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.

Synod - a personal take

Bishop Katherine addresses Synod
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I spent the end of the week at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church. You can read all about it here, where you can also listen to the speech from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA (pictured, rather distantly, with my phone), and you can pick up more personal takes on blogs like Kenny's. I didn't take my laptop - too heavy, too uncomfortable to sit in the pews at the side where the bloggers lurk, and to be honest, too tempting to sit surfing in moments of tedium.

And there were such moments. It is my contention that no-one aspiring to address a hall full of people should be allowed to be boring, no matter what they're talking about. Balance-sheets, maybe - but there are interesting nuggets hidden away in there, like the average giving of each communicant in the church (quite shockingly low), or the discrepancy between numbers on rolls and actual bums on seats on the Sunday next before Advent. But I'm pushing a point here. I know there has to be a business-like approach to pensions and quota and all the stuff I find personally so daunting. However, we are all sent the papers in ample time to read them from cover to cover - and yes, we can all read. So why, in the name of charity, do speakers insist on putting up Powerpoint slides and then reading them out aloud? Or explaining maps that we're quite capable of interpreting?

And another thing. When is everyone going to realise that if they're going to read every word of an address, verbatim, from the paper in front of them, they will have to work hard to produce a paper in the register of speech? It is soul-destroying to sit, on an aching posterior, with a sore back and restless feet, listening to a monotone voice reading a written report which the speaker shows no signs of having mastered sufficiently to interpret in any way. Surely if someone has worked with a committee and laboured over its report, they can then set aside the written document and speak about the highlights?

I'd like to suggest a self-check for speakers: Are you enjoying yourself? Are you gripped by the thing you're saying, right now? Are you communicating that passion? No? Then think again. Try another tack. For if you're bored, or unable to convey the sense of that convoluted sentence without hesitating, what chance do your listeners have? In fact, what chance is there that they're still awake?

Of course there were great moments, witty speeches, ad-libbing and hilarity. But apart from the social aspect of Synod, I regard attendance at it as a kind of penance. And that's a shame.

On a brighter note, this morning I returned to the worship of my own wee church. Last week I worshipped with a bevy of bishops, a clutch of clergy, several dozens of delegates. The organ was loud and the singing confident. The liturgy was at times involving (though at times the reverse). But nothing happened. Not for me, anyway. This morning there was no priest - he was in Rothesay - and there was a congregation of about 15. The singing was gentle (but in tune!) and the organ is a computer (but in the hands of a fine musician). We received communion from the Reserved Sacrament.

But the magic was there, there in a way that reminded me of why I hadn't headed for the hills. Whew!

A study in parenthesis

Found myself pondering stress, retirement and singing over breakfast this foggy morning. As usual for as long as I can remember - certainly since I was 12 - this time of year is a whirl of activity which is nothing to do with buying presents and drinking mulled wine in Christmas Markets (if only!) and everything to do with Keeping Well (because of having to sing), Very Important Rehearsals (because the gig is tomorrow) and What Shall We Sing at Midnight?

Add to that the deadline for a job I've been doing (before the end of this week) and you have, as near as dammit, the situation I used to be in when I was working. Then, in addition to the singing (remember - singers are the biggest hypochondriacs in the flu season) we tended to have exam marking to finish and the school magazine to get out before the customers started skiving in the run-up to the hols. And when I was a pupil we had the school concert - huge in Hillhead High School in the 60s, and multiplied by 4 the year the St Andrew's Halls burned down and we had to put them on in the (very much smaller) school hall on four nights one hectic week - so were trailing home after 6pm on the foggy Glasgow evenings after two hours of extra-curricular orchestral rehearsal. The choir, I remember, was never allowed to interfere with the orchestra, and had to fit rehearsals in at lunch time.

So I have never, ever, known a peacefully domestic festive season - have never understood when people have said "Just as well you caught flu/the cold/winter vomiting/bubonic plague before Christmas" - because, for me, Christmas has always come as a great "whew!" that I made it all (or didn't, as this year: I still haven't reconciled myself to the cancellation of last week's carol service). In a way, this mirrors my retirement so far - and that's where this morning's ponderings came in. Were I to chuck it all, to confine my singing to the shower (sounded great this morning) and my church activities to the pew on a Sunday; to refuse any invitation to practise my professional skills in retirement - would I turn into a placid, relaxed pensioner with time to visit friends and take little mid-week breaks in interesting cities?

Or would I simply die of boredom?

Huvtaes galore

My pal Kenny's been blogging about having a day off work, coinciding nicely with my thoughts today on what to some must seem like a life of days off - this retirement business.One of the things I joked about missing when I first stopped work was the absence of a proper "sickie" - because if you're not staying off work because you have a bug of some kind, there seems little point in actually taking to your bed for a day. No, you just slope miserably around doing things in a half-hearted sort of way that doesn't seem all that different from normal life - not the same thing at all.

But more seriously, now that I'm on my 5th year of retirement I've realised that there are people who retire properly and people who seem to miss that particular boat. I'm one of the latter group, as is Mr B. There are people who retire and find themselves without a single obligation in their lives - not a single "huvtae" to impose a deadline or produce a modicum of stress. They do what they like when they want to, and don't give it a thought: they're retired, after all. And then there's me and people like me. Ok, a lot of it's church - and I'm not talking just turning up on a Sunday. And it's not actually religious faith putting on the pressure - it's people, and the need not to let them down, and the difficulty in saying "no". Perhaps the tasks and obligations look interesting, fulfilling, even, so you say "yes" - and suddenly your life takes on the familiar structure where there are no weeks where you can see clear space of more than a day at a time.

Add to that any little job related to your past life that you take on because you know you can do it and it might be fun and anyway it'll pay for that new suite you've rashly ordered. It turns out to have a deadline and suddenly you're rushing home at 4.30pm to get a couple of hours' work on it before, domestic goddess that you are, you produce a wonderful meal. (The DG bit keeps cropping up, by the way, just as it always did when you were working - it's just that you thought you'd have more time for it and you don't)

It was, however, pointed out to me today that I'd probably be bored if I had no huvtaes. I have, after all, chosen my burdens - most of them, anyway. So I'll just carry on singing and writing and planning concerts and writing exams and blogging and preaching and attending synods and running discussion groups and performing in workshops and ... and ...

And I'll enjoy my holidays, which will still feel like holidays. And I won't ever know what boredom feels like.

Oh, Miss...

I've been inspired by one of the comments on yesterday's post to reflect on what led to punishment - and in particular corporal punishment - in my schooldays. Bun, for example, recalls being belted because she and her friend were singing "Bobby's Girl" and banging the desk (presumably twice) for rhythmic effect, on the last day of term when no work was being done. She was also belted on several occasions for talking by (and this is where insider knowledge comes in) the Depute Head of the Primary school we both attended. He was a quiet little man, I remember, a BSc of Glasgow University, probably in his early 50s at the time. I was never belted by him.

But I was belted twice in my time at school. In Primary school I was singled out for bouncing a tiny ball in the sewing class (never did like sewing) and in Secondary for - yes - talking. In Maths, in S1. The young woman who was trying to teach a class of 40 bright girls in our selective school was foolish enough to tell all who were talking at that moment to put their hands up. At least half the class obliged, and she lined us all up on the floor and belted us, one after the other. By the time she reached me she was exhausted, though I suspect she would have saved more energy had the first victim, a tall girl called Lindsay, not whipped her hands back and said "Oh, miss, not me first!" And then she laughed. Fatal.

See how we remember? It was half a century ago and I can remember it exactly. So you might think it worked, as a punishment - but you'd be wrong. I remember the incidents because of their absurdity, an absurdity which I recognised even then. For the misdemeanours were so trivial and so absurd that they merited ... what? And perhaps this is the problem. What do you do to suppress inappropriate behaviour in a classroom? Hitting someone actually does stop them doing whatever it was for a while - I didn't go on bouncing that ball, and I maybe didn't chatter again in that maths period. But I despised both teachers at the time. Did they not have any jokes up their sleeves with which to put us down? Did they never laugh at us?

I think it's probably magic right enough. If a pupil respects/likes/is interested by a teacher, they want to please him or her. The idea of my beloved Latin teacher even saying he was disappointed in something I did or didn't do was so horrifying that I worked my socks off in his class, and it was that memory that spurred me as a teacher to ensure that I wasn't boring. Because much of my education was incredibly boring, now I think back, and it was the sheer ability of the best teachers to transcend the potentially stupefying nature of the curriculum that kept me from expulsion. When I think of the hours spent copying out notes - off banda-ed sheets or from the board - I realise what an essentially douce bunch we were, and I recall the tedium of the periods in English where I sat in the very back corner reading a book under the desk and eating Mintolas. What kind of teaching was happening there?

I went to a respected selective school in Glasgow. We all passed the Qualifying to stay in the Secondary department. The potential in these classes was immense. But in my whole time there, the highlight of my school week was the orchestra practice after school on Fridays. The rest, as you might say, is silence.

Except for the chattering ...

Reflective pupils?

Edubloggers whom I read and admire, like Mr W and Edublogger ipse, often comment on how blogging has tended to make them more reflective practitioners of the art of teaching. Tonight I have been reflecting on how teaching has made me a more reflective student - because from time to time, in my new life, I find myself in statu pupillari in a small mixed-ability group.

I must've been a pretty awful pupil in some respects. In English, especially, I never in the whole of my six years in secondary had a decent English teacher other than my dad - and God alone knows how he found the energy to enthuse me after a day's teaching. (I taught, briefly, in the same department as one of my former teachers and confirmed my suspicions: she was every bit as dire as I had suspected) But I digress. The thing was that when I became bored I used to read a book under the desk (possible in a class of 40) and eat Mintolas. I simply opted out of the whole process - and this was in the top class in a selective school.

Back to being in a mixed-ability group. In some ways it's quite like the teaching involved when pupils are expressing their ideas about a piece of writing and you're being encouraging and trying to guide them towards coherence and actual understanding. I find myself holding back - not interrupting, for the most part, and trying not to ask the question which will destroy the idea newly presented. There is a huge temptation, when you see the "answer", to leap in with a swift summary to demonstrate your own understanding without necessarily taking anyone else with you other than the "teacher" - but because I've been the teacher myself I know this can't be allowed because the rest of the class won't all be there with you. And there's the knowledge of how irritating it is if a pupil interrupts before a teaching point is properly made - or, worse still, interrupts another pupil so that they almost come to blows.

And all this brings me round, in a circuitous sort of way, to reflecting on the problems faced by our pupils in a class, whether mixed-ability or streamed. Unless a pupil is working solo, there must be long periods of boredom, irritation, frustration - and a sense of how much more rapid learning could be taking place if the rest of the class weren't there. I know this doesn't allow for the sparks generated in a really good-going discussion - but how much of my own enjoyment of this as a teacher was because it felt as if I was doing a good job?

I am happy to report, however, that I learned a new word today: pericope. And I felt as if this was a word I have needed to know and use for all of my life. Wonderful.