Pilecka Małgorzata TEACHERS’ SENSE OF HUMOR: A NEW EDUCATIONAL TOOL BOTH FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR EDUCATORS

Since the latest political transformation in Poland in 1989/90 much has been said about the new roles of teachers in the modern type of education. The traditional system of conservative schooling, basing on the standardized knowledge having been transmitted verbally from generation to generation, has received widespread critics [1, p. 437]. Among the most vocal ones are not only pedagogues and psychologists, but also economists, who emphasise the increasing worth of human capital at the beginning of the 21^st century. In contrast to the vision of an infallible teacher – master, in the hastily developing Western Europe occurred a new definition of educators – the transformative intellectuals [2], who are conscious of the growing demands of the modern world and prepare their students to struggling against them: “teacher is trusted to propagate and support the new knowledge, behaviours and skills that are needed by the individual students and the whole society” [3, p. 159]. As follows, the personality of the perfect teacher should be characterised by inter alia: intelligence, creativity, the highest level of universal knowledge and critical attitude to the reality. One could infer that the work of  a contemporary teacher belongs to the particularly “serious” ones. Nevertheless, the word ‘seriousness’ has got at least two meanings that should be explained in this place. Firstly, ‘a serious work/job’ may be understood as ‘connected with large responsibility’. However, as far as a trait of character is concerned, ‘seriousness’ can be defined as ‘being solemn, thoughtful, unwilling to laugh’ [4, p. 777]. As long as responsible character of the teachers’ work could not be denied, one may discuss the place of the teachers’ sense of humour in the process of education. As said,“the view that teaching should be ‘fun’ for children goes back a long way in the history of educational thought. But the view that it should sometimes be ‘funny’ would appear to be a rather newer one” [5, p. 237]. The new place of the sense of humour in the educational process may be determined by results of the latest pedagogical and psychological research that revealed positive influence of humour on the children’s development [6, p. 102].

At the beginning, it appears sensible to explain the basic terminology used, especially the expression ‘sense of humour’ itself. There are various perspectives of perceiving ‘sense of humour’ because this phenomenon combines different aspects of knowledge: psychological, cultural and sociological. M. Dudzikowa claims that “the sense of humour is a universal category because it comprises, as a definition and as a phenomenon, a feature of personality, a sphere of perception, a social context as well as a skill of controlling the situation” [3, p. 157]. In general, one may name three crucial types of humoristic behaviours (meant as either an act of creating the comic quality, or a reaction to it [7, p. 203-204]): verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal. The partition, however, seems to be artificial, as all these kinds of humoristic behaviours interchange with one another. Verbal type of humoristic behaviours may be defined as every act of talking characterised by the conscious use of comic quality in order to make the audience laugh. It may be exhibited by inter alia aberrant comparison, hyperbole, denigration, quibble, ambiguity (allophones), jokes (meant in this place as “jest, quip, gag”), funny stories, comic remarks, absurd associations and humoristic contradictions [7, 192-199; 8, p. 53-58]. The only condition of succeeding is to fit the statement into the proper context, which is not always obvious and mutual, as A. Janowski warns: “When a teacher says something that has to be amusing, he somehow has to recognize the situation as a proper moment to say something funny (…). The result of such a recognition, led simultaneously by the teacher and by his audience, not always has to be the same” [9, p. 188]. Verbal humoristic behaviour is usually perceived as the only expression of sense of humour. Erroneously, because language may be generally examined in two areas: segmental (verbal) and suprasegmental (paraverbal). Paraverbal aspect of language pertains to its prosodic layer, consisting of accent, rhythm, intonation, melody of talking, as well as volume and tone of voice [10, p. 191-192]. All these elements may majorly influence the reception of a message since they reveal hidden emotions of the sender: the same statement expressed with different intonation may give quite varied meanings – also humoristic or ironic. Additionally, sense of humour can be demonstrated non-verbally: directly by gestures, mimics and body language, or indirectly by pictures, symbols and pictograms. What is more, one may also count the reaction of silence among the non-verbal humoristic behaviours. All of them, however, are attributed to particular social groups and consequently perceived as arbitrary. As follows, sense of humour is an extremely individual issue and may be expressed in many various ways. The humoristic behaviours depend on the situation, too. One associates sense of humour mostly with cheerfulness and serenity, but particular kind of smile or laughter may also be a reason for the other’s offence and distress. Thus, in subject bibliography one may encounter eight various categories of laughter: (1) humoristic, (2) social, (3) arrogant, (4) avoidant, (5) excusing, (6) ’discharge’, (7) mocking and (8) cheerful [11, p. 236]. M. Dudzikowa, the main author of this typology, pays attention to the fact that each enumerated category can be matched into a broaden group of either ‘supportive laughter’ or ‘destructive laughter’ (mostly associated with so called ‘Schadenfreude’ [7, p. 102]). Needless to say, supporting laughter is the type of sense of humour that everyone (especially educators) should aspire to possess. P. Woods created the following classification of teachers, basing on criterion how they use sense of humour: (1) teachers who require their students to work; (2) teachers with whom one may laugh and tell jokes; (3) teachers with whom one may work and laugh; (4) teachers who are not respected [9, p. 205]. The typology invokes children’s viewpoint that is why it may appear a bit coarse and imprecise. However, one gets satisfactory information about the teachers’ personalities to say, who wields sense of humour and who does not. According to this list, ‘teachers, who require to work’ seem to stay outside any expressions of sense of humour. The rest uses it; nevertheless, only third type of teachers applies sense of humour into the process of education in the most beneficial way. Second type of teachers practice sense of humour as a substitute of exact teaching and as a tool of fraternisation that counts into Woods’s survival strategies [9, p. 181-183]. Teachers of fourth type, even if they use sense of humour, do it incompetently (do not fulfil the conditions of ‘a happy illocution’). Eventually, the third group of educators wield sense of humour twofold: as a tactics to win the students round, as well as to make the process of teaching more attractive and, eventually, more efficient. The researches demonstrated that the third group of teachers are the least numerous (on average: 20% of the tested teachers) [3, p. 167]. The characteristics of those teachers occurs in subject bibliography under different names, but the general idea appears similar. For instance, M. Lejman writes about ‘a lifting personality’, which may be marked by tolerance and positive attitude towards other people [12, p. 47-51]. M. Dudzikowa in her three-element classification recalls ‘teachers, with whom they laugh’, who “[w]ith their attitude towards students and themselves inspire credibility and confidence, who impress with their substantive knowledge and are able to transmit it in an interesting way [3, p. 167]. Sense of humour emerges in numerous theoretical texts as one of crucial features of the perfect teacher’s character. The analysis of the students’ statements showed that supportive laughter belongs to the most desirable features of the teachers, because such an educator “would side with them, being a real authority in the world full of chaos, imprecise values, unclear ideas” [3, p. 162]. Still, seldom do the teachers themselves appreciate sense of humour as important item of education [3, p. 204]. Unfortunately – because as said, positive sense of humour, used competently by supervisors, may lead to comprehensive education and intellectual development not only of students, but also of teachers themselves. Simultaneously, using verbal sense of humour (‘supportive laughter’) by teachers during classes may fulfil a range of roles that stem from different definitions of the term, inter alia: psychological (to build sense of security and lower pressure); cultural (to link various disciplines into one sensible sum); social (to create pleasant relationship between teacher and students and among teachers); substantive (to develop knowledge and skills of both students and teacher). Alas, it has been proved that the type of laughter that occurs the most in Polish schools is rather a destructive one – obviously among students and, which is surprising, among teachers as well. Laughing about student’s mistakes, appearance and other features makes teachers feel stronger and helps them to maintain the authority (defined as ‘threaten authority complex’ [3, p. 164-165]); nonetheless, it is only a formal authority, not a personal one [2, p. 217-218]. That means that students conform to the teacher only because of his/her position in the institution of school, not because of his/her imitable traits of character. One of the interviewed student described his teacher as “the hedgehog in the defensive pose” [11, p. 163]. This metaphor illustrates teacher’s lack of self-confidence, as well as lack of respect towards him/her among students.

Historically, sense of humour, being an integral part of humanity, has been a pulsating category (the social perception of its values has changed in reference to the periods of history) – majorly an underestimated one [13]. The closely related terms, such as ‘play’, ‘joy’ and ‘fun’ have therefore remained in contrast to seriousness [14, p. 18]. Possibly, that opposition origins from the dual construction of the medieval mentality of the European societies, which based on two spheres: sacrum (expressed by seriousness and mourn) and profanum (expressed by laughter). That is why historically laughter and comic quality were directly associated with evil, sin and stupidity, and hence strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church (14, p. 17]. This negative attitude towards laughter illustrates U. Eco in his famous novel “The Name of the Rose”: “Laughter is a weakness, a corruption, an emptiness of our body (…). [L]aughter remains immorality, the defence for plain people, the desacralized charade for rabble” [15, p. 471]. Nowadays, “the former odium has been removed from laughter ” [16, p. 23] – on the contrary: sense of humour appears to be an appreciated asset. Still, its functions are different in various cultures and is conditioned by former experiences of the local people, as well as by present economic and political situation of their country. P. Szarota uses the term ‘a culture of smile’ to describe the society that has positive attitude to expressing cheerfulness and laughing. The best exemplification of such society are the Americans, who treat smile and laughter as the most important part of their private and public relations. Contrary to the USA, however, Poland is perceived as a country, where almost all symptoms of sense of humour are reserved for the closest relatives and the most intimate relationships [16, p. 91]. Traumatic war experience and the memory of communistic system deprived the Polish people of former sociability and airiness in the interpersonal contacts. In the period of Peoples’ Republic of Poland (Pol. Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa), 1952 – 1989, smile and laughter, publicised in pro-communistic posters and leaflets, became a symbol of political persuasion [16, p. 94-95]. It does not mean that the Polish society may not be marked by sense of humour whatsoever, though. But, Polish sense of humour is specific, full of irony, cynics and black parody of reality. T. Szarota distinguished two fundamental functions of sense of humour in the PRP: (1) consolidating and integrating – thanks to popular political jokes people felt united against the common enemy (the communistic government) and (2) invigorating – creating parody of the sorrowful reality reduced fear of the enemy and, at the same time, increased mental strength of both individuals, and whole groups of people [16, p. 98-99]. Both mentioned functions belong to a very specific type of sense of humour that is commonly known as ‘black humour’ or ‘gallows humour’. It is characterised by finding comic quality in extremely dramatic and stressful situations in order to decrease the feeling of fear and anxiety. Using violence to control the people frequently provokes the resistance. For this reason, one may reach the conclusion that black humour is one of the expressions of hidden resistance. Interestingly, these roles of sense of humour occur at present Polish schools, as well. According to P. Bourdieu, the conservative system of education uses symbolic violence in order to influence the world-view and behaviour of students [17, p. 60-61]. That is why they struggle against teachers and school on the whole and in this battle black humour (‘destructive laughter’) and so called ‘clowning’ are their main weapons [18, p. 67]. However, it is worth changing the fight into cooperation.

To conclude, sense of humour is one of the integral aspects of humanity. As an universal (psychological and social) capacity, it may be discussed from the perspectives of various scientific disciplines. Admittedly, there are some works concerning various attitudes towards sense of humour, but this phenomenon has not been examined fully yet. For pedagogy sense of humour performs a quite new issue, still waiting for being investigated in detail. The perception of sense of humour in pedagogy should be defined not as a special feature of character, reserved to the chosen teachers, but as one of ruling active teaching methods, which involve both teacher and students into the process of education. The author supports the opinion that telling jokes cannot be on any account an aim itself. Sense of humour should be used as a very universal tool of teaching, as it allows to create close relationship between children and their teacher, supports the interdisciplinary development and helps to solve complex problems with enthusiasm. It is obvious that sense of humour may reveal in various ways in different people. Nonetheless, it is possible to work out some kind of consensus between teacher’s and students’ sense of humour, clearly describing the limits and the rules of using it. The only, but usually the biggest, problem is the teachers’ willing. Alas, they still feel afraid or ashamed of manifesting their perception of comic quality. This may be a result of traditional (behavioural) way of perceiving the teacher and the process of education. It seems to be crucial to change mentality that ‘serious’ means ‘sad, deprived of sense of humour’. Additionally, it is suggested to include sense of humour into contents of teacher’s pre-work preparations as one of the crucial items of learning and up-bringing environment – not especially as a separate subject, but maybe as a new method of developing knowledge and personality.

Bibliography