Now Is The Best Time to Be...

Which are more fleeting, the tears of happiness or the tears of sorrow?

Happiness is…over-rated. The problem with happiness is that what goes up invariably crashes down. This can be fine if one enjoys rollercoasters. Some people enjoy the taste of their heart in their mouth. As for myself, I to often have a fear of heights, though staring out of an aeroplane window can be gently soporific. Clouds are white, and into each life a little rain must fall unless one is above them.

When Marc first brought up this topic I decided I would write about contentment. I realised I would mention Krishnamurti, who in his books, I thought, suggested that contentment is a more satisfactory state of affairs than happiness. To be content is to be beyond both happiness and unhappiness. Happiness screams, contentment nods sagely, unhappiness wallows, contentment nods again. But just now, on opening "Education and the Significance of Life" at random, I encountered the following:

"Life is pain, joy, beauty, ugliness, love and when we understand it as a whole, at every level that understanding creates its own technique. But the contrary is not true: technique can never bring about creative understanding."

I realise I was going to write about contentment as a technique. Just so many empty words. And can language learners risk contentment? Even young children need to stretch and apply themselves to acquire language, though this effort can largely be unconscious. An effective teacher will act as a catalyst and stimulate growth. The teacher, however, also needs to know how to get out of the way, least the growth be stunted or curtailed. The life, the learning is integral to the learner, springs from within the learner, is the learner. There is an element of movement contained in this that the notion of contentment seems to restrict. At the surface level contentment appears to be static. Marc's focus on happiness is more dynamic.

Which has more meaning, fears from the past or fears for tomorrow?

If happiness is conducive to learning it is worth considering the effect of other emotional states. From my own experience I know that fear is a murderer. One thing I inevitably warn my adult students about is that I am a dreadful speller. I have various memories of different teachers and if I allow myself can still smell the bile in the ridicule that was sometimes heaped on pupils for bad spelling. I know that I consciously gave up trying to spell words at school and took refuge in a strategy of avoidance. That was because I feared the scorn.

Past fear, however, only goes so far in explaining present circumstances. One must keep recreating it to keep it in mind and to experience its effects. I do admit to a certain contentment when it comes to not learning to spell. By being a bad speller I can demonstrate to students both that teachers make mistakes and that it is OK to do so. In other words, I perceive my lack as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. More on this below.

Which has more hold, expectation or regret?

Another dreadful emotional state is boredom. A bored mind is a closed mind. Accordingly, I think it is essential to get feedback from students. In my mind choice and chance are both important elements of any lesson. Many books giving advice about teaching children emphasise the importance of routine. Routine certainly can help children feel comfortable and safe. It can also make them feel dull. Surprise can be stimulating and joyful.

One way to combine routine with elements of surprise is to use lesson segments. A segment has a predictable structure so children know what to expect within it. However, like eating an orange one can choose how to eat the individual segments, when to eat them and even whether to eat them at all. A segment can also contain an element of randomness. For example, at the kindergarten I am working at now we have created a segment using tables. Each table seats four children and we are encouraging them to work together at the table by focusing on choral output, i.e. when seated at the table the children should respond together rather than individually and the activities we do while at table reflect this. The random element is introduced by using name cards and shuffling them to assign seating positions. Children sit down according to the location of their name card. Sometimes this puts students who like to argue next to each other. Conventional wisdom would be to separate them. However, the alternative of asking them whether they think they can get along together for the duration of the activity without conflict seems to be working. Through choice children learn to appreciate responsibility.

Which has more hold, experience expected or experience met?

Turning away from negative emotions, the most important positive emotion for learning is certainly desire. Need is often identified as a significant factor in language acquisition but it pales before the brilliant candescence of desire. Anyone who has tried to convince a young child to eat lunch or an older one to revise for an exam will realise that need isn't all it is cracked up to be. I feel getting a handle on desire is the holy grail of language learning, or any learning for that matter.

Students who are happy will learn more. Students who have a positive belief about themselves as learners will learn even more. Conversely students who dwell on their failures will have a difficult time. There's a very interesting article by Herbert Puchta that discusses this. Here's a link. Being aware of how students can interpret activities is important. I guess ideally an activity should be set up so that while students can perceive satisfaction at meeting a challenge they won't be able to interpret the results as failure. One reason I dislike competitive games is that they set up some students to fail. I know the argument about not giving up and that as long as one keeps trying one hasn't failed. I find this trying at best. I do think determination is useful and should be encouraged but trying to win can also be like embracing a thistle or sitting on a bumble bee. It hurts. As the story Ferdinand The Bull by Munroe Leaf indicates, fighting and struggle is not for everyone.

Something else that is not for everyone, or shouldn't be, is testing. I wonder how much fear, misery and unhappiness tests create? I'm not just thinking about formal tests. I'm also thinking about anything that a student might perceive as a test. I think it is possible to perceive the light of curiosity die on the face of child who feels he or she is being tested.

Unconditional love is the greatest gift we can give children. When children know they have this they become free to determine for themselves what they will be. They become free to grow and free to change. In Munroe Leaf's story Ferdinand's mother, who as he puts it, is a cow, is wise enough to allow her son to be himself. Would that all human fathers and mothers would do the same. Should teachers of children accept the wishes of parents over those of children? I've met quite a few children who enjoy learning English. I've probably met more who are indifferent to it.. I've met some who really disliked it. Where possible, I've refused to work with children who had no interest. This means I've worked with a lot of ambivalent children and increasingly I wonder about this. If we don't have passion for something and don't want to develop it. Why do it? Isn't that ultimately the road to unhappiness? Shouldn't we be encouraging children to find and develop their own passions. Shouldn't we be doing the same?

I have no passion to become a good speller and I know it. Intellectually I can perceive both advantages and disadvantages with my lack of skill in this area. When contemplating change it is always worth examining what benefits might be lost with the change. Sometimes it is necessary to address those benefits and recreate them in another way before genuine change can take place.

Marc mentioned some ways to be happy. He concluded with the idea of embracing depression. This is more than two sides of the same coin. It is learning to flip the coin. The same can be done with learning. Get students to look at what they are passionate about and see how those passions can be applied to English learning. Conversely think about what benefits students can perceive from not learning English. Can creative ways be found to get these through English?

Passion like happiness can be cultivated. Both come from inside. And both are less something to have than something to be. And the best time to be something is…

Note:

The Herbert Puchta article can only be found by manually searching for the July 2000 edition of Humanising Language Teaching. Start here...

June 2005
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