WP1: The Education of Inclusiveness
It took me great effort to fit in my high school as an outsider. Since then, I had cultivated a vision to make my school more caring and inclusive. Using the famous Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s words, I consider other peers’ indifference as an invisible consciousness and “prescription”, thus a kind of oppression. To overcome the situation, I proposed teacher-student basketball games as a platform to develop friendships and grow caring spirits.
My middle school’s typical exam-oriented education and my outsider identity conflicted with the open-minded atmosphere of my international high school. Repetitively learning of the “prescribed” knowledge since primary school made me a reciting machine rather than a true learner (Freire 2014: 47). However, entering an international school managed by visionary foreign faculties provided me with a fresh perspective as well as difficulties to fit in. While most of my classmates had already known each other for years at the high school’s affiliated junior department, my inferiority complex also made me believe I was inherently lower than others (See more about inferiority complex in my WP3: Humbleness, Solicitude, and Independence). In the first few weeks, my peers barely cared for my loneliness.
In the meantime, irresistible feelings of inferiority also drove me to excel in a certain field so I could win others’ recognition then integrate into the school community. Based on my childhood experience of being poor, I could understand ordinary people’s diligent hardship and thus respect them as worldly experienced elders. Consequently, I gradually mastered at communicating and befriending people. Using such skills, I fortunately became familiar with the senior Sky who was the president of the basketball club. Sometime later, he recruited me to the club and introduced me to other schoolmates. From the basketball court, I first felt the sense of belonging, where I will soon cultivate the school’s caring atmosphere in return.
In the next semester, considering my passion and skills for organizing various activities, Sky promoted me as the club’s vice president. At the moment, I just wanted to make my school more inclusive for new students. Although I was left out, I did not want to treat others the same way. If reprisal and indifference are the answer to an unfavorable behavior, our aversion will be exhausting and endless. By contrast, it reminded me of the virtue of embracing others because authentic caring is unconditional. More specifically, one should cultivate a broad responsibility to care for others rather than merely show gratitude as a return to someone else’s kindness. To this end, I could not be more determined to bring a change to my school.
Also, I deeply realized the seriousness of lacking a supportive and inclusive school environment. Although no one deliberately abandoned or ignored me, their indifference is already an action and could be the worst enemy. As Guy Johnson, the Senior Director of Federal and National Networks for Partners and Children, stated in his article regarding school’s ignorance of students’ emotional development, “foster deep, positive, empathetic relationships that are culturally responsive and promote each student’s physical and emotional safety” is one of the five fundamental elements to cultivate a healthy mental state. (Opportunity Institute 2018). In my high school, apathy prevented new students like me to integrate, which could profoundly disappoint their “emotional safety” and expectation to establish friendships.
Moreover, indifference could even be a kind of oppression to some new students. According to Freire, “one of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the preservers consciousness” (2014: 47) In my school, if too many current students believe it is reasonably difficult for new outside students like me to fit in, they will grow a false “consciousness” to account for their indifference, which is the cause of oppression. Over time, it will form a “prescription” imposed on incoming outside students, which consistently isolates them. Such dehumanization “is a distortion of being more fully human”, and “it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity” (ibid, 44).
To solve this problem, “through transforming action [people] can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity” (ibid, 47). Therefore, I came up with a pioneering idea: a teacher-student basketball game, which would provide new students an opportunity to perform and acquaint themselves with the current students and teachers, thereby establishing a more inclusive campus environment. Actually, current students and faculties did not REFUSE to do anything, they just chose to be SILENT and APATHETIC, which was a decision as well. They did not realize our school needed an “orientation” like every western university does annually. Hence, I chose to ACT. I wanted to construct a platform to help my school break the “prescription”.
To get the game off the ground, I tried to persuade every individual to participate and listening to their voices to adjust the game setting. According to Freire, I was establishing a “dialogue” relationship to humanize the atmosphere. Also, “action on the side of the oppressed must be pedagogical action…with the oppressed” (2014: 66). Therefore, I need both new and current students to engage. Specifically, I recruited student players through social media and personal conversations, individually invited every teacher to participate, persuaded the school principal to referee, and produced a documentary out of drone shooting. Without a hitch, everyone was impressed and agreed to participate without hesitation.
Although the late-autumn wind blew throughout the playground, it was nothing compared to the audience’s warmth. After the game, all teachers and students tightly posed together and took a big picture; the atmosphere was one of joy and care. Since then, I had organized five such games and the principal had gladly promoted it as a school tradition.
Before leaving for college, I thought about inheritance. Not every new student has the courage to urge for changes as I did, nor do they have hardship experiences to communicate and befriend others. Thus, the caring spirit had to be continued by me. Having instructed a few younger students on cultivating inclusiveness and organizing activities, I offered them to undertake the club and pass on this legacy. The key of liberation is sustaining the caring spirit and inspire the new students of their situation. In Freire’s words, “the conviction of the oppressed that they must fight for their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientizando (raising awareness)” (2014: 67). Fortunately, it was a delight to hear more and more Sky has emerged and the “conscientizando” continues until now.
References
Freire, Paulo. 2014. Pedagogy of the Oppressed Thirtieth-anniversary edition. New York: Bloomsbury.
Johnson, Guy. 2018. “Ignorance or Deliberate Indifference? The Federal Commission on School Safety and “Rethinking Discipline.” Opportunity Institute. URL: https://theopportunityinstitute.org/blog/ignorance-or-deliberate-indifference
Zhu, Ray. 2019. Game 5. The Photography Club.
