Notes/blog on Callendar and Curry
National descriptors appeared from my line manager at some point in the noughties during my adult literacy teaching in south London, mystifying and linked to an enormous government online document that listed their denotations. Slightly alarmed at this development but set on avoiding it, I continued to seek what was in my students’ minds in order to build a curriculum that I could articulate within the learning outcomes of lesson-plans, but hastily aligned them to these descriptors. Management seemed happy with the corresponding numbers and letters in the top right-hand corner of observed lesson plans. The students learned things; I learned about my students, their interests and life plans and histories, and classes trundled along as usual. Never a day passed that I forgot how lucky I was not to be teaching in the mainstream school sector – K-12, as we call it in Canada.
But my UK experience of education wasn’t entirely a lucky escape, as meanwhile my children faced the daily attrition of school life, that drained any ‘enchantment’ (Curry, 2017), that they had begun their school career with, at the age of 3. Poor souls. To observe this journey was not for the faint hearted I found, as I struggled to make sense of shrinking arts and physical education curriculum ‘under attack’ like the Humanities at universities (Curry, 2017, p.6), extended school days, burgeoning testing…, mounting exclusions that manifested in all manner of creative ways (Interestingly, research shows a clusters of exclusions occurring in the spring of the gcse year and highlights that this ‘timing – just before the cut-off date for including pupils’ results in the school performance tables – raises very difficult questions’ (Education Policy Insititute, 2021) questions presumably, of our obsession to meet achievement targets. Most of these exclusions are racially disproportionate (Department for Education exclusions statistics, 2018-19.).
However, with parents as teachers, professors and policy makers, I have been conditioned to observe any criticism of the teaching system with distrust. To complain is lazy, to engage is more admirable and to become the best teacher you can be. In this context, reading texts like ‘The Enchantment of Learning and ‘The Fate of our Times’’ (Curry, 2017) is a little painful. Upon reading apt publications such as this one, my disassociation with the UK education system only grows as does my despair. We must be able to do better. Initiatives to level the playing field continue to fail (Education Polcy Insititue, 2021).
Nonetheless, it is a relief to see Curry’s (2007) points in print and it is true that I continue to take advantage of the opportunities that one-to-one specialist study skills tutorials at the University of Arts, London allow. In this forum, I can explore my students’ perceptions and point of views on their topics, and how they relate what they’re learning to their daily lives and surrounding socio-political environment in personal and meaningful ways.
As a study skills specialist, caught between a contractual obligation steeped in rules and regulations and attaining enchantment, I begin with considering my job’s objective…. Getting students to pass. Some say that to merely ‘pass’ isn’t a very high aspiration. But I say to you, it is the first one. Why shouldn’t I do my hardest to make sure a student doesn’t have to experience the familiar failure of not passing a school/university assignment? Continued failure is so destructive as most dyslexics can confirm. Do not dismiss a ‘pass’.
The tutorial is a contractual situation where expectations of success is delivered, often through techniques such as ‘rationalisation’: abstracting, objectifying, explaining…’ (Curry, 2017, p.3), aiming for ‘’objectivity’ (p.4). The customers are the disabled student allownce (DSA), management and the student. It’s transactional.
Getting the basics out of the way, now ‘enchantment’ can begin. Taking Curry’s (2017) advice, to encourage enchantment, I should ‘leave room for it, resisting the temptation to try to meddle and control the outcome, and create the conditions it favours…’ (p.7). And this is where the tutorial can become more human, student-led and responsive t o their needs and interests – and for it to be a success, it generally needs to be this responsive.
Working with creative arts students, supporting their steps through the mine field of academic conventions, helping them ‘objectify’ their topics of learning,….. to master a voice both written and oral to discuss the aesthetics of their making, practice or influential artefacts that they engage in…. feels a little strange, as I am a total imposter in this arena. However, Callendar’s (2005) discussion on the nature of aesthetic judgements was a breath of fresh air, with his conclusion of ‘judgement of the self and judgement of art’ being one and the same thing…
Striving to assist students with developing their critical analysis skills the challenge is to develop objectivity upon a topic, and this means helping student see things from different perspectives and within various contexts to develop an enriched point of view; one that positions finally, in a perch of authority (They begin to get something for their money).
However, having read Curry’s (2017) article I can’t help recall his description of the role of metaphor in the process of enchantment – to consider things as other things requires imagination, to think as another might think is along the lines of empathy, and isn’t that taking another subjective position? And positioning the mind in multiple subjectivities ultimately arrives at the sought-after objective position?
Callendar (2005) is helpful here in his discussion of the Kantian principles of aesthetics, as he concludes his article with
‘art can be seen as an externalization of the world of inner experience’
and it becomes clear that the students are juggling their inner subjectivities with the all-elusive goal of achieving objectivity in their critical analyses that should underpin their written expression, and who knows? Maybe give them a ‘pass’.
References
Callender, J. (2005) ‘The Role of Aesthetic Judgments in Psychotherapy’, in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 12(4), pp.283-295.
Curry, P. (2017) ‘The Enchantment of Learning and ‘The Fate of our Times’. In Voss, A. and Wilson, S. (eds.) Re-Enchanting the Academy. Seattle: Rubedo Press, pp.33-51.
Education Policy Institute (2021) The National Funding Formula: consideration of better targeting to disadvantaged pupils Available at:(https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/the-national-funding-formula-consideration-of-better-targeting-to-disadvantaged-pupils/.