By Frank Moore

There has never been a policy against competitive sports at Preshil. What there has been is a general aversion to imposing competitive sports on our children and young people. If the wish to play a competitive game arises from the student body we applaud that and encourage it.  The crux of the school philosophy is to recognise and collaborate with all genuine grass-roots impulses, wishes that take flower within the student body. Let me illustrate. A week or two ago we ran a Q&A evening for the general public. It was voted a great success. Two past students joined the panel. They were Rachel Nordlinger, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Melbourne University and Liam Santamaria, teacher at Greythorn Primary School.  Rachel graduated in 1985 and Liam in 1997. The focus of the evening was around the theme ‘Achievement at Being Yourself’. When Liam left in 1997 he developed his talent as a basketballer and went on to play at a national level. I asked him how this had come about. The following is a transcript of what he said at the Q&A:

“When I was in Years 8, 9 and 10 over at Yallambee (former school site opposite Arlington), myself and a whole bunch of mates, we all played a lot of basketball. We played before school and at all of the breaks and on the weekends and we all played for teams on the weekends and, well, we wanted to put together a team, a school team. We thought, well a lot of other schools have school teams and they think they’re pretty good, and well we think we would probably be better than them. And so we approached the teachers and said we want to put together a Preshil basketball team and play against Xavier and Carey and eat ‘em. And, you know, the response was ‘OK great’. There never has been a Preshil basketball team before, but let’s do it. And you know, looking back, I realise that there was a potential for the response to be – there’s never really been a Preshil basketball team, it’s not kind of what we do here, so…er, maybe something else. But that wasn’t the response. The response was OK great, so what are you going to do to make that happen? And so we went back and said, gee, it’s not as easy as we thought. And so we approached the staff about getting the funds from the canteen for a couple of weeks to buy uniforms, which was okay, and so we designed the uniforms and I got on the phone and ordered them. They came in. I ran tryouts and then we worked the phones and we went to Xavier and we played Xavier and we went to Carey and we played Carey. We went to Trinity… Voice: Did you beat them? We beat all of them (laughter) and we consider ourselves, the, you know, basketball champions of Year 10, 1995 of all those different school systems because we beat everybody. And to me – that was us…and we missed some class time to do that, just like you would do if you were at one of those other schools, and to me that was us driving the school, running the school.”

This is a good illustration of what has happened many times during my long relationship with the school.

Bringing out the essential giftedness in a child is something that is more likely to happen through letting children make choices in a stimulating environment where there are lots of options rather than tying them down to a prescriptive curriculum of adult design. In the 1970s, Ivan Illich, a Viennese social philosopher, came to Melbourne briefly and gave one notable public lecture at Melbourne University. I was sitting in the front row. He has been described as ‘an archaeologist of ideas – someone who helped us to see the present in a truer and richer perspective.’ Illich described two kinds of human societies – convivial and manipulative. Convivial societies have no end in mind except the celebration of life whereas manipulative societies have a particular end in mind.

That end may be quite benign: a law-abiding citizen, a particular set of values and so on. All this is laudable but if it becomes the major focus of a school then manipulation of one kind or another will occur in order to get the desired outcome. And often the desired outcome will not be achieved simply because of the natural human wilfulness that we all feel when confronted by somebody else’s agenda for us. A celebration of life is something a school does together, in a gathered way. Across the two campuses of Preshil on an average morning there will be conversations going on, class discussions where all the issues that are concerning that group are brought out and talked about. These are added to by the forum times when an entire section of the school will come together for more conversation. Preshil children know how to talk and be articulate in public. Liam Santamaria’s wish to mount a basketball team had its first airing at a school forum.

In the weekend Age a couple of weeks ago Martin Flanagan wrote an article about an ex-Preshil graduate, Mischa Merz. Mischa is a boxer as well as a writer and a painter. In 2001 she was the national champion in her weight division. She wrote a book that year entitled ‘Bruising’. I can assure you that nobody introduced boxing to Mischa at Preshil. Flanagan writes ‘Merz went to Preshil, an alternative school that emphasised individuality. Preshil should be delighted with Mischa.’ We are indeed, Martin, because in some sense we paved the way for Mischa to find herself. So coming back to competitive sports – no we don’t stand in the way of any initiative from the students to play in competitions. There’s a big stir for soccer going on at Arlington at the moment. I’m sure it will lead to something.

COMPETITION: A NEGATIVE FORCE IN EDUCATION

By Fred M

Competition is normally interpreted as competing in some sort of race to win, usually for self-centred reasons and to “prove” something.

Climbing a mountain or going bushwalking, on the other hand, is most often working together with somebody to see the scenery and to feel the achievement, to smell the scents, to breathe the air, and to present oneself with a challenge, to stretch one’s horizons. The walking or climbing and exploring is most often done in a group, where each member has the obligation to support each other member, and each has the right to expect to be supported in the challenging environment, so that in the end all members have achieved and can enjoy the view with a sense of satisfaction and joy.

Rarely would they stop at the end of the climb or the walk and work out how to rank the performance of the participants. Rather, they would celebrate the achievement of all the members of the group, and the fact that they all arrived safe and sound and in a fit state to celebrate, and they would look around, to see what beautiful sights there are to be seen in this world. This, I believe, ought to be the model for learning, too.

Why then is ranking of people and scoring of performance so essential to education, when education is about the discovery of exciting things, like being able to read and “see” the huge and glorious expanse of worlds available through literature, like being able to perceive the patterns and shapes in the world of mathematics and the sensory delights of the world of art and music? Why is our government wanting to send children down narrow little dark lanes, where they are uncomfortable, unmotivated, imprisoned inside other people’s expectations, and in many cases doomed to fail as soon as they start? Why are people speaking and writing of “Literacy”, and equating it with the “Three R’s”, which mean Reading, Writing and “Rithmetic”, and “the basics”, which we have to “get back to”, as if these were ends in themselves, rather than the means to far more spectacular ends; where mystery and uncertainty ensure that there is always somewhere left to go?

Ranking of children is a part of our system at the moment, but it is alien to learning, because it takes the focus away from true learning, which is usually done best by sharing, interacting, exclaiming joyfully at beauty and surprise, by facing challenges with fellow learners, and by helping each other to learn. What learners respond to is an individual matter, of course.

Ranking children often has the effect of isolating children from each other. Imagine a group of 10 children, ranked from 1 to 10 in ability in a subject area, as for example mathematics. Now put yourself in the position of the “top gun”, who has outperformed the rest. You have decided to retire from the competition. You still love maths, but you are not allowed to retire from the competition, which is a constant source of stress, because not only must you compete, but you are defined as a failure if you do not defeat all comers.

Or perhaps try yourself as number two in the ranking. Probably you also are locked into the competition and do not have the option of not competing, because of the class or school culture, but you can never win, no matter how hard you try to overcome Number One. So, you are a constant failure, and not only that, you have the people below you on the ladder who believe they should be above you, trying to “knock you off”, which is perfectly appropriate for a tennis club ladder, or a squash club ladder, or an AFL ladder, but has nothing to do with education.

There are disastrous outcomes for some “low rank” children, who are defined as “losers”, “vegie maths kids”, “dopes”, and so on, but on the other hand the “winner” in this kind of ranking and labelling game is sometimes the one who is defined out of the ranking, is last on the ladder, knows that he is free of the competition, and sees all this school-generated competition as nothing to do with real life, and will live life in other ways. He may quite happily say, “Aw, I’m no good at reading.  Would you like a game of chess/footy/downball…?” They are not trapped in the main competition, or even in some sort of “sub-competition” in smaller groups.

It is a very common experience (and one that accompanies “labelling”) that people will stop running, climbing, reading, or learning, if they are defined (by themselves or others) as not very good at the activity, or if they are too stressed by the whole idea of competition  -  unless, of course, there is something wonderful to experience; those who do succeed in reading despite being labelled as failures in the competition probably only do so because they experience something emotionally or intellectually rewarding.

The jungle is a good metaphor for learning - one can enter it (whether it be spelling, science, art, music, mathematics, or whatever field) with fear, or with excitement, to hide from unknown and scary aspects, or to explore and discover. The fear in learning comes from fear of failure as a learner, fear of meeting expectations [usually those of other people], fear even of being punished for not “performing”.  It comes from labelling, from loss of self-esteem, or if one’s “identity” is defined, by oneself or by others, as pathetic or inadequate. One of the best metaphors for such a catastrophe is one I heard from a man formerly “illiterate”, but rescued from this state by a friend who cared and was interested in language. “We are all born with a sort of computer inside us, and all the time, every day, it is being programmed by all those around us”. His own programmers were his father and his teachers, who had “recognised” that he was to a large extent “unteachable”, and whose diagnosis he himself had accepted. For about thirty years of his life he was cheated of any learning connected to reading and writing, before he discovered that the “programmers” were quite wrong, and that he was perfectly capable of reading and writing. He had been told, not only that the jungle was dangerous, but he was not even the right kind of person to be there! And it was not true! He is now a prolific reader.

The safest way to start exploring the jungle may be with a guide who has experienced it before, who loves it, and who can show you the unexpected patterns and pathways, and the ways in which different parts of it are connected. There are, of course, those who prefer to explore alone and do not need or want a guide, but they are not the norm, happy and competent as they may be to make their own way. These people also, I would guess, are not winning a competition, but enjoying the experience of discovery, unhampered by competitive elements and restrictions.

What the government wants is far from the metaphor of learning as bushwalking or mountain-climbing, or even walking through the Botanic Gardens, or even learning to play a team sport, where we encourage each other along, and point to exciting achievements, or scenes, or animals?  Why does the government want all these highly statistical results? I suspect because it wants to make generalised statements about some policy or other, which by definition cannot be applied to any individual person.  Politics and most politicians do not understand education at all, especially the Preshil version.