"Troublemakers" or Future Leaders?

 

After reading "Troublemakers" and the analogy of students as the canaries in cages used in coalmines, I see the students labeled this way with a new outlook.  I am ashamed of certain practices that I have been using because they have been normalized and even taught in higher education.  We know that everyone has a right to education, but at what cost?  In a place that I thought my students were learning to be "free" and the tools to become an active member of society, they are actually being suppressed, outcast, and excluded.  

"Our schools are designed to prepare children to take their assumed place in the social order rather than to question and challenge that order." 

Schools tend to focus on students who are most compliant as those students that can be "trusted" and "leaders".  Rarely, do "other" students get the chance to showcase who they really are and what they can do.  The students that are seen as "disruptive" are often seen in detention, suspended, expelled, etc.  They are not given opportunities to learn if they are not in class. 

"These troublemakers- rejected and criminalized- are the children from whom we can learn the most about freedom."

School climate is also constructed in a way that takes freedom away from students.  We teach them very early that the teacher is the one with power.  Teachers are the ones who talk and question and the students are the ones who listen and answer.  When students ask questions and challenge, we perceive that as "acting up" or "causing trouble".  

"...Toxic social and cultural conditions of schools that threaten and imperil the hope of freedom."  

By recognizing this, maybe we can begin to think about how we view "troublemakers" and teach our students that it is OK to challenge (respectfully) and be curious.