Listening to our students for a change

When I was 13, my entire class was reprimanded by the teacher for coming in late. In the midst of her tirade, the teacher asked, “Why did you do it?”

I put up my hand and offered an explanation; this only served to incense her even further and I was singled out for an extended bout of scolding.

I learnt a few things that day; how one should respond to a rhetorical question – which is to say, not at all – and the value of shutting up.

Last Saturday, 30 students around Malaysia gathered for a roundtable session so that we (everyone else around Malaysia; that is) would find out exactly what it is our students wanted from us.

Most of the students came from underperforming schools and I was pleasantly surprised to hear what they had to say.

“I dream of a Malaysia where my voice is not only heard and taken into consideration when making decisions. My dream is for us to have a change of mindset and start listening to students, whether it is in the classroom or in policy making.” said my 16 year old student, hopeful that this will one day become a reality.

Here’s the thing; are we prepared to listen to our students when it comes to making decisions? Are we prepared to listen to our students at all? We have to stop thinking that our students are ignorant and dependent on us to make decisions for them.

We have to stop thinking that we know better and hence produce flip flop policies, making them the target of our experiments. We need to start getting student’s involved in policy making, school wide decisions and even, decisions in the classroom.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been pleasantly surprised when I listened to my students and followed their ideas; in fact, I’ve often felt ashamed of myself for having doubted them in the first place.

One fine example is when I allow them to lead our peer-tutoring sessions in school. I rarely interfered in the way they teach other students and would only step in if I find them being disrespectful.

Many times, they surprise me with their creative ideas and inventive strategies to help other students read. Truth is, I would often ask them for ideas because the younger students seem to listen to them more than they do to me.

In an ideal school setting, we’d have students taking charge of most of the decision-making. We’d have them leading assemblies, clubs, running programs and even going as far as to help the other students who struggle in their studies.

We’d have teachers acting as facilitators, fuelling students with creativity and setting them up to be future leaders. In an ideal education system setting, we’d have student’s feedback when developing curriculum and before implementing any policy.

In an ideal world, we’ll listen to our students.

Many times, we often forget that our biggest stakeholder in education are the students, We hush their voices and tell them to follow orders, forgetting that we are in the 21st century and our kids have evolved way past the era of blindly following orders.

We stand in front of the class and teach, unknowing if they are even learning. We sit in our offices and make decisions, new policies and introduce new strategies, without once stopping to ask a student if this will suit them well.

We assume our students are faceless being, not knowing how different and unique each one of them are.

At the roundtable discussion, the students believed that the one way to move forward and begin listening to students is to have a change of mindset. Getting students involved would not mean that they are taking over a school or a classroom.

It just means that we are all working together for the common goal of achieving the best education. Getting students involved means we are making school more relevant and moving education into a leadership development programme, where our students have voices, and their voices will be heard.

Now, wouldn’t it be amazing if we had students in all our policy meetings? – November 26, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.