Let the Student Have a Say

The new strategy schoolchildren are learning is called ‘find your voice’. Amazing to me, as I think many of them have definitely already found theirs. When I was a school child, we were not encouraged to find our voice. We were rather encouraged to lose ours. Wait. I am wrong. We were not allowed to have a ‘voice’. We were the children, not on the same “playing level” as adults. Today’s student is encouraged to buy into the school system by helping to plan it. The theory is if they do not have a say, and they are not able to express their voice, They do not “have” to buy into the system. They could not possibly buy in. We did not have a voice. We were taught to behave though. We did not have any say, or any freedom, or any power. The teachers were all-powerful in the ‘good ole’ days’. Which was okay if you had an honest, fair, teacher. But…well, you know there were some mean horrible ones out there. On the other hand, we were taught to memorize, and we did not question why. School was our job, and we wanted to do our job. We respected our parents, and our parents respected school, so we respected school also. A voice? We did not need one. We had multiplication, we had spelling, we had reading we had a parent, and we had a teacher. Some were wonderful, others shut us completely down, but we still tried to learn something. Psychologically, we were brilliant, because we quickly learned to not share ideas unless they were the teacher’s ideas. I am still pondering the concept of student voice. Interesting, huh?