Wednesday 30 April 2014

Wednesday 23 April 2014

A Truly Free School!

A really interesting and relevant article this!
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6424542

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

The Unlesson Manifesto intends to challenge the banking concept of education where ‘[t]he students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence – but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher’

The Banking Concept

the teacher teaches and the students are taught
the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing
the teacher thinks and the students are thought about
the teacher talks and the students listen – meekly
the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined
the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply
the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher
the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it
the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students
the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects

(Freire 1970 p53/54)

The biggest complication we currently face is an education framework that thinks it has resolved the problem of the banking concept, thus creating a distorted version of the very same model. We think we are offering something different through the many numerous strategies applied on top of national curriculums but actually, as it currently turns out, ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ or ‘Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’.

Delayed Notes on 1st April 2014

“Shouldn’t a school fail to function without urgent and divergent thinking? Shouldn’t a classroom fall flat on its face when it’s not there? The way education is currently designed, the answer is no. We reteach, intervene, and remediate.”

www.teachthought.com article by Terry Heike

I meant to write this sooner but as is the way with life in education we are swept along by the next task without the real chance to stop and reflect. Carrying out the Lesson(in)Action on Tuesday 1^st April was not, in itself, outside of the realms of my normal teaching. This is not to say I do not plan or spend a lot of time considering what I intend to teach or perhaps more importantly what I hope my students can learn.

What it does mean is that I am always keen to let the flow of a lesson take over and not be rigid in my control/role as 'the teacher'. My lessons are always described as good or outstanding when being observed, so letting my lessons flow is certainly not to be mistaken for out of control but could be considered as organic. I want my students to enjoy their experiences in my classroom, remember the social engagement and energy of the lessons. I am not naive enough to think my one or two hours a week are so important that they will come running and then leave with wisdom that sees every other subject pale into insignificance but I do intend to allow each student space to be themselves and feel comfortable when working with me on any given project. But I digress from the analysis of my Lesson(in)Action. As I mentioned the action in itself was not too daunting an approach but I deliberately selected a topic that was more off the beaten track - mobile phone photography. This is something I have been exploring personally for a couple of years and I see massive value in it, both for my own photographic practice and as a possibility as a learning tool, but to carry it out with a group as the only activity, within a school where mobiles are banned, was new.

Firstly I asked them (them being a year 10 photography class) all to take their phones out of their bags, pockets etc. this was met with mass suspicion. After considerable assurances that I would not be confiscating them we had an array of smart phones on the table - every student had one. The whole class had a working smart phone or iPod. This in itself was quite interesting as I had not prepared a back up activity for anyone that may not have had the ‘correct’ equipment and I had offered no prior warning regarding the lesson. I teach in a standard secondary comprehensive with a mixed catchment but perhaps this just shows how far the digital/mobile culture has come.

A conversation ensued about how we use our phones. Texting and online social media were the two main agreements between us all. The dialogue developed onto talking about the camera and social apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat and whether they would ever consider photographs taken on their phone to become part of their Photography GCSE coursework. The answer was a resounding no! I shared with the class that I had an Instagram account (remaining nameless…) and saw massive value in using the phone to record any given moment, particularly with a quick edit on one or two of my 17 photo apps. We discussed which apps I, and then they, use and found a slight overlap including Snapseed, Retrica and Camera Awesome. All of a sudden we had more in common as equal users of technology than we have ever had in our more conventional roles as teacher and students:

“You look for a process through which you can learn… we had to learn from each other. We all learned together”

(M. Horton 1990 p41)

I already deliver an experimental photography course that takes in a wide variety of analogue approaches as well as more conventional digital skills but here was an opening that had never presented itself in such an intrinsic way before. There was no prior learning to the activity from any scheme of work but the vast amount of knowledge that they could bring to the discussion, particularly through showing and sharing examples and processes was remarkable. It begs the question – can we ever actually remove prior learning form a lesson? I would answer this by stating… Yes; If we the teacher remove the opportunity for it to be shared by the learner, which sadly is all too often the case as we try to cram in all of the information we want them to ‘learn’ in a time frame that does not allow deviation from an exam syllabus thus enforcing ‘prior learning’ as rote.

By now the discussion had run on far longer than I would normally allow but the lack of pressure due to no particular objective or to ensure an outcome was at least under way was refreshing and the students were more or less dictating the pace of the lesson. This is one time I missed using my interactive whiteboard – a tool forced upon my department despite our protests and requests for the money instead to develop something more particular to us. This was the first time where I felt it would be of particular use to share a variety of visual evidence to support my input into the discussion (the one difficulty in opting for learning using virtual and digital processes when choosing to follow a manifesto!)

The task I had prepared was simple. Using a list of free apps I had written out and the school wifi (including the sharing of the password despite the email 24 hours earlier telling staff that the school “have taken the decision to block mobile phones until I can expand our network range”), students would download apps and go and take photographs in and around the school, return to the class and edit them using the software. The one given rule was that they had to note down each stage of the process and share the before and after images with their colleagues so they then had access to the same set of skills if they chose to use them. The focus of the students was great for the duration of the lesson and even in moments of drift the dialogue across the room was in keeping with the activity. At the lesson end students claimed they found the content of the session ‘more appropriate to them than normal’.

Personally I came away with a significant framework for activities that, with some refinement, would lead to more developed and challenging lessons. I will be able to learn more about a subject I am personally keen in exploring whilst the students can hopefully continue to engage with some classroom practice within their usual routines, and increase value in how they photograph when using the mobile phone.

I found the exercise useful. It reminded me of why I came into teaching. To share and to engage with young people.

Wednesday 9 April 2014

Worthy of Comparison!

Toads!

https:///watch?v=T9xso6A_51w

Narratives Found off the Prescribed Page (Reading Between the Lines)

‘Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter [educator]* do good things’

Edgar Degas

‘Painting [education]* is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants’

Pablo Picasso

‘Painting [education]* has a life of its own’

Jackson Pollock

* My brackets

When working off the classroom map unseen plans materialise and we are more inclined to respond to them. Education is bigger than us and we must learn to allow it the space to create new narratives that we can follow. We must not try to control it or put it in a manageable box. If we do it becomes static and dry.

My colleague and I have just returned from a residential trip to Edinburgh with 21 students aged between 15 and 19. The thing about taking students on residential visits is that there is not a lesson-planning directive in sight. We rely on real life experience and adapt to circumstance. One of the planned activities on the itinerary was to work with watercolours on the beach at Portobello. This is an activity that we have carried out on numerous trips in the past from Northumbria to Barcelona, always with success and a variety of different outcomes. I suppose you could call it a ‘safe’ activity.

On a visit to the Fruitmarket Gallery to view the Tania Kovats exhibition ‘Oceans’ we saw her work with ink, salt and seawater; they were stunning. It gave us the idea to reproduce them at the beach. We had no ink with us so our first task was to purchase some, which we did. Our second task was to try and figure out how Kovats actually produced the drawings, as we did not know how (we did not discover the exact process but it didn’t stop us). Our third task was to switch the itinerary around to accommodate the activity and coincide it with a second sea related activity – photograms of the tide by torchlight.

This change in the plan, a detour from the agenda that we had constructed allowed us to directly engage the students with something they had just come across in the gallery. It suddenly became more alive to them as they realised they were going to have the chance to respond directly to the work they were looking at. So off we went, that evening, to the beach armed with ink, watercolour paper and salt flakes and we produced some beautiful work. Not only this but as we were experimenting and learning together the realisation grew that the activity we were carrying out related perfectly to the photograms that were to come later once the night fell was confirmation that the risk was worth taking.

Responding to what we see is a fundamental aspect of learning. The view or the gaze, particularly during an intense time period as experienced on a residential, is key to ensuring that the learning that takes place becomes deeper. Reacting to an event is something the artist is used to doing, they are always seeking new ways to construct the tangible.

I wrote earlier that education was bigger than us. This is a perfect example. Activities planned are adapted due to experiencing something new, this new activity then happens to bare close relation to the activity that followed and the relationship ensures that the whole learning experience is enhanced. It is down to the teacher to take the risk; Education as fluid, adaptable and alive.

The following day we visited the Louise Bourgeois at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. One of the highlights of the exhibition was a series of prints and fabric work that were produced in response to the river Bievre, ‘Ode A La Bievre’. The use of the horizon line bore an incredible resemblance to the line produced by Kovats. And upstairs in the same gallery? The Boyle Family’s ‘Sand, Wind and Tide’ series!

We are merely pawns who serve to deliver education that offers a sense of fluidity and life. This is The Unlesson Manifesto.

The images below visually tell the story of this blog.

Photograph of the North Sea taken by me from train to Edinburgh

The only picture I took of the black ink work by Tania Kovats. It fails to show the lines of ink and salt

Tania Kovats study with ink and salt

Tania Kovats

The response to the work

Sea Printing

Sea Print results

The Boyle Family from 'Sand, Wind and Tide'

Louise Bourgeois 'Ode A La Bievre'

A grave seen in Greyfriars Kirkyard the following day. A student pointed out the visual connection to the work

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Take One A Day!!

Times ED.
According to technology experts and academics, computer tablets can revolutionise education and help engage disaffected students.

Research published last year found that devices such as iPads could help students become more creative and independent learners.

But teachers have warned that the mobile devices can do more harm than good. Next week’s annual conference of the ATL union will hear that tablet “addiction” can actual lead to “poor performance” in the classroom and lead to learners “losing educational opportunities” as a result.

A motion put forward by Northern Irish teacher Mark Montgomery argues that symptoms of tablet addiction include “withdrawal”, “loss of interest in or ‘crowding out’ other activities”, “lack of control”, “irritability” and even “deception and furtiveness”.

He will call on the union to draw evidence on problems posed by tablets to create a factsheet for education staff.

ATL general secretary Mary Bousted, called on parents to monitor their youngsters' use of the gadgets, amid fears that children are staying up late into the night playing on them.

While acknowledging that tablets can be "extremely empowering" Dr Bousted said: “There's no doubt that they are being used more in schools but there are concerns that increased time spent on the screen, on your tablet, leads to far more sedentary and far more isolated children and young people.

“I don't think anybody in the debate is going to say 'let's go back to the 20th century', it's about how they are managed and how they are used and particularly about how they are used in schools.

“And perhaps there will be a debate also about the ways in which parents should monitor the use of tablets and computers at home.”

Dr Bousted also warned that the size of the devices meant many students were able to use them without their parents’ knowledge.

“It's just like having a television in the bedroom, only its easier with a tablet, it's smaller. I have talked with parents about how difficult it is to manage. Because they are smaller you say 'turn your tablet off now and go to bed' and two hours later you go up and they're under the duvet still playing the computer game… My view is that if the child can't be trusted to turn it off when asked then take it off them.”

Last year, students in Los Angeles were issued with iPads in a $500 million deal with Apple. But school officials ended up red-faced when hundreds of learners hacked the tablets, enabling them to access restricted websites and download games.

Liberation!

Knowledge !

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." ~ Paulo Freire

Money!

Freire

Freire's Last Interview

Human!

Paulo Freire, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Whoever!

Friday 4 April 2014

Bertrand Russell (1926)

The Theory Of Knowledge

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/russell1.htm

From Data Soliliquies by Richard Hamblyn & Martin John Callanan

“Information which is not held because it never existed is covered by exception 12(4) (a) and must be dealt with correctly under Regulation 14”

Defra, Environmental Information Regulations, 2004.

Cognition!

“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.”

― Paulo Freire

Just Doing and Being!

Dear Warren,

I didn’t do any lessons on this day.

I took kids on a school trip. We didn’t do any sheets there was no lesson objective. They learned by doing and being.

For 3 out of 5 of them it was the first time in their lives they had ever been on a boat.

Definitely more worthwhile than staying in the classroom.

I couldn’t find anywhere to post stuff about the day on your blog.

Liz

Data Solilquies

http://greyisgood.eu/data/data_soliloquies-preview.pdf

Thursday 3 April 2014

Support School

Art as Conceit by David Rushton seen in the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh.

The Human Abstract by William Blake.

THE HUMAN ABSTRACT

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head,
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the Mystery.

p. 60And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat,
And the raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree,
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the human Brain

Academia Is Not The Only Fruit!

“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).”

― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Whilst sitting in an exam (art teachers have to sit in exams in case a child needs technical assistance) I received an email from one our deputy head teachers (he is both a colleague and a friend).We share many opposing views; he is trained in philosophy as well as being steeped in the various narratives constructed and taught delivered as history (with a capital HE). He loves an argument and will interrogate even the most unconscious and banal pronouncements made in the pub in the manner of an Ancient Grecian. He can be difficult to love but his intention is to provoke thought and I do love to tease him.

The e- mail that he sent was concerning the organisation of small focused reading groups from the pool of children regarded as the ' More Able'. The premise of which is to stimulate our pupils abilities to reason, speak out, debate and argue. The groupings came about from lists generated by subject teachers of those individuals the teacher thought may be classed as 'Gifted and Talented' and the suggestion of an Oxford don who had visited the school to talk to pupils about what Oxford University looks for in the profile of an applicant. I never met him wasn’t even introduced- I am only the art teacher after all.

I sent him the above quote from Freire (a book from which I admit I pick cherries and throw them on Twitter- and at reactionaries) to which some minutes later he replied electronically:

‘This will actually not work. Unfortunately there are no examples of the oppressed generating high culture - it always comes from the elite. I notice you quote Freire using the conventional academic procedures of the elite oppressors rather than just smashing my face in. Redemption, there's a thing!’

No examples of the oppressed generating high culture - it always comes from the elite? So what is Street art, Outsider Art, Cave Painting? I believe Da Vinci was completely self -taught -he’d preferred hawking to art initially.* My reply was this:

‘Dearie Me,

Can I quote you in my Blog?

A bald admission of the fact that the elite holding the gates closed or open as they see fit or until the oppressed or normalised to serve the Patrician classes or enhance the power, prestige and status of the said elite. ‘High Art/ Culture are adopted/adapted at will by this class who control the canon of ‘taste’. They patronise those who create - fashioning and prolonging certain modes, methods of thinking and their products as commodities of ‘truth’. An unabashed complicity that protects the status quo sustained by the products of a workforce that administers and serves own oppression. The patricians use the aspirant and their efforts as a magician might use smoke and mirrors to demonstrate an illusion of social mobility. Allow five in shut ninety five out; as even that gene pool needs fresh thought and meat but nothing that smells too radical or thought provoking.’

I was in such a mood! –admit that I have reviewed and edited my statement as I posted it back without review and have omitted the typos and grammar that came up in a subsequent spell and grammar check of this post. Embarrassing!

Is he right? What is ‘High Culture’ and who decides it is so? Who are the arbiters? Am I a Socratic fool?

I’ll quote from writing about Socrates sent to me and prepared by the same friend for discussion in these focus groups (I think it’s probably his own I’ll have to ask him):

‘The problem with Socrates is that he made anyone wishing to argue with him look foolish. He wallowed in his paradoxical greatness (he was wise because he understood his ignorance) and kept antagonizing people even when he knew his methods were ineffective.

Too many people are like Socrates. And I don’t mean in a good way. Their way of winning arguments is counter-productive. They put people on the defensive and invite them to strike back. They assume bad faith on the part of others. Quite often, they end up shunned by others and not achieving what they wanted.’

Does this sum me up? But, then it’s not all about me is it and I know he means well and has the best interest of others at heart. Again to recycle Freire:

‘At times we may need to fight side by side with the unions; at other times we may need to fight against them, if their leadership is sectarian, whether right of left. At other times we also need to fight as a progressive administration against the devilish anger of the obsolete; the traditionalists, some of whom judge themselves progressive ;and of the neoliberals who see themselves, who see themselves as the culmination of history.'

Onward!

*Thanks Caleb!

Artist Teacher!

“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”―

Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

Leaders!

“Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed