The Great Choral Verse Hang Out Party
Hi readers
While carrying out a long overdue cleansing of the office I have almost lived in, at one end of my home, for more than 30 years; the Empress found the copy I kept, of an article I wrote for, and submitted to, a now long extinct educators journal: for an equally, now long extinct provincial education department [exTED]: for Basic level education.
The article was published by them; and presumably somewhere that is in the disorderly chaos called my office and storerooms, there is a copy somewhere that I was sent…
However. This piece, that I had forgotten all about, represented: now, in retrospect, the beginning of a journey. I have, now, been on the same journey for more than two and a half decades… and I thought it would be an entertaining review: of something we have all forgotten.
And for me it was a reminder of that happiest; of unbelievable joyous bus rides, with 77, seriously diverse 9th grade kids: crammed into a reasonable sized bus…
The original heading for the published article was: “A Report on an experiment in teaching Spoken English in the New Mzanzian [formerly South Afrikan] classroom.”
It was published in 1996 and refers to the post liberation period from 1994. There are some variances to the language since and brief comment on those will be in brackets […] after the original word… Brackets were also used in the original article so those will be designated {*…}.
Now that I have reached a goal, by deadline of mine… To put 15 titles onto Amazon’s Kindle app project: in the 55 months since I stopped doing what I was doing: to do what my ‘bucket list’ told me to do… before the bucket dropped… or my bank balance reached zero…
And of course, as we all know… the list is, in reality, endless… Isn’t it.
So I thought I would share something: about how a journey, for me; got started… eventually… for at least the fourth time … now hectically late in life… After we all got liberated in 1994: And began to live the life we should have….
FX…. This blog will be a podcast @ Jakaripods.com
[Starts here. 1996 Article: remember…For personal history purposes.]
”
During the past three years, I have been successively, driven out of business by the economic standstill that followed the assassination of Cde. Chris Hani in 1993; and was forced, ultimately, back to the secondary school classroom: by the spectre of encroaching financial catastrophe. [And I had been accepted for a temporary position at a commercial/technical high school that somehow lasted for two years]
I have also during this time, on successive occasions, been mugged, kicked in the head, stabbed, shot {*multiple times} and thrown through a car windscreen at high impact speed.
It has been a singularly unpleasant period.
If, however, I had to choose one positive memorable moment, during this time, I would say unreservedly, that it was October 26th 1995: the eve of my 49th birthday.
On that particular day I took 77, Standard 7 [Now 9th grade] ‘pupils’ [now dekonstrukted to Learners… their functional purpose] to take part in a choral speaking competition festival at Grayston Preparatory School, in Sandton [The ‘larney’ie upmarket, side of town]. It was a culminating event in a two year struggle to find a solution of sorts, to the awesome business of integrating an overwhelming majority, of non English speaking “LEARNERS” into a [now] minority English speaking classroom.
Like many of my colleagues throughout the old TED system in Zone One [aka Gauteng], I found myself in January ’94, almost swamped, by classes that not only doubled in size, but doubled, with people who spoke almost minimal English, and quite frankly did not, and have not, shown the slightest inclination to speak English since.
My problem, like that of most educators I have spoken to this year was “what to do?” With this [unexpected flooding] mob of exuberant, free-spirited and volatile children… [who were products of deliberate withholding of information].
In retrospect I think I had one slight difference in perspective in my favour… [This would be aside from the real fact that English language educator, is not my official, formal, professional competence: which is Economics… Something offered in few secondary institutions… English had to do…
My perspective was assisted however… in that.]
After 17 years in private practice in various facets of the Communications industry; {* time that included more than sixteen thousand accredited hours of adult Training work…} So now I returned to the high school classroom … And was staggered at the apathy and generally indifferent attitude to learning; coupled to the desperate language skills of the television/computer-driven: formerly advantaged {*FA’s} ‘learners’, whom I was required to “teach”. [Into this mix on Day two of the new school year, 1994, new for me as well as for the poured a literal doubling of class ties instantly… as freedom arrived early for the actual event on April 27.].
My FA students, predominantly [what was then, a now discredited A = klevas. B = not so. C = profoundly not so… ] attendees made up in sheer disinterest, for any shortfall the new intake had: in educational background.
The television generation had arrived: and was reinforcing all McLuhan’s favourite hypothesis.
In effect decontextualised information produces decontextualised kids, placed into decontextualised classrooms and fed on a decontextualised diet of random information to produce the indifferent responsiveness of the intellectually homeless.
As a result I wasn’t quite as horrified as most of my colleagues by the rudimentary skills; and so called, ‘educational shortcomings’, of my flood intake of FD’s.
{*Formerly Disadvantaged} when it took place in ’94.
Experience has borne out my initial impression and there are, proportionally as many FD’s in the top ten as there are FA’s in the bottom ten of my various classes. I also now realise too, that there was no truth in the adage:- that in the “Kingdom of the blind the one eyed man [now person] is Ruler: for we are all stumbling about in the dark.
My mission then [and now]: To earn my pittance and generate meaning for my customers {*students} [and now you… my reader/listener]….
Thus I chose to interpret the new Departmental’s “Guidelines for language teaching and learning” with as much latitude that ‘teaching’ in a post-revolutionary environment would allow. And with the approval of my HOD, Sharon Robins, I set up my own “Masakhane” [solidarity slogan] experimental programme with my 9A & B classes. {* I also use the programme with my 9T3’s… who call themselves the Double D’s, and my 11th grade classes but my primary concentration has been with 9A & B.}
Part 1, of the programme involved shifting the classroom into a group structured, learner driven environment using techniques developed over nearly two decades of seminar style teaching/mediation/facilitation in corporate, semi corporate, and other tertiary institutions in places as disparate as Northern Zimbabwe, Southern Malawi, Nigeria [Lagos] Namibia, Botswana and the four corners of the now defunct ‘Union’; The basic theme, as ever, “the strong help the weak”.
Part 2 was, for me, an innovation. Many years of training salespeople, and others who used their voices for a living, persuaded me that i could make no meaningful progress, if i couldn’t get my learners ‘Talking’. Here i felt the guidelines were on my side. Oral work rules.
Notwithstanding that, Oral work came up against certain completely unassailable short term barriers. My Learners had no, [zero ish] [respectable or English language] oral language skills. The FD’s because they had no spoken English, period. My. FA’s because their learning environment has always preached: “Silence is golden” or “Empty vessels make the most noise” and a host of other similar blandishments… that have generally been used to keep people docile.
So this meant that such standby’s as improvisations, and prepared or impromptu speeches proved to be inadequate tools for what I wanted to do.
I decided that the solution lay in using poetry.
Poetry has all the essential ingredients of excellent communication: It can be brief or long. It can be rhymed or free verse. It has rhythm form and structure. And most importantly it can be learned and performed to a prepared standard.
Therefore, for people who cannot speak English{*56 out of 77 in the combined group.} it seemed logical that they should each learn poems: and recite them in orchestrated unison.
Logical to me of course: pointless to them… [all of them… one area in which we had amazing unanimity].
For ten months I cajoled , bullied, ‘schmoozled’ and bribed them into producing reams of poetry. Whatever they chose was okay: ’schmaltzy’ … Patience Strong type, Kardies stuff from PA’s : strident ‘a luta kontinua’ [revolution continues] stuff from the FD’s; and from many of the Double D’s ‘Gangsta rap’ with all their appalling lyrics. {*The Double D’s [9T3] btw [class of 46 persons]: took their name from Danny de Vito’s: “Renaissance Man”; which we watched at their request: after which, they played the “Hamlet Rap”: the film’s high point.}
Then to the grand culmination. A “Festival of Choral Verse Speaking” into which I had entered 9A & B before any of us knew if it was even possible.
“Sir’s Tapped…” I’d hear them say. “Must be all the bullets and the ‘bootings’. And In some ways they were right. I felt ‘tapped’. I was winking in the dark.
For in truth I had never really “done” any choral verse, not in the previous 30 years anyhow. Also in January my body and soul were desperately striving to recover from the effects of multiple gunshot wounds, inflicted in some banal, cliche ‘lets-shoot-someone-for-fun-today’ type Zone One ‘Gangsta Attak’. I was bereft emotionally; my imagination was ragged and I was intellectually at a point way beyond ‘burn out’… I knew only that “They” [a mob of kids…] had arrived in my classroom: and had to be attended to.
They fought me too. “It was boring”… ‘What advantage was there in learning this stuff?” And actually they were right. They had no idea about what I wanted to do. And even for me it was a radical ‘off the wall”’idea. There were no models to copy; and the movement stuff they saw on TV had no context either: for a variety of reasons.
My view was a simple one. You cannot learn a language if you don’t {* or wont} speak it.
So eventually a deal was struck. And it was an equally simple one. Go there. Take part in the competition….Whatever their score out of 100 was, would become their term mark [score] for “oral”.
Of course in our mutual ‘real world’, [as we know ] marks are a reward incentive, for work done and are all that ‘really’ matters.
Democracy also means, first and foremost, that everyone has the right to their opinion: and few people agree with anything said by someone else. In the absence of a model, chaos becomes competitive.
Still, persisted stubbornly. Despairing often. New nightmares came to replace the leering gunmen who have haunted me for the past year…
And in reality we never really got much beyond everyone simply knowing the lines of poetry chosen … “You mean you want us to learn all these lines!!! Why?
And saying them in some kid of semblance of orderly orchestration: saying them either in unison or in parts . This in turn was done at the breakneck speed that came to represent the best compromise between the class ossifying antipathy of the Formerly Advantages segments of the team; who broadly were brought up fervently distrust anything that required thought… and the generally confused state of everyone else from the eastern end of Asia to the same street as the school.
I learned also, that something learned, that needed to be changed, was usually rigidly inflexible… became indelible…. Set in concrete… and could only be altered at the risk of unravelling the whole thing…
Eventually the day arrived at the meticulously manicured Strathavon venue: with its kerbside littered with well heeled metal. Sandton ladies were prepared with delight.
They welcomed us with barely concealed horror…
I felt like Genghis Khan at the head of my horde… a damaged Genghis Khan. I’d wrecked my car in a head-on collision a few days earlier, in a heavy, hail soaked thunderstorm: on a bad piece of roadwork. I hit the windscreen hard enough to break through: when the seatbelt snapped. So I was wandering about Grayston Prep bandaged up: and in a state of semi-concussion.
My colleagues, having sensibly decided the entire venture reeked of insanity, declined: spurned even the thought to accompany me on this bizarre quest… “Take 77. 9th grade kids to Grayston … you must be crazy…!” … In the staffroom there were bristle-ish moments from some who were simply functioning on burned out adrenaline… [So it was just me and the driver of the Putco bus we rented for the journey… there and back…].
My charges too, bristled with class armour; defensively ready to be antagonised. At the slightest slight.
Their world view, was that only ‘swots’; got more than the edge of an E [40-49]. This was reinforced by their competition at the event. The overwhelming picture was that only the swots and the larneys were there… Having taken a good look around they told me; in no uncertain terms that theirs was the only crazy teacher who thought you could learn english by chanting ‘pomes’ in unison.
In the event, they were ultimately overawed. So they did not perform their pieces, with the precision that they had demonstrated in a required performance, for the HOD and the Acting Principal: before we had left for the day..
Nonetheless, neither did they disgrace themselves [or me] either: and they did as well as I had come to accept that they would do…
Then…
An unprecedented event …. [for us]
At various times, during the period of preparation and rehearsal there’d been strikes and ‘toi toi ing ‘, in disapproval, by different groups at different times: over what I was doing. I had to get used to negotiating my way through it all…
Now however, the organisers were running ahead off time: and our involvement was over sooner than scheduled… {Time to go… Oh NO NO NO]
Having been dragged [almost literally] to the drinking trough my ‘mob’ adamantly refused to budge at the allotted time!!! They insisted on seeing more… more more more! [‘Please sir we want some more’ … So: the driver was cool and we stayed]
I was overwhelmed by their sense of revelation: as understanding and comprehension of what we had been striving to achieve, though the exercise, hit them: for the first time… {*The overt objective that is, not my more sneaky developmental objectives…}…
This Aha moment began exploding throughout the gathered rows in the Hall: that we had come to crowd for the event. Team after team flowed using more seasoned perhaps, and {*perhaps more voluntary}. [The way some choose netball]. The impact was tangible with teams producing glorious, stunning performances of such diverse works as “The Hollow Men”, “Sounds of a Cowhide Drum” and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
At the end of each performance my glorious ‘horde’ broke into excited, enthusiastic explorations… Then; When the next performance started… intense silence: quieter than I had… or have, ever been able to achieve….
In the event they scored 74% … And they were no where near the bottom.
They were on a high.
A high equalled only by the high the nation was on: when awe won the rugby World Cup… And we all partied….
I have never known such a trip to equal that ride ‘home’ to Bedford on the bus.
74% was a mindbender … Most could only have dreamed of such a score before that day…
There was no them and us on that bus.
Simply the sounds of every song anyone ever knew amongst them… bearing time with everything they could find that would do… They had learnt the joy of ‘winning’… for that was what they were… united as winners of their own selves…
Years ago a colleague remarked to me that teaching was very much a business of planting ‘time bombs’to go off in people heads: that fire off erratically. I’ll be crunching up the numbers from my ‘masakhane’ programme to see what happened. I am certain already that my original prognosis … That there. Would be an 80% non competence outcome rate amongst the new intake… Now I am certain it will be much lower… Maybe even as low as 30%…
Nonetheless sitting on that bus; them me and the driver, experiencing that bursting awareness of blossoming self-awareness and, more than that: blossoming self-image, I felt a wonderful sense of vindication.
For I saw a whole succession of time bombs go off in one fell swoop: and now I ‘know’ that I found, for that fraction of a moment a route that worked…
The classes now adamant that they want to go back next year: and do better. And now not only those classes , but their friends in classes that didn’t go: who now feel left out: and cheated … Now that they all understand: what it was about.
They want to implement what was experienced that day…. Thereby proving that there is no meaning without context…
Ironically it also demonstrated the truth of my ‘old school’ motto: Carpe Diem: Seize the Day… For what I do not know is whether there will ever be a ‘next year’ either for them of me… Changing conditions mean changes to staff complements and we “temps” will have to go…. So I must regretfully head for new opportunities, which there must be out there; in this new information superhighway. that is coming into existence; satisfied that for me my hypothesis is proven: while for my charges it will remain a seminal event with unimagined effects… [As I hope worked with many of you with whom I worked later…]
Loves ya all
Nicholas
Ps: As I mentioned… That publication was way back in 1996… As i mentioned at the start, it was in many ways the beginning of a new life after the old one had been interrupted… Set me on a journey of discovery… Still unfolding: as with all of us…
Since that time, i have had encounters at different times, with various people who had been in those classes. They all, independently said, that those two classes went on to be, apparently, the most successful national final year, in the, then history of Bedford. And i was always happy to hear that i had played a small part in that journey… They also never did go back for more.
On one occasion a man accompanied by a woman and child approached me, while I was guzzling a smoothie; in company with my now, late mother: and my youngest daughter.
He said his name was Jabulani, and that he would like for his wife, to meet the man, who had changed the whole class that day, was talked about at their reunion: and had been the reason he was now [then] a qualified Chemical Engineer; working in a fast rising career: at one of the region’s biggest chemical companies… And we had a grand reunion…
The old ‘festival of choral verse speaking’ that had been run by Jozi’s guild of speech practitioners, for more than a century, reached its post empire sell by date: and in the spirit of financialisation was deemed appropriate for purpose. It was, maybe, hijacked /purchased/appropriated by the new authorities. Such things were the treasured indulgences of empire… No more.
It turned into a national festival. Organised by an instant new public service provider operation. Arranged as some part of some or other SOE organisation: that always seemed relatively opaque. It instantly had a workforce; who by the nature of organisation purpose required so much new bureaucracy: simply to enter to enter; that within a decade: it had simply seemed to have stopped happening … Certainly no school at which I subsequently worked up to 2018, had the capacity to handle the flood of paperwork… And it gradually disappeared from view… [been submerged…]
Maybe it is still there… or maybe it went bankrupt or became a total sideline, for the new owners:and vanished… I would hope the former…
That is, of course, of no account… Its predecessor served me well while it lasted: and I understand one of my teams, at a different place, won a national title for a performance of the Lewis Carroll set piece for the competition that year: … “Jabberwocky”….