In praise of
teaching as a subversive activity
Harry Fletcher-Wood
“You cannot step twice into the same stream”
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Writing in the late 1960s, the authors of Teaching
as a Subversive Activity
worked from two assumptions: society’s survival is
under threat and something may – perhaps –
be done about it. In response, they set out to
challenge the foundations of the education system and invited
teachers to re-imagine schools to benefit students and society.
I reread the book recently for the third time
in four years.
Each reading has felt different; each time, I’ve
been challenged to rethink what I ‘know’
and believe about education. The authors offer
some wonderful insights,
wittily and memorably expressed and well worth sharing –
alongside some truly dreadful suggestions.
My appreciation of which is which has changed over time.
This post focuses on the former –
ideas with a spark of genius, or of insight. Next
week, I’ll write about aspects I’d contest.
1) Education
should prepare students for contemporary society
Postman and Weingartner believed schools have a major
role in ‘saving’ society.
They proposed what David Riesman called a
‘counter-cyclical’ approach:
“schools should stress values that are not stressed by
other major institutions in the culture.”
This could be achieved by acting as an “anti-entropic
force,” providing students
with Hemingway’s suggested necessity: “a built-in,
shock-proof crap-detector,”
which would allow a student “to be part of his own
culture and, at the same time, to be out of it.”
In this spirit, the authors argue that education
must be relevant.
Firstly,
because society faces a raft of problems, including: “…the communications
revolution,
which, having taken us unawares, has ignited the
civil-rights problem,
unleashed the electronic-bugging problem, and made
visible the sex problem…. ‘progress’,
a somewhat paradoxical manifestation that has also
resulted in the air-pollution problem,
the water-pollution problem, the garbage-disposal
problem…. we must not omit alluding to
the international scene: the Bomb problem, the Vietnam
problem, the Red China problem…”
And yet, they believed, teachers and educationalists were
blind to this.
At a conference they attended, rather than
discussing poverty, Vietnam,
or an “ugly history of racial crisis” the authors found
discussion of which grammar to teach;
“Where is the learner in this? Where is his world?”
Secondly, they
contend that students’ perception of relevance is essential to their
learning:
“There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined,
active and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be
a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning.”
One thought
experiment they propose runs:
“Suppose all the syllabi and curricula and textbooks in
all the schools disappeared.”
Suppose, then, that you decided to create new curriculum
consisting of questions.
These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to
not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of
view of the students…. Take a pencil and list your questions
on the next page, which we have left blank for you.
Please do not be concerned about
decaying our book, unless, of course, one of your
questions was going to be
‘What were some of the ways of learning a living in
Ancient Egypt?’
In that case, use your own paper.”
2) Teachers
should listen to and understand themselves and their students
They advocate a thorough investigation by teachers into
their own attitudes and beliefs:
“The process, once begun, leads in many unexpected
directions but most often to the question
‘Why am I a teacher, anyway?” Moreover, they
believe that teachers should spend
much more time in listening to their students and seeking
to understand their needs.
The authors advocate a technique they take from Carl
Rogers: students engage in a discussion
with “an unusual rule applied to it. A student may
say anything he wishes
but only after he has restated what the previous speaker
has said
to that speaker’s satisfaction.
Astounding things happen to students when they go through
this experience.”
In some cases students “find they have projected
themselves into the frame of mind
of another person…. But, of course, you ought to
try it yourself first.”
3)
Education needs to challenge students to think for themselves
“Mostly, [students] are required to remember…
They are rarely encouraged to ask substantive questions….
what students mostly do in class is guess what the
teacher wants them to say.”
4) Radical
structural changes would improve schools, teachers and students
Here is a thought-provoking list of suggestions they
offer:
1. Declare a five-year moratorium on the use of all
textbooks
2. Have “English” teachers “teach” Math, Math teachers English,
Social Studies teachers science, Science teachers Art,
and so on.
3. Transfer all elementary teachers to high school and vice versa.
4. Require every teacher who thinks he knows his “subject” well to write a book
on it.
5. Dissolve all “subjects”, “courses”, and “course requirements”.
6. Limit each teacher to three declarative sentences per class, and 15
interrogatives.
7. Prohibit teachers from asking any questions they already know the answers
to.
8. Declare a moratorium on all tests and grades.
9. Require all teachers to undergo some form of psychotherapy as part of their in-service
training
10. Classify teachers according to their ability and make the lists public.
11. Require all teachers to take a test prepared by students on what the
students know.
12. Make every class an elective and withhold a teacher’s monthly check
if his students do not show any interest in going to next
month’s classes.
13. Require every teacher to take a one-year leave of absence every
fourth year
to work in some other “field” other than education.
14. Require each teacher to provide some sort of evidence that
he or she has had a loving relationship with at least one
other human being.
15. Require that all the graffiti accumulated in the school toilets be
reproduced on large paper
and be hung in the school halls.
16. There should be a general prohibition against the following words and
phrases: syllabus,
covering ground, I.Q., makeup test, disadvantaged,
gifted, accelerated, enhancement, course,
grade, score, human nature, dumb, college material and
administrative necessity.”
Some of these I’ve tried, some I’d advocate
wholeheartedly, and some would, I suspect,
cause little but harm. The full proposals – and
highly entertaining justifications – c
an be seen in the pictures below (see
particularly number 14):
Teaching as a Subversive Activity is a wonderful
book which everyone should read.
It’s also a product of its age, and many of its
prescriptions have been tried
and found deeply wanting. My next post will look at
some of the issues I have with it.
http://improvingteaching.co.uk/2015/04/12/in-praise-of-teaching-as-a-subversive-activity/
You can TCR software
and engineering manuals for spontaneously recall –
or pass that exam.
I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what
I’ve read.
I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.
Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading
YouTube
Perhaps you’d like to check
out my sister blogs:
To quote the Dr Seuss
himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn; the
more places you'll go.”
