More from Ken Robinson from Learning without Frontiers. Not adding anything to the teacher-student relationship unless it enhances it is mind-blowing. “Wanting to do Art (and not getting the hang of German) at fourteen” is a brilliant anecdote.
There are some real insights here, and, as ever, wittily put.
The title is taken, of course, from the poem by John Fuller – which is worth reading in it own right: lines like “bells call out the music of the sea” are just beautiful.
What has haunted me, however, since I first read it, is the line in Caliban’s villanelle “A language learnt but nothing understood.” By emphasising decoding over enjoyment and comprehension, the notion of learning to read/reading to learn, a purely instrumental view of reading, is this not what we risk? And in “slimming down” the National Curriculum, do we not risk a dulling-down (as opposed to a dumbing-down) of what is taught in schools? Classics and dull learning (not that Latin need be dull, of course) come back under the banner that says we must not deny any child a right to succeed. But succeed at what? Succeed in a system that creaked and groaned when I was at school? Some might, from a paternalistic model of education, see the teacher’s role as setting language on the tongues of Cailbans, but is their profit on’t to reproduce or at least be compliant in outmoded ways of learning?
I return again to the animated (in both senses) Ken Robinson.
Some interesting stuff here – an RSA Animation again from Ken Robinson, whose fascinating insights I have cited before. Thanks to my colleague Helen for the link, by the way.
The link between the growth of routine medication for possible ADHD and routine testing makes for a thought-provoking “moment” and (such is Robinson’s way) a good gag about the way different states in the US provide for what he calls a “fictitious epidemic” – but he has some important things to say about “aesthetic and anaesthetic education” and the link between patterns of industrial and educational organisation. And what do we make of the decline in divergent thinking throughout schooling? It reminded me powerfully of a poem Jack Zipes cites in his wonderful Relentless Progress, “…Because the houses of Quiet Restraint/had so few gifts in them…”
Spend just over 11 minutes on this and rethink (some) ideas on what education is about.
“My” PGCE students are out on their first day of what we term their first school experience, and the rain has tipped down, and the winds are high. It reminds me of my very first play time that I had to supervise and it was announced (perhaps somewhat gleefully by an older teacher) as Wet Play Time.
It was a bear garden, if by that term we can conjure up a hundred bears and probably about 75 crayons and the longest piece of paper – from one end of the hall to the other – and twenty minutes of frenzied drawing.
Did I mind it? Well, it was an eye-opener as to how much these rather daunting and serious-minded children could throw themselves into a rather ad hoc activity. No, it was fine, except perhaps for gathering them all together at the end. What gave me pause for thought was what counts as unsuitable weather. Rain is out, for starters, apparently.
Then, after a stretch of some four years, I found myself in the pouring rain with a bunch of four year olds, watching water pour down the leaky gutter onto the pumpkin they had grown. We all got wet and cold, and took about an hour to invent ways of collecting water, harvest pumpkins, and so on. I thought I was very brave, smugly. I can see now I was learning.
Move forward to this morning, and my thoughts turning to the baptism by fire that might, in some schools, be Wet Play Time for the PGCE students. I find, with a bit of help, two starkly contrasting visions of outdoor play: this from Norway and this from the UK . The emphasis on risk and protection from the v enthusiastic advocates in UK is entirely valid, but the conversations (and in some ways the actitivities) are dominated by the notion of staying safe.
Both sets of practitioners would claim that “Being happy, being outside and getting fresh air is clearly important for today’s children” as Heidi, the Norwegian school leader states. This is close to the four dimensions of outdoors mentioned by the Kaplans that I have discussed before: Being Away; Extent; Fascination; Compatibility. What is most striking is the degree to which they do this, the degree of Extent to use Kaplan’s phrase – one setting being next to a (doubtless quite cold) lake, where the staff meeting (in a tepee) discusses (at 12 mins 50 in the clip) being able to see the children after the winter sun disappears, and the other in a UK garden where an island is manufactured with a tarpaulin sheet (6 mins 20) and you have to pretend it’s deep water. Look at the Norway clip around 10 mins in, and see the match incident, to see real instruction, real involvement. It’s there in the UK, of course – as in the box play (4 mins 50) – but contrast that to the mountain walk in Norway (16 mins 20).
There are huge issues of confidence here – adults’ trust in the resilience of children, parents’ trust in the staff (and we can note the difference in the videos between advocating the outdoors to parents in the UK, and the parents’ voices in Norway) the staff’s trust in their understanding of the children: a mutual upbuilding of a project, arising from respect and common ideals. Is that what we’re lacking in the UK context?
… from the Gambia (see a previous and all-too-brief entry), no thanks to the titanic rumblings of Eyjafjallajökull. The University’s article on the subject in Onstream shows us in a very good light – although I could have wished Geoff had been decribed as leader, since he did much, much more than I did.
Our thanks have to go to Alhajie, Brendan, Jenny, Jo and Butch – not to mention Josh and Fatou and Mustapha and all the others – at the Gunjur Project who took us in and looked after us and kept us busy while airlines and politicians panicked around us. We, of course, did not panic at all.
It was interesting to meet new people on this trip. Interesting, for example, to meet the wonderful Fatou who runs Mariamma Mae nursery, a little gem of pre-school provision tucked in behind Gunjur Lower Basic school. More later, perhaps, on this. Life in Gambia College was also good – the hospitality of the staff was, as ever, very welcome. It was also very good to meet some of the other people in College, from more senior University officers through to (I couldn’t say “down to”) VSO workers such as Rachel, whose blog is linked here.
nicktomjoe 