss about. Even if there is no common meaning which is found, the important is that each one speaks and listens. If it is only the teacher who speaks and he does not want to listen, there is no communication, there is no dialogue. And that means that there is no process of education. In education, the teacher is supposed to help the students to build their ‘person-ness’ in founding between them a true relationship. Teacher has to recognize that students have the capacity or the ability to grow up, to change and to realize themselves as a real person.

Secondly, when the students are well understood and helped to be a person, they have to recognize that this process of education that they received from the teacher should be applied among them. Each one of them has to affirm that the other student is a person like him. So there should be a communication among them, that is, they have to dialogue, to speak to each other and especially to listen. They should recognize that their self realization as a person through education is not only from their interaction with the educators but also through the contact which exists among them.

And finally, the one that help the self realization of a person is life itself. Life, here, is to be understood as the result of our daily interaction with people. And here, the self realization is not only for the students but also for the teachers, the educators. Rob Anderson says that through emotions (anger, irritations…) or situations (crises, confusion…) we can learn significant things for ourselves and for the others. That shows that education is not limited for the students but it also reaches the sphere of the educators.

For everyone who is involved in education, teachers, educators and students, the key point for it to be successful is listening. "To listen" takes a great part and an important one in the dialogue. To listen includes ‘to hear’, ‘to understand’ and ‘to be open’ that is ready to be accessible by the idea of the others. If someone has already an idea in his / her mind and thinks that it is the only one which is true; if he/she just wants to apply it without taking into consideration of what the others think and say, this one cannot listen.

I see that book worthy to be read because it gives a guideline for all educators to improve their way of conceiving the students. And can join the Jesuit way of educating which targets the best in all the dimensions of human being (intellectual, physical and spiritual).