A Boring Class and Philosophy of Education

A Boring Class is a short animated film about the monotony of traditional education, viewed in a comic and relatable way. The video raises problems that are eloquent for the ineffectiveness of the teacher-centered approach and addresses issues that Philosophy of Education investigates.

“A Boring Class” video can be used in different ways in teaching and learning Philosophy of Education. It could be combined with philosophical texts by John Dewey, like the text My Pedagogic Creed, and excerpts from his book Democracy and Education. Another useful combination would be with excerpts from Martha Nussbaum’s work Not for Profit. Especially suitable are chapters like The Silent Crisis (1-13) and Socratic Pedagogy: The Importance of Argument (47-79), where she discusses a story by Tagore, called The Parrot’s Training. I shall propose tackling one of these varieties: a combination of the video, the story about The Parrot’s Training, and the chain writing technique.

For more clarity, the explanation of how such methodology can be used shall be divided into six steps.

Step 1: The teacher should give a stimulus to the students. The stimulus should outline a problem and motivate students to formulate investigative questions. Pairing a video and a story would be a stimulus for greater creativity and seeking solutions to the problematic situations, marked by the video and the story. First, the teacher could show the video to the students, and then ask them to read the allegory, which Martha Nussbaum narrates:

Tagore hated every school he ever attended, and he left them all as quickly as possible. What he hated was rote learning and the treatment of the pupil as a passive vessel of received cultural values. Tagore’s novels, stories, and dramas are obsessed with the need to challenge the past, to be alive to a wide range of possibilities. He once expressed his views about rote learning in an allegory about traditional education called “The Parrot’s Training.”

 A certain Raja has a beautiful parrot, and he becomes convinced that it needs to be educated, so he summons wise people from all over his empire. They argue endlessly about methodology and especially about textbooks. “Textbooks can never be too many for our purpose!” they say. The bird gets a beautiful school building: a golden cage. The learned teachers show the Raja the impressive method of instruction they have devised. “The method was so stupendous that the bird looked ridiculously unimportant in comparison.” And so, “With textbook in one hand and baton in the other, the pundits [learned teachers] gave the poor bird what may fitly be called lessons!” One day the bird dies. Nobody notices for quite some time. The Raja’s nephews come to report the fact: The nephews said, “Sire, the bird’s education has been completed.” “Does it hop?” the Raja enquired. “Never!” said the nephews. “Does it fly?” “No.” “Bring me the bird,” said the Raja. The bird was brought to him. . . . The Raja poked its body with his finger. Only its inner stuffing of book-leaves rustled. Outside the window, the murmur of the spring breeze amongst the newly budded asoka leaves made the April morning wistful.  –– Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit, p. 69-70

Step 2: After the video and the text, the teacher could ask students to engage in a chain writing process. Students could work in groups of 5-6 and discuss ideas between themselves while writing. Using chain writing technique would help students collaborate with each other as a community, because everyone should understand and connect one’s own opinion and possible decisions with others possible opinions and decisions, by building relationships through text messages, and aiming to develop one common work at the end of the process.  It is a common goal that should be achieved through teamwork, constructive communication, collaboration, and creative thinking.

Step 3: In order to make students’ work more focused; the teacher could propose different titles concerning the video and the story. For example: “How to wake up the class?” or “How could the parrot be brought back to life? “

Step 4: The students can choose what type of text they are going to write. They could write a poem, a song, a dialogue, an essay, or even their own lesson.

Step 5: After completing their task, the groups should present the results from their teamwork in a way which they prefer.

Step 6: The teacher, together with the students, reflect on the activity and the results from it. Such activity outlines the most important problems with which Philosophy of Education deals, and the possible solutions it propounds. The idea of “learning by doing” here is eloquently incorporated into practice. The students are actively learning by doing, and learning by creating something together. The final discussion could include two important things. The first one, as I mentioned, is a reflection, and a thoughtful interpretation of the common activity and its outcomes. Students could answer questions like: Did you enjoy working together? How does the way you have worked differentiate from the way the education in the video and text works? What was different, and what was the same in both situations? If you have to teach students, which method would you use? The second crucial thing that the final discussion should include is “big questions”. Such questions aim to keep the interest and motivation of the students alive for further thinking and autonomous investigations, by pointing out that there are many ways in which philosophical thought could be applied actively to the learning process, by making it meaningful, and enjoyable. Examples for “big questions” can be: How students could work as a community of learners? Why are school and life not two separate realities? How to build a positive and engaging learning environment? How could school promote, support, and assess not only knowledge but also creativity and teamwork? What we could do for better future education and how Philosophy, Humanities, and humor could help teachers with figuring out better methodologies that are capable of waking up boring classes.

Possible Readings:

Dewey, John. My Pedagogic Creed.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education.

Nussbaum, Martha. Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.

The Teaching and Learning Video Series is designed to share pedagogical approaches to using video clips, and humorous ones in particular, for teaching philosophy. Humor, when used appropriately, has empirically been shown to correlate with higher retention rates. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please email the Series Editor, William A. B. Parkhurst, at parkhurw@gvsu.edu

Kristina Yasenova

Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”

Kristina Yasenova is currently a BA student in a pedagogical program Civics, Philosophy & English at the Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”. She takes part in writing teaching materials for a platform of civic education. Her interests are in the field of Philosophy of Education, American and English Literature, and Political Philosophy.