spoonfeeding unripe cherries

There is more to be said about rants. I avoid spontaneous verbal outbursts so most of mine are in writing. People who open their mouths and let their bellies rumble may sometimes be educative or entertaining but, on the whole, I prefer to steer clear of them. They can be asked to “Please engage your brain before opening your mouth.”

I used to be a hard line educationist. I felt that no teacher should go to class without a lesson plan which clearly indicated (a) the aims and objectives stated in behavioural terms, (b) the content and method designed with scope, sequence and pace in mind and (c) the monitoring and evaluation processes that were to be used.

That was a high ideal but it guided my many years as a teacher and as an education advisor.

For example, we made explicit use of the lesson planning model in developing materials for Social Studies in Belize. The thinking was that most teachers fall short in the amount and quality of their lesson plans. Our task, therefore, was to cherry pick the best teachers in the different subjects and have them convert the curriculum into national lesson plans which could be spoon fed to the unripe cherries.
 

Belizean Classroom

The project was about improving the quality of education by teacher proofing what happened in schools and classrooms. Many of those at the chalk front saw the need for such a system. This was pessimistic but was it also realistic? The topic generates endless hours of discussion and debate with heartfelt but controversial arguments, polemics and rants.

I was brainwashed into being an enthusiastic and conscientious lesson planner and control freak. I was thus delighted when I began working on social development. The new big thing at the time was Project Logical Frameworks. These were lesson plans for development workers – complete with Objectively Verifiable Indicators (OVI) and Means of Verification (MOV).  They also embraced the concept of Management by Objectives.  This obviously begged the question of, “What went before?” Did development workers not make plans? How many unripe cherries were in the aid and development business?

Who am I to sit in judgement? What evidence do I have for the preponderance of unripe cherries in the teaching and aid games? Not a lot! Mainly personal experiences from seven countries, and anecdotes from experienced practitioners whose opinions I respect – and these include a fair sprinkling of nuns and priests. A groupthink of like minds? Perhaps!

For reasons that I will not go into here, I think of education as my calling. The Latin word educare means to lead out and this presumably means from the darkness of parochial ignorance into the light of cosmopolitan wisdom. There are two sides to this – teaching and the facilitation of learning.

Teaching involves (a) studying a particular area of knowledge (eg science and biology) and then (b) making lesson plans to put it across in a way that informs and entertains the learners. In practice this can reduce to spoon feeding students to pass exams.

In the facilitation of learning the focus is on process rather than content. There is discussion and debate between individuals with differing viewpoints. Formal debate is a win/lose game whereas discussion allows for win/win. The facilitator ensures that questions are asked and answered and that this stimulates critical thinking and illuminates ideas. The method goes back to ancient Greece where Socrates used it on the youth and died for his efforts. “That man thinks too much; such men are dangerous.” These days there is a movement towards holistic, multidisciplinary and consilient methods – Google for Multi-stakeholder Processes!

My days of formally stimulating and spoon feeding unripe cherries are over. But informally, in retirement, I am still at it. But there are three differences; in subject matter, in writing style and in publication.

Subject Matter: The subject matter varied through the years and moved from curriculum development through social development and on to the present focus on personal development.

Curriculum development included science and biology lesson notes, teacher training materials, national examinations, school inspection procedures, and think pieces on educational leadership, management and administration.

Social development included think pieces about the functions and training of change agents in Scotland and overseas. A higher profile aspect of facilitating social development included the preparation of plain language versions of policy documents – notably those focussed on Poverty Reduction. Some of the work done in Tanzania gained worldwide recognition.

Personal Development includes keeping up with the literature and current thinking related to the merging of scientific, philosophical and religious viewpoints from both East and West. This is balanced with quiet sitting in mindfulness which leads to even tempered peace and to numinous appreciation of everyday things.

Writing Style: I was impressed with Ken Wilber’s concept map - AQAL (all quadrants, all levels).  He convinced me of the need to change my writing style from the early objective scientific mode to the later subjective creative mode. I am still working on the details. The new way involves, amongst other things, using the ‘I’ word and presenting thoughts that are not supported by reputable evidence.

I think of the subjective writing as ‘rant’ – it is self indulgent. And what ‘I’ think has no statistical relevance. I used to have lots of footnotes pointing to references but I have given that up. These days I am happy to leave the unconscious to generate stuff. It has been got at by the same nature, nurture and serendipity as the conscious bit, but it is capable of parallel processing and thus of generating a much richer set of viewpoints. The mind has a mind of its own and it is well motivated for the spiritual journey.

Publication: over the years I have prepared hundreds of documents with relatively short print runs. Most of them were photocopied rather than published. Curricular materials in Belize were distributed nationally. The one-pagers produced in Lesotho were popular but had very limited prints runs. Some of them were adapted for use in the training of change agents in Scotland and Tanzania and they are now available online. Most of the plain language documents produced in Tanzania were published and had considerable print runs. Most of them are still available online.

I have been methodical in the online publishing of personal development materials written in the Lesotho days and since. There are several web sites and blogs and they attract a fair bit of traffic. I am relaxed about online publishing. There is always the possibility of an article going viral but I am not holding my breath. Go with the flow.

And here ends today’s mildly polemical rant. It will soon be online and available to such unripe cherries as may find it interesting.