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Alice in Education Land: Alice gets a job, Chris Binge
This article is the first of a series of stories to be included as occasional contributions to International School magazine, created by Chris Binge in response to some of his experiences in international education. Intended to be provocative and amusing, they are also used to provoke discussion when he leads workshops.
Alice gets a job
In which Alice begins a new journey and finds herself with a surprising opportunity
Alice was feeling drowsy as she sat on the sofa in the living room. While the weather was inhospitable and cold outside, the warmth of the fire had a soporific effect as she looked at the mirror above the fire and remembered her past adventures as a 6-year-old girl. Of course, she was much older now, and was a confident and knowledgeable adult because she had been through Education.
She always wondered whether to write the word education with a capital E or a small one. Capital E Education made her think of the systems and institutions that she had been through from kindergarten and school to university and college. It meant the names of the courses, the way they were organised and, of course, the qualifications that she had gained, which were now framed on the wall just next to the looking glass. education with a small e meant something different to her. It summed up what she had actually learned, what she knew and what she could do, how she understood the world and the skills she brought to bear on the bits she did not yet understand. The mystery was why these two seemed so different to each other, and why there seemed to be so little connection between the two. Two other words sprang to her mind as she reflected on her learning, and she knew that all good learners should reflect. She had been told that many times.
The two other words were “because” and “despite”. They seemed almost interchangeable in so many sentences, which left her even more confused than before. Did she learn because of school or despite it, because of exams or despite them, because of teachers or despite them? It was at that point she resolved to get to the bottom of the problem, using all the talents her education had given her. In short, she would find out whether she had gained an education because of her Education or despite it. The opportunity came sooner than she might have dreamed.
It grew colder in the living room for reasons that Alice could not quite explain, for the windows were closed and the fire still blazed. Yet, there seemed to be a breeze springing up, and coming from the fire. No, not from the fire, from the looking glass above the fire. There was something borne on the wind, fluttering in the air. A piece of paper? A letter? Yes, it was a letter and it floated through the glass into the sitting room to land on Alice’s lap. It looked formal as it had a crest on it, but the only writing that it bore were the two words “Open me”.
Alice had learnt before that interesting things can happen when you follow enigmatic instructions, so she opened the letter. It was from the office of the Red Queen.
O�fice of the Red Queen Headteacher Today Dear Alice, I am pleased to say that your application for a post as a teacher in Wonderland has been successful. You are now appointed as teacher of the pawns with immediate e�fect. Please report for school this very a�ternoon for your training and professional development. I am sure you are looking forward to working in our fine establishment. pp Red Queen
Alice wasn’t sure she ever remembered applying for such a job, which she found a little strange. It turned out to be one of the least strange things she discovered in the Wonderland of Education.
Into a classroom
In which Alice encounters some strange values and meets some of the school community.
Alice drifted through the looking glass in a daze and landed softly on the cushions of the sofa on the other side. As she came to her senses she could see that the room was as before, similar but eerily different from the one she had left. Everything was back to front again. The first thing she saw was a door on her right, or was it her left? She was already confused. The door had a number on it. The entire door was rather dirty, and the bottom particularly looked as though it had been kicked several times, with shoe marks on it and even a few dents. Further up were some rather grubby handprints, and the handle was loose. There was a small window in the door at head height for an adult. Alice
tried to peek in but could see nothing, as a piece of paper was attached to the other side covering the glass. Alice knew instinctively that this was a classroom door.
As she contemplated whether or not to open the door, the decision was taken away from her. It flew open accompanied by a noisy charge out of the room by a number of small pawns. Some were red and some were white, they were all running, most had smiles on their faces and they were chattering away to each other, to nobody in particular, to the air around them and to themselves. They bounced off each other, off the suffering and bruised door, off the corridor walls and even off Alice until she stood back to let them pass.
“There was a time”, said the door to Alice’s surprise, “when doors were respected. I was opened carefully, held back by the teacher and she shook hands with each child as they calmly walked out in single file. Now look at them. Look at the state of me! No respect!” Alice had never met a talking door before, and certainly not a grumpy talking door. She looked to see where the voice was coming from, and found that one of the cracks, about half way down, was in fact a mouth. Alice was not sure about the correct way to address a door, so she felt she should err on the side of over-politeness.
“I am very sorry Mr Door, but would you mind if I pass through?” she asked with a little bow.
“If you must,” responded the door.
Alice walked into the classroom. The walls, the back of the door and even some of the windows were covered with pieces of work, posters and complicated evacuation instructions. The largest item, most centrally placed, looked like this:
The School Values
The school community … pursues mediocrity … avoids responsibility … celebrates conformity …
There was more writing between each of the statements but it was too little to read, and Alice was already so struck by the tone of the main statements that she did not feel it necessary to engage with the small print.
“My”, she said, “What a fascinating set of values! I wonder why they chose them.”
“Did you say something, dear?” said a voice in the corner of the room, tucked behind a desk and a pile of books. Alice had not noticed anyone there before and, with a start, realised that this must be the teacher. He had a kindly face with a slightly distracted smile. He was dressed in a white outfit with a slightly clerical appearance. His glasses were perched on the top of a rather pointed hat. Alice guessed that he might be the White Bishop.
“I am sorry”, said Alice, giving a little bow, “I should have introduced myself. My name is Alice and I am here to take up a teaching position.”
“I know who you are, dear, I wrote you the letter of appointment.” Alice was about to interrupt, but the Bishop continued, “Yes, I know it said Red Queen on it, but that was after a pp. That stands for per procurationem, which is Latin for ‘through the agency of’. It means I can write letters from the school with the authority of the Principal and she doesn’t have to sign them herself. School Principals don’t have time for all that kind of stuff you know. They are far too important.”
“I am sure they are.” said Alice, somewhat taken aback. “What exactly do they do?”
“Well, nobody is entirely sure exactly what they do, but there is a lot of research that shows their role is very important. Having a good Principal is one of the most influential factors in having a good school. That is very clear from all the studies.”
“But, if you are not sure what a Principal does, then how do you know if they are any good?” Alice was finding this conversation confusing.
“Well that is obvious,” retorted the Bishop with increasing agitation and volume, “because they run a good school! If they weren’t a good Principal it couldn’t be a good school. I have told you about the research.”
There was something in the logic of this that concerned Alice, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on the problem. She understood that the evidence was clear that a good school has a good Principal, and that a good Principal runs a good school. That much is obvious, as the White Bishop had said. But if the only way we can find out if the Principal is any good is to see if the school is any good, then aren’t the results of the research bound to be true, by definition? There seemed to be a certain amount of circularity in the argument. As she pondered, the White Bishop calmed down and was able to elaborate a bit more on the key role of the important Principal.
“They do uphold our values, of course,” he continued in a quieter and rather unenthusiastic tone. “They enact them and they repeat them at every available opportunity, and they put up notices in classrooms and around the school so everyone can see them.” By this stage, any excitement or interest that could be detected in the Bishop’s voice had dwindled to imperceptible levels. Alice decided to try and inject some enthusiasm because she had, indeed, been intrigued by the values on the poster.
“Please tell me about the values. Why do you ‘Pursue Mediocrity?’ Surely your students should be striving for excellence.”
The Bishop took a deep breath. “Well,” he began, “I have to admit that Excellence was what we started with. It is not the most original of school values. Most schools have that one somewhere in there. Indeed, it would be hard to find a school that didn’t espouse Excellence as an aim. But then when we looked at what we actually do, we saw that in reality we put more effort into promoting the mediocre.”
“How?” stuttered a rather confused Alice.
“We do exams!” answered the Bishop.
“But surely exams are an incentive for students to excel,” blurted Alice, “A way of measuring how excellent they are, a celebration of their excellent achievements?”
“Oh dear. You really don’t understand very much do you? When you were at school, I imagine there was a range of
ability among your fellow students, from those who struggled with an academic curriculum to those who were quite brilliant and sailed through with ease. You, I suspect, were somewhere between the two extremes?” Alice just nodded cautiously, so he went on. “Well, that was a fairly safe bet, because of course almost everybody is somewhere between those extremes. Now, when did you take your exams?”
“I took some at 15, and some more at 17,” Alice replied.
“Exactly, and when did those who really struggled take their exams?” he asked.
“Er ... At the same age as me,” said Alice, beginning to see where this might be going.
“And what about the really brilliant ones?” the teacher continued.
“Well, also at the same age,” Alice answered.
“And I suspect they even took them on the same day, mostly in the same subjects and with the same exam questions. Some will have found it very hard to achieve even reasonable scores on most exams, but others will have scored the top grades in every subject without really having to try too hard. It is the same here. We looked for excellence in all of this and found it certainly was not at the bottom end. You cannot really call a series of failing grades excellence by any measure. We found it wasn’t at the top end either. These students were achieving well below their capabilities even by getting it all right. They certainly weren’t excelling in any meaningful sense of the term.”
“So when we looked at who these exams were really good for, we found it was the group right in the middle, those who were genuinely and triumphantly mediocre. We felt it was only honest to celebrate their achievements and proudly say that was what we did. So, we are possibly the only school you will ever find that trumpets our value of pursuing mediocrity. I would not want to boast here, because there are many other schools that pursue mediocrity just as successfully as we do. We just say that we do so.”
“If you want any more information you had better go and see the Red Queen in the office across the corridor. I am going for a cup of tea”. And with that the Bishop glided diagonally out of the door and across the chequered floor of the corridor.
To be continued …
