Having cast one manuscript into the seas of time, I now begin again. Surely it is absurd; but I am not - I will not be - so absurd myself as to suppose that this will ever find a reader, even in me. Let me describe then, to no one and nothing, just who I am and what it is that I have done...Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun
"I think it'd be fascinating," says Candace, "to take what we've learnt and then introduce negotiated curriculum. That would be the next logical step, because these kids are used to working in this form. You could say 'Hey, we've got this to learn, these are the skills in science that you have to learn', and then sort of bring them into the discussion and build ..."
"Yeah, negotiation's something I've been thinking about. Is that something you have to build up to? You almost have to give them skills in negotiation..."
"Oh, I've learnt that to my cost, last year. You can't just go in and say 'Hey kids, let's negotiate!' I did it, Bean and Brodhagen method, right down the line, exactly what they said to do - and it didn't work. You have to skill-base kids before you can use the skill in order for them to skill themselves."
Perhaps Alyx was right - there's just too much going on here, too many changes of roles and expectations that are mandated by the program of the school. These all need to be imposed on students if anything at all is to happen in the classroom that's different from what teachers and students expect. Schools have spent the last six or seven years schooling
Great story from Ivan Illich about the genesis of his whole 'deschooling society' approach. After a lecture once, Illich was talking to some students, and one of them said 'yep, no doubt about it, schools are made to screw you'. Illich misheard him as saying 'school you', and a movement was born. But I still hear the other way as a faint resonance in the background
these students in the gentle arts of passive acceptance - and perhaps in spite of our best intentions to encourage their active involvement, all we've really succeeded in doing is having them passively accept some different structures.
Perhaps the teachers themselves were in a process of change. They, too, have a long history, both as learners and teachers, of being subject to particular educational roles and practices. Some of them - Andrea and Carolyn spring to mind - do not see themselves as living contradictions, because their own educational values and beliefs line up quite closely with traditional models and approaches. Any contradiction they've felt has been in the area of new strategies and structures required by the reform-minded founders of the Arcadia model, that are dissonant from Andrea and Carolyn's own
dominant culture, received interpretation
assumptions. But even the teachers - like Alyx and Candace - whose values and beliefs are most closely aligned with that amorphous creature, the 'Arcadia vision', have had to struggle mightily against their own histories as teachers and learners. The constraints teachers feel are often identified as originating in 'the system', but those who are becoming more critical are beginning to see and accept that the greatest constraints we face come from what we know and who we are.
And I hope I'm critically reflective enough to understand that this applies most strongly to myself - what stands in my way, most days, wears David's face
Perhaps too, though, the students' assumptions and beliefs and expectations and roles
which often reflect those of parents, peers and the broader society
make change difficult. They have learned well the lessons of obedience and the loci of control: there is risk in change, and even more in fundamental changes of who teachers and students are in the classroom. The literature speaks facilely of 'active learners' and 'teachers as facilitators', as though the creation of the latter made the former axiomatic, but we are talking of human beings, and the causal links are far more complex and multiple than that.
And why should students change their learning roles and educational expectations? What value do they receive from becoming active learners? Because, like it or not, believe in it or not, all these students are bound for the TER - except those who elect not to
and the system, and the teachers, and the parents, and the kids, see those as the failures
- and that's the ultimate norm-referenced test of passive acceptance: memorise this and learn to parrot this and to do this in exactly this way and you will be admitted and accepted
and loved.
All our liberal values and love of learning considered, it's still entirely possible that the Arcadia experiment is doing these kids a disservice in their preparedness for life in the arid market economy Australia is rapidly becoming, if it disadvantages them even one iota in their preparation for that great and fatal sieve at the end of Year Twelve.
"I'd be more confident with Year Eight, especially experiments that don't involve lighting gas burners," she laughs. "But there are plenty of kids around who are happy to light the gas burners. I'd be more confident with Year Eight, but if I was taking Year Nine I'd have to have somebody like you come and help me again, 'cos I'd be in the same position, I wouldn't really be confident of the content. I feel that I need to prepare them well, and if I think I'm not preparing them well I get anxious, and it's not good for anybody, 'cos if I get anxious I'm not as... easy to get on with, and the kids suffer. They suffer both ways - one I don't know what I'm doing, and second, I'm a bit cross about the whole thing anyway."
and to the teachers, and possibly even to the students!
I've learned heaps, maybe I've even grown up a little bit. But this - what I did at Arcadia this year - is mainly about earning my Ph.D. I don't think for a moment that I've been able to kid you, dear reader, that I went through all this stuff - the stress and hassle, the relationship breakdowns, the long trip to Arcadia two or three days a week, puffing and cursing my way around the school on crutches for half the year, all for no pay - just because I love teaching so much that I couldn't stay out of the classroom. At the end of this year, I have to take enough away with me from the school - in my head and my heart certainly, but also in my briefcase and folders and tape recorder and the little impressionist tales I wrote every time something interesting happened - so that I can sit down in 1997 and write me a Ph.D. thesis.
What are those rules for theses again? I have to demonstrate that I know my way around an area of knowledge,
well, I certainly know a hell of a lot more than I used to about philosophy and the history and philosophy of science and constructivism and postmodernism and educational theory and action research and praxis and critical theory and...
I have to make an original contribution to scholarship and I have to...
blast, what was that third thing? When all else fails, check the web site! It says "...a Doctoral degree shall be awarded for a thesis and/or other approved work which in the opinion of the examiners is a substantial original contribution to the knowledge or understanding of any field of study and which demonstrates the capacity of the student to carry out independent research."
As the end of the year approaches, I look at my collection of stories and think 'What if it's not enough?' - and how would I know? How can I measure that exact number and depth and quality of tales that will count as a 'substantial original contribution'? But all I can do is all I can do, so I pray that all I can do will be enough, and keep on teaching and learning and researching, all mushed up together. There's so much I've learnt this year: now all I have to do is tell someone, in a way that's clear and interesting
and a substantial original contribution.
I see what I'm doing as being about contributing to understanding, rather than increasing the store of knowledge, at least if knowledge is imagined using substance metaphors. The ideas I want to present and represent aren't generally new - and I'm not sure any more that I believe there is anything new under the sun - but I hope the ways I represent them, and the human face the stories put on them, have challenged you and increased your understanding: of Arcadia, of education, of science education and of me.
I really didn't want to say anything about the fact that I was looking at teachers and teaching right then - our relationship was difficult enough. Perhaps I lied, a little.
"Um, Life, the Universe and Everything," I laughed. "I was looking at my own teaching, and at the values the school aims for: collaboration, student-centredness, life-long learning, all that good stuff. I was trying to understand, in a rich way, what things support those values and that kind of teaching, particularly in science teaching, and what hinders them."
"I think maybe the kids needed to know more about that. They knew that you were doing this research, but they didn't really know what you were looking for. Some of them came up to me and asked about it, and I told them to ask you. But I think it made them uncomfortable that you were observing them but they didn't know what you were observing..."
I think it's about broken relationship, for me. With Candace, Alyx, Fiona, Andrew and Colin I'll continue to be a friend, and I've already been invited back to the school next year to visit them. I doubt I'll ever see Andrea or Etta again, and that's probably a bit of a relief for both of us in Andrea's case. But it's the barely civil farewell and all the unresolved resentments with Carolyn that are weighting my steps on this final afternoon. There was so much I could have done better, if I'd had the will or the emotional energy or the love, but would it have made a difference? I don't know, and I'll probably never know.
I climb into the car with a sigh, and turn on the radio, and wind down the window to let out the blast of sunhot air that greeted me when I opened the door. And I make a determined effort to think about how it felt, standing by the ice rink this week, when Simon and Tony and Therese and Adrian and Louise and Josh and Sam and Emma came sliding to the wall and asked "Are you coming skating Mr Geelan?"