Teachers, Don’t Let Them Turn You Into Gatekeepers
by Jen Hurley
If I had a daisy for every time I heard someone despair over “unqualified students,” I’d be able to carpet the entire state of California in white and yellow. I heard it again today at a meeting where my department was urged to be “cautious” of offering college classes at the local adult school in case the students might be low quality. Administrators and state officials, wake up. We are all “unqualified” at something, even those of us who’ve had tremendous educational privileges. Education is the place where we gain access to new ideas, new information, new ways of being in the world. It is NOT a private garden where only the elite can enter.
The reality of teaching is this: Our students have not had equal access to education. They have not had equal access to good parenting, to stable households, even to basic needs such as food and shelter. And yet teachers are asked — rather, told — to hold everyone to the same standard, as if that were at all possible or even desirable. This is the lie at the heart of our education system.
Students from all backgrounds can thrive, but they certainly can’t thrive if they are given the message, explicitly or implicitly, that they don’t belong in a certain class, that they are “behind,” that they are not up to par. Nothing dampens a student’s desire to learn like the whiff of an authority figure’s disdain.
I’m teaching the classic freshman composition, aka Academic Reading and Writing, to a group of incarcerated students, some of whom do not have any high school education. The class is taught at the college level, in that the reading and writing assignments require tenacity and critical thinking. We talk to each other as adults, with respect for each other’s ideas and life experiences. Tragically, I encounter many students with active minds and deep wisdom who were turned off of school at a young age, perhaps due to the system’s obsession with tests, ranking, and obedience. Even sadder, I encounter students who’ve had virtually no education, from school or parents. I can’t fix their pasts. But I will not exclude any of them from the tent of education.
Those of us in education must be particularly wary of the word “standards.” This word always means somebody is being marked as lower than and made to feel that way. It’s true that some students do better than others and work harder than others, but do we really want education to only be for those people? Rather, I propose we meet students where they are, offering appropriate challenge and different levels of challenge for different students. To do this, we need smaller class sizes and more support for teachers. The way to fix education is not to exclude but to invite. We must trust in the power of humans’ natural curiosity. Most people enjoy learning, but not many people enjoy being made to feel not good enough.
If I ever did anything worthwhile as a teacher, it’s because I brushed off those messages that told me to gatekeep. Gates are the opposite of education. Education at its core is about opening gates in the world and in the mind. If you agree, send this message on to your favorite administrators and teachers.
