The importance of being recognized as a subject in contemporary times
Nowadays, one of the most useful and interesting ways to learn, is being aware of and to have some advices about the reality of students and the way of seeing them, in class. This new instruments are very used during these days. I am talking about movies, lyrics, trailers, to improve educational changes every day. A useful way to be aware of how the relationships between students and teachers have changed since Modernity could be by using this movie “Modern Time”. It is because in this movie we can compare the relationship between employees in factories with bosses and the relationship given in class between teachers and students during the last two centuries.
For example, one of the disadvantages showed in “Modern Time” with Charlie Chaplin as protagonist is, the way of seeing of people with power to poor one. It means, wealthy people do not see their employee as subject, indeed, they consider them as object that in every circumstances they can throw away because those workers can be replaced by machine. If we compare this situation with students, we can say that they either are not seeing like a persona. Instead of that, teachers and school consider students as simple objects who have to follow instruction and rules. They have to memorize instead of think, etc, because teachers are with the power and they are perfect, they never make mistakes, and so forth. Therefore, students have to respect their educators, they have to produce just what teachers say, they can not talk and give opinion, etc. As a consequence, students could have lower self esteem, they are not interest in study anymore, and the relationship between teacher and student is distance, cold as we saw in the film between workers and bosses.
On the other hand, we have some advantages that could be useful for us to learn how to teach and act in front of students in a better way. For example, when employees have to work, they have to be cooperative and working as a team to have good results in their jobs. In other words, they have to be in solidarity, respecting each other and being aware of their rights and duties in their job. Other example observed in the film was, when all workers were on strike (they work together by the same reason). In that sense, they could work better than being alone because all of them were acting for one reason, in that case, for new jobs opportunities because of the lack of job, food in their homes, the lack of good health, education, etc. This experience helps us to find ways to improve our school and the relationship in the class with our students that make us to work better, being cooperative, without giving too much punishment like hits and things like that, using some experiences like “The Age of Industrialization” to improve and get some ideas about how to not commit the same mistakes, errors as they did in those years. It could be a good beginning of improving our school and our process of teaching.
In conclusion, time does not mean we are changing too much in good things as fast as we want. We need to be patient but also with willingness to eliminate bad manners appreciated during those times with more power than nowadays. If we want that students were motivated to study, being educated, with good manners, respectful and so on, we must work hard on that and we have to see our students as equal as we are. I am talking about that both (teachers and students) have the same rights to participate in class; both can participate as listener and speaker. As Hernández, F. said in his book “La importancia de ser reconocido como sujeto” all human being have to be respected, heard and not discriminated by their social condition because all of us want to participle and give their opinion because we are not an object, we are subjects with different viewpoints, culture, traditions, families, etc. therefore, those aspects give us our identity and the way in which we act in front other. That is why school should be a good instrument in that case to improve and teach our students how to develop in the actual society. It also it helps us to improve our teaching and relationship with our students to have a more pleasant environment, with the will of studying, share, and so on.
Students need to “fall in love” again with education. Therefore, we have to help on that and give our mayor effort to produce more interesting and dynamic lessons, talking their life and experiences that can be used as example in class, be aware that students every time are changing. Therefore, we have to adapt their worries, ideas, etc. to be a good complement and helper to solve their doubts, worries, etc. The idea in conclusion is to find better ways to work together in a peaceful environment as the character done at the end of the film because they prefer to find different way to be happy. The only thing we need to have is disposition and daring to seek new ways and challenges.
