Day 2

 Today's topic of the violence triangle struck a cord upon discussing it within our group. We dissected the topic of assessments and parent influence on teachers with these assessments. It became clear that our group all had similar interactions with certain communities regarding assessment results. There would be a cultural expectation that the learners need to have good grades no matter the outcome. After much intervention from the parents to meet this expectation, a structural shift would occur within the school to accommodate the expectations of the parents. This could by either inflating the marks of the students or simplifying the assessments so that students can achieve higher grades. The structural changes to the system are all put in place when the ones who can stop it have no protection from cultural violence. This in turn leads back to direct violence against the teachers for yes, yet again students not achieving the coveted 100% grade. 

Upon concluding our discussion about assessments, Mr Janzen gave a quick example of a cultural bias that young students all like team sports. A structural implementation would then be made that all schools implement a mandatory team sports program. Only to find out that learners of a certain demographic really don't like team sports and often feel marginalized by having to participate in the sports. 

This made even less sense when exploring the alternatives even more. 

Let's say, there are 20 learners in the class and 15 like team sports and their weekly highlight is having this activity at school. 

Would it be fair to those learners to scrap the program because the 5 don't like it?

Would it be better to arrange an alternative activity for the 5? Maybe something like building puzzles. 

What if the 5 get bullied for not playing sports?

What if the 5 now feel even more left out because they preferred to build puzzles?

What if we have an alternating schedule of building puzzles and playing sports where everyone has an equal time of displeasure?

All these examples are filled with good intentions, but as the saying goes, "Sir, hell is paved with good intentions".

Daily Peace Action. 

My peace action will be to not get so bent out of shape when a learner is ignoring me while I'm addressing the class. 


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