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I have been thinking on the general hierachy and structure of both the management and student bodies of St Peters School, and the more I think the more I believe there is an inbalance in the way student views are represented reletive to management opinions. The inbalance is due to one simple fact - the collective view and opinion of the student body as a whole is poorly represented, if at all.
What I am suggesting is the introduction of a management-student hierachy, a democracy - a system where everybody has a say at the very least. I have created a few preliminary sketches and diagrams around this, and will be following up the idea of a 'student council', as such, once I have put in a little more work and gone into more depth around the issue.
The question, as always at this point, is how does this relate to TOK? Management do not already have a student council in place, which means either they think they know what the general POV of the student body is or they do not believe this opinion will make a difference to their decisions within the school. I am going to assume that the first statement is correct (because, if it wasn't, quite frankly I would be very worried about the running of the school), and in that lies the question. How do we know what we know? More applicably, how do THEY know what they know? Something that will certainly be explored via further probing I am sure :)
Just to make it clear, I am not attacking the school and the way they do things - I am simply offering another point of view, and suggesting that the school as a whole would benifit from a collective student point of view. Cheers :)
ReplyDeleteI think the situation is a bit more subtle than how you describe it. Yes, it could be correct that the school leaders think they know the student's views. In fact, I think you'll find that there is a strong desire from management to know hat the student views are.
ReplyDeleteYou also assume that this has never been attempted before at St Peter's (note the use of the apostrophe, please), when in fact that might not be the case. If so, then why has it not continued to exist? I have some answers of my own to that question, but I'd urge you to ponder further.
Your ideas are great .. and yes, student views need to be heard, considered and acted on (I think you'll find that student views have been responsible for a number of changes in the way the school runs, e.g. the instigation of Academic Prefect, was an idea that came from the students.) Articulating clearly a student viewpoint that the majority of students can agree with is another challenge.
To be honest, I'm not sure this is entirely a TOK discussion, but interesting nonetheless.
See you in the soup