Working and doing nothing

Loneliness and idleness, longing for conversation and creation, same old same old. The concrete things that help, not just materials but actions, the particular alignment of some neurons and limbs in the world. First, writing. Making a habit of it, doing it as honestly as possible. All those movies where kids have their notebooks to write in and begin to love it, the teachers are so beautiful and wise. Or coming to it by way of reading, going along with it. To have time in the day for just reading, and knowing how to appreciate it, reading something interesting, leading to other interesting things. Then stepping beyond the books, to do the kind of thinking that gives rise to books—to work out on the chalkboard a proof, a paragraph, a problem—what things have in common, how they differ, what a word means, how it is meant here. Learning words, but also habits of thinking, reflecting, overcoming ignorance while admitting uncertainty. Students taking turns at the front and the chalkboard, or the computer screen, anyhow that visual and media focus of attention—the clicking of the chalk, a music track playing softly in the background for mental math, of their choosing, eventually—but not giddily, feeling the claim they are making and how they are beholden to the others in turn. Letting the center of attention be the work being shown, the thoughts everyone should be concerned with. Then the majority of the time neither individual or lecture-based, but in pairs and small groups, taking things apart and putting them together again, making songs and stories and rehearsing them, reviewing topics covered already and relating them. Learning mostly to talk and listen in a way that tends to get things done. Because one or the other, the individual or the companionable, will appeal to each kid, at least, and the other one be more of a chore. But both are necessary, and they reinforce one another. Just like the time in the classroom and the time outside playing and running around are not in opposition but cohere into a whole, meaningful and enjoyable both. Then both have to be respected as important, not calling one fun and one boring, or one worthwhile and the other a waste of time, or using one or its absence as punishment. If it’s in our nature to set up one thing as valuable to the diminishing of some contrary, then hold up the school as a whole against the contrary lack of school, with regard to kids who haven’t got that opportunity, times and places where it didn’t exist, or still doesn’t. And not to demean those kids, but to feel for them, and feel the responsibility that comes with the opportunity.

As far as assessment, it makes more sense in every way for it to be qualitative for it to mean something, but especially in a school like this. This can be one of the ways adults, elders and older students can be involved in a class—engaging students one on one or in groups in conversation about some topic, to see not only how much they know, but how fluently they are able to speak and connect ideas. The chief written work would be the journals, for the teachers only, unless students were willing to share certain pieces with the class or with parents, but really for themselves. However, the tandem storytelling and writing you can do with kids and older students is also valuable to see development in that area. Then the proofs and problems at the chalkboard, the projects when completed and interactions observed throughout the whole process, give a teacher plenty to base a judgment upon when it’s time to assess, confer with parents, and make decisions about what the kids is ready to learn next. And likewise with the sports and games, for health and physical development, and how they tie into the mental and social side. Watching for interests and dislikes, temperament, predilections. At a certain age, certain kids will take to poetry like ducks to water, and especially the spoken word variety, even by way of slam competitions; or debates and forensics; or chess; or athletics—these competitive outlets ave to be available across the board. Even prizes for good art and writing. So that athletic and bookish types equally get exposed to the vanity of it, and outgrow it as soon as may be, or else if they pursue it on up into the crack university programs and the boardrooms, they know what they are getting into. Obviously here, too, elders play a crucial role—as coaches, mentors, tutors, advisors, to talk about career ideas or part-time jobs, to give some perspective on a life in balance between work and family and self. To give countervailing the money interest a fighting chance and slowly questioning prevailing priorities, in line with a philosophic education. They should be there on field trips, and invite classes into their places of business if there’s something interesting to see there—a deli, an auto shop, a boardroom. Or to their neighborhood, to tell its stories firsthand—ideas of social justice, gender equality, and racial and sexual freedom really take hold when shown, not just told. Days when the teacher isn’t there, one of these elders or a few of them should step in to run the class from a place of authority based on a prior relationship, and to make it easy on them show movies and bump up the time outside, playing and talking with friends, rather than cracking down on it more than ever. No busy work, ever, it goes without saying. And something I hadn’t thought of in awhile, the potential for storytelling on the part of the teacher, in the fashion of a Frank McCourt or Philip Pullman, tales from childhood or myths and epics, but either way something real and compelling, never pedantic, to capture attention, never extort it.

Speaking as one who has authority. Even Socrates has to quell the rabble-rabble-rabble when he’s trying to make his public defense. It has to be the tone you take with a class full of kids accustomed to latching onto every distraction, and who have come to crave the appearance of authority, externally, the more they lack self-restraint internally. It’s unnatural to have to aggrandize oneself before them, when in potential they are so much greater than anything a day older—and yet by experience one has the advantage, the timely word, the machinery that compels attention, however wan and sporadic. Only let it be used for their benefit, to develop little by little their own self-direction and confidence, self-possession, not to always harangue them and aggrandize oneself. As far as possible, let them run things, in whatever little ways, and by serving be truly great. It isn’t true that they only understand strict instructions backed up by consequences--that is just what they’ve been accustomed to. Listen to them. They want to know things, they want to do things, but not at the whim of a demanding teacher who hasn’t earned their respect, but taken it as foreordained. They like to read, just not the books they’re forced to, at the pace rhythm imposed by the class structure. Let the class be its individuals, even when there is something to be said to the whole or some discussion they can all be involved in, look each other in the eye, slow down enough that each recognizes what the other is saying, but even more what that says about them—who they are. And the crucial lesson there—that we can never wholly know, except on the grounds of the heart or whatever you want to call it, the shared humanity. So what school amounts to, again, is telling young people how to spend their time, and judging them on how well they listen to you, or how effectively they hoodwink and charm you. It’s the odd nerd who enjoys whatever the former happens to be, and the perhaps rarer genuinely good kid who pulls off the latter with grace—and either way, no one in this situation is free enough to enjoy themselves as they’d wish. Even the teacher is artificially free at best, and compensated for her time. It’s the human interactions and relationships still possible within the thing that redeem the people trapped there, not the end result—graduation  or a paycheck, either way it’s just marking the time. She has one good poster in here, but instead of on the door it should be next to one of the two clocks—‘The time is always right to do what is right,’ –Martin Luther King, Jr. That is the measure of freedom there is in an unjust society or institution—to say and do in accordance with what we know to be better. When the circumstances don’t allow this to be expressed fully, we can go ahead letting the time pass, but in every human interaction transcending it. Asking names, what they mean, how that connects to Shakespeare, to ‘what’s in a name?’ or if they’re talking about videogames, asking what they would do without them for entertainment, then saying in a hundred years videogames will be what’s studied in school—keeping a move ahead, and thereby moving them ahead. Or the new kid from DC, who was in a military school before but doesn’t want to be in the army. Hell no. He’ll play football. And if he gets injured, he’ll be an engineer in the boiler room.