Roberson 1

Erin Roberson
Lucia Elden
English 111
14 October 2015
Internalized Fences

Fences are a part of everyday life. It seems that you cant go anywhere without passing
one, whether in the country or in the city. They surround playgrounds to keep out unwanted
strangers and keep children from roaming. A fence can be a vital part of an ecosystem, protecting
crops from predators. It can even be a beautiful decoration, with no other purpose than to be seen
and admired. In most cases it seems that the purpose of a fence is to protect such as in the photo
at the top. Such fences as these for the most part protect the things we care about. They keep out

Roberson 2

dangerous things and mark what goes where. These physical boundaries are easy to see and easy
to go around. But what happens when fences are put up against us?
Internal fences are thoughts and beliefs that act as potential barriers between us and new
ideas. Fences such as thoughts of inadequacy and ability are some of the most common, but often
we do not realize we are the ones putting them up. Jack Mezirow, a professor of adult education
at Columbia University writes in his article Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice:
Adults have acquired a coherent body of experience - associations, concepts,
values, feelings, conditioned response- frames of references that define their life world
They set our line of action. Once set, we automatically move from one specific activity
(mental or behavioral) to another. We have a strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fit
our preconceptions (268)
Mezirow suggests that adults have many years of experience under their belt they are the ones
that younger generation looks up to. He also references this idea of mental and behavioral
activities. Young children learn from following in the footsteps of parents, they learn how to talk
from observing adult conversations, and how to walk from others walking. The same concept
goes with morals and ideas. Children learn certain 'mental' actions of thinking by listening in on
adult conversations. They adopt political parties without learning that much information about
them just because they are' republican family'. These behavioral actions mentioned would be
things like voting specifically one way they give no ideas are the caregivers of the younger
generation, and their ideas and beliefs are passed down. Mezirow also suggests that these actions
are done without thought, or automatically. In this way, fences are put up without even being
realized. They are fences against new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Roberson 3

Mezirow continues this idea of adults being and having frames of reference and
structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences (268). In many
cultures there is this idea that adults are the ones who have experiences in life, who know what
they are doing and therefore are the ones that everyone should model themselves after. This is a
simple transformation of ideas. If a parent thinks it is very important to have good grades, then
the same idea is passed onto the child. However, an internal fence in order to meet these
standards set against them. For some, the fence is not healthy. It pushes that grades are more
important than their own health and therefore an A is more important than their well-being. For
others the fence pushes the other way. A belief of not being good enough to earn high grade from
past remarks and scores keeps them from working to achieve them.
Not all fences are built just by parents. In fact, many fences are built or at the very least
kept and well maintained by one's own self. In the story Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose,
he talks about his experience with a student named James who went through a something similar.
James was a student who came to him for tutoring because of his low marks in his composition
course. It was easy to see why he was getting low marks however.
I asked him what he thought Berger's reason was for writing Ways of Seeing, and he gave
me a pretty good answer. I asked another question, and for a brief while it seemed that he
was with me. But then he stopped and said, "I should have gotten better than a C-. I think
I deserve way higher than that (14-15)."
When the tutor when to help him, he quickly put up a fence that prevented him from continuing.
He saw himself answering these questions, saw him as smart but did not want to work for the
grade. He only saw that he deserved better than what he got, without realizing what it was that he
did wrong in the paper or trying to realize it. This mental fence he put up prevents him from

Roberson 4

learning from his mistakes as well as preventing him from putting in the extra effort to actually
improve his grades. He created a mental barrier that prevented him from pushing past his
comfort zone and into a higher academic learning zone where he could potentially earn a higher
grade. James exhibits the idea of line of action explained by Mezirow earlier by his rejection
of the C-. It is an idea that after talking about the paper is inconceivable and to him and he
wastes no time thinking about it. His internalized fences do not allow him to see his fault or to
help him to correct it.
The story of James is sadly one that is not uncommon. Fences of the mind and in
education especially are being quite commonplace. In my own experiences, I have struggled with
fences that I have created. In classes such as English, art and economics I knew I was not the
best person in the class, maybe not even in the top 10 so I was less competitive. These were not
classes that I knew I was good in so I had to struggle for them. In art it was especially hard to
work with an abundance of skilled artists when I felt like I needed constant help from the teacher
to get an area shaded. It was so discouraging that often times I would take my artwork home to
work on it and hunch over it when so others could not see it in class. My internalized fence was
my inability to believe I could work to be as good as some of the other students in that class.
There was not a single project where I did not go to the teacher for help on multiple areas and
none of my artwork is framed and hanging. In economics, I had gone into the class being the
only sophomore surrounded by juniors and seniors. Going in there was already a notion that this
class was going to be challenging because so many upperclassmen were taking it. My fence
automatically popped up: I was not going to get an A. I have no prior knowledge of economics
and this class is advance, so for me a B would be high enough and it was all that I worked for
and that was exactly was I got. The course was taught in such a way that the tests were not too

Roberson 5

difficult. In fact, many of the tests had the same questions repeated on them in the same format
as on previous tests. On days before tests we would review everything that would be on the test,
word for word in almost exact order, as we did in most classes. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire
would describe this style of teaching as banking education. Banking education simply put is
where teachers speak and teach students statically, without much participant involvement by
depositing information. In not so pretty words students are force fed information and
regurgitate it up when they need it. They do not actually learn or the importance of it, just
memorize it. Freire regards a banking education as a negative teaching style and instead suggests
the problem-posing style. He writes in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as
indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats
students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers.
Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates...the intentionality of
consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their
ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing
education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality,
thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings only when engaged in inquiry
and creative transformation.
Freire suggests that because a banking education has less dialogue between the students and
teacher, the students are not being taught to think on their own. In a sense their hands are being
held too much and in this way, fences are being put up against them. Without being taught how
to critically think, a student is unprepared for the figure-it-out-yourself attitude of college such as
James in the Mike Rose story. Had James been taught with a problem-posing education as

Roberson 6

suggested by Freire, he might have had an easier grasp on his assignments with fewer
internalized fences. Freire repeatedly brings up this concept of problem-posing education that
involves high student interaction and is thought to improve critical thinking skills. In theory this
teaching method is great because of its possibility to tear down some internal fences. By a
critical thinker, there are fewer fences for you maneuver through because you are less likely to
build them in the first place. Confidence in academics is stronger. However, the problem-posing
education could build more walls for students who have issues with in class participation.
Depending on how this style is presented, a student can build multiple internal fences against it
and be worse off than with the banking system.
The fences that people put up against themselves are some of the hardest to overcome.
They put limitations on themselves and prevent them from accomplishing things that they only
needed a little mental boost to get to. When people set up these internal fences they are saying I
cannot do this and they do not work to fix this into I can do this or I can work harder to
improve my skill in this. Often they set the fence up without even giving it a chance or from the
fear of a past failure. Instead, they need to urge themselves to make that fence smaller, to make it
easier to climb and see through, and eventually to just stop making it. It is a constant battle to
recognize and tear down internal fences. Overcoming a fence is a huge obstacle, but the rewards
are worth the effort. Greatness waits just over the fence.

Roberson 7

Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. "Philosophy of Education -- Chapter 2: Pedagogy of the Oppressed."
Philosophy of Education -- Chapter 2: Pedagogy of the Oppressed. N.p., n.d.
Web. 08
Mezirow, Jack. "Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice." 2013. Exploring
Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century. Custom Edition for
Mid Michigan Community College ed. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2013.
268-274. Print.
Rose, Mike. The Politics of Remediation. Conversations In Context: Identity,
Knowledge, and College Writing. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College
Publishers, 1998: 32-48. Print.