Sunday 29 December 2013

When The Grade isn't worth it


The dubious present state of the labour market makes it apparent to those from low income backgrounds early on that their options even within an affluent society like Britain are extremely limited.

In such circumstances it seems to be the case that the right response is to compete harder for jobs. Within collective enterprises like classrooms or even macro environments like nations the idea that some are not "pulling their weight" is therefore a potentially frustrating turn of events.

I once set a class the task of giving group presentations. One group delivered theirs and, as sometimes happens, one student had evidently done the majority of the work. At the end we reflected on the presentation as a class and tried to work out what we thought had happened and why. The student who had done least I will call Tobi. Tobi had said nothing whatsoever during the presentation. During the reflective questions at the end he also said nothing. Others were more vocal, they spoke of the frustration of being in a group where one member is not pulling his or her weight., and the language was very reminiscent of anxiety around "benefit cheats".

"They just take everyone else's hard work"
"Lazy"
"If they can't be bothered..."

I didn't share my view but I was sympathetic. Perhaps because I was silent one girl, Senay, spoke up dissentingly. To my regret I can only paraphrase from memory her extraordinarily original point.

"Sometimes you are in a group and someone wants a level six (equivalent of an A grade in this class) and they want it sort of TOO much and they are rude to you and you just think 'get it in your own then I won't help' if it means that much to them"

This sophisticated introduction of a categorical imperative, a refusal to be treated as a means to an end, completely altered the room. Even those who had previously towed the line now revised their views in some cases, agreeing that being decent to one another actually came before success. Senay had successfully reasoned an alternative interpretation of Tobi's nonparticipation, one that convinced her whole class including me.

At this point and without introducing any big theories I would like to quote Paul Willis on counter-school culture amongst students. Willis was studying working class male students in the Midlands in the 1970s, but his sympathies are recognisable in Senay's point:

"It is through a good number (of the working classes) trying (to succeed in high stakes certificate testing) that the class structure is legitimised. The middle class enjoys its privilege not by virtue of inheritance or birth, but by virtue of an apparently proven greater competence and merit. The refusal to compete...is therefore in this sense a radical act: it refuses to collude with its own educational suppression."
- Willis "Learning to Labour" 1978 p.128

I do not mean to suggest that counter school culture or idleness is any kind of useable programme. Tobi does not have the answer. I do deliberately imply, however, that in the words of one contemporary writer "The only way to win is not to play".

Saturday 28 December 2013

Anna Karenina - an early critique of celebrity?

Anna and Vronsky's affair does not run contrary to social mores but rather, for Tolstoy, is produced by them.  The 'spirit of lies' (pt 2 CH 27) is Society itself. His profound distrust of Society  makes AK a prototypical critique of the media and of celebrity. It can be conceived of as part of McLuhan's project as much as a general ethical or theological work.

Furthermore it is important to collect examples of where Vronsky and Anna are read as being straightforwardly in love, straightforwardly "star crossed lovers".

They are false because the Society that produces them is false, not because they must necessarily deceive Karenin, Anna's husband. The real target of Tolstoy's critique is Society which, like Heidegger's "Das Man" merely hands on received opinions and petty falsehoods.

It is not therefore a simple and straightforward injustice which distinguishes Oblonsky's affair from his sister, Anna's: he is morally less in love with the truth than she is (hence her "straight backed" appearance in Society prior to her fall). The corrosion of her behaviour is a byproduct of her immersion in a society built on lies. Her personal anguish is the unique subject of the novel and not her love for Vronsky. Paradoxically, then, it is Levin who is her nearest analogue in the novel rather than her opposite. His withdrawal to the country, a self imposed exile of which we are constantly reminded, has presumably saved him from the same fate as Anna: succumbing to Society; madness at his inability to reconcile with it and, eventually, death.

Tuesday 17 December 2013

Be Like Huck

It'll happen when it happens.


One of my students, a fantastic writer, could not put a word down on paper.

He obviously had a head full of ideas that was driving him, if not insane, then at least to the point of a mild hysteria. And yet every time he would sit down to write he would freeze up. He couldn't get them out of his hand and down on the page.

It took a long time for me to work out that the key was just to give him the option of writing and walk away. He's fifteen years old, he will do it if he wants to. Although he is writing his coursework and I know that time is running out, I also know that yelling at him about deadlines won't help. Instead, I have found that I just need to suggest that some work might happen in the time available, and prepare the resources and a bit of encouragement.

"You can write, you just don't think you can write."

That sort of thing.

Today he wrote four pages in an hour and a half and said, "You know, the reason I can do this is because there's no pressure."

I agreed that there was, in fact, no pressure.

And then he carried on writing, before checking it carefully and handing it in.

There is, in fact, no pressure. What is the worst that can happen? Somebody in authority might not be happy with you? Boo Hoo. As Huck Finn said, "Sometimes I'd play hooky, and when I came back to school somebody would have a good holler at me, and I'd always feel much better."  Twain's Huck is capable, fearless and, most importantly of all, feels all the pressures of the adult world to be mildly amusing distractions from real life. Which is what they are.

We should aspire, teachers and students, to be like Huck. There is no pressure. If you want to write it, write it. If the class wants to be quiet, let them be. If they won't let you start the lesson, what will do more harm: screaming at them? Terrifying them? Piling on the pressure in all its "you will never amount to anything" intellectual shabbiness? Or waiting an extra five minutes? Sometimes in teaching, wrote Rousseau, you have to be ready to waste time to save time.

There's no pressure. Sometimes, we forget that.