Embracing Change
I have taught brilliant students of color, many of them
seniors, who have skillfully managed never to speak in
classroom settings. Some express the feeling that they are
less likely to suffer any kind of assault if they simply do not
assert their subjectivity. They have told me that many
professors never showed any interest in hearing their
voices. Accepting the decentering of the West globally,
embracing multiculturalism, compels educators to focus
attention on the issue of voice. Who speaks? Who listens?
And why? Caring about whether all students fulfill their
responsibility to contribute to learning in the classroom is
not a common approach in what Freire has called the
“banking system of education” where students are
regarded merely as passive consumers. Since so many
professors teach from that standpoint, it is difficult to
create the kind of learning community that can fully
embrace multiculturalism. Students are much more willing
to surrender their dependency on the banking system of
education than are their teachers. They are also much
more willing to face the challenge of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the
narrow boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is
shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our
complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any
kind. Students are eager to break through barriers to
knowing. They are willing to surrender to the wonder of relearning and learning ways of knowing that go against the
grain. When we, as educators, allow our pedagogy to be
radically changed by our recognition of a multicultural
world, we can give students the education they desire and
deserve. We can teach in ways that transform
consciousness, creating a climate of free expression that is
the essence of education.
Adapted from hooks, b. Teaching to Transgress: A
Education as a Practice of Freedom. London/New York:
Routledge, 1994.
Read the highlighted sentence in the text above. The
cohesive device “since” can be substituted for: