Jackson, P. (1994) Life in Classrooms. In Pollar, A. & Bourne, J. (ed.) Teaching and Learning in the Primary School. (pp. 113-118). London: Routledge. (Affiliate Link)
The chapter is an extract from Jackson’s book titled Life in Classrooms. It addresses various aspects of school life. It brings to the fore that not all aspects of school life are celebrated and thus are not paid due attention to. Yet the trivial, routine systems that characterise school life also need to be studied.
Table of Contents
Significance of Classroom Routines
The author points out that the significance of the routine is recognised when we pay attention to the following three aspects:
- The frequency of occurrence
- Standardisation of the school environment
- Compulsory quality of daily attendance
Significance of School Life
The significance of school life is highlighted by discussing the sheer number of hours that a child spends in school. Further, the role of the teacher is significant in being the significant caregiver who sometimes spends more time in care of the child than his parents.
The teacher often makes considerable effort in making the classroom comfortable and inviting (“homelike”) for the child. This is done through frequently decorating the bulletin boards, rearranging furniture, etc. The stability also comes from familiar surroundings that include smells of chalk dust, lunch boxes, familiar faces of students and teachers. In many classrooms, where students are assigned a seat, a quick glance is sufficient to identify who is missing from the class.
Social Intimacy
A very significant aspect that Jackson has pointed out is the “social intimacy in schools”. He points out that although buses, cinema halls and other public spaces may be more crowded than schools, yet classrooms are more intimate than any other place. Even long periods of concentrated work that requires or allows little interaction, are marked with intimacy.
School Day
School Day
The school day is characterised by a ritualistic and cyclic quality. This is evident in the division of school day into regular, equal periods, schedule of classes, and a regularity in classroom teaching. Students are not taken by a surprise when instructed to refer to specific textbooks, or undertake writing work. This manifests itself in students’ familiarity with the terms “seatwork, group discussion, teacher demonstration” etc. Instructions such as not talking during individual work, not looking at other’s sheets during tests, raising your hand to ask a question are also familiar to students, and often internalised by the time they reach senior classes.
Schools vs Prisons vs Mental Hospitals
Jackson points out an aspect of student’s life that is similar to prisons and mental hospitals : “involuntary attendance”. Parents and teachers often choose not to talk about this aspect. The similarity in the three settings arises from a lack of choice with the people involved. The dissimilarity may be found in the unpleasantness of experiences at the prison and mental hospitals. Yet, the child has to come to terms with the inevitability of the experience. They thus have to learn to cope with the conflict between their nature desires and expectations of parents and school.
What it means to live in a classroom
Finally, the author profoundly states that “learning to live in a classroom involves, among other things, learning to live in a crowd.” Almost all behaviour in the school setting is in the presence of others. This brings a quality of evaluation. A child’s words and actions are constantly under scrutiny. In addition, the teacher is in a more powerful position than the student. They are in a stronger position to determine the direction of the classroom events.