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8.3 Towards a Pedagogy of Dispositional Democracy
In this section I set out some indicative content of a curriculum aimed at enabling the pre-existing socio-cognitive dispositions of young people to surface
so they are able to reflect on them, as well as providing them with important factual political knowledge.
Most people are not aware of their most deep-seated beliefs, emotions, and practices, and generally only become aware of some of them when they
experience something that contradicts their pre-existing expectations or beliefs. Hence, because most beliefs and practices are tucked away in cognitive schematic
compartments, people may not even realize that they are acting out according to a certain set of internalized belief and affective systems. However, by bringing these
to the surface level, people can become more cognizant of them, and potentially be able to make more genuinely free and rational decisions. There were certain
questions that seemed to prompt my participants to express dissonant and ambivalent thoughts, particularly when it came to questions about consumption. In
response to this set of questions, participants from all three groups tended, to varying extents, to mention that they consume corporate goods, but a significant
number of them expressed guilt over this when I probed them about the conditions under which the products that they like and consume are made. Given that
consumption and media-culture are central to most Wes tern young people’s lives,
a good starting to point to help young people to develop socio-cognitive frameworks that more extensively connect their everyday experiences and
practices with larger political-economic consequences and concerns is to develop classroom activities that, for example, go beyond superficial or brief lessons on
sweatshops, to induce a feeling of cognitive dissonance amongst students. As discussed in section 2.5, cognitive dissonance can lead individuals to bring their
deep-seated attitudes, emotions, and beliefs to the conscious surface, during instances when these run counter to their
ad hoc
experiences, which then leads to the reification or modification of those pre-existing schemata. In classroom
settings, instances of cognitive dissonance can be potentially initiated so students may more consciously reflect on the consequences of their deep-seated attitudes,
emotions, beliefs, and practices. An example of this is revealed in one of the following classroom practices described to me by my
CriticalPolitical
participants Lisa and Arlene.
238 Rudy:
Let’s briefly go back to like some of the things you learned in class about sweatshop conditions. What are some of the things that you
guys can think of?
Lisa: It was working in cramp spaces where there is no air ventilation, and
you’re constantly breathing in all the dust particles in the air. Arlene:
Like, for example, when we were on that topic our teachers made us do this sort of game where she was like our manager and we had to
persuade her to boost our salary up, and some people were like coming up with ideas like oh well I’m pregnant, I need money for my
family, or I’m sick, and she would just say, “I don’t care, that’s not my family
”. Rudy:
So how were guys able to come up with a solution? Arlene:
I remember I was very mad because in that class you would get very very passionate, and I was like no way, we have to walk out, we have
to walk out. And I was like I retired, and everyone retired and we walked out of class.
Rudy: You guys walked out of class?
Arlene: Yeah, and like she did that with all of her classes but no other class
walked out except for us. So we walked out and we were like striking outside of class, and everyone came out seeing that [we were striking]
and we were striking, striking, striking. It was very funny. Lisa:
She gave us an A for the project. Rudy:
How did you guys come up with the decision to strike? Lisa:
Because I felt like it wasn’t worth it [to work] under such conditions.
World-Vision participants
Now arguably, the teacher in this case, in effect, initiated a state of cognitive dissonance within her students by going against their work-place expectations and
sense of fairness, which as Arlene notes, prompted a very powerful emotional response.
75
The students in this activity probably assumed that a boss would be fair and humane, and boost their salary or be otherwise accommodating to their
fictional plight. That is, in acting out actual labour practices, the teacher directly challenged
her students’ pre-existing schemata for labour practices and consumption, initiating dissonant thoughts, which in Arlene and Lisa’s case, seem
to have contributed to their lasting ethical consumption practices.
76
75
A ccording to Dias et al., 2009, p. 784, “cognitive dissonance can be conceived both as a
concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information processing in the human mind”. Research findings support the
theory that people tend to avoid internal dissonance even when there are no punishments or rewards involved, and that this tendency operates at a mostly unconscious level.
76
Without the benefit of having observed this activity at first hand, this will have to remain a tentative interpretation. However, Arlene and Lisa’s account inspires a promising avenue for future
research on the use of cognitive dissonance in the development of more effective critical and progressive pedagogic strategies.
239 Moreover, and quite remarkably, rather than give up or succumb to more
fatalistic dispositions, the students in this class enacted direct democratic practices as a solution to the problem posed by their teacher. Hence, in initiating cognitive
dissonance, this politically charged classroom activity helped Lisa and Arlene to not only make a clear connection between their everyday cultural practices, like
consumption, and their wider political-economic consequences, like labour exploitation, but also helped to foster within them the sorts of transposable
empathetic, critical, and political dispositions that they expressed throughout my time with them. Furthermore, this activity and others like them probably
influenced, or at the very least reinforced Arlene’s competency in direct
democratic decision-making, which she and her World-Vision colleagues displayed when I first came across them.
Additionally, these types of simulation classroom activities can be retrofitted to incorporate in depth discussions on environmental problems, alternatives to
current market arrangements, and labour practices, and on the broad canon of democratic theory and action. These can include examples of contemporary forms
of democratic work-place practices that are being followed in different parts of the world and even by Western corporations, e.g., see WorldBlu. These lessons
should also include in depth discussions that demystify taken for granted economic notions, and specifically, those
discourses that presents the ‘economy’ as a sort of omnipotent deity, rather than a collection of human practices that are
diffused through various human institutions, and that are, therefore, subject to human control. Moreover, these lessons should be accompanied by equally in
depth lessons on neoliberal theory and practices, so that young people can discern the differences between different forms of political-economic arrangements, and
be able to make a more conscious choice as to which they support. In depth lessons on human nature would also be valuable. While I was not able to uncover
why so many of my participants held a standard neoliberal ontological view of human nature, which arguably stops discussion let alone actual implementation of
alternative systems in its tracks, exposing them to differing conceptions of human nature may prove a useful pedagogic tactic that can get young people to think
about the potential for humans to act in very different ways. There is a lengthy academic literature in place, spanning the social sciences and currently growing in
the cognitive sciences that consistently demonstrates that while human beings do
240 indeed display self-interested dispositions, they also display altruistic, autonomous,
empathetic, creative, and co-operative dispositions Graeber, 2004; Olson, 2008; Patel, 2010; Sloane et al., 2012. Which set is more pronounced is largely
determined by the political-economic and concomitant socio-cultural structures that humans choose to implement and reproduce. As F. B. M. de Waal in Olson,
2008 , p. 1 notes, “you need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to
arrive at extreme capitalist positions”. Engaging young people and teachers alike with this empirical literature, can get them to think critically about this very
important factor from which all possibilities for genuine alternative political- economic models stem, and whether they agree with it or not, it may at the very
least prompt them not to take human selfishness for granted. As Mallott, 2011, p. 74 argues in advancing anarchist pedagogy that is supported by empirical
findings: While many anarchist writers correctly understand that ones view of
human nature is going to determine ones understanding of what kind of societies humans are capable of successfully creating thereby shaping
future possibilities and interpretations of historical events, they tend to fail to transgress the idea that ones conception of human nature is
purely subjective and a matter of personal preference or political commitments.
Furthermore, Giroux 2000 recommends that a critical examination of how contemporary corporate culture and cultural artifacts contribute to discourses that
propagate and legitimate race, class, gender, and political inequalities, as well as to the commodification of youth and culture for corporate profits, must be
included in the curriculum of any critical pedagogic project. It was especially evident from the London
Mainstream
participants that the dominant media-culture materialistic ideals and aspirations were being accepted without much decoding or
critical examination. While it is not my intention to suggest that young people should accept alternative socio-cultural discourses, they should be presented with
the tools to comprehensively analyze existing and competing socio-cultural and political-economic discourses so that they can make a more conscious choice
about which to accept and reproduce. As it stands, their acceptance of market
241 norms and values seems to stem from their underexposure to competing discourses.
An incorporation of cultural studies into pedagogy, where contemporary and popular media texts that most young people engage with are scrutinized and
dissected for their ideological content, can contribute to the goal of getting young people to be more critically aware of the inner workings of neoliberal consumer
capitalism and its implications. It may not be the case that once armed with the critical tools to dissect corporate media-texts and the dominant socio-cultural and
political-economic discourses imbued in them that young people will then automatically reject or contest them. However, as argued throughout this thesis,
critical and political cognitive frameworks that are informed by accurate and detailed information are a necessary precondition for more critical practices. As
Giroux 2000, p. 7 notes: Struggles over culture are not a weak substitute for a ‘real’ politics, but
are central to any struggle willing to forge relations among discursive and material relations of power, theory and practice, as well as
pedagogy and social change. Lastly, all of these lessons, as in the Frierian 1994 and Deweywian 1997
traditions, should themselves be taught in a more democratic fashion that moves away from the standard banking, behaviourist, and authoritarian model of
contemporary education. Democratic pedagogic practices can serve to instill within young people a democratic ethos and sense of non-hierarchical
organization. It is clear from the existing literature as discussed in section 3.4, as well as from some of the accounts of my participants, that the teaching of politics
in particular, necessitates, and is in fact more enjoyable and conducive to learning when young people are actively involved in discussions and encouraged to share
their opinions and beliefs. Many of my Zoo participants, for instance, pointed out that it was being allowed to openly talk about controversial political issues in the
safety of the classroom that opened their eyes to, and made them appreciate, other people’s points of view.
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8.4 Course Preface
Kategori