Why My Students Don't Come First in My Classroom

This post may not make me very popular with some of my teaching brethren.

If you've followed this blog for any period of time or had many conversations about books with me, then you know that I am a voracious C.S. Lewis reader. I am by no means an expert, but I attempt to widen my exposure to his writings each year, reading some texts for a 2nd and 3rd time, others for the first. If I had a time machine, I would be hard-pressed to find a better location to visit than mid-20th century England; and my first order of business would be buying C. S. Lewis a beer and asking if we could hang out for a while. I'd certainly let him know that Tolkien and his other fellow Inklings would be a welcome addition to our conversation as well. I imagine that would be a pretty good day.

Most times when reading Lewis I learn so much, watching him meticulously sort through his worldview logically, weaving point by point in his non-fiction; or imaginatively, one mythical creature at a time, through his fiction. In others, though, I find in his writing the perfect words for ideas or beliefs that I hold but that I could only whisper of on my own. It is such a time as this that prompts this blog post.

I happened upon C.S. Lewis well into my adulthood, so I had taught English for many years before ever reading his works. In some passages I read this week from Alister McGrath's If I Had Lunch With C.S. Lewis, though, I found an educational ally in Lewis and his philosophy.

McGrath details what Lewis, a long time instructor himself, believes about the purpose for education:

"Lewis thinks of education as an 'enlargement of our vision,' . . . a way of rescuing us from our own limitations. . .  Education is about changing us - helping us realise that we are not always right, and that we can gain a deeper and better grasp of reality by experiencing the world the way others do."

In these words I found reason for why I do what I do in my classroom. 

I often find myself running somewhat counterculture to the current trends in education.  A buzz word now, and at many other times cyclically throughout the history of American education thanks to John Dewey, is "student-centered education." Today's educational world is all about student choice. Students should choose what texts interest them and read those; their research is based on what they want to explore. We are encouraged to use more and more technology to meet students at their level, where they are comfortable, and to provide them choice in how they want to display their learning. We are told that "relevance" is the key to student engagement; we must connect to their immediate world and make all learning relevant to them where they are now.

I must confess a desperate loathing for the "student-centered" philosophy. And Lewis provides the perfect explanation for why.

My students do not come first in my classroom; their opportunity to be far more than they are now does. I hope they read a hundred books about what interests them on their own time. But I'm going to ask them to read books that they wouldn't choose during their educational time, books that require them to see the world differently, books that ask them to weigh their ideas and beliefs against the sharpening iron of time and history and people with different experiences than them. I want in their hands literature that shakes and shatters their worldview, requiring them to piece that worldview back together with glue and tweezers and a magnifying glass, connecting fragments of their past with some new pieces they didn't know existed.

I don't get worried about meeting them where they are, for I fear leading them to believe that staying there is a good idea. Or fear having them believe that the world is "student-centered," that they are the sun that all else spins around, altering the orbits of their surroundings to suit their own comforts. 

Students do not come first in my class because their future does. To put them first puts their limitations, their biases, and their assumptions first. Their current self probably will not sprint to Shakespeare or Steinbeck or sonnets. They do not immediately want to ask how their sins and concerns and successes and obstacles are similar to mankind throughout the history of humanity. And they probably don't think that "old books" have much to tell them about the modern world.

The kind of reading I want for my students is the dangerous kind - the kind that might make them change their course, question their place, and walk away wiser - armed with the kind of wisdom that often results in less certainty. 

So students do not come first when they walk into my room. At least not the students as they are today. And lest I commit the same errors I attempt to keep them from, I offer these observations not with confidence and the goal of exclaiming myself to be right; rather, I find myself, as McGrath writes about Lewis' view of learning, "'trying on' ways of looking at the world, and seeing how well they work." 

The learning process should not end with graduation from high school, and I don't pretend that the most formative of years are the ones spent in my classroom. But those are the years I am responsible for, and the opportunity to learn will be present on my watch. And it will be the kind of learning, as Lewis suggests, that diminishes the student's current self in favor of who they might become.