Imagine, if you can, a beehive where its super-conscientious workers are laboring tirelessly.
Now imagine you had the opportunity to interview one random bee.
You: Sorry to interrupt, but what are you doing?
Bee: I can only spare a minute because I need to fill this honey compartment while it’s still daylight.
You: Why are you doing that?
Bee: Because that’s my job!
You: But what drives you to work so hard?
Bee: I don’t understand your question. I am a bee and that’s what bees do? I get to eat some of the honey and it’s quite a mellifluous workplace with over 50,000 workmates!
You: But do you know why you spend your 38-day life making honey?
Bee: No idea! Please stop droning on, I’ve got to fly!
My contention is that many schools are like this beehive. There is plenty of activity, busyness and dedication but there is little awareness of the ultimate end of the enterprise. Witness this conversation between a Devil’s Advocate and a teacher.
Devil’s Advocate: Exactly what are you doing in this room?
Teacher: I am teaching Year 9 Maths!
Devil’s Advocate: What do you hope to achieve in this enterprise?
Teacher: If I can motivate the disinterested students I hope they will all pass and graduate into Year 10 Maths.
Devil’s Advocate: Do you have any other goals?
Teacher: I am doing well if I can push them through the set course and maybe even some of them will continue studying Maths right through to university.
Devil’s Advocate: But don’t you have other loftier nobler goals?
Teacher: Like what?
Devil’s Advocate: Fostering well-rounded, grounded, thoughtful and compassionate human beings committed to building a better and fairer world?
Teacher: Sorry, that’s not in the Maths curriculum. I think they do that in Personal Development classes.
I am probably short-changing our Maths teacher in that many teachers may think about educational philosophy. However, I suspect that there is no consensus about exactly what should be the fundamental objective which should drive what happens in our schools.
There is simply no time in a super crowded curriculum to dwell on the truly human seminal questions around the meaning of my existence, the quality of my relationships and my growth as a decent human being and good citizen in my community and on planet earth.
If we are truly committed to building a better and fairer world without racism, sexism, violence and exploitation, then there must be a circuit breaker so that the next generation will see and do things differently.
What better opportunity is there to spend 12 years equipping our children with the tools and virtues to transform themselves and our society and create a more compassionate and caring world. What does it profit a graduate of our schools if he scores straight ‘A’s but is aesthetically, emotionally, spiritually and ethically retarded?
Greg Cudmore is a retired teacher with 45 years of experience of teaching in Victoria and Queensland. He is also the author of just published The Elephant in Our Classrooms