Spreading light as we fight

This Whakataukī really spoke to me today. My dear friend Kit Haines sent me the wonderful Slow wonder a fantastic piece that beautifully describes itself as:

“a searching dialogue for us to playfully imagine alternatives to current orthodoxies that privilege technocratic approaches to education and have strangled discussion about what it might mean to make education good and right, or even beautiful” (Gómez and O'Connor #)

It made me want to start a fight, set a fire, burn down the forest I am surrounded by. All the things a good book should do. It reminded me of the reason I am in this game. Let us cast our eyes across that eduscape. A weary place where our fantastic children are burdened with the fact that numeracy and literacy have slipped and this is coupled with the unfortunate attendance rates and the persistent spectre of post normal times. It seems to me that we are in a head-long rush towards seeing curriculum leaders spending more time on administering high stakes testing to younger students, than dreaming about fantastic learning opportunities. I hear the musing of the fact that more high stakes exams require more rote learning and more drilling, ākonga need further experience of testing so that they can succeed at testing. On the contrary, I hear that many of our ākonga lack the cultural capital to engage with some of the state testing that has been implemented. Looking at papers asking to write about installing art in a public space or the numerous math questions around heat pumps and siege equipment.

So in my opinion the role of the high school is furthermore to bring all these experiences to our rangatahi. Let them install stunning pieces of art across the country, have them comment and explain new social phenomena through their eyes, create siege weaponry to storm the achievement castle and burn it to the ground.

There has been attacks on modern learning environments which for some reason as someone who is seen as a progressive in the Education sphere I have to front up against the media articles claiming there was no evidence that in an increasingly complex world new pedagogy is required to meet the needs of our society and indeed allowing agency in the classroom may reap rewards. And imagine laying these pedagogies across more modern architecture may help us imagine a new future. While I try to use circles in class along with play and breakout spaces others would prefer there to be straight silent salient lines.

If indeed relationships are at the heart of learning and through the seven principles of learning we understand the social nature of learning (OECD The Nature of Learning, 2016) and given the incredible ākonga in front of us who have thrived and survived through these uncertain times is it not our duty to reimagine what learning environments might look like?

This blog originally set out to be more of a victory lap, one where I could spin my wheels and marvel at the amazing engagement of the Otago community with the esports initiative I have been driving. Then I became a little bitter about the lack of interest from the teaching community and the fact that I carry a lot of this mahi on my shoulder with a handful of stoic friends who give me the strength to keep beating a path ahead despite the naysayers. So instead I split the blog in a yin and yang form to ensure none of these feelings take away from the fantastic mahi that went into our latest event.

So what is this blog then a vent of frustration a yearning for vindication. No possibly more of a milestone, a weary step along a pathway where in trying to spread light you get tired of being embroiled in a fight.

“Schools banish idleness and the softness of repose because in these moments we might consider what is unjust and what we might do about it. When schools starve our inner lives, where we are most fully ourselves, we can’t figure out who we are, what we believe in and don’t believe in, and what we might imagine we can become. Those who condemn us to lives of getting and spending in pursuit of happiness know that idleness is dangerous – all manner of revolutions can grow in that fallow soil.” (Gómez and O'Connor #)

Work Cited

Gómez, Claudia Rozas, and Peter O'Connor. Slow Wonder: Letters on Imagination and Education. Cambridge University Press, 2022.