Parker: Who are our students?

Walter Parker points out numerous ideas in his Teaching Against Idiocy article. In his writing the term idiocy is defined as “concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things” (Parker, 1). One obvious essential question stood out to me as I read through this text. Who are our students? We have been discussing this question in class and we have come to many conclusions such as the fact that one of the reasons that teaching is so difficult is because of the major diversity among some students. Parker recognizes that schools are diverse because the students in them come from all different backgrounds. He takes this issue a little farther in his text, however, and claims, “When aimed at democratic ends and supported by the proper democratic conditions, the interaction in schools can help children enter the social consciousness of puberty and develop the habits of thinking and caring necessary for public life. They can learn tolerance, the respect, the sense of justice, and the knack for forging public privacy with others whether one likes them or not. If the right social and psychological conditions are present and are mobilized, students might even give birth to critical consciousness. This is the kind of thinking that enables them to cut through conventional wisdom and see a better way” (Parker, 4).

In other words, interaction among a diverse group of students helps them to understand more not only about each other, but about the things around them as well. Parker is pointing out that you can still hold on to your differences while learning and embracing the social, moral, and intellectual ideals that bring us together. This is especially important in school in order for students to learn to their greatest potential. To instill interaction amongst students, we must first understand that ideas such as virtues and social ideals are not innate, but are learned from others. We must be aware of the fact that the only way to have such qualities is to break the bonds that diversity limited us to.