#53 The Missing Dimension

Hi Everyone

I'll leave you to decide whether you would recognise me from my Harry Potter inspired avatar, but I wanted to use it to illustrate the main idea behind this week's newsletter. Having recently devoured the book 'Nine Rooms' by Dr John Rowe, I feel that I can finally address an issue that has been eating away at me for years, but which I've never been fully able to express.

I now know why I haven't been able to broach this particular subject so far, except at a superficial level, and that's because it's 'indescribable'. And believe it or not that's a good thing! Dr John Rowe explains in his book that there are 2 sides to every experience, firstly what we 'do' and secondly who we actually 'are' internally, as we interact with our environment.

The 'what we do' bit, is 'describable', ie; can be broken down into chunks and explained, observed and replicated by others. The indescribable element of who we actually ‘are’ and the impact we bring along with it, he calls the ‘missing dimension’. That part is indescribable because the moment you try to explain, it's power is reduced to boxed bits of 'described' information that is not an authentic representation of you.

Hence the example of the avatar where I have long greying hair, brown eyes, wear glasses for some activities, like cats, love books, and apparently qualify for being a member of the House of Gryffindor. (I did the quiz!) That picture however is not 'me', and we need to question what proportion of our lives is actually spent being truly authentic in a way that is 'indescribable', ie; not confined to a socially accepted structure. (In the book this is described as our Complete Transmission Experience or CTE)

My main concern however, mentioned at the outset, is the application of this principle to education. You knew I was likely to go there sooner or later didn't you? We teach students all the facts listed and described by a stated curriculum, and insist on doing so using evidence-based strategies that can similarly be ‘described’ for replication purposes. It is however the internal joy and fulfilment that comes to an individual in relation to learning that is 'indescribable' and unfortunately missing for the greater part!

'Nine Rooms' is littered with short stories (with Eastern influences) to help promote reflection on the topic, and one of the earlier ones is about a group who’re fascinated by the activity of some local monkeys. Keen to understand and explain what the animals are doing, (describable) they kill one and take it apart to find out more, and are then disappointed when they put it back together again and are missing the ‘life’ (indescribable) part that had made it function!

That immediately prompted the question for me; 'Where’s the 'life' for our children and young people in the learning opportunities we provide for them during their formative years in school?' Where’s the ‘indescribable’ element that makes learning (and teaching I might add) a joyous ‘experience’? The Complete Transmission Experience is a poor one and that's the missing dimension that has bugged me for decades and why I continue to plead with parents, school leaders, teachers and support staff to 'be in their corner'.

In his book, Dr Rowe provides the story of a music teacher attending an opera with her students who were required to analyse the characters and the music in detail in order to understand every aspect of it for assessment. Other members of the audience were 'enthralled' and 'caught up in the mood' which caused the teacher to bemoan that her students would never grow to experience the joy of opera. She reckoned that 'education had killed the potential of a lifetime's experience of remarkable and spontaneous enjoyment' for them'.

I heard something very similar from an English teacher recently who had lost her joy of teaching because the prescribed way in which she was expected to teach, was boring her, let alone her students. "I don't love my subject any more" she told me, "and it's going to kill any chance they might have had for enjoying literature in the future" she added sadly.

I'm sure that this will resonate with other teachers who are also limited by the current system in what they can provide for their students. Wouldn't we all love to to help all learners find that 'missing dimension' of joyful authenticity and allow them to 'be' who they are before it's too late? Are you interested in the role that metacognition might have in opening up a child's mind to the infinite possibilities of independent thinking? If so, you might also like to consider how can we improve our own CTE and that of our students?

Keep following!

Warm regards

Liz