After tutoring a Wright Middle School, I was at least familiar with the idea of a school ethos. I believe theirs at that time emphasized “respect”. There were certain ways that Wright tried to impose (for lack of a better word) ethos: banners strewn across hallways with “RESPECT” all across, the distinct lack of hall passes that were a staple of my middle school, the allowance of free time for the students to utilize constructively as they saw fit. But it wasn’t until I started to teach to come to understand how an ethos can really be hammered home.
You see, our course spends a lot of time focused on the ideas of James Gee. We begin, sure, with his “learning principles” and comparison between educational and videogame design. But these ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. There is nigh-moral imperative—if schools don’t use these instructional and assessment elements, we’ll be leaving good, fun learning up to the militaristic neo-liberals! There is discourse of course—most schooling today reifies the values and ways of being of the white middle-class. There is elements of this “New World” as McLeod & Yates put it—the argument that one can no longer trust the degree or the university to do the cultural capital thing and magically poof a bachelor’s degree holder with a middle-class wage; one needs to now be this “shape-shifting portfolio person”.
This stuff is controversial to most, but to Gee it’s obvious. As an instructor, I struggled at first to do justice to the theories of the man and the subjectivities of the people in my discussions. I remember my first semester having impromptu debates with my students about market forces and the whole “rising tide makes all boats float” idea. I felt (feel) Gee is right but also was certain that stipulating this as plainly as Gee does wasn’t the right way to go during something that’s called a discussion.
So, accidentally, I tried to develop an ethos. I would expose my students to videogames that were far away from the normal shooters and jumper one thinks of when they think videogames—stuff that interrogates capitalist-created inequalities, autobiographical videogames about hormonal treatments, videogames that challenge you to live on minimum wage. I would give mini-lectures on the history of American schooling and about who has and who doesn’t. You know, all the stuff that student teachers tend to miss out on, all the stuff that implicitly benefits many of the students at this campus, but we never talk about because we never think about it.
These choices that an instructor makes in how they do what they do has a huge effect. I can happily say that students this semester were recommended to take my sections in particular, because previous students found it interesting and enlightening. What a feeling. And now McLeod & Yates state that the ethos of a school is a potentially big factor in learner’s subjectivities.
It feels a little dirty to shape students knowingly, to try to develop in students the foundational core of of Curriculum & Instruction, through pedagogical manipulation no less! To convince student to strive for shape-shifting social justice selves. Thinking about it now, I don’t feel like I’m respecting them and where these student come from. I’m not sure if I care. I have an agenda.
Sean loves vidcons. 