For Mr Jimmy Kilpatrick, Editor-in-chief, EducationNews.org
TEACHING PEACE
(published in Ednews.org on 4th November 2006)
In
April 2006 our reporter Professor Michael Shaughnessy reported on the
contributions to the 2006 Qatar Foundation Symposium on Innovations
in Education of Professor Hani Q. Khoury of Mercer University, Georgia,
and Professor Eva Vásárhelyi of Eötvös Lorand
University of Budapest, Hungary. They both spoke about a better way
to teach math in the classroom. (See reports: 04/24)
But, even if one of them was an American and the other
Hungarian, what was so unusual about this? Education academics are always
inventing new ways to teach math better in the classroom, to transform
the teaching load, to send SAT scores soaring. But when their ideas
are tried by the average over-loaded teacher in the average over-populated
school, with classes of average under-performing students, almost invariably
their magic fails to work. Dozens of these proposals are published every
year in shiny academic education journals: and gather dust on academic
library shelves for ever more.
But what these distinguished professors were reporting was a better
way to teach math discovered by an ordinary classroom math teacher,
working with his classes every day. It took him ten years to find it;
another fifteen years to prove that it worked with all his classes;
and then he decided to quit a well-paid post to spend a few years offering
it - pro bono - to other teachers everywhere.
Originally he called it the 'Socrates Method'; but
Professor Khoury has pointed out that this enticing combination has
been worked to death, and that it should be called instead a Socratic
Methodology - because its philosophy can be applied to very many other
subjects, as well as to the mathematics for which it was originally
intended.
The teacher who made this discovery is an Englishman,
Colin Hannaford, working in a school near Oxford in England. He has
explained that his final decision to quit his teaching post was made
for him after he invited a school administrator to visit a young class
to see his pupils as a team working under his direction, learning math
together directly from their text-book.
The lesson was exactly what he wanted the administrator
to see. It was also exactly how he now worked with all his classes -
right up to his senior pupils' final exams. But after this young class
had left, the administrator showed that he was appalled; declaring angrily:
"You must stop teaching these children like this at once - or in
another few years they won't need a teacher at all!" They were
all around 13 years of age.
EdNews readers may notice a striking parallel with
the experience of ex-USAAF Lieutenant Colonel Saxon, the founder of
Saxon Publishing, (see EdNews 03/28/2002). He started teaching math
after service in Vietnam; found the state-adopted textbooks on algebra
unsatisfactory; wrote his own; ran into inevitable opposition from the
authorities; drove around America to persuade many other teachers to
use them - and the rest, as we may say, is history.
Colin Hannaford came to teaching from the British
Army and taught classroom math to university entrance level in one of
Britain's most important international schools for 25 years. Throughout
the first ten years he found himself experiencing the frustration that
many able teachers will know: that of being obliged to instruct classes
of good students how to pass their tests and exams efficiently - whilst
being increasingly sure that only a decreasing minority had any real
understanding of what they were doing, or why.
For many students like these a horrible crunch arrives
in the middle of their first university year: when they discover - and
their university department discovers - that very few can follow what
their lecturers are saying, and even fewer can understand their textbooks!
But the misery and anger that can surface then can appear at any time
earlier. School massacres are explicable. Every child goes to school
expecting to be helped to learn. Misery and anger are a natural consequence
of their disappointment. The people they want to punish are naturally
to be found - naturally, that is, to them - in their schools.
But where can we start to set this right? However
good textbooks may be; however carefully they have been written and
selected - what is the use of trying to teach children to use them if
only a fraction can read with any proper understanding at all? Isn't
this exactly why pupils everywhere start depending on their teacher's
instruction? Isn't this why their teachers end up training students
to pass tests like gangs of programmed robots? Isn't this why so many
teachers abandon their careers, whilst others burn out with exhaustion?
Born from this experience, his solution was to learn
to persuade the strongest in his classes to help the weakest. His challenge
- always to the strongest first - is to start to read aloud, line by
line, the explanations in their textbook that the class must learn to
understand.
Soon all the others - and this will soon include the
weakest - are also learning to follow these lines. Automatically their
literacy is improving as they follow and hear them being read. Almost
at once, as well, everyone's brain has to work bilaterally, for they
are simultaneously looking and listening, and at the same time they
are trying to translate what they see and hear into their own words.
Why should they do that? Because when the teacher
is sure that everyone has heard what was read, the question is never
asked either of any individual or of the class as a whole: 'Did you
understand?' This question is worse than useless. It will inevitably
produce only defensive replies - and all too often they will be dishonest.
Instead the question is asked quite mildly of them
all: "What do you think that means?"
And then, after an unhurried pause, the teacher points
at someone - even the original reader - and waits for a reply.
The class holds its breath. It is clearly no use just to repeat what
has been heard. This may be tried. This will be equally gently rejected
like this: "That's fine. But that's what the book - or, rather,
whoever wrote the book - has said. What do you think it means?"
What is required is for someone to offer a simple
translation of what they have all seen and heard - but now it has to
be in someone's own words.
This is power thinking!
Will there be any reply? The class soon finds that:
"I don't know!" - is perfectly acceptable as a first reply.
The teacher nods, unfazed: as if being unable to comprehend a simple
English sentence on first reading or hearing it is entirely normal.
And it is! There is another calm response: "That's
alright. Relax. Just read it to us again!"
Will the next attempt be more sensible? Can any one
do better? If no-one can - and this is also common - who will next be
asked to read the exact same lines again? Who will next be asked to
explain the meaning of these same lines - and sometimes just of one
line - but always in their own words?
Children like competitions. This lesson is no longer
a battle of wit and wills between the teacher and the pupils. It has
become a gentle competition that everyone can enjoy. The weaker pupils
will certainly enjoy seeing Miss or Master Smartyboots fumbling to reply.
But they will also share the far greater joy of one of the weaker pupils
if she or he happens to achieve a much better reply.
You can read his original explanation of how to continue
lessons like these in those first reports. Why not try it? Why not grab
a spare lesson in the week; announce to the class: "Here is the
latest learning idea from England!" - and try it. Aim at about
twenty minutes to complete sufficient exploration of the text for the
pupils to begin to work - preferably on problems that they themselves
choose to try - but at whichever age you choose to begin, always explain
why it will soon help everyone to start to learn and working independently
- and then to keep on learning and working independently whatever is
happening around them. You may find the experience as enjoyable and
liberating as they do. A complete of introduction to schools over five
to six year period without any disruption of 'normal' teaching is available
from my website. It was written for Qatar University is called 'Evaluating
Change.'
But there is now an even more exciting reason to try
it. Colin also claims that this approach also improves the spiritual
health of the class: by naturally combining in the classroom the fundamental
moral principles of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
He reminds us that there was once an itinerant, unlicensed
Jewish rabbi who made a seemingly impossible moral demand of his countrymen.
"You have been told to love your neighbour as yourselves. Now I
tell you to love your enemies - and to do good to those who hate you."
How very aggravating this must have been to all the
sword smiths, and dagger-makers; the spear-makers, and the bow and arrow
factory owners; the local militia leaders and their priests! How could
they win their battles without bloodshed?
Even now these demands are impossible. The challenge is the same, but
the scale of modern conflicts is hugely greater. Nor can we cannot seriously
expect adults trained for war, immersed in war, drenched in blood, agonised
by the loss of their loved ones and homes and hungry for revenge, to
transform themselves in this way.
This did not happen in Jesus' time. It cannot happen
now: unless our children show us the way to peace; unless our children
show us what they know.
For children in a classroom 'the enemy' is just about
anyone who opposes or disagrees with them. They can first learn 'to
love their enemies' in learning to respect another's criticism - even
if they believe it wrong. They may even learn to change their minds:
to adopt another's argument as better than their own! They will learn
'to do good to those who hate them' in learning to respond calmly to
rude or angry criticism, in learning to give their own reasons for disagreement
- whilst remaining obviously ready to learn from a reasoned response.
For the Prophet Mohammed honesty and sincerity were
the highest virtues. He asked his followers to remain honest and sincere;
and never to divide into enemies again, as they were when he united
them. He asked them always to look for new ways to search for deeper
truth. But this is the essence of all joyful, creative endeavours, in
art as well as science. It is the reason why Islamic universities once
led the world. Such constant search demands great humility; for accepting
the existence of always deeper truth, means accepting that all that
is known may one day be replaced. It means accepting that no human truth
can ever be better than an approximation to the truths known to God.
Good science always moves in this direction. Bad science stops.
There is no better age to learn this kind of integrity,
honesty, and humility than as children in a classroom. There is no better
place than in the classroom to learn respect for the integrity, honesty,
and intelligence of others. This is especially so in the math classroom,
where they will be learning the best approximations to the truth that
human minds have found.
And, finally, there is surely no more important aim
of education than to show children how natural, easy, and enjoyable
this search can be. Certainty is not only fatal to good science. It
is fatal to societies for the simplest of reasons: because it makes
enemies who are irreconcilable. God warned Adam of this in their very
first conversation, recorded in Genesis 2:15-17. This is wisdom every
child should know.
Colin now wants to offer a small conference next year,
either in Central London or 'somewhere in the US', to explore this broad
path to peace. There are between one and two billion children on our
planet could start learning now where this path begins. Within ten years
they could begin to change the cultural background of conflicts wherever
they become adults.
To support his proposal he has written a short book.
Its title is his old army number: 473959 - which, as he says, is, after
all, where it all began. Anyone who wants to attend the conference -
wherever it may be - will have to pay their way, but if you want to
attend, please tell EdNews! His book will be published in the New Year.
It will have to have a price - but meanwhile his original 'Socrates
Workbook' is available free from his website www.gardenofdemocracy.org
in five European languages, including Spanish and Russian. It has now
recently been translated in Arabic as well. There is also a Teachers'
and Parents' Guide, but in English only. All are free to download and
use. All this is still pro bono - and further translations will be most
gratefully received.
