Ten years ago I used to take our dog
walking these country lanes. His large,
shaggy soulful frame is long gone and I am reminded, as I take the same walk,
of his beautiful friendship. This time
through the heavy silent mist of a mid-November afternoon I am walking with an
Indian friend from Canada. He has been
staying at the school for some time and we talk about his experiences and
discoveries; he is researching for a book on a different approach to education
and has gained fascinating insights from his interviews and conversations. We walk slowly up the drive to the large
house, the fields either side exude a soft stillness and the leaves fall in quiet
flurries to the ground exposing the trees to their winter skeleton. We are not hemmed in by the thick mist, there
is not that cloying claustrophobia you can get in the cities and towns, instead
there is an atmosphere of gentleness and peace.
The next day I am invited to spend the
morning observing and interacting with several classes of students, girls and
boys aged from thirteen to nineteen.
These students come from all over the world and have recently joined
this particular school community; the only one of its kind in Europe. Many are a long way from home. The first two classes explore the role of
peer counsellor through role play and reflection. It is an opportunity to develop the process
of listening and observation in respect of human behaviour; so responses to
non-verbal as well as verbal expressions are discussed. There is no authority in the classroom in the
sense of an expert and the students are free to question any aspect of what is
going on: the intelligence and sharpness of their observations is no surprise
to me, but may be of some news to those who consider teenagers only to be
capable of receiving knowledge rather than thinking for themselves.
During the human development classes I am
given the opportunity of asking the student questions about their experiences
of being listened to, which also includes reference to some participation in
their own learning. The vast majority of
these students are in their first term at the school and, therefore, their
memories are very recent. Their
background varies from home-schooling, through small ‘alternative’ schools,
‘regular’ schools, to one student who had come from a school in South America
that had three thousand students. In general they had experienced limited
communication with adults. For some it
would be purely about academics, others had relationships which led to broader
and more meaningful conversations, a significant few talk about having no
relationship beyond that common to most traditional hierarchical and
disciplinarian schools. Many say that they
had articulated their thoughts, but had not often been listened to in a way
that engendered some kind of response that acknowledged what they had been
saying. Some mention anger and
frustration as being a regular facet of their lives with adults.
However, although an examination of their
present situation is not an intention of my questioning, several talk of this: the usage of adult’s first names making a
significant difference; active involvement if the running of the school; the
culture of the school that does not depend on a hierarchy and an
acknowledgement that everyone is learning together. These young people are relaxed, open and articulate
- it is a delight to be with them.
Meanwhile, the UK Government is working
hard to ensure the vast majority of children do not have access to a culture of
learning in which they might participate fully.
No opportunity is given for them to even question what is going on. Power is being used to promote a thoughtless,
inhumane and ultimately useless approach to education dreamed up from a
male-orientated, militaristic, narrowly academic ideology. Education has become a battleground dominated
by fear, distrust and frustration – hardly a creative environment in which both
teacher and students can thrive. We have
become so obsessed with what goes on in our heads and what our hands can
produce we have forgotten our hearts: for when the heart does not beat the
brain can no longer function and the hand is still.
In this quotation it is important to
understand ‘he’ is also ‘she’.
‘The
true teacher is not he who has built up an impressive educational organization,
nor he who is an instrument of the politicians, nor he who is bound to an
ideal, a belief or a country. The true
teacher is inwardly rich and therefore asks nothing for himself; he is not
ambitious and seeks no power in any form; he does not use teaching as a means
of acquiring position or authority, and therefore he is free from the
compulsion of authority and control of governments. Such teachers have primary place in an
enlightened civilization, for true culture is founded, not on the engineers and
technicians, but on the educators.’ J Krishnamurti Education and
the Significance of Life (1953)
This is why I went into teaching, why I had
to leave teaching and why I will return.
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