Reflections on a life-long process

A discussion this afternoon as we walked down the Bishop's Glen under a miraculously cleared sky had me thinking. Not, on this occasion, of how cold my head had become - it was, we discovered, only 1ºC - nor of how lucky we were to have hiked for over an hour without getting wet, but about education. Again.

Thing is, when you spend 17 years of your first quarter-century in formal education, and the best part of your adult life involved in imparting the fruits of your learning to others, it's hard to retire the bit of your brain that thinks about such matters. And I keep reading blog posts that make me remember and reflect, and then I find I have to discharge these reflections to make room for more development. This particular outpouring, actually, also has its genesis in the English grammar test that was doing the rounds on Facebook last week; I was amused to see that among my circles I and one other judged the test by our 100% scores rather than the other way round.

So I can write correct English by the standards of the past century. I know my subjects and my objects, I recognise errant apostrophes and misrelated participles (all wildly common these days), I tend not to split my infinitives despite the mootness of the imperative that dictates such niceness. And yes, I know how to use "nice" correctly. But why? And how did this come to be?

Of course, it's a process. A lifelong process that began when I learned to read before I started Primary School, continued through the reading before I was 10 of books like "Treasure Island", Whymper's "Scrambles amongst the Alps" and the historical novels of Conan Doyle, was underlined by regular lessons and exercises in analysis and parsing all through primary school and into S1 and S2 and culminated - I suppose - in the mastery of Latin grammar at secondary school and university. I was taught from first Infants by teachers who were graduates - as far as I can remember, they all turned up in Glasgow MA hoods at special occasions - and who seemed possessed of infinite knowledge. (Here I have to single out the unfortunate BSc who took over my class in P7 - he struggled dreadfully with the English homework he set us, and had to seek help from my father, an old acquaintance from University.)

When I think about it, I can't remember ever not knowing how to write correctly - given, of course, that I was of an age to be literate. I couldn't always spell, and still have words that I like to check - but they're few and far between. I used to use "like" as a conjunction in careless speech, and may sometimes still do so, but I can hear my father's voice telling me not to. At dinner, God help me. Did such knowledge make me a good English teacher? Of course it didn't. But it made me a confident one. I didn't worry about the things I didn't know, because I could underpin everything I considered with a solid foundation. I never minded having to check something, or ask the class what they took from a text, because I enjoyed the stimulus of doing new stuff - there was no fear of being outgunned. I never needed to use half of the things I knew, but they were there, in the background, like a full tank of petrol, ready to emerge as a matter of interest, or to help in the delving. And when an earnest child assured me that it was wrong to start a sentence with "and" I was able to assure them that it was perfectly fine as long as you knew what you were doing. That kind of thing.

Now for an admission. Every time I read something, I'm judging it by the standards that have their roots in this past. When someone who is supposed to be educated doesn't know their comma-splice from their dangling participle, I notice. When someone writes about English teaching and does so in a less than literate fashion, it pains me. But I wonder about the future - about whether all this stuff that lies behind my thinking about the language and what we do with it will come to be seen as irrelevant, and if it does, whether that will be because no-one will have been educated in the way that we were.

Was it boring? Did we switch off? Sometimes. But in the end, I acquired what I needed because I attended a selective school, and most of us accepted that we had to learn. Even my distractions tended to be academic, like reading a book under the desk. I didn't meet non-academic children until I started teaching. But here's a thing. A boring teacher will make anything boring. Everything they touch will be tarnished by tedium. Pupils seem to me to be less likely to accept boredom than in the past. They are used to professionally packaged entertainment, all the time, on tap. They know when someone hasn't got what it takes, and they react predictably. Gone the days - happily gone - when a class of forty would sit in silence while the teacher droned through a bowdlerised "Hamlet" without ever giving one of them a shot at the lead role. As for parsing ten sentences in their jotters before the bell rang ...

Happily,  the selection and training of teachers is quite another story.

Passionate pedants

A wee discussion on pedantry vs passion almost got going t'other day but was stifled by circumstances. I'm frequently accused of pedantry in language, though my dear ami Fr Kenny enjoyed coming the pedant over my choice of the phrase 'a big ask' in a recent public utterance of mine. But in a way that moment illustrated something. Both the reverend father and myself knew what we were about in that moment, and that was right and proper in two educated people. Both of us are perfectly capable of linguistic accuracy, and both of us enjoy the humour (to us, anyway) of straying from the path.

As an English teacher it's been my job to be accurate, to be a role model for my students and to correct their errors - to reassure them that once they knew when to use "I" and when "me" they should stick to it even if their parents tried to correct them. (This has happened - several times.) I've also been able to show them how it's fine to begin a sentence with "But" if they know why their early Primary teachers told them not to. So you could say that my passion* is for the pedantry that ensures accurate English, and for the clarity of expression that accuracy can bring. Someone else might have a passion for singing in tune - and might be accused of being over-pernickity for insisting on it.

I just hope the next doctor I really need is keen on accuracy too ...

*Actually I have several passions. We'll not go into that, shall we?

Single-sex teaching

Well, well. It's a strange feeling to see the BBC Scotland news featuring something I did several years ago and hailing the development as something new and exciting. I'm talking about the "experiment" in Kilsyth Academy's English department, where they have decided to teach boys and girls in separate classes. They are evangelical about the positive effect on the work of all concerned.

Of course, I'm glad about all this. I'm glad someone else has cottoned on to something I've known for years. Because it must be eight or nine years since I first offered to solve the gender imbalance in a yeargroup by taking a boys' class as they started S2, and five or six years since I attempted to publicise the results of this experiment. Of course, we weren't blogging then; the only computer in my classroom belonged to the now defunct Pupils' View magazine and I merely circulated memos - which obviously didn't get very far.

The news story ended with the reporter wondering how their Standard Grade results will benefit - if at all. I can tell them already - at least, if they're anything like my boys. I taught this same mixed ability class from S2 - S4 - three years together for boys whose predicted grades ranged from Credit 1 down to Foundation 5. In the event, no-one achieved a Foundation award: of a class of 30 I had 15 Credits (8 of them at Grade 1) and 15 General, of whom only two were a Grade 4. The most able boys helped the less able without the slightest embarrassment or resentment on anyone's part; every one of them found that they were able to write more effectively and express genuine emotion without fear of ridicule. One boy startled me in S4 by announcing that he had learned John Donne's Batter my heart off by heart because he thought it was "amazing", and offered to recite it to us all. Another became fascinated by Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child and wrote, off his own bat, a critical evaluation of it. So much for the fear that an all-male class would read nothing but so-called macho texts.

Many of these boys stayed with me for Higher English, though for that they were rejoined by some girls, and most of them did extremely well. One of them even comments on this blog from time to time. In all the time I taught them I looked forward to their period in the day as a time of hard work, enthusiasm, adventure and frequent hilarity.

So I wish the boys - and the girls - of Kilsyth Academy well. I hope their teachers enjoy the classes and the opportunity for some exciting cooperation. But I wish someone had told the Beeb about my class - because whatever it is, it's not a new idea.

Old technology in class

On the back of Ewan's post about the latest manifestation of the construction toy Lego, this is the lesson I devised way back when Standard Grade English was new and different and we had to devise means of providing integrated occasions for Talk assessment and Transactional Writing (always dodgy in that it seemed all too easy to lapse into Creative Writing and lose one of the requirements for the dreaded Folio). Interestingly, this lesson was part of a unit we called The Technology Unit, subtitled Men and Machines.

I bought five of the small Lego model sets, each making a different little vehicle, complete with driver/operative. In order to do away with the illustration on the boxes, I got the techy department to provide me with neat little wooden containers with sliding lids - this went down strangely well all round. In these went the sets and their leaflets, each with the set of diagrams representing each stage in the building of the model.

The class split into five groups. Two at a time, they sat back to back, one with the Lego bricks and a desk to work on, one with the leaflet of instructions. It was the job of the one with the leaflet to translate the pictures into words and instruct the builder how to make the model. This involved them in searching for the best word for the studs, beams, bricks and so on, and in expressing as clearly as possible how they were to be aligned.

The rest of the group watched and listened, noting what made for effective communication - or complete disaster - and waiting for their turn. It was interesting that not all benefited from coming later in the exercise; perhaps the fact that the models were destroyed and then moved on to the next group after each building helped to maintain the level of difficulty. When the spoken exercise was over and assessed - lots of jinking around on the part of the teacher - the class then wrote a report on the experience as they had observed it.

Every class I did this with loved the exercise - there was a great deal of hilarity - and were keen to write it up afterwards, often producing reports which showed considerable insight into the process. It was a good introduction to transactional writing of an original kind, and gave the the satisfaction of having two solid grades at the very beginning of the S grade course.

I'd forgotten about this until reading Ewan's post today; he tells me no-one would know how to play this game from the comment I left on it, so here you are - old-fashioned technology!

Prelim preparation

Anyone with the patience to read the comments on this blog will have noticed that I've been having an interesting chat with Liz O'Neill about the teaching of textual analysis. This evening I scurried back from a very civilised lunch in the Rogano in Glasgow to see my two private pupils for the last time before I vanish to foreign parts for a bit and they vanish into their Higher prelim exams. In both cases we were discussing how to construct an effective Critical Essay under exam conditions: ie choose a question that has some connection with one of your texts, work out exactly what it is asking you to consider, plan how to use your knowledge of the text in order to answer the question and then write about 700 words - all in 45 minutes. Then do it again for another question and a text of a different genre from the first.

All this - and it's hard work, at this level - had me thinking further about the effective sharing of ideas on literature. It seems to me that the most meaningful learning happens when the student begins to make the connections for herself (both my current students are female, so we'll stick with that pronoun). This takes time and patience, and sensitive probing and leading to help the insecure to a place of confidence. But what if a pupil arrives in your class with four years of less than satisfactory experience of literature? (Not the case with my current pair, but a possibility) What if they've never read any particularly complex stuff until they fetched up in a Higher class? Suddenly you've got to get them to a pitch of expertise that will enable them to pass a demanding exam in January - and you've got about five and a half months to do it in, with four weeks of holidays in two blocks to break up the rhythm.

I don't feel like solving the whole mystery right here and now - the nice lunch is still affecting the brain - but would suggest the following for starters:
If you can, make sure they read a novel over the summer holiday before S5 really starts. Something big, like "Sunset Song". Start analysing it with them in week one of the first term. If they can't hack it, they'll realise something about themselves. If they find themselves passionately reacting to the situation of the heroine in the middle of discussing her home life, they're hooked. Real literature is really involving - and there is so very much to say about it. Anyone who has failed to do the reading suddenly realises that they've dealt themselves out of the conversation, and either gets the finger out or gives up the ghost.

If you leave something as big as that till later in the term, you'll never do it. They'll get bogged down in Maths homework (it was always maths) and have no time to sit and read an extended text. You'll be stuck with short stories or jounalism for the Prose option - and that's not always ideal. My aim was always to have the novel plus, say, two of Doris Lessing's short stories - Lessing because she is such a superb crafter of language that every word and phrase tells and nothing is redundant. But what you absolutely must build in is the opportunity to talk about these texts - with you, with each other - so that they own them. It's not enough to set them questions to wrestle with in writing when they haven't the basic personal understanding that is only achieved through discussion and turning back to the text to back themselves up. And it is we the teachers who have to ask the hard questions, the whys and the hows, the whats and the what ifs, that will set their critical faculties working efficiently - and it is we who have to be the first to react with enthusiasm when they start to get it. You can do this in class time - because when you're with them it's a better use of your time that sitting doing your own thing while they write. I used to do it orally - with them all joining in, I hoped. Now I'd perhaps do it differently - a blog might involve everyone simultaneously.

But I'd really miss the chat.

Commitment and nags

As I've bragged (or should that be brogged? - a neat amalgamation of verbs) about the success of edublogs like Progress Report I think it's only fair to acknowledge that wildbanks has been a complete failure in terms of encouraging a student to work and progress. The joyous bit for me was that I felt able to tell the parents that they were wasting their money and my time and that we should cease trading forthwith - how often did I long for that freedom in my classroom days!

I often reflect on the discrepancy between parents' ambitions for their children and the inclination of said children to do anything to fulfil these ambitions - which the child may even profess for themselves. On the other hand, it was just great when one of the Progress Report bloggers came back sua sponte with an onslaught on her Higher work - for then I was reminded of the drive created to improve and succeed.

In the end, of course, it's all a matter of commitment. Some people reach that stage of maturity earlier than others; some people have wonderful nagging parents who sacrifice their own peaceful lives to keep up the pressure. That's what I had when I was at school, and I've never ceased to marvel at the way my father - a famous Glasgow English teacher in his day - helped me with physics while my mother would do the preliminary work on my Virgil translation because I had so much homework. I hope I in turn was able to carry on the noble tradition of nag-in-chief despite the temptation to do my own thing.....