“Please Sir! / ‘Eyy Robert!”

An interesting situation arose early after school began. The headmaster called a staff meeting. He had been a sergeant major in the army, a fact that became very clear by the way in which he ran his school. Every day of the year, despite the extremely hot summer, he wore a suit, collar and tie, and marched briskly around the school in highly polished leather-soled shoes. Both children and teachers could fortunately hear his approach from some distance away. The teachers found something to do that clearly demonstrated their diligence, and the children sat noticeably straighter and suddenly became model hard working pupils at the distinctive sound of his approach. At this afore-mentioned meeting, he informed the teachers that he made all the decisions affecting the school, and these decisions would be obeyed promptly and to the letter. His methods, he informed us, were proven over many years, and he ran the tightest and best school around. Discipline in his school was unquestioned and punishments severe. Teachers would teach English by the time-honoured method of formal grammar, analysis, and parsing, and maths would be taught by rote learning of tables number facts and the processes. Furthermore, he would personally test throughout the school every two months, correct it all, and expected results to satisfy him and indicate that his instructions had been followed to the letter. “My personal specialty is poetry, which I, myself, will teach in every room from grades 3-6, demanding high standards of elocution throughout,” was his final decree. I could not believe the demands I was hearing, nor the meek acceptance of them by all the staff. The teachers were rather stunned and speechless, but accepting, as the head teacher fully expected. He was outraged when I calmly reacted quite differently. “Your methods were current in the days of Adam, and much progress has been made since. I know one room that will not be teaching anything like your way. It would be setting my teaching back at least thirty years.” His reactions indicated that he had never before, in his entire life, been defied. Just for a moment or two he was lost for words. Then he exploded. “Are you suggesting that the methods I have proven over many years don’t work?” “I’m sure they achieve your aims, which would appear to be to pound facts into children’s heads. My aims are to educate them, to teach them how to learn, to love learning, and thus want to continue doing so. I want to ensure they thoroughly understand what they are learning. My aim also includes the development of their personalities and characters, and to give them initiative and self-confidence, so they can become independent learners. Would your methods achieve my aims?” “Your class will be tested the same as the rest of the school, and they will be expected to pass grammar consisting of analysis and parsing. If they gain poor results you may well have to face irate parents.” “I would be very happy to do so,” I assured him. “We will discuss this further tomorrow after school in my office. See that you are there.” That discussion did take place, but ‘argument’ might be a more accurate word than discussion. Neither of us gave away any ground. From that day on he called me “The Rebel”, and grudgingly let me have my own way. It seemed that he found me a challenge, as almost every day he would initiate a discussion with me, usually beginning with, “You would have to admit, Don ---.“ Following this would be something like, “that my poetry lessons produce excellent class recitation.” “I certainly do,” I answered that claim, “but they also make children hate poetry.” “How do you justify that statement, when they recite it so beautifully?” he would ask. “Because you murder the beauty of poetry. You recite a poem selected by you, one which you think would be suitable for expressive recitation. Whether the children might like it does not seem to be a consideration. Then taking it phrase by phrase, you force the children to repeat it over and over until they use your exact notation. You do nothing to help them enjoy it. In fact, when you leave the room, I take another poetry lesson to give poetry a chance.” “And what do you do differently?” he demanded to know. “For a start, I read them a poem that I feel children of their age might enjoy, and ask them if they liked it or did not like it. We discuss why, and what they did or did not like. If it suggests some activity we can follow up like acting it, or illustrating it, we do that. If they really like it, we will enter it into their anthologies, and because they want to do it they take great care to do it well. Their real favourites we learn, but a verse at a time, not by meaningless short phrases.” “I don’t imagine you manage to elicit the perfect elocution that I achieve,” he boasted. “Probably not, but nor do I have a classroom of totally bored pupils who hate poetry. I achieve my aims and you achieve yours. We are just on a different planet.” Another day he would attack me on English expression. “It is vital that they learn parts of speech, phrases, clauses, adjectives, adverbs etcetera, so they can write well, and for learning other languages in the future, that educating for the future, to which you often refer. You must agree to that, and parsing and analysis my way, teaches it to them.” “I also believe in them knowing their grammar,” I said, much to his surprise. “But instead of tearing someone else’s writing apart to learn it, I teach them to learn by using it to build interesting sentences themselves. We start with just a subject and verb, add an object, then make it say exactly what we mean by adding adjectives, adverbs, phrases and clauses. They first see the need, which is because they realise that I won’t know exactly what they mean unless they add clarification, and they actually enjoy doing it to make things clear to me. How often have you heard some child say, ‘Oh goodie! We are going to do analysis’?”