Celebrate the Small Things: good-bye and good riddance

I'm going off a week early here, but that's because a secondary departure occurred which also pleased me. The primary departure will occur when my my current least favourite student, and arguably my least favourite student of all time, leaves.

I've had a real struggle with him over the six months he has been with me. The first day I met him, he explained that his grammar and spelling were not good, so I told him that we could fix that. He said 'No, we can't.' I knew, therefore, from the get go that he was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to teach. How do you teach unteachable people? How do you open closed minds? I have no idea.

Rather than bore you with the details, I'll save my X (student's name) stories for other occasions. Suffice to say, he has caused me angst and made my job difficult. A mostly negative influence on the class, a bigot and a self confessed misanthrope, he will not be missed. 

Secondary departure occurred when another student, who also possesses a poor attitude and is lazy, decided to transfer to another college to do another course. I desperately wanted to advise him to lose the attitude or he would bomb out of his next course as he did my course. However, as he only showed up for three hours this week (out of 20 required) to do his catch up assessments and exit test, I thought better of it.

My problem is that I care more about the education of my students than most of them do. I love my job and I am thankful for it. I am also thankful for my students-past, present and future, both good and bad. I am thankful that I care, and that after 11 years, I still care, and by the grace of God I have not grown weary in doing my best.

The challenge for me remains though; to love the unlovable. How do you deal with closed-minded and negative people, especially those with whom you spend a fair bit of time?

A Few Irons

The good news about the offer of a publishing contract for A Muddy Red River, is still being diluted by ongoing struggles in my personal life. I'm also supposed to resume my studies this semester but I have no appetite for further dull academic instruction. I should begin my next novel, after deciding to shelve the one I had already begun, but I can't seem to find my way to that particular door. At least I know where the room is, and I know what's in there. I wish there was a much certainty in my life as there is in my writing. If only it was as easy to do as it was to know.

A Muddy Red River chapter 1

Magical Band-Aids

A child's first choice for the treatment of a minor injury, even if there is no bleeding, is often a Band-aid. Especially effective are ones with cartoon characters on them. These plastic strips don't have magical powers. Although they can assist the healing process by preventing infection, they can't take away the pain or heal the wound. But children think they can.

The world's first choice answer to most of the problems confronting it today? Band-aids. The two most popular Band-aids are education and legislation. Like plastic strips, these two can do some good, but neither of them is a panacea. If increased knowledge and awareness was the solution to all our problems on the road for example, then nobody would speed, or drive drunk. If education was the answer to society's addictions then nobody would abuse alcohol, use illicit drugs or smoke cigarettes.

We make laws, or increase the punishments for breaking existing laws to deter wrongdoing, and to protect people, but are we living in a peaceful and crime free society?

What education and legislation, with their lofty 'save the world' ambition, fail to recognize is the root cause of all problems. People chose and always have done, to do wrong regardless of what they know to be right, and regardless of any law prohibiting it. Society is terminally ill with the cancer of sin. Trying to educate or legislate sin out of people is like applying Band-aids to broken limbs. It is a mark of immaturity that we place so much faith in Band-aids.

I believe that only Jesus Christ can ultimately and truly heal society's disease. Our broken hearts need His love, forgiveness and grace.

Photograph sources
www.drugstore.com
http://handcuffedtogod.blogspot.com.au/

Defacto Parents

The Latin expression "de facto" means "according to the fact" and refers to a situation as it actually is, regardless of what the law specifies. It is most commonly used with respect to defacto marriages in which couples are living together in a long term committed relationship but are not actually married. I would like to suggest that teachers are defacto parents for our children.


Children spend a lot of time at school under the supervision of teachers, but a significant chunk of that school day does not involve academic instruction. Even while students are receiving formal lessons they are still being managed or babysat. Children are babysat in the playground before school and during the lunch and recess breaks. They may need to be babysat if their classmates are participating in a paid dance lesson by a visiting teacher, for example, and they have not paid, and must therefore sit in the hall and watch, and do worksheets. When the music van arrives to entertain and inform the children, as well as sell them music lessons, the class teacher has nothing to do but babysit. In class, during Crunch 'n' Sip time, children deliver their news to their classmates while they eat fruit, and either listen or don't listen, quietly. The teacher is babysitting. 

Teachers don't just teach and schools don't just provide academic training for our children. We send them to school to be taught and to be looked after so that we don't have to teach them or babysit them all day. To be fair to parents, there are many things we can't teach them, either because we lack the knowledge or are devoid of the necessary skills and temperament to teach effectively. We love our children but do we really want to spend all day with them, every day? We've got our own interests and pursuits: work or leisure. So we need free babysitting, and as a bonus, our children actually learn a huge amount about a whole lot of stuff.


They not only gain knowledge and skills but also values, and it is this last area of acquisition which is by far the most important. Those universally accepted values which we are required to not only know but to practice, and which transform us into loving, caring and respectful citizens, are either taught or reinforced at school. Do we want teachers imparting values to our children? Do we trust them? Do we even care? As long as they are being babysat, as long as they are safe and happy, does it really matter what else happens at school? What is a parent? What is a teacher?

The Experience of 31 Lifetimes

I'm currently doing a teaching practicum in a public primary school, and learning some surprising things. I expect to have a bucket load of stuff to say about this, and subsequent periods of professional experience, but here's just a bite in case you're not very hungry.

From my observations  of 30 Year 3 students and their inspirational teacher, a good learning environment is one in which there is order. Teachers maintain control and set good behavioural examples and the students follow them. A good learning environment is one in which students know what is expected of them, and understand, and therefore avoid to the best of their abilities, the consequences of misbehavior. A good learning environment is one in which courtesy and respect are evident, and students respond positively to having boundaries in place by being obedient and diligent. 

A good learning environment is not, despite how it sounds, a utopia. The structures of reward and consequence, of respect, responsibility and safety, operate in the imperfect world of the classroom where there always exists some degree of unpredictability. The beast we know as human nature means that the best  behaved child can have a bad day, and the worst, a good one. The teacher tries to maintain a good learning environment despite the all too frequent attacks of its enemies: extra- curricular activities like the Mother’s Day Stall, the Music Bus, Dance 2 Be Fit and the overnight excursion, and interruptions to lessons from students and even other teachers.

Being a teacher seems to be more about management and paperwork than it does about actual teaching. Those who can do it with passion and diligence have my undying admiration.

What do our Schools Produce?

The idea of successful learners suggests achievement. To be considered successful what must one do? How is success measured? Is society's view of what may be deemed “success” as important, more important or less important than the individual student’s own conception of success?

Although “Successful learners” is a little vague, significant benchmarks have been introduced into the Australian education system, such as NAPLAN, which do a reasonable job of measuring academic achievement. The question is, I guess, is academic achievement our only goal?

What about confident and creative students? It could be easily argued that confidence is a non academic measure of success. Creativity, however, is not a measure of success. It is debatable whether or not creativity can be taught, or even enhanced in those individuals who are naturally creative. Some people are successful without being especially creative.

Hardworking people who may or may not be creative, can be, and often are, very successful. In my view, perhaps turning out creative individuals should not be a goal of the education system. I just don’t know whether you can create creative students.

Active and informed are good goals but what does active mean exactly? Are we expecting our students to all become champions of various causes, members of political parties, unionists, community volunteers? I guess that’s not unreasonable. While “active” may be debatable, “informed” is not. Ignorance is one of the biggest problems we have, not only in our schools, but in society in general. It’s one thing for students not to want to know what’s going on, to be socially aware, quite another for educators to accept, in any way shape or form, the questionable maxim, “ignorance is bliss”.

I think they only thing missing from these goals is diligence but I suppose it is implied in conceptions of success and active involvement. As a Christian I wonder where is the mention of making a primary goal of education the development of loving and caring people who respect others and work to promote peace in society by building good relationships. Perhaps such talk is too “Christian” or “religious” for our secular system.

Smarter Devils

Why do we teach others, and learn things for ourselves? Why is education so highly esteemed by the majority of people, in a majority of cultures, in a majority of countries? Why do we speak of educated men and women as though they are better than uneducated men and women? Do we truly believe that more knowledge is the answer to the world's problems? Are we learning more and doing more? Are we knowing more and loving more?

Knowledge is not the ultimate goal of education. The Bible says that knowledge "puffs" a person up with pride when it is pursued as an end in itself. If then, education should be a means to an end, what is it we are attempting to achieve? What is the end?

Humanists believe that increases in knowledge lead to improvements in society. The more we know, the better able we are to avoid problems or to fix them when we can't dodge them. Education makes people better and therefore leads to a better, more efficient, more caring, more peaceful society. That's the theory. Reality tells a different story. But even allowing for this beautiful albeit Utopian ideology, I want to ask why. What is the point of striving for the betterment of mankind? Why bother? Don't say education is a universal right. It may well be, but that is not an answer to the question. In fact, it only leads to another question about the basis for human rights.

The fault in the argument put forward by Humanists and arrogant athiests like Dawkins is that it has no moral foundation. Humans are intrinsically moral, and to remove morality from education is to render the latter, an exercise in futility. Education does not produce angels but rather, as C.S.Lewis puts it, "education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make a more clever devil."

All education should have as its goal, the edification of mankind which is itself ultimately for the Glory of God. God has given me a brain so I should use it to learn and grow but I must also share and apply my knowledge to help and encourage others; not to become better people but to recognize their need for God. To accept weakness and failure is to become complete. The purpose of life is to know God and to make Him known. Education alone will never achieve this objective, never fulfill this purpose, and it will never make the world all right. The world is all wrong and education is only a treatment, not a cure.

Split Ministries

It started with the Rudd Labour government separating the climate change portfolio from the environment and giving it its own minister. This was obviously done to broadcast the importance the government placed upon climate change. The recently re-elected, albeit barely elected, Gillard Labor Government scrapped the Education portfolio and installed a Minister for School Education,Early Childhood and Youth (Peter Garrett) and another minster for tertiary education and skills (Chris Evans).In the spirit of the Labour government's division of ministerial portfolios, I would like to suggest the following.

Foreign Affairs should be divided into two separate portfolios: one for countries we like and one for countries we don't like. Immigration could be split between illegal immigrants/asylum seekers and legal immigrants. And there should definitely be a distinct ministry for the greatest game of all: cricket. One minister for all the other sports and one minister whose sole responsibility is to look after the interests of our national game.

Lastly, I would like to propose a brand new portfolio to oversee our politicians, and make sure they do their jobs instead of spouting negative and nonconstructive rubbish.

Excerpt from Devolution

Turning around quickly she said, ‘Hush, where’s your father?’

‘Swimming in the living room. You don’t mind if we talk, do you?’

‘No,’ she said, smiling, ‘I kind of like it. It must be such fun for you to be able to voice with your friends at school.’

He scratched his nose and played with the buttons of his shirt. ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about actually.’

Sensing the serious tone in her son’s voice, 2 rotated her hoverchair to face him.

‘Has dad said anything about our school being closed down?’

‘He,’ she hesitated, and 3 noticed her uncertainty, ‘He says it’s almost a done deal. He’s been pushing hard for years now and has finally gathered enough support among the other councilors to go ahead. Of course he is the education minister.’

Keeping his eyes fixed on the liquid floor, 3 felt a surge of anger in his veins and his head began to ache again. ‘It’s not fair, mum. It’s just not fair.’

Wisely, his mother tried a change of subject to attempt to calm him, ‘What about your dream? Did you want to tell me about it?’ she said. But he turned abruptly and left the room talking to himself. She tried to project a warning to him to stop voicing, but he was so angry she could not penetrate his thoughts.

In the bathroom, 3 looked at his image in the mirror and cursed. His head, a little large for his body, its shape oval yet triangular, narrowing at the forehead. Eyes wide-spaced, under no eyebrows and long lashes, nose flattened, mouth too wide. As far as Newtonians could be attractive he probably looked all right, but how would any girl ever find him attractive? How would a particular Adonite girl desire this ugliness? If he was to be forced into single tribe education then it probably wouldn’t matter anymore. Obviously looks would play no part in the partnering of Newtonians, but he desperately wanted to stay in mixed schooling. Of course there was no hope of him ever partnering with a girl from another tribe but so much of a teenage boy’s world was fantasy, and 3 was no different. He burned with passion for his friend, the goddess, Veena.