Part One - Chapter 4
On any other day at this hour Max would be finishing his morning walk, but on this wet and windy Monday he’s sitting waiting for Molly in a cafe on Sydney Road. It seems she wants to talk about Friday’s visit, but she’s late. Or she’s forgotten.
His coffee is lukewarm. He hates lukewarm.
Should he just leave? A walk in the wet and then a hot shower might shift a gloom that’s been with him since he woke up. He looks at his phone. No messages. He’ll give it another ten minutes, no longer.
He has a seat by the window, looking out onto a tram stop. There is a small group of commuters huddled close up against the cafe window, trying to keep out of the wind. Amongst them is a large spiky-haired young woman. She’s scowling and dragging fiercely on a cigarette, one hand pressed against the window for balance as she totters on ridiculously high heels. There’s a tattooed vine leaf snaking around her bare neck. What was she thinking?
Then he sees Molly, hurrying towards the cafe entrance. She stands out in the general greyness: copper curls, yellow jacket, green scarf. There’s a red brooch pinned to the jacket. On another day the splash of colour would shift his mood. She sees him and gives an apologetic wave.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says as she sits down.
‘That’s OK. It’s snug in here.’
‘I really appreciate this Max,’ she says. ‘I wanted to say I’m so sorry about what happened on Friday.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Max. ‘Forget it.’
In fact Tran’s outburst had upset him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Harriet hadn’t been in the room, forced to witness the way a fifteen-year-old boy had bettered him. He’d felt weak and off-balance. Resourceless. An overreaction, he knew, but that’s what he’d felt. And then angry, very angry. Not just at the boy, either. It was a kind of general rage that had hung around all weekend, and in his dreams. He’d woken this morning, mouth dry and heart pounding, from a dream where he was a boy again and bashing a favourite cousin, first with a wooden plank and then with his bare fists, hitting her in the head and face over and over again. The blows were ineffectual.
Was it normal, he’d wondered, to have such violent dreams?
‘No, the way Tran behaved wasn’t fine,’ says Molly. ‘It was inexcusable and I should have shut him down.’
‘He was worried about not being ready for some test?’
‘That’s just the half of it,’ says Molly. ‘His father was riled at the parent –teacher night. I shouldn’t be telling you this, I know, it’s unprofessional, but his father …’
‘I saw him, I think. The local councillor?’
‘That’s him. The family is self-made and powerful. Overly ambitious and pushy.’
The waitress appears and Molly orders a flat white. Max gets a second cup. Extra hot, he says.
‘You were saying …’
‘Where was I?’
‘The boy’s father was giving you a hard time.’
‘The father said Tran always did well in English, wondered why things seemed to have stalled this term, and implied that it was my teaching. And he wanted to know what folk tales had to do with preparing for the real world.’
‘Ah,’ says Max dryly. ‘The real world.’
One of the pleasures of retirement has been not having to care about male fantasy versions of the real world. The getting on, the making an impression, the pressure to enact a false self. The real world! He’s always hated the term.
Their coffees have arrived.
‘Sometimes my English classes feel like they’re not connected to the real world,’ says Molly.
God, not her too! ‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
‘It’s as if … I’m not sure about this …’
Max’s coffee is hot. Molly is just stirring hers and looking out the window.
‘It’s as if there are two worlds and they don’t intersect,’ she says.
She is still stirring. If she were Harriet, he’d say something.
‘I live alone,’ Molly continues. ‘I live with my cats and my books. My family are in Perth and I don’t see them much. One day I’d like to write. I read a lot. I disappear into the worlds that the books have created. I encourage my students to imagine themselves into the worlds writers make. But is this real? Is this ordinary? Is this being unconnected with the real world?’
‘Stories speak to a reality that the likes of Tran’s father wouldn’t understand,’ says Max.
‘Do you think so?’ says Molly.
‘Of course I think so.’
‘You don’t think I’m doing my students a disservice?’
‘I’ve never seen Harriet happier.’
Molly smiles. Then she looks at the time. ‘Oh god, I’ve got to go. I’ve got an appointment to see our Principal before school. He’s not very happy with me I think.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not sure. Can we talk again though? It’s good to talk.’
‘Sure,’ says Max.
‘Thanks Max. I’ll pay. You sit there. You can have my coffee if you like. And I’m really sorry about Friday.’
She leaves. Max waits for the rain to ease.
The real world. The phrase usually refers to Hobbes’s version. Or Freud’s. A world of a brutish striving for power and pleasure. Winners and losers. That’s not the kind of real world he wants for his grand-daughter. Thank goodness for teachers like Molly, he thinks.
Max sits for a while with his coffee. Outside, the rain has turned to sleet.
‘Not the most popular girl on the block I hear,’ says Rodney. ‘Boss not happy with your Unit Plan, so a little birdy told me.’
‘So it seems,’ Molly says, not looking up from her pile of marking. Again they’re alone in the staffroom. It’s after school on Monday. She’d met with Elliot before school, shown him her Year 10 Unit Plan, and had been asked to ‘tighten it up, focus more on what’s to be learned, make the goals explicit’.
‘Need any help?’ Rodney says.
‘All under control, thank you.’
‘I’m happy to show you mine,’ says Rodney. ‘The boss thinks my unit plans are the bee’s knees.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ says Molly.
‘So what’s the problem with yours?’
‘Rodney, I’m trying to get some things done. I don’t have time to chat.’
‘All work and no play, they say.’
Molly doesn’t respond.
‘Ready for the Common Test on Friday?’
Molly takes earphones from her bag and pointedly blocks out his voice. But Rodney is prodding a sore. Rhonda made a point of going through the Common Test with her at lunchtime and she’s felt sick in her stomach since.
It’s after school. Tuesday. Another day that Zeph has survived. Hours to kill before he goes back to the grey apartment with the heating that is either off or belting out air so warm it gives him a headache. He’s at the train station again, slumped on a seat, hoody up over the earphones, his music filling his head.
A train arrives. The doors swish open. The carriage is almost empty. Some kids from his school, but he doesn’t make eye contact. He finds a seat, leans his head against the window. The train moves off. It picks up speed. He feels himself relax. Music in his ears, the gentle rocking of the moving train.
He looks out the window.
Graffiti on the walls, most of it boring, predictable. Cars waiting at railway crossings. The rain streaking the window. Pedestrians with their umbrellas. It’s been spitting, off and on, for days.
The train slows as they approach a station. He looks into houses, some of them lit up in the late afternoon gloom.
Through one window he sees a frail old woman ironing. Olive-skinned. A grandmother? A cleaner? She looks up as the train glides by. She’s close enough for Zeph to see her expression. She looks tired. Worn down. Unhappy.
The train moves on and stops at a station, but the image of the ironing woman lingers. A moment in her life. He wonders about her olive skin. Italian? Greek? Turkish? Maybe, like his father, from the Middle East? He wonders about the woman’s apparent misery. Has something just happened? Or is it just the never-ending routine of a cleaner?
The train picks up speed again as it leaves the station. More pedestrians under umbrellas. More drivers waiting at crossings. Glimpses of office workers at their computers or residents at windows going about their private lives.
So much happening out there, yet Zeph feels cut off from it all. It’s only on the train, or when he’s in his own room with the door shut, that he allows himself to wonder about the wider world.
Someone is sitting down next to him. He doesn’t look.
Zeph feels someone touch his arm. He instinctively recoils, tenses. He looks round.
It’s the girl from his class. Harriet. The girl he’s been drawing.
I’d been thinking about him all afternoon, ever since seeing that drawing of me in the library. And there he was, sitting by himself in the train.
I couldn’t believe it.
This was the second time I’d got on a train and he’d been there.
I hadn’t noticed him at the station. But there he was, his face half hidden by the hoody, his head half turned away from me. But it was definitely him.
I decided that I’d go up and ask him about the drawing.
So I sat down next to him. He looked surprised. A bit hostile.
‘Hi,’ I said.
He nodded in that boy kind of way, a brief tilt of his head backwards, a slight pursing of the lips.
‘You’re Zeph, aren’t you?’ I said.
He frowned. Then he slowly reached under his hoody and pulled out his earphones.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You’re Zeph, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re in the same English class as me,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ He wasn’t making this easy. He looked nervous, edgy.
‘Yes, we’re in an English class together,’ I said. ‘And you’ve been drawing me. Why?’ I was starting to feel a bit irritated I guess. ‘Why were you drawing me?’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘You were drawing a picture of me. I saw it in the library.’
He shrugged and looked away. I could see his reflection in the window. He was frowning, uncomfortable.
‘Why were you drawing me?’
Nothing. My badgering tone wasn’t helping.
‘It’s because I’m so unbelievably beautiful, isn’t it,’ I said. He kept looking out the window, but I saw his face soften.
‘Come on Zeph. Tell me. Why were you drawing me?’
He turned and looked at me. He smiled a shy kind of smile. Then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘You were the first one I saw.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I wanted to draw a face, and I looked up and you were walking back to your seat in class. So I drew you.’
‘And here was I thinking I was special,’ I said. He smiled again. And shrugged.
‘Have you got it here?’ I asked.
‘What. The drawing? Nah. Not here.’
I didn’t believe him actually. He looked out the window again.
‘Can I see it when it’s finished?’
‘Maybe.’
We sat in silence for a while.
‘Where are you off to?’ I asked.
‘City.’
‘What for?’
He shrugged again. But he wasn’t looking out the window now. Nor had he put his earphones back in. He was looking at the back of the seat in front of us, looking as though he wanted to keep talking but couldn’t work out what to say.
‘Where are you going?’ He looked out the window again as he said it.
‘The city as well.’ Silence. ‘I’m going shopping,’ I added. I wondered if he’d ask me what I was shopping for, but he clearly wasn’t very good at conversation. I tried again. ‘I want to get a new phone. This one’s crap.’
He shrugged. We sat in silence again. But I’d noticed that he’d made the effort.
‘Do you draw much?’
‘A bit,’ he said.
‘Pencils? Charcoal?’
He looked at me, right into my face, for the first time.
‘Paint,’ he said. ‘On walls.’
‘You’re joking,’ I said, though I believed him straight away. ‘Where?’
‘Here and there,’ he said.
‘Would you show me one?’
Again there was a pause. He was biting his lip.
‘I’m going to paint you on a wall,’ he said.
‘You what?’
‘That’s why I was drawing your face. I’m going to paint a picture of your face on a wall.’ He was smiling broadly now.
But I wasn’t smiling.
Friday early evening. Molly kneels in front of the fire grate, then lightly touches a lit match to the twisted newspaper. Five or six light touches, each like an anointment. The flames flare briefly then die, replaced by short-lived wisps of grey smoke. Is the paper damp? She doesn’t think so. Just mysterious atmospheric conditions, perhaps, stuff she’s never understood but which occasionally seem to affect her fire-making. She tries again, in vain. It takes several more frustrating attempts before a weak flame reaches up to the dry twigs and the fire takes a precarious hold. Even then she’s not confident it will last, and she hastily scrunches up more newspaper, opens the slow combustion door quickly and tosses it in. The heat builds slowly, but even the warmth she begins to feel on her cheek seems less comforting than usual. She sits for a while, staring gloomily into the flames. One of the cats sits licking a paw, wondering perhaps why it has been pushed off the chair so gracelessly.
Molly is restless, out of sorts.
It’s been a shitty week really, and she knows why. It’s to do with the Common Test. Rhonda had shown her a copy of it on Monday and the students had completed it in class this morning.
All responses must be written using full sentences.
1. What is the difference between a myth, a legend and a folk tale? [3 marks]
2. What are the different kinds of myths? [6 marks, 1 for each correct answer]
3. Read the following Aztec myth, and answer the questions below:
When the people on Earth became wicked, the god of the rain, Tlaloc, became angry and made it rain heavily. But Tlaloc saw that there were two good people, named Tata and Nena. So he warned Tata and Nena that a great flood was on the way. He told them to make an ark by hollowing out a huge tree trunk. The rain got heavier and Tata and Nena worked quickly to make a hollow log. Just as the flood hit, they climbed inside and were swept away. Eventually the rain stopped and the land appeared again. The Aztec ark had saved Tata and Nena.
A) Our Year 10 booklet mentioned six kinds of myth. Which kind of myth is this? [1 mark]
B) Which Christian myth is similar to this one? [2 marks]
C) What are the characteristics of this story that make us describe it as a myth? [3 marks]
4. Many myths are written to explain scientific phenomena that are not clearly understood at the time, such as why there are stars in the sky, why the sun rises, or why there are sometimes natural disasters in the world. Write a myth that might explain why temperatures and sea levels are rising in our world. [10 marks]
She’d read it at her staffroom desk, the blood draining from her face. She felt shamed. She’d let the students down.
She’d tried to calm herself before facing the class later that day, and thought it was with a controlled voice that she’d announced at the beginning of the lesson: ‘As you know, the Common Test will be on Friday. That gives you a few days to prepare.’
What’s on it, they asked.
‘The Mythology, Legends and Folktales booklet that we gave out at the beginning of the semester has everything in it that you’ll need to know,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll be fine if you study the booklet.’ But she was appalled at what was coming out of her mouth. Appalled as if she’d taken them down a certain path and it had turned out to be a path to nowhere.
The next couple of lessons had been awful. She’d organised quizzes and question times, centred around the booklet, but they’d been lifeless hours. Tran and some of the others had asked her pointedly, more than once, why they’d spent so much time on folk tales when the Common Test was mainly about myths. Her responses had sounded unconvincing, even to her.
So this morning the students had done the test. She has a pile of them to mark over the weekend. She’s not looking forward to it.
Sitting here now, in front of the struggling fire, she feels an unease which is more than just shame about her teaching this week. She is feeling as well a confused mix of agitation and anger. An urge to reach towards some different way of thinking about what’s been happening.
Her eye is drawn to her copy of Moby Dick, sitting on a small table next to her chair. On its cover there’s a drawing of the great white whale breaching, thrusting up through the surface of a calm sea, water cascading off its back, the sun above concentrating its rays on this mighty sea monster. Molly picks up the book. It’s a strange story, meandering but alluring. The assorted crew thrown together yet becoming one in a whale chase. The driven madness of the captain. The meditations on the sea, on whales, on human nature, on what lies beneath the surface. Reading the book has taken her to a world that is both unknowably mysterious and utterly familiar.
Books like this are windows through which she can see and know and experience more about the world.
The real world.
A world more rich and compelling, and more real, than the bloodless versions of people like Elliot. A world far more compelling than the flat world implied by most of the Common Test, with its lifeless categories, like so many dead butterflies pinned behind glass in museum exhibits.
Molly picks up her copy of the Common Test and reads through it slowly.
Apart from the final question, which she rather liked, the Common Test was uninterested in stories as windows onto the world. Instead it was preoccupied with definitions and classifications. It assumed that English teaching is a pseudo-science with texts being our specimens, where the categories are fixed and rigid. Is this text a myth or a legend? What’s the difference?
This limp enterprise is not Molly’s version of English teaching. That’s not why she reads books, or why she wants her students to love stories.
Molly’s had these thoughts before, but these insights, these little epiphanies that come in moments like this, are fragile, ephemeral. They are present now, as she sits in the room where all her books are shelved. She feels them intuitively when she’s with a student like Harriet. She felt them during the first weeks of the semester with her Year 10 class. But they’re so much harder to hold onto when she’s in the staffroom, surrounded by talk about texts, evidence, outcomes, achievement bands, grades and prizes. In such surroundings, her version of English sounds unconvincing, uncomfortably self-indulgent, out-of-step with ‘the real world’.
The fire has taken hold. Molly strokes the cat that has returned to her lap. She’ll mark the students’ papers tomorrow.
Saturday morning. Zeph is preparing for another night out. The paints are in the bag under his bed.
He’s decided against drawing the girl. She was upset. He didn’t like that she was upset.
It had been awkward on the train. She kept asking why he’d decided to draw her face and not someone else’s. Why me? she kept asking. He didn’t know why her. It just fitted. He liked thinking that his mum might have looked like that when she was a girl. He misses his mum.
Don’t do it, she said. She got worked up. He didn’t like it. It was good before that, when they were talking. When she was talking. She made him smile. She seemed nice. But then she got angry.
So when the train stopped at the next station, he just stood up and got off. He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t tell her about the dream, about his mother. He felt confused, embarrassed. A bit dizzy even. So he just stood up, pushed past her and got off. He hadn’t looked back.
He sits on his bed now, looking at his new drawing. He’s drawn the mother so you can’t see her face. He’s glad he’s decided against Harriet’s face. He doesn’t want her to be upset. He liked her. He’s sorry she’s angry. Ah well, things go to shit. Can’t be helped.
The new version works better anyway, maybe.
He’ll spend some of today looking for a good spot on a wall.
What a weird week that was. Really weird. Not much time to write. Grandpa wants to take me out to Sunday lunch somewhere. Like in the old days, he says. Roast lamb, mint sauce, roast potatoes, big pudding. Sounds gross. Who am I kidding. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Anyway, a weird week.
I went to school last Monday feeling as good as I’ve felt in a long time. I love English. I love Ms McInness. I love writing. And what we’re doing in class, or at least what we were doing till this week, was so, so cool. Listening to great stories, talking about their many meanings, having Grandpa come to talk (even if shithead Tran tried to spoil it). I love it. And Ms McInness has been encouraging us to think about our creative piece, which she calls the culminating performance of the unit, where we have to adapt a folktale in some creative way. Haven’t a clue what I’ll do. But it’s exciting. Can’t wait.
Or at least that’s the feeling I had when I went into school last Monday morning. But then something shifted.
First Ms McInness started talking about the Common Test. She got out that boring Year 10 Myths and Legends booklet we got at the beginning of the semester. It was like one moment we were being encouraged to imagine mysteries and the next we had to study the instructions for tying a shoe lace. Or something like that. From the sublime to the banal, as Grandpa would say. We spent the rest of the week listening to Tran and a few others ask questions about the booklet. ‘Was x in the test? Was y? Did we need to know z?’
Who cares?
Then there was that awkward meeting with Zeph on the train. We’ve avoided each other since, though I’m going to say something to him again soon. It would kill me if he drew my face on a wall! The cool girls already give me a hard time. It would be so embarrassing, so impossibly cringy, if suddenly my face appeared on a wall. He draws well and they’d know it was me. They’d go on about how Zeph has clearly got the hots for me. I’ll say something to him on Monday. I really really don’t want him to do it.
He’s strange. He looks sort of gentle, especially with his hoody off and you can see his face. But so awkward to talk to. Like he doesn’t know the rules. Or gets so choked up with embarrassment that he can’t speak. He just stood up and walked off the train.
And then there was the pathetic Common Test. I’d read the booklet, so it wasn’t hard. There was this one question that I enjoyed answering though. It asked to list the different kinds of myths. Ms McInness is always encouraging me to take risks, so I decided to with this one. I knew the answer they wanted, but I also thought it was dumb. So I wrote something like this.
Our booklet says there are six: creation myths, flood myths, fire myths, trickster myths, hero myths, creature myths. But I don’t think there is a right answer to a question like this. There are so many different ways you can classify myths, so many different ways you can group them. You could say there are two kinds: believable and unbelievable. Or religious and secular. Or you could classify them according to where they come from: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, the Pacific and so on. Or you could classify them according to their function (which is what my Grandpa is always banging on about): induction myths, ethics myths, explaining nature myths, supporting the social order myths. But even trying to classify myths in some of these ways seems difficult, because the categories aren’t watertight. Some myths about floods are also myths about creatures (like Noah’s Ark). Some myths seem to crop up in different cultures, even if the cultures themselves have not been connected. And so on. I don’t like classifying much, though I guess it’s necessary and often useful. So my science teacher often says and I guess that’s right. But sometimes doing all this classifying, as if it’s the most important thing, breaks things up into lifeless bits somehow. Like with myths. I’d much rather know that Odysseus had a fight with a cyclops than know that The Odyssey was an example of a heroic myth. And was Odysseus such a great hero anyway? He left his wife in the lurch, had affairs with nymphs and goodness knows who else, and lost every single one of his men. Some hero.
If it was anyone else other than Ms McInness marking it, I’d probably be marked down and told to stick to the point. But I have a feeling she’ll enjoy what I’ve written. She often does.
Which is nice.
Molly is handing out the marked tests to her Year 10 class.
The teachers have had their moderation meeting. It had happened at lunchtime yesterday, on Monday. It had not been a comfortable hour with Rodney and Rhonda, and with the two other Year 10 teachers. Molly had feigned compliance – ‘oh yes, this is a B, this is a C, this one doesn’t address the criteria, this one is poorly expressed’ – but had deliberately not shared Harriet’s response (it felt too unorthodox and brave for her to risk some smart-arsed criticism from Rodney), nor had she shown them Tran’s attempt (which had addressed all the marking criteria in a superficial way but was the kind of thing that Rodney would claim was an obvious A). She had felt uncomfortable, even devious and a bit sullied. But, she told herself, she was fudging for the greater good.
There’s a particular kind of quiet in the classroom now as she moves from desk to desk. Some are clearly disappointed in their grade, others pleased. A few pretend to be unconcerned. She senses that all are feeling judged. As if the grade is saying something about their worth as a human being. Something like that.
Into the silence, there is a sudden eruption.
‘This is bullshit!’
Eyes turn to Tran. A few students start to smirk.
‘I beg your pardon Tran,’ says Molly.
But Tran doesn’t reply. He stands, and, with defiant eyes fixed on Molly’s face, slowly folds his returned paper, picks up his books, and walks out of the classroom.
‘Tran,’ calls Molly weakly, but she is ignored.
The classroom door slams.
‘He might be a pain in the bum Molly, but he’s right.’
Who is Rhonda talking about, Molly wonders. They’re all pains in the arse. Tran? Tran’s father? Elliot?
Molly feels humiliated. She feels wronged. She feels furious.
‘You can’t ignore the criteria Molly. You’ve put Elliot in an impossible position. You’ve put me in an impossible position. Tran’s father is right.’
Fuck the criteria, Molly thinks. Fuck them all. It’s a shitty system and it’s producing slimeballs like Elliot and slimeballs like Tran.
‘It’s all very well for you to sit there consumed by your white hot indignation, Molly, but you’ve made things very awkward.’
‘And how have I done that?’ says Molly. She’s shuffling papers around on her desk mindlessly, trying to expend some of the pent up fury she feels. It seems Tran’s father has been to the school to complain. She’s not sure when. It’s now Friday and she just wants to shut this school world out. To get home and shut it all out.
‘You ignored the criteria when you gave Tran the C. You made it impossible for me to back you up. You put me in a horrible position.’
‘That boy has disrupted my class, been rude to a visitor, undermined me in every way possible, and it’s him the system comes out supporting. The system sucks.’
‘The system is what pays your salary.’
‘That doesn’t make it right.’
‘It makes it necessary that we don’t ignore it. Molly, I know you’re upset and I can understand why. I think what you’ve been doing in that class is admirable, I really do. But you can’t just make your own rules. You’ve got to be able to justify your marks and, given the criteria that we all agreed on, you can’t deny that Tran should get at least a B.’
‘It makes a mockery of what we’ve been doing. He can do bugger all for weeks, then just play the system. Toss off some cliched garbage which addresses in a crass way all the outcomes and so he gets a B?’
‘You might be right, but that’s the system we’ve got.’
‘It’s fucked,’ Molly says. ‘And are you serious? All my class’s work has to be regraded?’
‘I’m sure most of it is fine. Just make sure you cover your back. Elliot wants a full report.’
Elliot is a dickhead. She’s had enough for the day. She packs up her books and heads home for the weekend.
Should he press SEND?
Harriet has told him Molly’s been out of sorts this week. She’s heard rumours of complaints by a parent. Might this help?
He’s been reading Spinoza. Odd stuff, about the nature of things, and about joy. He finds it all strangely comforting. And stimulating.
He’s been thinking about what Spinoza might write about Molly’s classroom. He’s tried writing some thoughts in the style of Spinoza. It’s been fun.
1. On the nature of the learner and learning
Learning is never a passive process, but always excites or animates. The learner is a relational organism, ie it has a natural tendency to form relationships with other learner-organisms. The learner-organism perceives aspects of the not-me world as having a relative perfection or completeness it lacks. This perception of the relative perfection of the not-me world is experienced as desire. The learner-organism has an urge to mate with that desired aspect of the not-me world. The natural urge to learn will always persist; if frustrated it will try to find alternative routes. The appetite is insatiable. The teacher’s job is to create a classroom environment where this natural process can take place.
Its erroneous opposite: Learning is a passive process where knowledge and skills are transmitted from the expert to the student. The success of the transmission can be measured.
2. On the nature and function of story
Stories are at the heart of all learning, and nowhere more so than in the English classroom. A story is not an object; it is a catalyst. Stories agitate, complicate, induct and animate. Stories pierce the surface and gesture towards mystery, that which we sense but can never fully know. The communal sharing of story creates community. Stories provoke contemplation of the good, the beautiful, the just and the true. The teacher’s job is to create a classroom environment where stories can be created, read and discussed.
Its erroneous opposite: Stories are objects. They are texts to be studied, analysed, classified, judged, pulled apart. A student’s success in working with these objects called stories is to be assessed using objective criteria in moderated assessments.
Should he send it? Would it help? Possibly Molly will think him odd, dated, cut off from the world of the everyday.
His finger hovers above the ‘send’ button. Then presses it. Faux-Spinoza speeds through the ether.