January 14 Kiebard's Metaphors

Travellers, Gardeners or Producers?

I am struck by the fact that everyone in the class identified themselves as either gardeners or travellers or at least identified problems with the producer metaphor. As Dr. Hlynka pointed out, the dominant metaphor in our provincial department is producer (think Great books, trades, sciences, technology, etc.). According to my reading, the producer metaphor looks at societal requirements and attempts to create students to fit the needs - very Orwellian. The gardener metaphor attends solely to needs of the child while the traveller metaphor attempts to blend the needs of individuals with the 'reality' of society.

So, we all toil on in our schools and classrooms either concerned with the needs of children completely or blending our student centred concerns with a sense that there is a society in which they must function. All the while, we work in a structure whose primary aim is efficient assimilation of young people into the social order. Seems a system doomed to fail or at least breed frustration for both those within it and those controlling it. So, why the disconnect?

Here's what the people at the Department of Education don't get. Children know things, important things. Worse, they know things that we don't know - or worse forget that we knew. There is a quality to the worldview of a child that is fundamentally different although closely related to that of our adult world. If this weren't the case, our Departments of Education would have an even more difficult time drafting curricula. After all, if children were exactly the same as us in outlook we wouldn't need to do anything more than present them with information they need to absorb and apply. However, the whole business of teaching concerns itself far more with how to convince (motivate) students to learn rather than with what is learned. Our job is at least partly to modify the worldview of our students.

Far be it from me to suggest that we should be handing the world over to children. In my five years teaching I have seen enough to suggest that although the worldview of children is in many ways more joyful, more trusting, more magic than ours, I have also seen the fanged nature of it as well. However, people who work with children cannot deny that there is something to it. In my view, that is what the people at the Department of Education don't get. For those of us immersed in the world of children it is ludicrous to try and sap the magic, trust and joy and replace it with the magic of science, the trust of logic and the joy of words without spending at least some time dabbling with it ourselves. We all grow up. Part of my joy comes from the ten minutes, one hour, or on some blessed days, six full hours spent seeing the world through a child's eyes. I'll meet my curricular outcomes because the children I work with deserve every chance to succeed in the adult world but I'll take my time thank you very much.