Steffke 1 Emily E. Steffke Sallie Butler Eng. 111.

P12 31 March 2014 Connection, Dehumanization, and Road Running I am a running geek, and I am always looking for ways to make myself a faster competitor. So, when I leaned about human respiration in my biology class, I used my knowledge of ATP, lactic acid fermentation, and glycolysis to run smarter, more efficient races. When I read about self-efficacy in my psychology class, I convinced myself of my capabilities during my next race and used that mental advantage to take over thirty seconds off my personal best time. When it was announced that my track team was no longer allowed to run on the local roads, I marched into the superintendent's office and used persuasive techniques from English class to take a stand against the injustice. It is such a proud and satisfying moment when I can use something I learned in school to make my running, or my life, better. I actively seek out connections; I want to integrate what I learn in school to what goes on in my life. However, many students do not. They may ask, When are we ever going to use this? but many are not willing pursue the question any further than through complaint. Instead, they separate what they learn in school from what goes on in the rest of their lives, and because of this lack of integration, many do not learn the material as well as they could. A lack of connections between student backgrounds and class material discourages critical thinking, and students resort instead to passive assimilation and memorization. This brings about an absence of autonomous thinking, but autonomy is a central component of a being a conscious, fulfilled, human being. Making connections is essential. Students failure to make connections between

Steffke 2 what they learn in school and what they experience in life is a major problem in adult education; however, it is one that is not easily solved. The causes of this problem can be rooted to many different stages of the educational process; pinpointing a deficiency in one area alone will not fix the problem. The core component of this problem is that making connections is a voluntary action that can be accomplished only by an individual student. Students choose whether they are going to make connections; teachers cannot force or make connections for students for them because all students have different background experiences to which they would make connections. Students backgrounds, or compilations of all current previous experiences, frames of reference, and lifestyles, affect the way students interpret and make connections to learned material. Mike Rose is the former director of the tutoring center at UCLA and recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English David H. Russell Award of Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English. He tells the story of Lucia, a single, working mother and student at UCLA, who was struggling to interpret excerpts from Thomas Szaszs controversial writings on the study of abnormal behavior. Lucia came from a background of dealing with people with mental illnesses, so when Szasz asserted that there was no such thing as mental disease, the idea clashed so severely with Lucias frame of reference that she could not comprehend his points. Likewise, Szaszs writings included many academic phases associated with a multitude of assumptions and allusions to arguments and positions within the academic field, and upon encountering these, Lucia again struggled because she did not have the background to understand. Lucias difficulties in understanding Szasz [had] to do with her belief system and with her lack of familiarity with certain ongoing discussions [in academics], frames of mind, predispositions, and background knowledge (Rose 36). Essentially, Lucia had difficulty comprehending Szasz because of her

Steffke 3 background. She could not integrate his writing to things she had experienced within her own life because the two were so disconnected. This divergence prevented Lucia from making the connections that were essential to her comprehension of the material. Connections can be almost impossible to make if there are major divergences between background frames of reference and those presented within class material. Backgrounds play an integral role in how students make, or fail to make, connections between class material and life. Backgrounds can prevent students from making connections, as in Lucias case, but they can also be a way for students to provide meaningful application if used as a tool for deeper comprehension. Utilizing backgrounds is a good thing. However, students come to college from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a complex smattering of experiences. Connections are personally derived; therefore, teachers cannot make connections for their students. They can encourage integration, but this is difficult because many do not know their students well enough to understand the backgrounds that encompass them. Dialogue can assist teachers in understanding students more holistically and in promoting connections. bell hooks, an acclaimed lecturer and professor at Yale University, is a strong supporter of holistic education, a major component of which is student expression. hooks calls for students to share information about their lives and cultures. These confessions, as she calls them, are the bridge that connects college-learned ideas to life. hooks iterates, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions [] show[s] how experiences can illuminate our understanding of academic material (258). She believes that linking backgrounds makes academics more significant. However, the key to this linkage is communication geared toward a more holistic understanding of students. Only through dialogue can teachers foster an understanding they can use to guide student connections.

Steffke 4 Dialogue is obviously important in making connections, but it is not present in many classrooms. Many teachers are not willing to take the time away from their lecturing to address student perspectives. Theodore Sizer, a professor of education at Brown University, criticizes this deficit in high school classrooms. He notes the cramped, rushed schedule of school days, and feels that because teachers have such limited time with students, they are reluctant to engage in conversation deviating from teaching core material. Therefore, There is little opportunity for sustained conversation between the student and teacher (Sizer 266) and one must infer that careful probing of students thinking is not a high priority (Sizer 266). Many teachers do not have time to encourage connections through confessional narratives or background explorations. This concept is synonymous to what occurs in the college setting: the time professors have with their students is limited to a few hours over the span of one or two days per week. With much to cover, taking away from their limited time allotted for something as trivial as student expression is rare in many classrooms. With this lack of dialogue, teachers cannot suggest ways students can connect learned material to their backgrounds. Professors are also not able to recognize the limitations caused by background problems, as in Lucias case. If teachers ignore student backgrounds when it comes to learning, students will follow suit and do the same, but when they discount their own backgrounds, they lose their ability to make connections. Students failure to make connections is a difficult problem to solve. There are multiple layers to this issue that can only be resolved by a change within students and teaching methods. For students to begin making connections, their backgrounds have to be considered by both themselves and their teachers, which would require teaching methods that include time for dialogue. Students can try to make connections without teacher encouragement, but this can be almost impossible if students do not recognize the limitations stemming from divergences between background and

Steffke 5 class-presented frames of reference. Enacting changes in the current system would not be an easy feat, and that makes this issue a tough one to solve. This issue causes many problems in adult education students failure to make connections between life and school material causes them not engage in critical thinking, which leads to passive assimilation. Making connections is a crucial part of critical thinking a process involving the junction of experience, reflection, and reasoning. Backgrounds, and thus life, are become connected to academic through critical thinking. Lack of critical thinking because of a lack of connections is an alarming problem. Jack Mezirow, emeritus professor of adult education at Columbia University, discusses the importance of critical thinking, or as he calls it, critical reflection, in an educational setting. Mezirow asserts, Becoming critically reflective of the assumptions of others is fundamental to effective collaborative problem posing and solving (272). Mezirow is saying that thinking critically about the ideas of others and making evaluative judgments is very important. By collaborative problem posing and solving, Mezirow is referring to the process of working with others to question the assumptions and verdicts of some by making connections to personal experiences, evaluating the validity of the matter at hand, and using dialogue to reach a consensus. This process is essential to humans as a collectivist population in order to combine knowledge and skills to improve quality of life. This group problem solving, with critical thinking as its core, is also a very valuable asset for those entering the workforce to obtain. The Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, one of the top thirty public universities in the country, asked employers to rate the most important skills new college hires would need to demonstrate within their first job. Building Working Relationships and Analyze, Evaluate, and Interpret Data (Michigan n.p.) were rated at the top. These components embody Mezirows concept of collaborative problem

Steffke 6 posing and solving, but for a somewhat different purpose. The Relationships can be used and strengthened by pooling background connections during collaborative dialogue and the Analyze and Evaluate criteria are the essence of the critical thinking process: they both require deep amounts reflection on background knowledge and life experiences. Therefore, it can be concluded that critical thinking is an essential component of being an employee in toda ys workforce. The absence of critical thinking because of an absence connections is causing a deficit of students prepared to collaborate to solve problems at work and in life in general. Critical thinking is also essential to promoting autonomous thinking. Autonomous thinking is an essential component of being a fulfilled human being, but without connections and critical thinking, it will not occur. Instead, everything a student learns in an educational environment will be passively assimilated. Mezirow discusses autonomous thinking as the epitomic goal of adult education. He states, A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our existence. For some, any uncritically assimilated explanation by an authority figure will suffice. But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own interpretations (Mezirow 268). Essentially, Mezirow is asserting that autonomous thinking is critical to being a conscious, critical human instead of just an apathetic, instinctual, animal-like being. They do not question the legitimacy of what is being taught to them; they accept unquestioningly all the information thrust upon them, and in ignoring their ability to make connections and critically evaluate knowledge, they abandon their capacity for autonomous thinking the very thing that defines their humanity. Of course, adult educators do not want to create robotic, unthinking students, but because of a lack of autonomous thinking and critical thinking, that is exactly what they are producing. This is a major problem. Not only are students unprepared for the demands of the workforce and

Steffke 7 collaborative problem solving, as indicated by Mezirow and the MSU study, but they are being deprived of establishing a truly human identity. The absolute essentiality of critical thinking is blatant, but it cannot occur without connections. Students failiure to make connections between academic material and their lives is a major problem. When students do not make connections that make what they learn personally applicable, they are usually not exploring the underlying meanings of the information being given to them, and therefore they are not truly learning the material. Instead, they use a surface-learing technique and resort to rote memorization. Instead of internalizing knowledge and analyzing algorithms in search of a deeper, conceptual meaning, many students treat the information they learn as detached bits of data useful only for reproducing in the occasion of a test. John Tagg, associate professor of English at Palomar College, illustrates this idea through his example of Jack and Jill. Jack was a college student that got good grades but did not retain anything he learned, while Jill was a student that flunked but was inspired by a class to change her educational outlook. Tagg feels that Jill was the more successful student because her learning experience continued to shape her life, while Jack was unaffected by the class. Tagg cites a students chosen processing approach as the reason for his or her success or failure in truly learning class material. Those who take the surface-level approach focus on only the formulas, or words, or memorization when processing material they are presented with in class, while those who take the deep-level approach delve into the information in search of its underlying meaning. Using his Jack and Jill example again, Tagg says, Jill [] was taking a deep approach to learning; [] she engaged with the ideas, the underlying meaning. That was what motivated her. Jack, on the other hand, took a surface approach. We see in Jack what we do not like to see in our students: he studied for tests (Tagg 5). Jack, in other words, engaged in temporary

Steffke 8 memorization. He studied only for the purpose of being able to reproduce information and did not make connections with what he learned. He ignored the usefulness of the information, and as a result, he did not really learn anything at all. Jill, on the other hand, made connections and bettered her life because of it. Memorization is also a serious problem in relation to the robotic, passive person that Mezirow argues develops in the absence of autonomous thinking. A robot can memorize facts and formulas. Only a conscious, critically thinking human being can distinguish the underlying meanings and applications of knowledge. Memorization is dehumanizing, but it is occurring in the college system of education because of students failure to make connections between what they learn in school and experience in real life. Education should be about something much more than tests and memorization; it should be about personal application. Students should use connections enhance their personal lives as Jill did. Students should be motivated to learn because they are eager to make connections. Tagg addresses this concept through the exploration of learning perceptions. Furthering his discussion of surface-level and deep-level processing, Tagg cites a study done by Ference Marton of the University of Gteborg. Marton asked students about their perceptions regarding the purpose of learning. He found that responses fell into two broad categories: learning as reproducing and learning as personal growth and seeking meaning. Those concerned with the former tended to take the surface approach, while those that believed the latter usually took the much more effective deep approach. Students motivation to engage in deep-level processing depended on their perception of learning. One such driven student said of learning, Its something personal and its something continuous. Once it starts it carries on to other things.You should be doing it [] for the person before and for the person afterwards (qtd. in Tagg 6). In other words, this student endeavors to personally apply knowledge and integrate it into his life. He finds his

Steffke 9 studies pertinent and is therefore motivated to learn. This is a crucial component of the effective education of college students, not only for the sake of encouraging students to take a deep-level approach in order to avoid becoming robotic memorizers, but for the sake motivation. As in my own experiences relating running to school, applications can be exciting. I was motivated learn, make connections, and think critically, and when I did apply what I learned, my life was better. Unfortunately, many students are not like myself, Jill, and the student interviewed by Marton. They do not make connections between life and learning, and because of this, they are bored. They are disinterested and therefore attempt to expend minimal effort learning material. They passively assimilate lessons through memorization, which is in itself boring, and a cycle perpetuates: students are disinterested so they memorize, then bored because all they do is memorize. Unmotivated, disinterested students created by a lack of utilization of education within ones own life are a major problem. The integration of college knowledge and life practice is fundamental to a comprehensive education. Students should relate class-learned material to their lives not only will it make the material easier to understand conceptually, it can enrich their lives. Education should be anything but boring and useless. It should be empowering and inspiring. It should better lives, and not in just the simple ways I apply my education to running. However, in order for education to do this, it has to be about more than memorization and surface learning. It has to embody critical thinking, personal application, and collaborative problem solving. Transforming people from apathetic robots that succumb to authority to autonomous thinkers is the key to peoples empowerment through education. Dr. Barry Alford, professor of English at Mid Michigan Community College, is adamant about the necessity of literacy. He discusses the pitfalls of what he calls compliant literacy in his video Politics,

Steffke 10 Power, and Literacy. Compliant literacy is essentially education as passive assimilation in which students do not question the legitimacy or the purpose of what is being taught to them and connections and personal applications are not utilized. However, Alford speaks of a real literacy that uses these connections to the extreme. He asserts, real literacy is about engaging in your world to change it. Make it what you want it to be, not what someone says it should be (Alford). In essence, Alford is promoting connection and real-world utilization to such a degree that it can change the world. Instead of the compliancy of what someone says it should be, education needs to be about application to the point of change. Memorization in a dehumanizing way does not change anything. Knowledge is only effective to change if it is approached in an engaging way. Alford's call for engagement analyzing, evaluating, and reflecting on backgrounds to draw connections and integrations echoes the demands of critical thinking so called for by Mezirow and the MSU study. Therefore, not only is critical thinking essential to being a collaborative problem solver, but to being an agent of change within the world. However, education cannot fuel change if students fail to make connections. This lack of integrations and resulting passive assimilation is disgraceful. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian philosopher and educator, discusses the dehumanization of people learning without autonomous consciousness. He views consciousness as the way people perceive and interpret the world, which can be developed through autonomous thinking or passive assimilation. Freire believes that autonomous consciousness is essential to empowerment through education. In discussing the subject, he quotes Sartre, who says, consciousness and the world are given at one and the same time: the exterior world as it enters consciousness is relative to our ways of seeing and understanding that world (qtd. in Freire 8). Essentially, what Sartre is saying is that that the

Steffke 11 way people perceive the world, or their consciousness, is dependent on the way people comprehend and interpret the world, or ways of seeing and understanding. Consciousness can be autonomously derived or uncritically assimilated, depending on whether students actively reflect and critically think about information bestowed on them. As was stated earlier by Mezirow, A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of our existence, and the way people interpret their existence is deeply dependent on the way they view the world, or their consciousness; thus, autonomous consciousness, a defining condition of being human, is dependent on students making connections between school and life in order to be critically evaluative. If students fail to make connections, they are not critically evaluative and are therefore conscious in such a way that is shaped by someone else. This means that, in relation to what was stated by Sartre, such students view the world in such a way as those who teach them would have them see, not in a way that takes into account their own experiences. If people view the world in a way distorted by anothers explanations, then they will not see it in such a way that encourages them to change the world. These people will not do as Alford says and act on the world to change it, because the way they view the world is depersonalized, and therefore, they would not see their actions as having any effect in change. Freire furthers on this concept as he discusses the inhumanity this, stating, to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to turn them into objects (Freire 11). He is saying that people who do not think and act upon the world in such a way that they are critically thinking actively making their own decisions are dehumanized. Only when people act autonomously can their education can be empowering. Connection and integration is essential to being an autonomously conscious humans. Therefore, students failures to make connections is an

Steffke 12 alarming problem because this failure prevents them from being able to be fully human and from utilize their knowledge to make the world a better place to change their worlds. Making connections between school and life is an essential component of a true education. Connections are integral to critical thinking and autonomous thinking. Without them, students are left to memorization and passive assimilation. Only through connections can people engage in the collaborative problem solving so necessary to the workforce; only through connections can people be empowered to take action and change the world; only through connections can people be autonomously conscious and truly fulfilled human beings. Students failure to make connections is a major problem and it is not easily fixed. This complex issue occurs with issues at different levels of the educational process and requires changes at each. Meanwhile, however, connections do not have to be drastic. Students can still personally decide to apply what they learned in school to different areas of their lives. Not all students are as passionate as I am about road running, but perhaps, if they jog a few steps with a small connection here, a tiny integration there, they will eventually find themselves taking great strides and making complex connections that can really make them stronger, happier, and empowered. The more they connect, the more motivated and fulfilled they will be. Making connections is a lot like running the more one does it, the easier it gets and the better it feels. And running? Its addictive.

Steffke 13 Works Cited Alford, Barry. Politics, Power, and Literacy. Video. (Provided by Instructor). Freire, Paulo. The Banking Concept of Education. 1-12. Print. (Provided By Instructor). hooks, bell. Engaged Pedagogy. Exploring Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century. Eds. MMCC English Department. New York: Pearson, 2013. 253-258. Print. Mezirow, Jack. Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. Exploring Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century. Eds. MMCC English Department. New York: Pearson, 2013. 259-267. Print. Michigan State University Collegiate Employment Research Institute. Survey Results. (Provided by Instructor). Rose, Mike. The Politics of Remediation. Part One: Conversations about Identities. (Provided by Instructor). 32-45. Print. Sizer, Theodore. What High School Is. Exploring Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century. Eds. MMCC English Department. New York: Pearson, 2013. 259267. Print. Tagg, John. Why Learn?: What We May Really be Teaching Students. About Campus 9.1 (2004): 2-10. Print.