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Circles and Rows
When I first started teaching, I didn't have much choice about the setup of my classroom: it came equipped with six tables, each big enough for two people, each with thick legs on each end and a metal panel on one side, dictating clearly where the only two people who could fit at the table would sit. If this wasn't enough, the tables were wired up with electrical outlets and ethernet jacks, making them pretty much impossible to rearrange. All of this was fine, though, because as a young teacher I didn't have very strong opinions on how the classroom should be arranged, and the tables forming rows on two axes conformed to just about every classroom I'd ever been in anyway, so I was content.
Six years into my teaching career, I changed schools. In this new setting, I had discreet desks, which allowed for some flexibility. I'd considered a circular arrangement before, and since that was the default for the entire English department, I conformed with that norm. Now that I'm back at the school where I started my career, it happens that I'm in a different classroom--in fact, I was able to choose my classroom, and I've also been able to choose the setup for the classroom. It's not quite a circle--more like a horseshoe--but it serves the same purpose.
Consider, for a moment, the inherent biases of the traditional classroom setup. Rows are made for order. They're made to divide the room between the teacher at the front, lecturing or at least leading, and the students in serried ranks assembled, whose purpose in the classroom is to politely raise their hands to answer questions--often virtually rhetorical--asked by the teacher. In fact, conversation is really only fostered in two ways: student to teacher and teacher to student, but not student to student (with the exception of passing notes sending text messages). The model of education that fits such a plan is one where the teacher lectures and the students write down, where the teacher is the fount of knowledge and the students are (mostly passive) receptacles for that bounty. Oddly enough, the fount often doesn't seem to pour well, as studies have shown. Perhaps this is because one of the structural allowances of such a setup is that students can hide. I don't mean that the teacher doesn't know where they are, but often the teacher can't see what they're doing, which allows them to do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with learning (as well as the one form of student-to-student conversation allowed, passing notes (or, in the digital age, sending text messages). They can avoid eye contact with the teacher--in fact, they have to work in order to make eye contact with the teacher. Often the room becomes divided between the high-achieving students who grab seats at the front and the "cool" kids who sit in the back, where, as well, it's easier to pick on other kids--throwing things at the back of their heads, poking them with pencils or... whatever.
Compare this to a circular arrangement. The main thing fostered by such an arrangement is discussion. Everyone can make eye contact with everyone else, everyone can hear everyone else (at least, better than when all are facing forward and someone in front speaks). This allows a more active, experiential learning. Also, students are more responsible for their learning and no one can hide. When it comes to taking quizzes or tests, even though students tend to be closer together, which might enable cheating, they have slightly fewer people close enough to realistically cheat off of and the teacher has a better view of what's going on, making it difficult to cheat in any case, without the teacher needing to pace up and down rows.
What made me think about this is that my two sections of juniors are currently working on writing their Junior Papers, a combination of research and argumentation, and I've got them sitting in rows facing away from my desk to make it easier for me to monitor what they're doing on their laptops. When my seniors came into class today, rather than rearranging the desks, I decided to just go with it, and wow does it seem strange after 2 1/2 years of facing a circle or semi-circle to suddenly look down (and there's another difference--often when we're in a circle, I sit, but when they're in rows it's almost necessary for me to stand).
To be fair, all of the classes I've ever taught have been small, from six to thirteen students, and in such a situation there's very little hiding regardless of seating arrangement. Further, a grid-like arrangement is a far more efficient use of space, without the waste of a big open spot in the middle. Likewise, large classes make it inherently more difficult for discussion to occur in which every member of the class participates and makes it easier for students to "hide." Still, I think there are certain structural properties of different formations, regardless of the number of students involved.
After I'd finished writing this post, I read a passage on a similar topic in Derrick Jensen's Walking On Water, as he narrates "the Great Chalkboard War of 1995," an incident from his time teaching creative writing in night school, when an argument with another professor broke out on the classroom's chalkboard after Jensen rearranged the desks in a circle. He narrates a fuller story, but the gist of it can be gotten from the chalkboard exchange itself:
Put the chairs back in rows!
Who is making this request? If you're a custodian, I'll gladly do it. If not, I'll make you a deal: you put them in a circle for us, and we'll put them in rows for you.
Don't be immature. Grow up and put the chairs the way they belong.
Students--and by extension chairs--don't belong in rows. And I wouldn't call the questioning of authority or tradition immature, but rather a sign of emotional and psychological well-being. If we learn nothing else from the horrors of the Holocaust, Vietnam, and the ongoing destruction of the planet, we should learn that blind obedience to authority or tradition is far more problematical than any questioning a person might do, don't you think?
Cut this nonsense out. This is a school, and I'm trying to teach something here.
I am, too. That's why I'm doing this. The question becomes: What are you teaching?
I'm not going to waste any more time debating with a fool. If the chairs are not back in rows tomorrow morning, I'm going to your supervisor.
If I may for a moment shift from a discussion of issues to one of tactics, I'd like to point out that while attacking the person one disagrees with--either through name-calling (e.g., "immature," "fool") or through some sort of threat (e.g., "I'm going to your supervisor")--instead of confronting the substance of the other's arguments is certainly a tactic with a long and storied tradition, it is often a tool of last resort, because it shows the weakness of the user's arguments. If the user were able to construct a case, he wouldn't need to call names or make threats: he could merely make his case. Furthermore, name-calling violates a fundamental principle of good writing, which is "Show, don't tell." Calling someone a fool is not good writing. It's much better to have someone read what you've written--whether it's in an article or book or on a chalkboard--and then have the reader say "That guy he's describing really is a fool." That is good writing.