Social media, work ethics and resistance

Last week, I had a conversation with my workmates. We discussed our pupils’ habit of interrupting their work to send text messages, play games or use Facebook. We all agreed  

that this habit of constantly wanting to be online, would probably create a bit of tension before the new technology will have adopted to today’s work culture. 

One of my workmates referred to her extra job, where lots of people had regular pauses during work hours  to check their phones for messages etc. Since she had relatives who were entrepreneurs herself, she condemned this habit and my other workmate agreed by nodding. Of course, I opposed and said that it was an obvious thing to do in a stressful work environment.

 In my mind I recalled the resistance towards the the work phase at a warehouse where I worked many years ago. As temp workers we were harassed by management while the workers with steady jobs had an easier situation. However, we tried to take sides with the workers with fixed contracts and managed to take longer brakes by hiding in the bathroom form a while. The workers with fixed contract had arranged one bathroom to be a smoking zone, and the other to be non-smoking. 

I can’t avoid thinking about how we treat the kids at our school, in many ways I have to do the same dirty work as my supervisors did when they checked our work at the warehouse. However, if I don’t  control the kids they wont get any work done, get bad grades which might result in them having trouble getting a job. 

I have discussed these things a lot of times with friends. For a while, I even considered dropping out from my teacher education because of the the disciplinary function of the job. I continued, manly to get a less alienated job than those I had before. I think that an important function a teacher can have, is to create space  for pupils to resist and act collectively to get some more control over their lives. I am not sure exactly how to do this. But I hope I’ll find time to investigate it further on this blog. I’m sorry to say that it might be hard to do it with my workmates, although I really appreciate them on other levels. 

Over and out