#Thread:

After a conversation w/ a colleague, pre-service teacher education is heavy on my . I listen to the stories of many educators’ PD experience and I can’t help but hear the alignment with oppressive systems developed in the 19th century.

So little has changed.

19th century: many oppressive systems were called efficient methods of teaching but truly were cost-saving devices.

Like the Monitarial System, Madras System, or Lancasterian System.

Let’s zoom in on the Lancasterian System. I first read about it in Black Gotham.

Joseph Lancaster was deemed a “public education innovator.” He was a schoolmaster that created a system first hyped for its “success” and then criticized later on as the traumatic practices were harmful to children.

Sound familiar?

Lancaster’s system implied that you could accommodate 250 children in a hall and teach them all if the “floor included up toward the back” so the educator could see all of the students. The room was also arranged according to student ability...

He believed that a code of command and exact movements also reinforced discipline. Here’s a poem influenced by the Lancasterian System.

“Whose eyes must on the lesson fix
With hands behind, attentive stand”

Credit: Black Gotham by Carla L. Peterson

The rest of poem talks about aggressively “monitoring” the room and the importance of honesty and grooming.

This system was heavily enforced in African Free Schools in the 19th century.

Lancaster’s opposition came from wealthy white parents (b/c they initially used the system too) that were frustrated w/ stories of aggressive “pupil monitors” and children “hoisted in cages” or the isolation of their children.

Exhibit A:

Note: There was an emergency order to halt the use of quiet rooms after Nov. 2019.

But y’all...

AFTER NOVEMBER 2019.

Here’s the article on quiet rooms in IL. https://features.propublica.org/illinois-seclusion-rooms/school-students-put-in-isolated-timeouts/

https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/1274423542470377473?s=21 https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/1274423542470377473

While reading through the systems, particularly Lancaster, I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the pre-service texts I’ve been given throughout the years.

How much stand-in-the-perch and angled movements simulate a room on an incline...

The Madras System had young teachers tracking points through a “paidometer register.”

And I can’t stop thinking about all of the Edtech and systems designed to do the same...

“Discipline was held through a 'Black Book', which had entries which were read to the entire school, and the faults were explained in moral terms.”

And I can’t stop thinking about the way some schools track student performance publicly for all to see...

Or the manipulative way teachers are trained to call out students “doing the work” bringing attention to those who “aren’t doing the work...”

Or the way we’ve been commodifying community strategies and placing them behind paywalls, with no reparations.

19th century “educationalist” Andrew Bell observed children in a native school, seated on the ground, writing in the sand and sold it as strategy.

Strategy and not an aspect of religion and healing.

Strategy and not a way to engage multiple modalities.

The definition of appropriation.

Teaching someone something they taught you...

The same way that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have had their teaching styles commodified and nicknamed for catchy consumption.

I hope everyone is asking themselves this question: What do you teach or lead like?

A champion?

Ha.

I digress.

Stay well y’all.