{"id":5176,"date":"2015-10-24T12:46:03","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T20:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ross\/?p=5176"},"modified":"2015-10-17T12:59:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T20:59:27","slug":"masterslave-questions-for-teachers-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ross\/2015\/10\/masterslave-questions-for-teachers-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Master\/Slave questions … for teachers (and others)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rich Gibson, guest blogger, presents\u00a0some starter questions that few teachers are willing to ask in serious ways.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>What is it to be free, fulfilled, and confident that you will be able to meet your human potential?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Are we free? Are we free at work, at school, at play? If we are not free: What would we need to know, and how would we need to know it, in order to be free?<\/p>\n

Are there people among us who appear to be much more free than others? If so, what is it that makes them different? What do they have in common, worldwide?<\/p>\n

Who is less free? What elements do they have in common?<\/p>\n

Is freedom achieved through isolation, or friendly connections with other people?<\/p>\n

If we are not free, in part because we are isolated from each other, often in ways that we do not see (the normalcy of segregated schooling), then what might we do to be more free?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These questions rise from the Critique of Tyranny. This critique has been applied to every society, ever since the first food surpluses made inequality possible, and it became possible to make an argument that separation from others might be a good thing\u2013in contrast to early societies where those who behaved the most collectively survived longest and best. The critique was the interrogation of domination that, in ideas, forged the US revolution. It is absent from most social studies textbooks.<\/p>\n

The Critique of Tyranny leads to a question that can be asked of any society\u2013to judge it: How does this society treat the majority of its citizens, invariably the workers, or slaves, troops, i.e., the common citizens, over time?<\/em><\/p>\n

This reasonable question sweeps aside the notion that poisons conservative forms of postmodernism, which insist that there really is no rational way to judge any society, that one society or social movement or idea might be as good as the next, that all is mere viewpoint and, at the end of the day, maybe Mussolini was not such a bad guy after all.<\/p>\n

Are teachers willing to ask these questions to students in their classrooms, not of abstract distant societies, but of their condition inside school? My experience is that most teachers are not willing to seriously pose the issue, in fear of lack of control.<\/p>\n

Psychiatrist Robert Kaye says students in the world’s classrooms are not free, using a metaphor that suggests that compulsory attendance laws make them “incarcerated.” This would be a good place to start. Are we here because we want to be here?<\/p>\n

Indeed, many teachers will insist that they live in a free society. But they will also agree that they cannot probe the question of freedom in school, or really speak their minds. The Bill of Rights, for example, stops at the door of most work places.<\/p>\n

Most teachers are not free to interrogate the key issues of life:<\/p>\n