When you stare into the eye of a whitebait...

The invitation to present to the West Coast Principals’ Conference at Franz Josef offered many unanticipated adventures.

Peering out the window of the Beechcraft 1900D on my way from Christchurch to Hokitika I marvelled at the huge up-thrusts of sheer sided, ice-carved, greywacke rock; the U-shaped glaciated valleys and the ancient forests below.  These were the surfaces I had so often talked about when teaching earth science in the 80s – to see them from above was weird. They had seemed so familiar in our textbook relationship and yet, face to face, their complexity made them majestic and unknowable –strangers.

The experience was not unlike nudging up against a minor television celebrity in a Ponsonby café – without all the majestic unknowable-ness.  You catch their eye – and for a moment you think you know them well… and then, you realise that whilst you have looked at them for months, they have never looked back at you.

Thelma was waiting for me at Hokitika Airport – or was it Louise? Either way, we pass the Bechdel Test for a Thelma and Louise Road Trip: The road trip must have at least two women in it; the two women must talk to each other; the road trip conversation must be about something other than a man or men.

We threw the luggage and handouts into the back of “Phyllis” the 4WD truck and set off on the Thelma and Louise road trip to Franz Josef (and the conference). We were almost immediately distracted (check a map) by the call of Step 2’s Bargain Corner and Jon’s Relics in the Hokitika township. After much searching and many number 8 wire suggestions from the locals we added to the truck a dented aluminium billycan with “Boys’ Brigade” scratched on the lid, a rusting 1950s Griffin’s biscuit tin and a school desk that the mice had gnawed through. 

Buoyed by the romanticism of our finds we went looking for a local white baiter. This was less successful and when the girl frying chips at the Hokitika takeaways suggested the local New World, we decided to get back into the truck and hit SHW6 and travel south for Franz Josef.

The West Coast Principals’ Conference was fun and packed with new learning. I especially enjoyed hearing the charismatic Hana O’Reagan (Dean of Te Puna Wanaka, Faculty of Maori Studies, CPIT) speak on making  a difference for Maori students in school and the equally verve-filled philanthropist Chrissie Fernyhough speak on valuing and learning from the rural sector.  Derek Wenmoth had the last speaking slot on day one and focused on ubiquity, personalisation and collaboration through technology. I always like it when Derek Wenmoth references Neil Postman’s Fourth Idea about technological change: “Technological change is not additive it is ecological.” But I do wish he would reference it within the context of Postman’s original thinking in his article on Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change. For Postman follows the quoted text with this caution for culture and traditional ways of thinking and being.

That is why we must be cautious about technological innovation. The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible. That is also why we must be suspicious of capitalists. Capitalists are by definition not only personal risk takers but, more to the point, cultural risk takers. The most creative and daring of them hope to exploit new technologies to the fullest, and do not much care what traditions are overthrown in the process or whether or not a culture is prepared to function without such traditions.

Derek shared his draft thinking on how we should understand the connection between teaching and learning, services and infrastructure. I reckon the bit on teaching and learning – the “Learn Create Share” bit – needs some re-thinking, but the underlying message was important, and one too seldom heard in education. It makes no sense to ask what impact deploying UFB fibre connections to New Zealand schools has (or will have) on learning outcomes.

The best question of the West Coast Principals’ Conference came from the sponsor who inadvertently highlighted the importance of this message when he asked:

 “How does furniture impact on educational outcomes?”

It was a “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type question.  Because when you stare into the eye of a whitebait, its protruding lens and fixed-size pupil stares right back at you in a very knowing 360-degree gaze.  A “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type question is a question that demands/extracts a response.

The question jolted the educators present to think about the credibility of some of the questions we currently raise and attempt to answer about the relationship between technology, services and infrastructure, and learning outcomes. 

It is well answered by John Hattie in his book Visible Learning:  “My own view is that, like many structural innovations in education, computers can increase the probability of learning, but there is no necessary relation between having computers, using computers, and learning outcomes.”  (Hattie 2009 Visible Learning p211)

Intelligence about local communities gleaned from the local principals meant the return trip on SHW6 from Franz Josef to Hokitika was packed with deviation – it was closer to a lateral arabesque than a road trip and took in the people and places that had escaped us on the way in. 

Driving through the lurking wilderness and lowland farming communities of Whataroa, Hari Hari and Ross, we stopped for some of Spider’s whitebait in Whataroa and then for whitebait sandwiches at the Pukeko Tearooms & Store, made famous in “Goodbye Pork Pie” in the 80s. We stopped again for free-range, red-shaver eggs and a tour of the hen house from a couple in their 80s who lived on the highway, and again trying to locate a knife maker in Hokitika. Sometimes we stopped for no reason at all and many times when we stopped, we had to put “Phyllis” in reverse or do a u-turn to retreat to what had caught our eye. It was a whimsical and complex journey.

At each stop we had “when you stare into the eye of a whitebait” type conversations. We talked, we laughed, we gleaned new sources and shared our contacts; we had conversations that looked right back at you – we made new friends.  

Crossposted at Essential Resources Blog

Comments

[mtechcomputers]

mtechcomputers
regards
it is quite nice

[Derek Wenmoth]

Well summarised, Pam - it certainly was a thought provoking time - and a location that prompted some of the reflective muscles in my brain to engage more than they might normally ;-)
I take your point about correctly referencing Postman's work - I refer to his 'five things' article regularly, with the quote you included above being a useful reality check in my thinking. Of course, his "End of Education" book remains one of my all time favourite reads, one that gets re-read on a regular basis as there's so much more that appears to jump out for me each time I do so.
Anyway - thanks for you input to the conference as well - it was one of the stimulating highlights for me - like you, I found myself staring into the eye of a whitebait of one kind or another for most of my drive home!

[ulimasao]

Artichoke, This piece is relevant for my hyperconnectivity focus. I began the investigation caught up in the technology. I have even
organised and carried out childrens and staff learning with the technology. But the real learning often happens with the face to face conversations we have with our peers and even with our children. I enjoy using the social media tools to strengthen my learning as I can often learn at my pace and revisit sections that did not make sense the first time around. But like Ulises Ali Mejias’s post on the Tyranny of the Nodes, the dark space between the nodes can also be learning in a different form. Larry Cuban recently wrote: "Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology."
Your vivid description of the coast brings memories of swimming in the Haast river in September. This is when the snow has recently melted.

[Artichoke]

Thanks Derek – much as you do - I enjoy the provocation and disruption that comes from writers who question educational and societal ideas presented as being “A GOOD THING”. Gazing into the eye of the whitebait thinking.

I think you would like Zygmunt Bauer’s thinking around the connections between consumerism and morality in Collateral damage – Social Inequalities in a global age – it offers another way of understanding the impact of the introduction of perpetual connectability through technologies like iPADs, netbooks, smart phones etc into our lives and into our schools.

Zygmunt argues that being perpetually connected has seen .

• The weakening and growing frailty of human bonds.

  Where shopping as a substitute for “concern, sympathy, compassion, well-wishing, friendship and love” is pretty scary.

• An instability and insecurity of people’s place in society – questions of self-identity.
  
  He argues that questions of identity lead us to think that “to do something, you first need to be somebody” this leads us to imagine that “to be capable of caring for others, you first need to acquire, protect and retain the resources such a capacity requires.”
  
  “In short, to be moral, you must buy goods; to buy goods, you need money; to acquire money, you need to sell yourself – at a good price and with a decent profit. You cannot be a shopper unless you yourself become a commodity which people are willing to buy. And what you therefore need is an attractive sellable identity. You owe it to yourself – because QED, you owe it to others.”

It makes me wonder – “How do the criteria used to determine place (turangawaewae) change when we become perpetually connected in school?”

For example will we see even more “you’ve earned it’, you deserve it’, ‘you owe it to yourself’ thinking as teachers and students rush gain moral identity credits through their purchase of the latest device?

• Sustainability of the planet – as an unintended consequence “From the beginning of the consumerist era. Enlarging the loaf of bread was promoted as the patent remedy, indeed a foolproof prophylactic, against conflicts and squabbles around the loaf’s distribution. Effective or not in suspending hostilities, that strategy had to assume infinite supplies of flour and yeast. We are now nearing the moment when the falsity of that assumption and the dangers of clinging to it are likely to be exposed. The might be the moment for moral responsibility to be refocused on its primary vocation; that of mutual assurance of survival. In such a refocusing, the decommodification of the moral impulse seems, however, to be paramount among all the necessary conditions.

All of which makes me ask –

How can we develop a curriculum to decommodify the moral impulse?

Is decreasing connectivity – and exploring ways to re-approach the near part of the answer?

[Silver Jewelry Jaipur]

just to good and really amazing post i loved it a lot