Because I say so!

Do you remember being forced to shut your mouth by a teacher? Have you ever remained in doubt because someone told you “it is just because”? If any of these things have happened to you it means that you might be a victim of misuse of authority.

A few weeks ago I was in my working experience in a 4^th grade class. There was a student from the U.S who was anxious to answer teacher’s questions. When he was finally chosen to answer he said “more smaller” instead of “smaller”. The teacher looked at him and told him he was wrong. The 9 year old child said that it was not wrong because that is how they say it in the U.S. The teacher stood up, and yelled “I’m the teacher and what you said is wrong, because I say so”. Instead of giving an explanation about the grammatical rule behind her correction, the teacher expressed with this phrase that her words should be enough for the students as a complete truth.

Authority abuse is not new in Chile, the news are full of situations similar to the one I observed. Teachers use or overuse this authority for different factors: to protect their self-esteem or for fear of losing control. Another possible reason is that teachers’ feelings sometimes cannot be hidden and if they don’t like a student they might just show it. A possible consequence can be that if teachers waste their energies arguing without arguments with little children instead of explaining things calmly and with fundaments, they will lose students respect and reliability.

According to Freire (1997), children can learn by imposed rules or commands, although that learning is neither meaningful nor permanent.

Here you have some ideas of what is necessary to change this unfortunate reality.

Teachers should:

· Let bad feelings for children at home.

· Be respectful with children, it will become reciprocal.

·Do not be afraid of sharing authority. Children are protagonists of their learning process. They have the right to raise their voice. If they feel free to speak and give their opinion, they will feel more confident and important.

·Consider frequency in the language they are teaching. Explain that it’s normal that native speakers use wrong grammatical expressions, nevertheless, you are teaching the official rules of that language.

·Value their students’ opinions and answers by reinforcing their participation and not humiliate them in front of their peers.

If these few measures are applied to the educational system we would be in the starting level of a long path to reach a better education.