The moral purpose of English

The house which my wife and I own is on the land of the Boon Wurrung people on what is now known as the Mornington Peninsula in the south east of Australia. We have owned the house for 15 years; they have owned the land for 40,000.

And already we enter a region of problems: "Ownership" is such a problematic term. When the first permanent settlement of Europeans was established in Boon Wurrung and neighbouring Wurundjeri territory in 1835, my white predecessors thought it just and proper to purchase the land they wanted to own. In exchange for scissors, blankets and an assortment of knives and mirrors, John Batman "bought" the land from Wurundjeri elders and laid the foundations for the city of Melbourne. Less than 50 years later, Jimmy Dunbar, the last full-blooded Boon Wurrung person, was dead.

Jimmy Dunbar

What killed the Boon Wurrung people was not primarily a failure of good intentions. This history certainly has its share of scurrilous individuals and acts of evil, but most of the white settlers did not wish their Boon Wurrung neighbours dead. Some of the settlers wrote with enlightenment sentiments about the Boon Wurrung as noble and aristocratic and relations between the two peoples were primarily peaceful. Germs played a major role in the deaths as diseases like smallpox, to which the whites had levels of immunity, ripped through the Boon Wurrung peoples, who did not.

The most devastating failure, however, was a failure of communication.

As James Cook had so presciently written in his journal whilst exploring the east coast of Australia in 1770,  the way the aboriginal people of northern Australia engaged with the world was profoundly different to the way Europeans did.

From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched People upon Earth; but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans, being wholy unacquainted not only with the Superfluous, but with the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe; they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a

James Cook

Tranquility which is not disturbed by the Inequality of Condition. The earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life. They covet not Magnificient Houses, Household-stuff, etc.; they live in a Warm and fine Climate, and enjoy every wholesome Air, so that they have very little need of Cloathing; and this they seem to be fully sencible of, formany to whom we gave Cloth, etc., left it carelessly upon the Sea beach and in the Woods, as a thing they had no manner of use for; in short, they seem'd to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would they ever part with anything of their own for any one Article we could offer them. This, in my opinion, Argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life, and that they have no Superfluities.

(James Cook: Journal Thursday 23rd August 1770)

When Europeans arrived in Australia, they couldn't see any fences and so they assumed that the land was not owned. The settlers on the Mornington Peninsula saw the "Black's Camps" but, as the Boon Wurrung didn't live in them permanently, they didn't understand the complex relationship between land and culture that characterises "ownership" for the Boon Wurrung. When the Europeans brought their sheep to eat the grasses that sustained the native animals and the daisy yam which was the staple of the Boon Wurrung, they didn't understand how their actions were appropriating not just Boon Wurrung food, but also the land which defined them. Ownership is about much more than fences, it's a complex set of understandings about how we can interact with the spaces and objects in our lives: the grammar of belonging is intricately woven from interactions and conventions.

The land was being re-written from the songlines of the Boon Wurrung to the languages of the Europeans. White settlers at the time noted that there were fewer and fewer babies  and it appears likely that, with no land to sustain their future identities, Boon Wurrung mothers took their babies into the bush and smothered them.

Ultimately, the loss of so many Boon Wurrung lives and so much culture, is partly a failure of communication. A failure of the Europeans to understand the Boon Wurrung and a failure of the Boon Wurrung to understand the Europeans; a failure of the Europeans to communicate their culture and values to the Boon Wurrung and a failure of the Boon Wurrung to communicate their culture and values to the Europeans.

As a white Australian male, the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells me that my life expectancy is about 80 years. Aboriginal Australian males can expect to live for about 14 years less. Clearly we are still struggling to communicate and understand.


..........


These reflections were inspired by some work we have been doing at UWCSEA to make better use of data as we assess the impact of our teaching. It may seem a bit of a stretch to be relating good teaching practice to the history of race relations in Australia; what prompted the connection in my mind was a question from a colleague about "moral purpose"- he invited us to frame our research around a common understanding of the moral purpose of our teaching of English.

For me, the moral purpose of teaching communication is clear and compelling: if we are to live in a world which is peaceful and just, we need highly developed skills for communication. We need to know how to read and write the contexts of our interactions in ways that a complex, empathetic and insightful. The hard work of living well together is built on a foundation of good communication and building this foundation is our moral purpose.

Two seats

It's a bit impertinent

To write this

When I

Didn't know you

That well

But I read

Your books

And taught your son

And you gave me a

Collection of your writing

So I thought I could give

You this in return.

You wrote about

Soundings -

Sailors taking soundings

Trying to fathom

The depths of

Meaning in the place

We both lived.

I loved the masterful

Elegance of

Your art form:

Swinging the lead

And letting it fly

At just the right

Moment so that it

Hit the water

Far enough for'ard

For the lead to touch

Bottom just

As the line

Became vertical.

Timing: a split second

To fathom meaning

And make sense

Of the darkness

Beneath.

...

Your two seats

Were like all the rest

In that instant

Before whatever

Political stupidity

Turned a flight

I knew nothing about

Into one

about which

I knew too much.

It was intermission
When I looked at my
Phone. Ballet
In the park. The
Twist and turn of bodies
Beautiful
Until it is shattered
By the news.

I can't make sense

Of it.

A line

Of words

Trying to sound

Depths which are

Immeasurable.

For Liam and Frankie Davison 17th July 2014

Moral obligations of YA literature

Mice by Gordon Reece
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book and I don't feel I have a right to be overly critical of a book unless I can put in the time to explain why - so here goes.

This is a YA book and, whilst I'm not of the opinion that YA literature should shield readers from the harsh realities of the world, I do believe that it has a moral responsibility to treat difficult issues with complexity and insight. As the narrator of the novel notes:

"So much of what Mum was was made up of what she'd read. Is that what our middle-class culture created? People formed more by the books they'd read than the lives they'd lived?" (p.199)

To the extent that this may be true, I was disappointed by the lack of empathy or insight shown in the novel. The main character is a victim of cruel bullying which drives her to decide to suicide. A series of events saves her from taking her own life. She then goes on to murder two people. Despite having been a victim herself, Shelley, the first-person narrator of the novel, shows little or no empathy for her victims. There's a level of egotism that is in itself quite frightening. In another moment of reflection she says:

"After everything I've lived through, surely I'll be able to write something truly great? After all, how many writers actually know what it's like to kill somebody?" (pp.224-225)

And this is where I think the novel fails. Reece didn't convince me that he truly understood his subject matter. Too often I felt that Shelley's introspective moments were there to move me to the next point in the plot rather than to explore honestly this difficult subject matter.

If the novel had been about a less difficult and important topic or if it had taken a much lighter hand to it's subject matter, I could be more forgiving, but if you choose to write a YA novel about these topics you have a moral responsibility to say something that matters. I don't think this novel does.

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Imagine

It’s the complexity of it all

That gives me a headache.

Reimagining John Lennon’s

Song with my Grade Six

Students, we stumbled into

The binary of black

And white as John

And Yoko walk down a

Dark path to arrive

At a white house and

Yoko opens shutters to

Illuminate an empty

Room in a place they

Call “not here”.

The peaceful simplicity of a

Black and white world

Greyed as we walked

Our own path:

Black White,

Wrong Right,

Evil Goodness,

Dirty Clean,

Ambiguity Clarity,

Weak Strong,

Chaos Logic,

South North,

African European,

Female Male,
Innocence,
Experience,

And arrived at a room

Where my illumination

Opened eyes
And minds onto

A world which is increasingly

Hard to see.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gladwell's ideas are as compelling as his prose. The essential premiss is that mainstream views of success produce Goliaths who may be unable to view the world creatively and may lack the resilience to adapt and succeed when times change. The Davids of the world might see opportunities others miss and have the the necessary resilience for success which comes from being an underdog.

It's interesting that several of the case studies Gladwell works through are based on religious figures as there is something of the evangelist in the way Gladwell writes, too. This makes for an easy read - like listening to a sermon on one of the Gospel stories - but did make me wonder at times how much the flow of the story was encouraging me to lazily drift over the rigour of the argument. Not that I have particular reservations about Gladwell's argument, just that he is so skilled with his prose that I wondered at times if I might have forgotten to think for myself.

From my perspective as a Middle School Teacher, I'd like more of my students to think about Gladwell's discussion about universities and the advantage of a 2nd tier university over a 1st tier uni. I particularly liked the argument that we can define success broadly and see opportunities for meaning in many different life paths.

I was given this book by one of Grade 8 students who wanted to know what I thought. I hope this review helps, and a copy of the book will be going into my classroom library to challenge some of my other enthusiastic readers.

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More about Middle School - an article for Dunia

This is a recent article I wrote for Dunia, a magazine published by UWCSEA. You can find the digital version here. The version below is the original which was clipped slightly to fit into Dunia.

It follows nicely from my reflections in my last post about the changing nature of teaching and learning in Middle Schools.

Reading and Writing Workshop in the Middle School at East

“Do you like the rhythm of this?” asks Ali, as he turns to his partner.

“Yeah, but the mentor text is shorter, maybe you could cut out a few words.”

The two boys look again at the lead they’ve been using as a model: There’s no dignity in poverty. They compare their writing to the mentor text discussing what they’ve been learning about meter and rhyme and the need for a catchy phrase to help anchor their audience’s attention. After a moment more of discussion, they return to the speeches they are writing as a part of their study of the Grade 6 Development Unit.

This style of learning will be familiar to parents who have had children come through the Primary School as UWCSEA East. The “Workshop” approach uses a combination of very structured “mini-lessons” mixed with sustained periods of time for students to write and conference with their teacher and student partners. At the heart of “Workshop” is the belief that ‘children want to write’ and that instruction around writing should be very focussed and succinct leaving time for students to apply and consolidate skills.

In our Primary School, reading instruction takes a similar form with focussed lessons on particular skills and an emphasis on building student’s reading volume and stamina. The teacher’s key objective is to help the students find the right book for their reading ability and interests and to keep them reading.

Learning in High School English classes can look quite different to this. In High School students will spend sustained periods of time in whole class discussion around one common novel and teaching points will often come organically from this discussion. Writing becomes increasingly focused on the essay form and feedback will focus as much on the student’s ideas as it does on the craft of writing. This transition from learning in Primary Schools to High Schools is sometimes described as the difference between “learning to read and write and reading and writing to learn”.

What should reading and writing instruction look like in the Middle School?

Middle School is, of course, in the middle and we need to do a bit of both. Middle School students have a very particular set of developmental needs and learning instruction needs both to recognise what is unique to early adolescents and also where students are in their journey through the curriculum. Over the past twelve months, Middle School English teachers have been working with our colleagues in Primary and High school to decide how best to build on the success of the Workshop approach in Primary School as we prepare students for High School. UWCSEA’s English Standards and Benchmarks describe what we should teach; our discussions have centered on articulating how best to deliver this curriculum. What has resulted is a plan to extend the Columbia University “Workshop” approach up through Middle School but with modifications to meet the needs of our particular circumstances here at UWCSEA East. We have been trialling many of the teaching strategies from Workshop already and parents will already notice many similarities in the way writing is taught between Primary and Middle Schools.

The big challenge in our planning has been around reading. By Grade 6 or 7 students are classified as “independent” readers meaning that, whilst they need guidance in their reading choices, they don’t need the same kinds of support in learning how to read.

A lot of our discussion has been about how to encourage good independent reading habits when the diversity of demands on students’ time are increasing. The establishment of a dedicated Middle School section in the Senior Library has certainly helped, but we have also decided to establish classroom libraries in all Middle School English classrooms and High School is exploring a similar approach. The emphasis here is on maintaining stamina and engagement in a wider range of novels to supplement the common class texts that students study in Grades 7 through to 12.

As you can see in the photograph accompanying this article, students still share texts in the Middle School. One important insight into the complexities of Development comes from the novels that describe the experience of poverty and these Grade 6 students are sharing their understandings through their Literature Circle discussion. They will use what they are learning in their writing as well, building both from the ideas in the text and also learning from the skills the writer uses to construct his narrative.

Reading and Writing Workshop supports a rich environment for learning; we believe it provides the best foundation for building readers and writers who are skilled, confident and capable - ready to face the many complex communication challenges they have ahead of them.

More about curriculum - the what, how and why of subject English

The last two years have been the only two years in my teaching career when I haven't taught Grade 12 English or Literature alongside my Middle School classes. I miss the energy and momentum of this final year; it's hard work keeping up with the kids and making sure that I have given them the best chance to demonstrate their skills in the final exam, but it's very rewarding.

What has surprised me about teaching only Middle School (G6, 7 and 8) at UWCSEA is how much harder it has been. At Grade 12 I had to think deeply about texts and how to connect students to the ideas but what I taught and what the students needed to be able to do was clearly defined - this part of the learning didn't require much thinking at all.

At Middle School we have to think not just about the "what" of our teaching, but also the "how" and the "why". Over the last 15 years, Middle Schools around the world have been going through a curriculum revolution and it occurs to me that only now are the many pieces of the new understandings about what it means to teach young adolescents coming together. We began with research into the unique developmental needs of adolescents. Concurrently curricula authorities began looking at benchmarking and sequencing K to 10 curricula. As these two pieces come together, Middle School teachers find ourselves at the pointy edge of a new set of curriculum understandings. Grade 12 students have a skill-set not too far from my own; thinking my way through how a Grade 7 student might best grasp an idea takes considerable imagination and energy.

I  articulated some of these ideas this week in response to a question from a parent about why we don't do more essay writing in Middle School. Here's what I wrote:

As you may know, UWCSEA made the decision a few years ago to review our curriculum and develop Standards and Benchmarks for a unique UWCSEA curriculum. What we found as we compared English curricula from around the world and looked at our own teaching practice, was that, from Primary to IB, we were doing a good job of teaching students many of the writing skills associated with essays but that we needed more emphasis on the thinking skills. The students who are most successful with essay writing in Grade 12 and University are those who see the form as a media for thought and have the confidence to adapt and build their writing to match their own insights and the needs of their audience.

Writing a good essay is about a lot more than putting pen to paper. If students are to do this writing part well, they need some complex reading and thinking skills so that they have something meaningful and engaging to say. We know from the research into how Middle School students learn, that this is an important time for building student's thinking skills and autonomy. Students want to think for themselves but we also have to teach them how to support their ideas and arguments and how to engage critically and respectfully with the wider cultural world.

What our review of the curriculum has shown us is that students need this greater emphasis on critical reading and developing the confidence and autonomy to make claims about the underlying ideas in texts; equally important is the close attention to detail to find appropriate supporting evidence for the things they want to say. When students are able to do these things - and they have been doing a lot of them in G6, 7 and 8 - they are doing the very important "pre-writing" component of the essay writing process. As adults, we sometimes form the misconception that having an opinion about a text (or about a topic in Humanities or Science) is a relatively easy process. Reading deeply, independently and widely and finding meaningful and appropriate evidence to support your arguments is a difficult skill that requires significant time and effort to learn.

Which isn't to say that the writing component of an essay isn't also important. Knowing how to craft your words to say what you want to say clearly and appropriately is also a skill that needs to be taught and practiced. We do this mostly in smaller pieces of writing in the Middle School and often focus on forms other than essay writing recognising that students will have less and less space in the curriculum ahead to develop their capacity for creative writing and for writing in forms other than the essay, but that the best writers are those who can paint from a wide palette of skills. 

The writing mechanics for producing an essay are not, of themselves, terribly difficult but if we focus on them too early, students write essays that are hollow and dispiriting. If we can prepare our Middle School students to be careful thinkers who are learning to experiment and craft language, then our High School colleagues have the foundations they need to build strong academic writers in the final years.

As I sit here working on the next unit to teach my Grade 6 students, it occurs to me that it is no wonder it takes so much time and seems like such hard work. At UWCSEA we've articulated a clear and thoughtful description of what we think needs to be taught from K to 10. Translating these understandings into meaningful units which really prepare students well for each next step requires creativity, imagination and lots of time.

I miss the relative simplicity of Grade 12 but I'm relishing the challenge of Middle School.