Challenging our Assumptions about Teaching and Schooling in Ranita Ray's Slow Violence

 Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom by Ranita Ray

Slow Violence book cover

Author and Scholar Ranita Ray

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for sharing this powerful and discomforting book about education, Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom. Ranita Ray, a sociologist, spends several years following students in Las Vegas schools as they interact with their teachers and gradually experience the kind of institutional violence and power differentials that their teachers apply seemingly to harm rather than help them. I typically enjoy reading books about education, even ones that often challenge our assumptions and understanding of the purpose of schools, such as Eve Ewing’s excellent Original Sins, Aaron Kupchik’s insightful Suspended Education, and Betina Love’s powerful Punished for Dreaming, to name a few recent books. Ray’s book would fall into a similar category of a critical examination of policies and practices that inhibit student success, while also highlighting the kinds of power differentials teachers often wield and their seeming indifference to make change and begin to advocate for their students. Ray writes in her conclusion that “it is difficult for many of us to challenge the perception of universal altruism among teachers,” and I felt this kind of dissonance while reading the book. Not only did her observations and conclusions make me upset, but they also caused me to reflect on my own teaching experiences and those I’ve observed, thinking back to when either I witnessed or engaged in these types of behaviors that contributed to the slow violence that students experience. Although I cannot say that this kind of behavior has never happened, I will admit that after some experience teaching and working with student populations much different from my own background, I became more flexible and understanding in my teaching and approach to accommodations in the classroom. Furthermore, I’ve also been lucky to work with other like-minded colleagues who shared similar educational philosophies and approaches that attempted to be student-centered and supportive of student learning. Nevertheless, I’ve witnessed instances of the kind of slow violence that Ray explains from both teachers and administrators, and not just towards students, but towards teachers and staff who were deemed as not team players or not on board to help students. Although I question some of the generalizability of Ray’s conclusions based on her work in 2 schools in Las Vegas, I can agree that often power, policies, and pedagogy work against students whose backgrounds may be culturally incongruent with teachers and administrators. Nevertheless, there are steps and strategies that schools and teacher education programs can take to help strengthen the teaching corps and better prepare them for the diverse student bodies they will work with in American schools. I know from my teacher education, I was underprepared to work with the kinds of diverse populations in many American schools, and often fell into the apprenticeship of observation, relying on teaching the way I was taught, which is not appropriate for students from different generations and cultures. It wasn’t until I worked with other teachers, observed their classes, and reached out for help about either student issues or teaching practices that I was able to develop some more engaging practices that focused more on student learning and helping to make students feel like they had a say in their learning in our classes.

However, I’m digressing, and Ray’s book offers much to critique and question in her ethnography of these students’ experiences. Ray begins explaining her methods for her research, which took place between 2017 and 2020, right before the pandemic, and her definition of slow violence, which reflects the kind of psychological and emotional violence over physical violence. She also includes an important caveat that the conclusions she drew were based on her observations, conversations, and scholarly knowledge. In the prologue, Ray provides some background about her own experience as a multilingual learner who was threatened and punished for speaking her mother tongue in school. It’s this memory that enables Ray to feel more empathy and understanding for the students she observes than her own teacher, having experienced that kind of power differential and disregard for her identity, interests, and culture that the students at Ribbon Elementary and Doreena Middle School experienced with their teachers and administrators. Although the teachers are presented as seemingly progressive and advocates for diversity and student success, as the school year progresses, we learn, through Ray’s observations, that their motives and actions are inconsistent with what we would think about teachers. Ray offers some further insight into understanding these teachers, noting that for some of them, teaching was a second or third career option, and not something that always took precedence in their future plans. This point about the teaching profession is also an important consideration since there is always a need for qualified teachers, and Ray frequently stresses about the lack of diversity in the teaching corps, which is primarily comprised of white women and men who frequently teach students whose ethnicities, cultures, languages, and backgrounds are different from their own. These differences may allow for biases and assumptions to influence instructional decisions, grades, and even future opportunities for learning. Ray’s observations of the teachers show how they frequently let their assumptions about the students and their families influence the type of work they received and how they interpreted the students’ achievement or motivation in class. Although Ray frequently notes how the school is under-resourced, with as many as 40 students in a classroom and limited access to paraprofessionals and other in class aides, it also seems like the nature of teaching has changed along with the expectations about the roles that teachers are expected to play in students’ lives. While I was shocked to read about some of the assumptions that teachers made about the lives of their students, it also seemed like some of the teachers were unprepared or had no background to possibly support the kinds of challenges that some of their students experienced. For example, one student who is featured as a star student in the class, lost her 2 month old brother, and her disengagement and withdrawal from class and socialization seemed swift and in need of some kind of intervention. Although her teachers reached out, I was surprised that the school didn’t do too much more for her after this devastating loss. Furthermore, I’m not sure how many teachers are able to navigate and support students through this kind of grief. As a teacher who has experienced loss, I think that I can be empathetic to students who also experience loss. However, it would seem like the school or even counselors within the district might offer some support for teachers to then support students. I worked in a school where we experienced the loss of students in close succession, and we basically stopped everything to reach out to students (and other colleagues) and make sure that everyone’s emotions were considered. It just made me think about how teachers do more than just teach—they are often expected to emotionally support students, interpret their feelings, and consider their changes, socially, emotionally, academically, and identity-wise. Although some may view teachers as “instructors”, the work of a teacher is much more complex and demanding, and often requires some skills and attributes that are not always the focus of teacher education and professional development. Beyond this kind of emotional support, teachers are also expected to be something like a technician, where they need to assess students, examine their results, and then devise strategies and supports for their students, especially those who are at opposite ends of the learning curve. I’m not sure how that is possible with 40 students who require varying levels of support and enrichment, but this is part of the new reality for teachers and their work. Regardless, Ray’s observations also made me wonder what happened in the teacher meetings for the 4^th and 5^th grade teams that she followed. Ray seems privy to some of the teacher conversations in the lounge, where the teachers engaged in disparaging the parents and families of their students, but I wondered whether there was any kind of shared strategies and data analysis that was happening across the teams.

Ray’s observations also made me question the administrators at these schools. In Ribbon, Dr. Geertz seemed almost oblivious to the issues occurring within the classrooms. One of the only male and Black teachers in the school left his 5^th grade class after being scrutinized for his harsh treatment of female students. Although I was wincing at the ways in which he responded to and disciplined some of the female students, I also saw this as maybe an opportunity for some professional goals and either the principal or another teacher coach to come in and support this teacher with some strategies and measurable goals for improving his interactions with his students. Although I know that teacher observations do not always happen in schools, I was surprised by how independent and unsupported these teachers were. It seemed like the schools were confirming that assumption that teaching is a isolating job, where teachers shut their doors and just work with their students. Ray also explained that she felt conflicted about not intervening when she witnessed the slow violence in the classes she observed, and as a researcher, she’s correct not to step in. Not only would it influence her research conclusions and potentially damage her relationship with these teachers, but as an outside observer who was in the school to observe the students, I’m not sure that the teachers would have accepted her observations or suggestions. If anything, it seemed like the entire culture of the school was deviating from the messages and slogans posted around the campus. I wondered whether the school leadership was aware of this, and whether they participated this kind of slow violence through their own assumptions as well.

Ray’s observations are descriptive and detailed, and she provides some useful connection to research when necessary, which helps to situate and understand the behaviors and consequences we read about in the book. I really appreciated this aspect of her scholarship and analysis, since it allowed readers to see that much of what we are reading about in this school is not necessarily an isolated incident, but is potentially happening in other schools and to other students in the US. Still, I was shocked to see how some of the teachers didn’t really understand basic elements of teaching or connecting with their students. For example, in 5^th grade, the teacher planned a unit around Civil Rights in the 1960s, reading a recent book that takes place in Alabama in the 1960s. The students made their own connections with the Colin Kaepernick and other events in 2017, but the teacher seemed to disparage these astute connections the students were making. Rather than listening and questioning them to explain their connections further, she dismissed their connections. It was really unclear what the focus of the lesson was, and whether the students were working on reading skills, history, or what the objectives for the lessons were. I can only imagine how confused the students must have felt. I wondered whether this teacher knew about learning objectives and how to structure a lesson. Furthermore, I was shocked to read about how many teachers used candy to motivate students. This 5^th grade teacher apparently kept a candy stash and used candy as a reward, which I’ve always viewed as something teachers should not do. Not only are extrinsic rewards like this something that will eventually demotivate students (or make performance contingent on these kinds of rewards), but also giving sugar to students seems unhealthy. The schools I’ve worked in along with my kids’ schools never allowed candy for students, but it seemed like a regular practice for these schools. Some 5^th grade students organized a distraction to snatch some of the candy from the teacher, and when she found out she basically held it against these students for the rest of the year, assuming that they were criminals. Another teacher in the middle school seemingly gave candy to students no matter what they did, even when they disobeyed him or gave incorrect or off-task responses. I just wondered about what message he was offering for his students. It was incredibly shocking to read about this kind of reward for academic work. Why not offer some praise or positive feedback? Why not try to acknowledge their students’ efforts by noting what they did well?

Also of concern was the kind of deficit approach that many of the teachers took about their students that seemed to be informed by their biases and assumptions and was further fed by their interactions and gossiping in the teachers’ lounge. I learned pretty early in my teaching career that the lounge was not a fun place to be, and that it was often a site of complaints and commiserating rather than any kind of productive work. I think this could be true of much work, not just education. However, it’s more personal and emotional since teaching is such an emotional and time investment. However, I think I’ve always learned that it’s important to identify what students bring to the classroom and not what they are lacking. Identify their strengths and interests, utilize their experiences and skills, rather than harping on what they are missing. It’s a simple lesson that any teacher education program should emphasize for their pre-service teachers—do not take the deficit approach. Nevertheless, it seemed like these teachers all assumed that the students lived in poverty, had nothing, and the parents were often standing in the way of progress (although they never offered any examples or evidence). Parents who were interested in their students’ learning were chastised for being too involved, while other parents who maybe worked multiple jobs or had other responsibilities like child or elder care were deemed indifferent to their children. There were assumptions running wild, and while it is natural to want to draw conclusions and make attributions about reasons for involvement or lack thereof, again, this seemed like a place where the administration should step in and offer suggestions and methods for involving more parents in a proactive way, whether it is through hosting parent/child activities, or finding ways for parents to be involved in the class (which there were). Regardless, I was shocked to read about how much the teachers assumed the students were in trauma, and that this trauma was the main reason why students were not succeeding or achieving. Mr. B, the 6^th grade teacher, seemed to be a self-appointed trauma expert (he wrote his thesis on student trauma), and based on Ray’s observations, appeared to lower expectations for students due to their collective trauma. Furthermore, the principal also acknowledged students’ trauma and how it influenced their learning. This led to both a humorous and terrifying assembly in 6^th grade where I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe at the message and assumptions that kids are bad whose friends will eventually lead them to destruction. Yet all of the teachers seemed amazed at the message.

As Ray notes, this is not an easy book to read mainly because it challenges our own assumptions and cherished beliefs about teachers and the work they do. While I’ve known some teachers who engage in this kind of slow violence, thankfully, I’ve known and worked in schools that tend to be more supportive of both their students and teachers. That’s not to say that this kind of slow violence doesn’t happen. I agree with Ray’s conclusions about the need to diversify the teaching corps and prevent the kind of slow violence she witnessed. No student should experience that kind of bias and incongruity in their learning. However, I couldn’t help but question some of the conclusions about the teachers’ own motivations in this book, especially since Ray drew these conclusions based on observations and overheard conversations and not necessarily based on interviews with the teachers or asking about their methods or instruction. Furthermore, it didn’t seem like she interviewed students to ask about their own experiences with learning or school either. I wonder if she may have reached some different conclusions about her observations if these data were included in the analysis. In her “Afterword”, Ray notes that there is a difference between schooling and education. This distinction reminded me of Ewing’s book in particular in that schools in the 20^th century were often sites of assimilation and control, a means to shape, condition, and train future workers for the kind of manual labor that was needed in the early 20^th century. As society and the economy began to change, other’s views and philosophies about school also shifted, with some viewing education as the potential for a social equalizer. Although we are still a long way off from making this aspiration a reality, it’s still possible to support this idea and reinforce it with pre- and in-service teachers. While reform has taken education down some wrong paths, I agree with Ray’s idea that we need to “insist on a more honest conversation about the stark power differential between teachers and students”, and especially those “power relations that oppress Black, brown immigrant and trans people coincide with this fact that teachers have absolute authority inside the classroom and students…have close to none.” While it may not completely address the entirety of this situation, providing more student-centered approaches to learning that also engage students in positions of leadership and responsibility within the classroom are a way to start. Ensuring that teacher education programs, whether they are for undergraduates or alternate route candidates, stress these kinds of democratic approaches to education and acknowledge these power differentials is a good place to start. Furthermore, ensuring that teachers are supported and have regular observations and quality professional development that focuses on culturally congruent teaching strategies and methods is another way to support teachers in supporting their students. While this is challenging and at times disturbing book, it is a necessary and important read, especially for educators, but also for the general public. As Ray explains in both her introduction and afterword, there are attacks against teachers from both the right and the left today. We frequently hear stories about teachers who engage in inappropriate lessons about slavery or immigration, often bringing harm to students. When I was in college studying to be a teacher, I remember watching the “Blue Eye/Brown Eye” experiment as a method to teach about discrimination, but also questioning what kind of harm this brought to students, some of whom attacked and harassed their classmates. Although there were good intentions to teach about discrimination from an experiential perspective, it brought harm to the students. Teachers should also be more aware of their methods and think more about what their students will learn from these activities and assignments, to fully consider the implications and consequences of their lessons. Being a reflective practitioner should be a prerequisite for teaching, and schools need to do more to reinforce this essential aspect of teaching. Nevertheless, Ray’s book challenged my assumptions and made me think and reflect about my own experiences as both a learner and a teacher. I recommend this book even though it is a challenging, difficult, and at times upsetting read.