During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is: not to take the risk.
- Kierkegaard, Journal, 1850
I can keep appointments for something like a radio broadcast or a medical examination. But I am appalling procrastinator. (I do daily postings at my personal blogs because if I didn't, entire months would go by postingless.) If there is no fixed moment when I have to start, and I am able to postpone by a few more hours, then I do, and the hours pile up for ever.
An example of this is that a really quite long time ago, I did a posting with a title that began something like "". Since which time there has yet to materialise any Douglas Bader 2 posting of any sort. This I will now correct.
Douglas Bader was the man who was a young star in the Royal Airforce but who had both himself and his career cut short when he lost his legs in a flying crash. Only the Second World War gave him a chance to get back into the RAF, and he duly distinguished himself in that conflict and became a classic Great British Hero.
Here is a description (again, from this book) of how they made (and still make I assume) RAF officers.
The Senior NCOs had the greatest responsibility for teaching the Flight Cadets the ways of the Service, instructing them in ground school and on the drill ground, berating them, exemplifying authority and responsibility, inculcating self-respect, self-discipline and self-control. Bader and many others recalled that it was the Senior NCOs who taught the cadets how to become officers.Each squadron had an NCO drill instructor - a flight sergeant or a sergeant - who was responsible for training cadets to the high standards of drill practised by the Cadet Wing. Before attaining that, cadets would not be allowed to join their squadron on parade. There was a Wing Sergeant Major who was the Senior Drill NCO. He was the final arbiter of a cadet's fitness to join the Wing on parade. Every morning, the two squadrons were called by bugle to the parade ground, and inspected - meticulously, ruthlessly. Each Saturday morning there was the Colour Hoisting Parade.
Drill and flying were the two most important parts of the daily routine. Academic and ground studies were secondary, but not markedly so. Cadets had to undergo a great deal of drill. First, there was basic drill, then arms drill. It took about a month of intensive foot and arms drill every working morning to reach the standard required to perform as a team with the Squadron and the Wing.
A good way of fostering team spirit and formation, drill was an important part of training. It stimulated team work, and required concentration and alertness. It taught cadets all about parading and ceremonials, for they too would have to command and supervise such things one day. Later, as Fourth Termers, cadets had to command the Wing on parade. Bader became under-officer of his 'A' Squadron.
Does drill count as "education"? Maybe not. But a few generations ago it would have, because boys used to do this kind of thing at school.
I did drill at school. I was made to. Bastards. But it was good exercise, and if I'd been allowed to choose I might have chosen it. I especially liked the music that was always played: Elgar's Pomp and Circumstances marches.
The serious thing that drill teaches is cooperation. It isn't the only kind of cooperation you'll ever do, but it is one of them, and it has one huge merit when compared with something like sports: it is extremely easy to do. Practically anyone can do drill.
And when it comes to "educating" soldiers, drill is essential. I know, I know, what's a libertarian doing having nice words to say about drill? But unless you are a pacifist, you have to acknowledge that there are times when (a) you have to fight, in a group, which means (b) that you had better do some drill. Armies that do drill fight better.
Lots of civilians regard drill as an inherent insult to their individual humanity, and in a sense it is just that, and on purpose. But if you have experienced the difference that drill can make to a body of soldiers (or in Douglas Bader's case airmen) then you will have learned something (not everything, but something) of the difference between effective and efficient cooperation and the more usual sort, which only brings to bear about 15% of the available energy.
This is a lesson worth learning. Those who refuse to learn it - as I refused to learn it at my school (I just marched back and forth in a state of contemptuous resentment) - shouldn't be forced to go through the motions. But if you volunteer for it, you could really learn some worthwhile stuff.
The way to correct procrastination is to devise a drill for yourself, and then do it.
I have been reading this book about the great language teacher Michel Thomas.
I have not got very far yet, and not very far is as far as I may be getting any times soon, because I am afraid I left my copy of this book at the house where this sparkling dinner party was held. (I am under less time pressure, because it is now after midnight, and I am doing Thursday's post now, so as to be able to do all the stuff I have to do today without worrying about my daily duty here.)
Anyway, I have already learned something of great interest about Michel Thomas, which is that his prowess as a teacher is rooted in his remarkable ability to remember the important events of his life, from the earliest times. He accordingly remembers exactly how he learned things, when he learned them, and accordingly he remembers how to teach. When he teaches others, he is, as it were, teaching his extremely young self in the exactly the way that he either was well taught, or wishes that he had been well taught.
Michel Thomas remembers his early life because, essentially, he decided, extremely early on in his life, that he would like to remember everything. So he did. And he did this by constantly replaying these important early scenes in his mind.
Great teachers are those with a way above average ability to remember their own learning experiences. Discuss.
I am under intense time pressure, but do still have time to report some more of the conversation with a French person that I had yesterday about the teaching of reading. See below. Forgive me, no link to that or to anything else, I'm too rushed.
Apparently, in France, they have also been afflicted with "look and say" or with the "whole word" method for the non-teaching of reading. Only they call it the "global" method. And it has been around in France for several decades now, and is doing just the same damage there as it has in the Anglo-Saxon world, including rampant dyslexia. Google for the "Reading Reform Foundation" if you want to know more about the Anglo-Saxon version of this catastrophe. Or you can find it in my permanent links section.
I didn't realise that the educators of France were as stupid as ours, but apparently they are.
Yesterday morning I sent the form in saying I would like to contribute to this enterprise. One of the reasons I did this was that I was about to meet up again with a dear friend who knew that I had been meaning to do this for some time now, and who I knew would at some point ask me if I had done this. I wanted to be able to say yes, and today I was able to do that.
This friend also asked me: what is the absolute most important thing to teach a child? I said: reading. Not writing, nor arithmetic. If you can read, you have a chance of learning how to write, or how to arithmetise (?). Learning how to write is meaningless if you can't read, and learning how to add and subtract (probably a better way to turn arithmetic into a verb) won't help you learn to read. So: reading. Reading opens the door of civilisation. Not being able to read keeps that door firmly shut. A little bit of help to a child at an early age can make a lot of difference, I think, which is what I put on the form as my reason for volunteering.
Me becoming a reading helper is bound to make this a more interesting blog to read, once this process gets under way (assuming that these people can find a use for me). I will keep you informed of progress, as and when it materialises. Expect no names of people, places or institutions (other than the one I have just linked to). But I for one, expect to learn a great deal about the state of education by becoming the lowest form of teaching life now in existence, and about whether I may ever be able to make myself into some kind of seriously effective educator.
As a first step, I much prefer this to picking some sort of training course, with a pin.
Category: Brian's brilliant teaching career • Literacy
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A nerd-friend who wishes to remain anonymous emailed me with a link to Paul Graham's excellent essay entitled Why Nerds Are Unpopular, pointing out that Graham is also the person who wrote this.
I wrote about this piece here. But, having re-read Graham's piece, I am appalled at how completely I misunderstood it, saying of it, this:
Notice that Graham doesn't say that "in the abstract people in poorer countries are monstrously cruel to one another". He merely notes that cruelty happens, without claiming that the people being cruel are cruel by their inherent nature. Yet he makes that exact claim about children. I think he's flat wrong, and that children, like adults, are nice or nasty depending on the pressures they face. A few are truly evil, even in a nice world. A few are saints, even in a nasty world. Most children, like most adults, go either way, depending.
The only explanation I can offer for that is that I hadn't read the piece other than the bit I quoted, from near the beginning.
Here's a big chunk from the middle of Graham's piece:
Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In preindustrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.Teenagers seem to have respected adults more in the past, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults.
And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.
Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
What happened? We're up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in preindustrial times started working at about fourteen at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30, which is close the average life expectancy in medieval times.
Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.
If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.
And here is how the piece ends:
It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. Occam's razor says you don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
I've said some harsh things in this essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one - that several problems we take for granted are in fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. That should be encouraging news to kids and adults both.
Mea culpa.
I agree with my nerd-friend that this really is an excellent piece.
Once again, the hormone theory of adolescence is challenged. Society is to blame for adolescence, not hormones.
Where I think I really do (still) disagree with Paul Graham is when he says that kids are kept away from work merely because they are useless. I think they have been kept away from work because a lot of powerful people thought that was a good idea, including parents. If they can be persuaded that it was not a good idea to render teenagers useless, and I believe a lot of them have been so persuaded already, then we are well on the way to solving this problem.
I don't think teenagers are inherently useless, any more than they are inherently "teenagers". If we wanted to make better use of these people, we could.
But none of that in any way diminishes my admiration for this piece of Graham's, or my gratitude to my friend for reminding me of its existence.
My friend the teacher in Kent emails as follows:
I thought you might be interested to know that I have managed to escape the school I have been teaching in. I have been offered a job at another school nearby and will be starting in September.
The final straw for me came when I had a detention class a few weeks ago. I had about six pupils in for a variety of offences - lack of work, misbehaviour in lessons etc. I don't have too many of these detention classes as few actually bother to turn up if I set them, but on this occasion about six did.
I attempted to get them to sit at a table each and gave them a book to do some work from. Chaos erupted. They weren't there to do work, they told me. They never do work in detentions. Other teachers just let them sit there. Well, I said, in my detentions you do. Result - boys began running around the room, jumping on tables and swearing at me. The Head of Department comes into the room, looks around, and walks out. I dismiss the boys (who are left some have run off already) telling them they have failed the detention and it will be reset.
I filled in the incident report forms and took them to hand into the Head of Years concerned. In the Staff Room I met the Head of Year 10 (most of the miscreants were from that year) to be told to stop writing so many reports as he couldn't deal with them all. He subsequently speaks to my Head of Department who meets me later to tell me I am too strict with the boys and shouldn't use detentions as a punishment. Instead, detentions should be an opportunity to have little chats with the boys and get to know them better.
I start looking for a new job that evening. I visit a number of schools to have a look round and the one I like best is the nearest and, although the intake is less able than my current school, the ethos is quite
different. The Head is very visible, seen around the school talking to staff and pupils alike. He egularly pops into the department to see what's going on. If there is any misbehaviour, he'll yank them out of lessons himself. This is quite different to my current school where the Head has never visited the department in the two years I have been there. Many pupils have no idea who he is as he seldom leaves his office.
The school I visit is immaculate. No graffiti, little litter. Windows and lockers intact. My current school is covered in graffiti, strewn with rubbish and has numerous broken and cracked windows, including the main entrance to the bloc where my department is situated. The boys don't have lockers at my chool as they would be wrecked within minutes.
I go back a couple of weeks later to have an interview at the school I like. The demonstration lesson goes well, the kids enjoying it and an observing Headmistress says it was fantastic. Some of the kids (I later learned) went up to the Head of Department and told her "You must employ this teacher!"
The interview goes well - but one issue is raised - the Head of my Department has stated in his reference that I have problems with kids due to my "rigid discipline." I explain the situation at my current school which is greeted with shock and incredulity. High standards of discipline are fundamental at the school I am visiting. I am offered the job straight away and accept (beating six other candidates).
The next day I return to my old school. I have a cover lesson in a different department. As I enter the room to see if any cover work has been left (there usually isn't and wasn't) there is a loud crash behind me. The door has been pulled off its hinges and now lies in the corridor. The boys inside and outside the room claim to have seen nothing.
I send for the Head of Year 10. He's too busy. I send for a members of senior management. They're all in a meeting and too busy. The Bursar is sent to collect a list of names. I have a few, those that I know, but some have refused to give names and there is no register available. I write a report and stick it in the Head's pigeonhole. Later in the day he sees me in the Staff Room and ignores me. Nothing is done about the door as far as I know.
At least I'll be gone by September.
