Metaphors that make you
Shinjini Sanyal
We all use metaphors to describe situations and states in life. They often describe exactly what we want in the simplest way possible. I recently came across this article by Lakoff and Johnson (2003) which suggested that images and metaphors are not trivial bits of language, but rather powerful and influential mechanisms that help us form world views and maintain them. In their work Metaphors We Live By, they explored how these metaphors influence the way we think and approach a situation, our expectations and how we perceive our roles and responsibilities. They play an important part in influencing or swaying discourse. For a teacher too, the various metaphors that speak about their own identity therefore shape their practice. They may not be based on professional considerations alone, but also on personality traits that are considered relevant based on socio-political and cultural beliefs. When I was studying teacher professional development for my course, I came across a few more articles that further shaped this belief.
For example, let us look at the common and age-old tradition of referring to the teacher as guru. The guru of ancient India was the ‘knowledgeable one’ both from an epistemic and spiritual point of view. The role of such an individual was to transfer worthy knowledge to his disciples and to shape their beliefs and world views as well. He was the only one in charge of their knowledge and well-being. Even today, male teachers are referred to as ‘guru-ji’ in Hindi in many schools across India and touching the feet of the teacher is a common practice. The teacher is still the unquestioned authority in the classroom, often put on a pedestal both literally and figuratively, and students think twice before questioning him/her, even on curricular matters. Teachers who hold this belief also come to expect unconditional obedience, allegiance and respect from their students. On a superficial level, this can be witnessed through the expectation that a child must always stand up to respond to a teacher, or greet without expecting a greeting in return; children who question their teacher are thought of as adamant.
Personality traits sometimes become more important than pedagogic knowledge for teachers when they talk about their beliefs about teaching and ‘good teachers’. Connected with this is the rather predominant metaphor of the teacher as a parent. Ideas of ‘unconditional love’ and ‘sacrifice’ for the child are common beliefs of teachers who maintain that the teacher is like a parent to the child, who is entrusted with the ultimate responsibility of moulding the child into a good human being. For this, the teacher forms relations with the child based on warmth, care and benevolence, and his/her role is to ‘protect’ the child from the harsh realities of the outside world. The feminization of the teaching profession and the popular concept of the teacher as a mother figure is a direct outcome of this belief.
After Independence, the role of the teacher as a ‘nation builder’ also gained a lot of prominence in the teacher identity discourse in India. The national development agenda in newly independent India led to a glorification of India’s traditional heritage and culture. This directly impacted the role of the teacher as an upholder of these values, and on the teacher as a morally sound human being. Even today a teacher is expected to be a good citizen, or patriot or martyr (Sarangapani, 2003) who has sacrificed material wealth for the betterment of the society and nation, and who has no bad habits.
Along with these seemingly positive images coexists the notion of the teacher as a bureaucratic employee, who is just a pawn in the larger bureaucratic organization of the education system. The work of the teacher is sometimes seen as largely clerical, wherein the teacher is just a transactor of the curriculum devoid of any autonomy or power. The teacher is at the lower end of the large chain of education officials, and has no such influence on curricular decisions that impact his practice.
There are several other metaphors that are commonly held by teachers about their identity and role, such as for example, that of a ‘gardener’ whose work is to give the right inputs at the appropriate time so that the seeds can grow into trees. The symbol of a ‘lamp’ is often used to signify the role of a teacher, which would be to ‘light the fires in the hearts and minds of children’. I have even heard of a teacher calling himself ‘cattle herder’ in the sense that his most important role is classroom management, so that children do not run all over the place! Words like friend, doctor, sculptor, architect, leader, coach, etc., are often used to describe the role of a teacher.
It is interesting to explore here that these metaphors about teacher identity are not mutually exclusive, neither is it just one or the other. These beliefs are shaped by the interaction of various simultaneous socio-political and cultural forces and often teachers hold multiple identities about themselves and their profession which influence their practice. Sometimes, these beliefs may also clash, which can lead to either resistance, or to newer ways of approaching their profession.
The most commonly noticed conflict is when traditional beliefs contradict modern notions of the teacher. The teacher with the ‘guru’ orientation who is the sole knowledge giver now has to compete with the information boom of the 21st century where pupils come with rich background experiences from their local environment. The perceived social status of the teacher is no longer as high as it once was. It is increasingly seen as a boring, routine and ‘safer, more comfortable option’ for those who cannot make it in more demanding corporate professions. The notion of the ‘teacher as a professional’ is contested regularly with the idea that ‘anyone can be a teacher’.
Sometimes policy mandates demand shifts in practice, and teachers have to negotiate with their own belief systems. This leads to resistance or even helplessness to adjust to the changing norms. The most relevant example that I can think of in the Indian context is the advent of the RTE and its associated challenges. The no-detention policy is perceived as an obstacle to learning as the threat of examinations will no longer force children to study. The banning of corporal punishment means the common practice of using punishment as a means to discipline the errant child cannot be continued any more. The teacher as the ‘concerned parent’ or well-wisher finds it difficult to agree or adjust with all the clauses as their previous actions in the best interest of the child can no longer be justified with policy mandates. Lasky (2005) discusses how there is a constant vulnerability that the teacher feels when there is a disjuncture that is caused when these reform or policy mandates clash with their previously held beliefs.
This can also be witnessed when teachers struggle to adopt a learner-centered approach to teaching, because on the one hand there is the personal identity of the teacher in the dominant role (with respect to epistemic authority as well as power) in the classroom, and on the other is the policy mandate that requires the teacher to let go of this authority and accept the local knowledge of the learner or break that hierarchy in the class to ensure active participation. As a facilitator in in-service teacher training programmes, this is where I witness conflict the most, where teachers are sometimes unable to give students the space to speak in the class, ask questions or acknowledge their responses because it clashes with their traditional or cultural identity and role of the teacher who is in charge of the learning. Similarly, if a student is unable to understand a concept after several attempts by the teacher, a teacher may assume that the learner is either disinterested or ‘slow’ based on his own belief that the teacher has tried to the best of his abilities, rather than adopt a more flexible approach that is best suited to support the child’s learning needs. Child-centered reforms that have weakened the boundary between the teacher and student have on the one hand led to shifts in their constructs of how a good teacher needs to be like a ‘mother’ or ‘guide’ who is personable, patient, mixes well, etc., but at the same time it has also led to feelings of regret at how the status of the teacher has gone down in society.
There are multiple identities that teachers hold, and these keep changing with time and experience. I had a short stint once as a part time teacher, and I remember, out of all the metaphors that I had held and nurtured for years, many went flying out the window, while a few became stronger. At the end of the day, teachers (or rather all practitioners) need to be adaptive, flexible and willing to sieve out the metaphors that are restricting and weave new ones into their practice. I believe the teacher is first and foremost a learner, and unlearning is the first and most important step. There are so many other metaphors that are used to describe a teacher today – a researcher, an artist, or even an actor. I know I am a mix of a few, what about you?
References
- Sarangapani, Padma (2003) Constructing School Knowledge. An Ethnography of Learning in an Indian Village. Sage Publications
- Sriprakash, Arathi (2006) Pedagogies for Development. The Politics and Practice of Child Centered Education in India. Springer
- Sriprakash, Arathi (2011). “Being a Teacher in Contexts of Change Education Reform” in Contemporary Education Dialogue 8(1) pp.5–31
- Linda Darling-Hammond, Joan Baratz Snowden (2007) A good teacher in every classroom:Preparing the highly qualified teachers our children deserve. Source: Educational Horizons. Vol 85 no 2
- Lasky, Sue. (2005). ‘A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform’. Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 21, Issue 8, Pages 899–916
- Pratima Kale. (1970). “The Guru and the Professional The Dilemma of The Secondary” in Comparative Education Review, pp. 371-376
- Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark (2003) Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press
- Cheryl Rosaen, Susan Florio-Ruane. The metaphors by which we teach: experience, metaphor, and culture in teacher education, in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, 3rd ed. (2008)
Shinjini is a research scholar currently pursuing her Mphil-PhD at TISS, Mumbai. She has been working on education/development for over seven years now, collaborating with resource organizations that work on teacher development and curriculum design. She is keenly interested in issues of teacher professional development. She can be reached at shinjini.sanyal@gmail.com.