Authors and Authority

There's a collection of memes that have retained some currency among teenagers these last few years and they're aimed squarely at the not-so-humble English teacher. In the simplest terms, it goes:

AUTHOR: "The curtains were blue"

ENGLISH TEACHER: *Insert analysis that seems over-the-top and ignores the fact that curtains are sometimes just blue*

At some point, sometimes perhaps only on the most symbolic of levels, the English teacher has to do battle with the senior English student as said student asserts that not everything can be analysed from an English standpoint. This debate can be fun and, in a way, plays right into the teacher's hands as it involves students exercising their critical thinking skills and forming independent opinions. In laying groundwork for the Year 11 'Reading to Write' Common Module, however, it also provides an opportunity to talk about something completely different to the merits of metaphor and analysis: the concept of literary authority. 

On this subject, the French semiotician Roland Barthes famously said,

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

We can use this quote to introduce students to the concepts of post-modernism and literary authority. The idea that an author doesn't get the final say on what they write is a genuinely unsettling question for many students to deal with, and the debates that arise from this can be challenging and disruptive to even the teacher's concept of what English is all about. At the heart of this idea though is something that gets to the very core of our role as teachers...

We teach with the aim of relinquishing our authority as knowledge-holders, and we teach to empower the student to become their own authority on the text. 

This isn't a straight-forward exchange or journey, and the success rate inevitably varies, but if even just one of our students becomes confident and equipped enough to develop a contrary opinion backed by their own judiciously-selected evidence... then this is the apotheosis of teaching, is it not?

Perhaps the quote should be:

"The birth of the student must be at the cost of the death of the teacher"

In engaging teenagers with such a challenging idea it becomes necessary to break it down and develop material that will re-contextualise academic theory within a 21st century adolescent space. I've included a PowerPoint below that went some way towards helping my current Year 11 Advanced English students.

• Slide 1 - Students engage with both sides of the debate via the Roland Barthes quote and one of the previously mentioned memes.
• Slide 2 - Students engage with a popular online meme to break down the idea of looking at a text from multiple points of view. This text, supposedly drawn by a young child, gives a straightforward account of a young student's current home life. In isolation, the text can be viewed as an authentic example of the unreliable narrator - a storyteller who is unwilling or unable to relate the reality of the events around them. The point here is that students are asked to consider four separate ways of 'reading' the text; the ultimate goal being to disrupt/challenge the concept of the author having ultimate authority over the meaning of the text. 
• Slide 3 - Examine a range of statements that reposition the concept of authority and authorship. Students are then asked to assign each statement a score based on how much they are in agreement with it. The class can then decide (argue) over the placement of each statement on a line that shows a spectrum of agreement/non-agreement. [Numeracy in English. Nice!]

Here's the PowerPoint: Authors and Authority.

Deng and Mao: Changing Political Standing

This cover from a 1983 Time magazine demonstrates the challenging relationship between two of modern China's most influential figures.

The middle section of Option B for Change in the Modern World in the new Modern History HSC syllabus deals with the transition stage between the two big key events that form the basis of the study. In the 1960s we have the Cultural Revolution, and in 1989 we have the Tiananmen Square Incident, but between these flashpoints of great social upheaval there is a changeover of guard that helped to shape the course of Chinese history in the latter half of the 20th Century. The early 1970s saw Mao Zedong go into physical decline as he began to outwardly show signs of Parkinson's Disease, leading to his disappearance from the public eye before his death in 1976. By 1979 he would be succeeded as paramount leader by his co-revolutionary and long-time colleague Deng Xiaoping.

The details of China's political development in terms of key political figures can be seen here.

You'll note, however, that 1976 and 1979 are three years apart. It wasn't a smooth rise for Deng to become China's new helmsman, and Mao's own 'fall' from power isn't as clear cut as one might imagine. The involvement of Hua Guofeng as Mao's immediate successor, and the prosecution/scapegoating of the Gang of Four, are the two major factors that would eventually allow Deng to complete his 'rehabilitation' from persecuted enemy of the state in the Cultural Revolution to powerful and respected Party member in the wake of Mao's death.

Here's a resource that details the rises and falls of Mao and Deng in greater detail -Resource: Deng and Mao

In order to get students thinking about the impact of significant events on the way each of these men were perceived by the public and Chinese Communist Party, it will beneficial to encourage some degree of independent evaluation. Students can do this by looking at each dot point in the resource and assigning a score out of 10 indicating how popular and/or powerful they think Mao or Deng would have been in relation to said event. The results can then be plotted on a graph depicting their respective political standing, allowing for visual comparison of data created through direct engagement of the student with the historical detail.

It's numeracy in History!

The graph may look something like this. Be mindful that this is just based on the scores that I gave to each dot point - it isn't factual, it's a graphic representation of my opinion as an amateur historian. Each student should have different results as it will be based on their own evaluation of the events.

It's not an exact science as the data is evaluative rather than quantitative, however, it does help students represent their understand in a concrete and visible fashion.

You could do a couple of things after this, such as:

• Compare and contrast results, encouraging debate around the nature of subjective evaluation when judging the merits of significant historical figures. 
• Create an aggregated version of the graph  by taking averages of the class's combined scores and making one overall graph.
• Have students write a paragraph response assessing the syllabus dot point on the changing political standing of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, using their newly created graph as evidence to draw upon.

The USSR: Collectivisation Source Analysis

Propaganda poster showing the fist of Soviet Russia smiting the greedy Kulak (rich peasant). Kulaks were the enemy of collectivisation, and a ready scapegoat on which Stalin could blame the peasantry's many woes.

I'm right in the midst of teaching the Modern History National Study, Option G: Russia and the Soviet Union (damn, that name is so catchy) and have been chatting to my students about Stalin's Five Year Plans and the process of collectivisation. 

I've come to realise that it's worth spending at least a few lessons approaching collectivisation from a few different angles. In one lesson we did a role-play activity in which students moved through the stages of Marxist society - from feudalism/capitalism to socialism, and from socialism to collectivisation (adapted from a great activity by one of my colleagues, Ashlee Horton). 

In a more recent lesson, I gave the class some sources about collectivisation so they could practice their source analysis. In previous posts I talked about taking a more grammar-based approach to source analysis - here and here - and described the way text chain identification can assist students in building their ability to decode unfamiliar words in order to increase their content-specific vocabulary. 

Let's not beat around the bush, HSC Modern History is a difficult subject. And whilst Modern History is the sort of course that rewards students who work hard, read regularly, and have no major issues writing essays, it's also a course that attracts a diverse array of students with a variety of learning styles that don't necessarily encompass those skills. For some of these students, who may also be undertaking the non-ATAR English Studies course, extra support is needed to scaffold the skills section of Modern History. Conceptual approaches like OCMAP or COMBAT can elicit some great analysis from many students, but taking a grammar-based approach can help open the process up to students who need something else. 

The first source in the sheet below is a speech from Joseph Stalin about his motivations behind thrusting the Soviet Union into a brave new world of super-farms. Students start out by identifying some text chains in the source. A text chain is a string of connected words in a text that mean the same thing. Finding and linking these synonyms allows students to build their vocabulary in relation to the content, scaffolding the reading process in order to dissuade them from disengagement before they attempt whole-text analysis.

You can start this out by modelling one or two text chains on the board. Pick a word out, such as "slow down", and join it to "put a check on" and then "reduced". Students can then do this with any number of words in the text, building up their understanding of the whole source by creating meaning within and across sentences.

The next couple of questions then follow on from this understanding to get the students engaging with the content and the reasons for Stalin's choice of language. For teachers looking (or needing) to differentiate their work more substantially due to the presence of students with a wide range of learning abilities, this grammatical approach provides an alternative way-in for any kids struggling to get to grips with the usual methods for analysing historical sources.

After the Stalin speech there are some tables about production and collectivisation in 1930s USSR, and an activity where this information needs to be converted into a graph. I like this sort of stuff because it's a legitimately useful way to use numeracy skills in Modern History, and it can make the learning more concrete for those students who are more mathematically-minded. 

Anyway, the activities are all below on the sheet.

Resource:


A Source on Collectivisation

STEM Sells

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting in a lecture theatre at Western Sydney University simply because the professional learning on STEM has been offered as a free seminar. I've heard this acronym a few times over the last year and since it's free I thought I should come see what's it all about. 

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths. The STEM organisation has grown as a response to Australia's flagging home-grown talent in these areas, in the hope that better ties can be made between high schools and industry to plug the gap. I'm paraphrasing here, but one great opening idea to this lecture ran as thus, "The more connections a young person has with industry, the higher their chance of post-school success". STEM seeks to embed this philosophy into Australian education through the support of the Beacon Foundation and Origin Foundation, in the hope that our senior students will start selecting these subjects in greater numbers.

This chart shows the Top 10 performing countries for Maths, Sciences and Reading (please excuse the poor lighting).

Many students are not choosing STEM subjects at high schools. For example, the number of students who don't study maths at all has tripled in recent times. In Australia, 30% of staff in some STEM sectors are manpower imported from overseas, and coders created in this country are almost all male. The Beacon Foundation seeks to connect STEM businesses with schools in order to build more productive pathways into these industries.

So where do my KLAs English and History fit in? Well, if you want to be a teacher, you will - believe it or not - find that STEM skills are highly useful in working as an effective educator in our increasingly administrative and data-driven profession. It's also believed by the STEM organisation that 1/3 of the jobs of the future haven't been invented yet, so I think we should also therefore consider that current jobs will also undergo additional evolution in conjunction with technology and use of data. The way that teachers teach in the future will be radically different to the way we teach now, in much the same way that current professional expectations contrast quite heavily with the way teaching was conducted 30 years ago. 

From a content-driven standpoint, English in particular can actually contribute to the deficit in STEM industries by addressing gender stereotypes. The sheer dearth of females in STEM jobs in Australia has been borne out of gender stereotyping that continues to persists as an ingrained aspect of Western society. This is where the importance of the English curriculum comes into play, with several opportunities throughout Years 7 to 12 to address our society's cultural constructs regarding gender, which should help encourage more teenage girls to become interested in STEM subjects. Additionally, from a STEM standpoint, we should also be ensuring that numeracy is as accounted for in humanities subjects as we'd like literacy to be catered for in the STEM subjects.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this seminar was an interview panel with some industry professionals. From left to right in the picture above, we have:

• Andy McDaid - manager of sourcing programs for Origin Energy
• Sean Barrett - Head of Origin Foundation
• Mark Bernhardt - Senior HSE Business Partner - Origin Energy (Health Sector Environment)
• Ben St Clair - Manager, Market Risk Development - Origin Energy 
• Catherine Attard - Associated Professor WSU
• Scott Harris - Chief Exec of Beacon Foundation

Each spoke about their interest in STEM subjects and the ways these domains of knowledge are imperative for their respective industries. 

This chart shows the motivations behind teachers choosing to specialise in STEM subjects. Blue = 47%, Darker Green = 29%, Light Green = 24%

Barriers to student uptake of STEM subjects. Green = 32%, Grey = 26%, Dark Blue = 30%, Light Blue = 16%, Orange = 16%

How much do we currently engage industry in the delivery of our curriculum? No = 49%, Sometimes = 14%, Yes = 37%.

WARNING: I'm going to get political now, so close this tab if you don't want to think about all of this too negatively.

STEM ultimately wants to prevail in creating an 'innovation pedagogy'. There is, however, one great irony that needs addressing here - in a political regime that promotes 'innovation', why is education funding so poorly considered by Malcolm Turnbull's government? For STEM and other areas ripe for future breakthroughs, our culture isn't going to change while education is so undervalued by the blokes in power (and let's face it, most of them still are men). 

At the time of writing, the government has pledged $12 million towards restoring a focus on STEM subjects. Under a purely equitable model, that equals $8 per school. You can't even buy one calculator for that much. And let's face it, without better literacy in our schools, how are we even going to get students to engage with higher order skills in STEM subjects? With that point, I would say that funding needs to go to all areas of education in order to improve STEM, not just the STEM subjects. 

This is through no fault of the STEM organisation, at least no more than any other aspect of Australian society being the fault of voters. All I'll say is: when you vote, think about how much money that particular political party is willing to put into education. Nothing is going to happen in this culture of ours without better funded education. We talk about the future as being a space that needs to be prepared for, but what about now? Students need us now. 

For more information, check out these websites.

Beacon Foundation

Origin Foundation