A Principled view

I have recently come across the writings of another headteacher, John Tomsett, in which he refers to some difficult classes he is currently teaching, illustrates his actions with some graphic detail, and suggests that by taking on the children at their own games, be that ‘yellow car’ or ‘door knobs’, credibility and respect are won. You can read that here. One of those commenting suggests that the methods described would not get past inspection, even posting the thought that OfSTED might need to be informed straight away.

Here some straightforward rules I use in action:

• Treat all as you would be treated
• It is all in the preparation – compelling learning experiences need to be worked at.
• Trust all you work with, but always check to praise. Don’t assume trust can’t be discussed.
• People lie; children less so than adults, and children aren’t very good at it either.
• People aren’t usually ill – if they are, show them concern and get them back on the work saddle quickly
• Work hard and be direct; the harder you work, the more work gets done, the better your skills are established and the luckier you become. Amazingly results improve too.
• Work/Life balance is a luxury teachers can’t afford. We’ve signed up for an asymmetric life, so both adults and children need to get used to it.
• Feed your enthusiasms (and theirs) – A smile uses far fewer muscles than a frown.
• Go watch the children work for others; whether it be in the Library, in the yard, in the arts or sports, taking an interest in others ensures they become interested in you. Really.
• Where possible, stand in the playground or on the touchline with parents, and talk with them; I can’t imagine a more artificial set of circumstances than a parent evening, except perhaps over the visitors counter in ‘Porridge’ prison. Relationships need to be worked at too.
• Remember stuff; having a memory means you won’t let others make the same mistake twice. Except politicians, who are beyond any control we have except the ballot box.
• Homework is a good thing, often set very badly. The older children are, the more you need to ensure their ‘practice’ happens under your nose.
• Give great feedback more than marks.  You’d never give adults marks; and if you do, they rapidly become dependent upon them. Only say things are outstanding or exceptional when they are.
• If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

By the time you read this far, I might have fiddled with the ideas a little. That’s a good thing, by the way, reviewing and correcting work. I know that following the above, I will get all my pupils into the right frame of mind to give of their best.  I certainly won’t have worried them about failure, because of course adolescents are by and large not motivated by the Private Frazers of this world, who let us know in no uncertain terms that ‘We’re all doomed‘. What is even worse, is that people who are that negative have scant regard for those in positions of authority over them, which is why of course you never want to give the poor bloody infantry anything other than a cheery smile and the certainty that you’ll be up there with them when the chips are down. And for those teachers that go the extra 1000 miles, their’s is the best job in the world, because they discover lands and ways of learning us mere mortals will never encounter.

I am not the only educator to be drawn in principle to the Massive Open On-line Course structure that the American Ivy Leaf and now UK Universities are making available to students across the world. In many ways it seems a no-brainer to develop on-line lecturing; rather than insist that students ‘read for a degree’ as they used to do. Looking at the concept of ‘Reading for a Degree’, whilst including a greater number of students who should study to degree level, it was spotted their relative literacy levels were challenged by such an instructional method (reading that is), so they were then ‘lectured at’ as University education changed to cope with the increase in less skilled undergaduates, in ‘classes’ since the 1970s.  Now that technology can make it so, those Universities with the bravado (and the lecturers to match) are now choosing to put their first year courses on line so that students can study from afar, be educated by (gathered as a brand ‘capture’) and become an alumni of the said University.  As the media would call it “Sexing up a correspondence course for the purposes of student enrollment”.

Not so fast Pal.  Since the opening of the Open University in the UK in 1971, we have had a MOC here in the UK.  In the first year, the OU recruited some 25,000 undergrads, probably the biggest first year cohort of its generation.  And because of its remit to reach out and connect with those more difficult to engage, the OU has pioneered all sorts of access  programs from that very start, You can read more here – http://goo.gl/eSdey.  Suffice it to say, their innovations including ‘going to the cloud’ have continued apace, so OU are on iTunesU, in Second Life with their own island, and in Grand Theft Auto 7 as a dysfunctional learning space for a Clockwise Orange Droogs ‘horror-show’ (I made the last bit up).

The thing we know about learners is that actually they ‘don’t know’.  Which is why they have a need ‘to learn’. And as the ease has grow about what facts need to be known, so the emerging difficulty is all about the skills that need to be acquired to support that body of evidence. To exemplify, 100 years ago we did not even know that antibiotics existed in a formal sense. They came in to general use after the Second World War. Almost 60 years on, today scientists are challenged to develop new forms of such medication in order to save us (and the medication) from the consequences of our actions – we need to do even better in the labs than before.

The more practical an academic discipline becomes, the greater the human contact time required. Look at Medics today, and they’ll work their socks off for 20+ hours a week in their first three years at Uni (it get’s worse after that), whilst the most cerebral reading History are able to graduate after 3 hours a week for 3 years and a Library access card (Urban myth, University of Bristol).  As ‘any fule kno’ (as stated by Nigel Molesworth, http://goo.gl/Tgae0), times are hard, and parents and their student ‘kin’ seek VFM from undergrad life at Uni, so our Centres of Learning are now booking more contact time for their students.  Now that could be a mixed blessing, but in the main, I think Unis are gaming the system less and appreciating even more the need to give their population of learners enough time to collaborate, engage, discuss and acquire the more complex skills needed to make progress in their discipline/vocation in the 20Teens.

At every given development of technology, some have imagined that they have invented a ‘Silver’ bullet that makes learning easier. There is no way that Magic circle Unis have found the Silver bullet with MOOCs. Some of the best scientific books for students I have read have come from the OU; that did not tempt me to study with the OU, because I went to Uni for so much more than the lecture hall or the Library (though I did earn to love them). Extensive lab and field work time off campus was needed to study my Biology component, whilst seminar time with Professors to explore the workings of the mind in Psychology were equally valuable. I cut my political teeth as an elected University counselor (Liberal), wrote the for the Uni paper and edited the University Rag Magazine (in 1974) among many other more dubious accomplishments at University.

So as with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4/5 and now 1000 channels of world EDU available from a myriad of independent broadcasters, please bring on the MOOCs and the concept of self-organised learning. They say ‘University is wasted on the Young’; the reality is that it is the ‘Young that need education organised for them’, and for me post school-age, no-body does that better than the UK Universities (to be honest, Leicester above all). The Oldies of course can organise it much better, hence the U3A – read more about that here – http://www.u3a.org.uk/. And if you want to learn more about MOOCs, click here.

What I know I acquired at Leicester in the 1970s is the most amazing education; 3 years spent in a deep and diverse environment in which my peers dug deep into my own pysche and helped me find my talents – here’s Sir Ken – http://goo.gl/hOzZ6 – who summarises in ways only he can – danced to by Brady Sanders.

A NotebookLLM conversation on this article can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gp

Throughout the ages, philosophers have highlighted that man imprisons himself within his own petty conventions and behaviours. Plato’s original Allegory of the Cave has us picture slaves tethered to a wall and, in watching events pass by through the shadows cast on the cave walls, theorise a way of life that bore no resemblance to that which was visible to those outside the cave. Neither the cave dweller nor the watcher from outside would be able to see each other’s point of view; the shadows, dancing in both natural and artificial light, creating that whole world vision to those inside which was simply invisible and incomprehensible to those not benefiting from that perspective.

Rosa Luxemburg comes from that Marxist tradition that held such strong sway in central Europe during the latter part of the 19th and start of the 20th century, giving rise to the various revolutions of the time.  Battle-hardened through umpteen struggles in Germany, wherein she tried (amongst other things) to highlight the oncoming world conflict. Her major contributions were as a political activist , feminist  and writer, and in advancing an internationalist view of nationhood, promoted the birth of democratic ideals in Germany. She was murdered shortly after the end of the first world war, and for many years neglected as an inconvenient truth, the Nazis’ first assassination. Shortly after her death, the poet Berthold Brecht wrote

“Red Rosa now has vanished too. (…),

She told the poor what life is about, 

And so the rich have rubbed her out.

May she rest in peace.”

I have always liked Luxemburg’s other famous quotation too; “Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.” Put together, they provide a framework for human development that sits comfortably with me, as I work within the framework of British Education in which so many ‘beacons of light’ are set to ensnare the unwary traveler. If educationalists, politicians, economists were right, then we’d have a perfect world by now. The conventions that make a just and fair society seem to run at variance to that which rule a free market and successful economy, and almost always at such a tangent that collision causes mayhem on the frequent occasions when they collide.

In short, it is Humanity’s struggle that ensures progress, that constant testing of the light, shadow, natural and artificial that reveals what we can learn about all the dimensions of our surroundings. For those content with the status quo, they simply won’t feel the fetters that prevent them from flight.  George Bernard Shaw, a contemporary of Luxembourg, had this to say “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
This set of thoughts links directly to “The vanity (or narcisism) of small differences”

…playing with Fire.

This stunning picture recorded a few hours after the Holy Father’s resignation from the Holy See gives a ‘Dan Brown Novel’s take on proceedings.  For those of you not familiar with Mr Brown’s Oeuvres, he writes mystery who-dunnits involving the Catholic Church on occasion –  Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code spring to mind. As a teacher of physics, I am reminded that this is precisely what lightening rods are for – to permit a discharge through the metal spike of a strap of copper that runs from the ground to the highest point on the roof of a building.  Electrons forming the static ‘venom’ build up in the heavens, and safely transmit them in one huge discharge to earth.  For geeks amongst you, I am reliably informed that actually there is initially a discharge up to the clouds through the spike, ionising the air a little, which then promotes the fantastic firework spectacle seen in this picture.  I am also advised we still have more work to do in this area of science.  As both the Frenchman Denis Barbaret and the American Benjamin Franklin have previous in the area of flying kites close to the danger zone ’round about 1750, and we still don’t know what is going on, it’s my advice to stay away – because Fulminology is clearly quite hard. Not quite so difficult it must be said as managing the spiritual lives of the largest religion by far on the planet.

Pope Benedict XVI may very well have done absolutely nothing to incur this strike from the heavens, but it is a great juxtaposition between human action and an event of nature.  Perhaps it has given a budding ‘Dan Brown’ a great idea for a best selling novel!  For a period of time, the Church in Rome will be without a leader, as the 120 Cardinals (one rank lower, and those under 80 who are eligible to vote) gather in Conclave to vote.  Now the older cardinals can still politic around, canvassing their own ideas, and twice a day, the vote will be held in the Sistine Chapel until there is a clear winner. Majority voting did come in, but in 2007, Pope Benedict passed a decree reverting back to the two-thirds plus one vote majority, thus encouraging cardinals to reach consensus, rather than one bloc backing a candidate with more than half the votes and then holding out for 12 days to ensure his election.

The ballot papers are burnt each time, producing black smoke; with a little help from its friends, the smoke turns white once the new Pope has been elected.  And I can confirm that there is no link between the Lightening and the Smoke – unless you write it so!

Here is the presentation I was invited to give at BETT 2013 from the Google stand in the Excel centre. The stars of my presentation were Chris Rowan, Joe Reeve and Barnaby Morton-Woodruffe, who as teacher and pupils showed where engagement and education can meet at the juxtoposition of Google Apps for Edu and Claires Court.  Our organisation is now at the very forefront of all institutions as an exemplar model of how this stuff works – technology meets 3millenium skillls (the Claires Court Essentials) and it shows from the growing interest across the globe on what happens when 1000 users, plus BYOD and 620 Chromebooks/netbooks/desktops meet in the ‘Cloud’.

Here’s the presentation and if you want to come and see us, just let me know – jtw@clairescourt.com – we book Monday pm for 90 minutes every week to show people around.