Jan 16 2010
Quality of life in classrooms
What is quality exactly? And what is quality of life in the classroom? After working as a language assistant in a school in Berchtesgaden in Bavaria in 1975/6 I came back to Britain to go to university. My summer book reading was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig which was basically an investigation into quality. On reading Simon Gieve and Ines Miller’s article “What do we mean by Quality of Classroom Life” in “Understanding the Language Classroom” (Palgrave McMillan 2006) last November I was alerted to a quote from the aforementioned book:
Quality…you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof. There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no-one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist…Obviously some things are better than others…but what’s the betterness?…So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it? (1974)
My M.A. thesis supervisor at Lancaster was Dick Allwright, the inspirational voice of “Exploratory Teaching” and he has suggested that “the quality of classroom life is itself the most important matter, both for the long-term mental health of humanity (and the mental health of the language teacher!), and for the sake of encouraging people to be lifelong learners, rather than people resentful of having to spend years of their lives as “captive” learners, and therefore put off further learning for life.”
It seems to me that as we as language teachers spend so much time in classrooms the idea that quality of life as an aim should be taken much more seriously that in it is at the moment. This goes beyond traditional classroom management techniques and conceives of the classroom as an authentic place for human interaction and where the people in the classroom are not just learners of something but human beings who come together with other human beings and engage in human interaction. In this blog, my first ever blog, I hope to come to grips with these issues.
Two years ago I read a book called ‘Free Play – Improvisation in Life and Art’ written by Stephen Nachmanovitch. In it there is a whole chapter about the thing that we call quality, and here’s a short extract from it:
’This whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about allowing ourselves to be true to ourselves and our visions, and true to the undiscovered wholeness that lies beyond the self and the vision we have today. That is what quality is all about: truth. Now we can see the meaning of Keats’ famous line ’’Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’’
If the art is created with the whole person, then the work will come out whole. Education must teach, reach, and vibrate the whole person rather than merely transfer knowledge.’
Later he also adds ’Quality arises from, and is recognized by, resonance with inner truth.’
Last year you started our advanced methodology class with the Carol Ann Duffy poem ‘Valentine’. And that was the poem I started my teaching practice with, in a classroom full of 16-year-olds. To me this poem meant so much at that time, and it still does. I like to think of it as one of the cornerstones in my methodology studies. Its message is so relevant I find, and that has to do something with the the necessity of doing and saying unexpected things (unexpected in the best possible way) in the classroom and in life. And the burning necessity of being unusual, genuine and truthful. In one word: *REAL*.
The Poet says ’Burn down the disco / Hang the blessed DJ / Because the music that they constantly play / IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE’. The blessed teacher hopefully won’t be hanged, unless he tries to teach his students the things that say nothing to them about their life. I’m afraid I won’t be able to define quality here, but I don’t think it would be stupid to say that it has something to do with being real.
Fabulous blog, Mark, very powerful, I sense a lot of passion here!! Hope to read your forthcoming contemplation on teaching, learning… and on the great scheme of things
Keep it real,
Mariann
Great blog for a most thought provoking book. It particularly rang a bell for me, as I was the designer and illustrator of the Corgi books cover that you feature above. Keep up the good work.