“Pleasure in the classroom is feared,”
according to American educator and author, Ron Scapp. He supports his claim with instances when collogues have challenged his capabilities as an educator simply because his students seem to enjoy his class. This is a well-known occurrence in educational institutions all over the world, and especially in south-Asian schools.
The fear of pleasure in the classroom instilled by the Banking Concept of education that Scapp refers to, is perfectly depicted in the Bollywood movie, “Taare Zameen Par” (Stars on Earth/the ground). The film follows the life of 8-year-old Ishaan who society has deemed as “lazy” and “stupid.” His life changes when he is sent to boarding school as a punishment and finds a teacher who realizes that he is dyslexic and has great undiscovered potential. The movie explores how the education system has consistently been failing Ishaan in the past and blaming him for it, further pushing him away from wanting to learn. His new boarding school is also ready to give up on him, but his new art teacher comes to the rescue, offering to tutor Ishaan on all his subjects in a different way. He makes learning fun and interactive and develops a friend-like bond with Ishaan rather than scaring and intimidating him like his previous teachers, and by the end of the year Ishaan is seen excelling in all his subjects and winning an art competition.
The story of Ishaan, although fictional, reflects the plight of many neurodiverse students being neglected and abused by the universal implication Banking Concept of Education. Forcing students with anxiety disorders to interact with groups and present in front of the class, and then taking off points for stuttering, avoiding eye contact and fidgeting; and punishing students who may suffer from depression or other corelating mental illnesses for being late, missing days and handing in work late are just a few of the most obvious ways in which the system is ableist. Some teachers might argue that these rules are employed to make sure students are disciplined, but that in and of itself sounds like they want to dictate how these individuals who happen to be their students should live their lives. Students should want to come to your class, if they aren’t coming or are late, they either have a genuine reason that should be respected without having to invade their privacy as if they are commodities rather than individuals-or you as a teacher have failed to make your class inclusive or worthy of their time. Dull narration-based classes are the biggest enemy of students suffering from attention disorders and learning disabilities: you put us to sleep and then shout at us for it. Moreover, punishing students for fidgeting, talking out of turn, needing to move around and prohibiting them from leaving the classroom when they need to is no less than torture for autistic students and those suffering from ADHD.
As seen in 2007’s “Taare Zameen Par” and in real life, the Banking Concept of Education is designed to fail neurodivergent people, but, upon further inspection it also proves that it has been failing neurotypical people, too. The students in Ishaan’s classrooms that were deemed as “intelligent”, in actuality, were also learning near to nothing just like him. Unlike him, however, they were able to feign understanding simply by reciting facts that they had rote learned from textbooks prior to attending the class. This was always a common occurrence in school, and even now, as a university student, I tend to see students who raise their hands to “ask questions” when they really just want to recite what they retained from the readings, word for word, for validation from the professors. I can’t blame them, however. They are simply a victim of the system that has been teaching us since childhood that that is the only way to prove our intellectual capabilities to our professors and that we must prove our capabilities to them to begin with, placing them on some pedestal. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to truly learn if we continue festering this god-like reverence of our educators.
In my perfect world, all classes must be taught as interactive comedic stand-up routines and the skill of teaching must be taught as seriously in universities as medicine and engineering (and should be paid just as much too.) Till that day, I hope we can at least start breaking down the walls between students and educators and make the learning environment safer for curiosity and comfort and promote learning over remembering.