Learning Matters

The book has been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years and I have delved into its pages on several occasions, but events have seen me distracted after the first twenty odd pages. The book has travelled between Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia – a well-travelled book, which I have always felt needed to be kept by my side as an important one to read in its entirety one day. Well I have ‘begun’ to read it again in recent days, and hope that I will be able to stick with it this time.

The book has prompted me to write a little about “learning”. As an educator I find myself mulling on the word and idea all the time. I often write that it is at the core of all that we do in school, but a part of me worries that it is not or not half as much as it should be. The book in question is not What’s the Point of School? by Guy Claxton, which I was much influenced by when  I first read it in Nepal, but one of Claxton’s earlier works, Hare Brain Tortoise Mind. The sentiment and central message of the latter book resonates with a belief that I have held dear for many years, namely the value of giving time to slow learning. I have often said to parents that education is not a race. And this message to parents is borne out of my desire to see all educators take the pressure and stress out of learning, to allow for time to mess about with learning, and to allow learning to take place for its intrinsic value and for reasons that the learner has brought to it herself. Not to say that the more deliberative d-mode learning that Claxton refers to is not important. It is just that this kind of thinking has underpinned our examination system and has taken over too much of the educational endeavour in schools, to the detriment of more creative and intuitive learning, we maintain.

Being myself a quiet learner who likes to dream, recollect dreams, day dream and contemplate, perhaps you can forgive me for my indulgence in liking this thesis, but if such an understanding of “know-how” can be rescued and given a complementary place in 21^st century learning and its attendant technologies, then perhaps, I believe, we will create more balance and more ‘holism’ to our modern, frenetic lives.

Tooth Fairy Matters

It was lovely to reflect the other day that our eleven year old son – soon to be twelve years old – still expected the tooth fairy to leave some money underneath his pillow during the dead of night. Of course, his parents – Dad in particular – have nourished this belief from a young age, and the family custom persists. It was also interesting to see the reaction of our five year old daughter, who was most upset that the tooth fairy was not paying her a visit that night, and so she proceeded to burst into tears, like a jilted lover. I did explain to her that when she – at the appointed time – and that her time would definitely come - were to lose a tooth, the tooth fairy would visit her also. This eventually seemed to assuage her.

One of the reasons I have perpetuated this custom is to prolong the sense of child hood awe and belief in things magical. It has been suggested that the prolonging of the tradition is an attempt by parents to keep their children ‘dependent’ on them and close to their bosom, like little children are. I had not reflected on it in this way before, but methinks in our case, it is more a question of a belief in the supernatural, a spiritual acknowledgement that even in our techno/gadget-filled eon there is still a place for mystery and fantasy. I know a day will come shortly when our son no longer believes in the tooth fairy. In fact, when another tooth came out recently and we were far away from home on a ‘desert island’ he did wonder how the tooth fairy would come; and was also surprised – when he looked underneath the pillow the following morning - that she had not taken the tooth away after having left the money (- an oversight by Auntie, who was sharing a room with our son at the time!). Our son has questioned me about Father Christmas, after he wondered why one of his friends said that Father Christmas never came to his house. My reply at that time was that because his friend did not believe in Father Christmas, then that was the reason why he never visited him.

As our daughter is still young it is important, I feel, that we continue to play along with the lovely mystery of Christmas and all things magical, like the tradition of the tooth fairy, not least to offer a little comfort to a child who may be worried about a tooth having come out. It is also a nice conversation to have at the dentist, as we always found with our son. He will soon outgrow his belief. I pray that it will be replaced by another and hopefully deeper sense of awe of life’s beauty and richness.  

Party Matters

We were invited to the school annual dinner the evening before last– the end of term staff and family party for Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Uda 2, the ‘high performing’ school I am currently posted to as a Teaching and Learning Advisor. The dinner took place at one of the hotels that line the beach at Desaru, Johor.

It was a rather special event, the culmination of a year's work in the life of the school, a school I have been working at for only a couple of months now. I was made to feel very welcome, myself and my fellow Advisor, as well as my family – wife, children and sister-in-law. Although the whole affair was conducted in Malay – the speeches and presentations etc., we were made to feel very welcome, with a few special mentions in the colloquies. Smiles from each table as we wandered between them, and praises for my family, with words of “how beautiful”  they  were. The two School Advisors present on the evening – our other colleague unable to be with us - had been called to sit at the high table with the Principal of the School, a charming lady, who has photographs and credits describing her as the “Iron Lady of Bandar Uda” on several noticeboards on  the school compound. She can be a formidable lady, oleaginous and understanding at one and the same time, but as I said, she was very hospitable and warm on this evening, and has in fact always been very civil and polite with me.

The other thing that struck me most about the gathering was its purity. Perhaps it is a Malay Muslim phenomenon: soft drinks only – no alcoholic beverages, and everyone dressed very modestly – the ladies and girls of age in the traditional head “tudung" and the men in casual attire; children celebrated.  Smiles throughout, and no coarse or loud laughter, no vulgarity, but a very warm and convivial atmosphere. A real sense of family. Nice also to see a few tables with Tamils and their families, smiling and enjoying the company as well.

It was in contrast to the Jaguar event next door in the more upmarket 4/5 star hotel, where we had popped in briefly earlier in the evening to get a pre-dinner bite to eat. There, a sexily clad  trio of young ladies performed a few songs on a small makeshift stage and led the Singapore-origin party for the evening’s special function, beer free flowing on tap at each table. We left before what we assumed would develop into a more raucous affair as the night drew on.

Then today there was an article in the Daily National Newspaper, The Star, entitled Sex Matters. Incongruous in this country, I felt, which I have come to associate with moderate conservatism and a respect for keeping matters sexual private – at least on one level. The lingering statistic in my mind, if it can be believed, was that 39% of Malaysian (married) women confessed to being unfaithful, behind Ghanaian and Thai women only. The implication is that Malaysian women are the third most unfaithful group in the world. Could I believe it? I thought of the beautiful women – most of them married - that adorned the tables of the other night at Desaru, their open smiles and attractive demeanours. Surely, a representative group of 39 % unfaithful women did not populate this group? Perhaps the teaching profession is unrepresentative of his vague statistic. Perhaps not. I guess I will never know, and it is not my business to dwell on it further.

Sports Day

They say sport is good for you, physical exercise, healthy body equals healthy mind and all that. Well, another example to vindicate this old adage came yesterday at Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Uda 2’s Annual Sports Day here in Johor Bahru, with nearly 1600 students participating, 100 staff in attendance, and many parents present, cheering on their sons and daughters and lapping up the atmosphere at the local Larkin Stadium.

Typical Malaysian daily temperatures saw the heat rise, and people retreat to shadier spots as the morning went on. They key experience for me was seeing children and staff smiling, enjoying the sense of occasion, and the liberation afforded by being outside in a large venue space, seemingly millions of miles away from oppressive classrooms.. Very few tears, just an atmosphere of good competition, cheering on of the different ‘houses” and individual efforts in the sprint races.  Teachers, students and parents all seemed quite relaxed. Having been working as an Adviser in the school for nearly two months now, I had forgotten how much fun it can be just to be in the company of the school children, simply enjoying being with them, and seeing teachers in different roles – an experience good for one and all.

The event was typically Malaysian in that food was in plentiful supply. At one point, a friendly young boy presented me with a polystyrene food container – my ‘lunch’ for the day - rice, noodles, chicken, apple and water. He then returned to his, noshing away greedily on the contents of his lunch box, oblivious to the funny side of seeing an ‘athletics competitor’ eating by the side of the track.

I took it upon myself to take photographs, the amateur shooter that I am, preferring to take those pictures of teachers and students in informal settings away from races, stretching themselves before the event, playing with balloons and the tomfoolery of kids killing time before competition. My own body, although not exerted by any races or strenuous physical activity, felt wonderfully relaxed for having been outside in the open air for several hours, the moderate exposure to UV radiation from natural sun light good for my Vitamin D production, no doubt!

 

 

Teaching matters

Thank you, Purna, for a timely reminder of the importance of the 'skilling’ and ‘up-skilling' of teachers all around the world – and especially those of the developing countries. 

(See Purna Shrestha's Blog post - Take a stand for teachers: children are in schools but not learning – who’s to blame? @ http://blog.campaignforeducation.org/take-a-stand-for-teachers-children-are-in-schools-but-not-learning-whos-to-blame/#comment-3).

Time and again we have seen development projects measure outcomes by other more easily quantifiable success criteria - i.e. numbers of schools built, numbers of girl students and increases in enrolment ratios. Too little attention has really been paid to the quality of the teachers, their training and the quality of the teaching and learning environment. Too few studies have attempted to measure this outcome, and then lobby NGOs, INGOs and other development agencies to provide funding to focus on this area long term big time and to equip the governments of developing countries to focus on quality training for its teachers - matched by quality salaries. Or perhaps the studies and evidence have been there, but a deep commitment to tackle the problem has not.

“No one forgets a good teacher,” was the catch phrase for a famous advertising campaign in the UK some years ago, a campaign targeting young graduates to consider a career in teaching.  We all have our stories of good and not-so-good teachers, and often the quality of our (school) learning experience is  down to the quality of the teachers we had. Sounds obvious, but until the leaders and power brokers of this world match rhetoric with praxis and truly acknowledge the pivotal role that quality teachers can play in improving life chances for the children of the developing world (- and their key role in transforming societies and the part they play in sustainable economic & livelihoods development -) then we miss precious opportunities yet again to intervene to improve the educational experiences of the next generation.