Pistachios

She always had possessed a certain place in his heart—not always a happy one, but one which was certainly hers, a sure and abiding portion. That was how he thought of her as the endless traffic streamed headlight-golden before him on a warm grey evening.

Purple came now, and dinner's last faint tang was swallowed and gone. He looked at the dim dial of his antique silver pocket-watch and began the long walk. It was his only hope of the moment that he might somehow encounter her once more before he left.

=====

What odd things one writes when one is young! And stranger still, that some things become heavier and more meaningful when one knows one did not mean it then, but has come to appreciate it now.

Then there is embarrassment and the urge to rewrite, edit, delete or obliterate. But if one did that with everything one wrote, would one then be lessened by it? It is bad enough that natural processes destroy the templates and emplates of memory daily.

And so, one keeps these somewhat quaint vignettes, bits of memory like the odd crumbs of pistachio that can be found in a block of nougat.

Nostalgia

Wolff nodded grimly to himself. He sat at an old table, his fist near the sherry decanter and his sword in the corner. He poured. And sipped.

=====

In his mind, he saw a line of brave knights, before his time, not so many after. One by one, in some perverse mirroring of the Grail quest, they had been sent forth, with the sole purpose that they not come back to the Citadel. And so the fellowship had been broken, and the false knights had gained power without a fight.

He thought of the ivy that used to adorn the tower, and was no more to be seen. He thought of the keen swords and the sharp wits of those who saved the sum of things for pay.

In the ruins, the things crawled. Sometimes they seemed to cry out in the tongues of men, but Wolff suspected it was wishful thinking that made their morologia into speech.

In the ruins, the rats chittered and the bats squeaked. Where the Grand Inquisitor had once laid heavy hand, the signs and symbols were tarnished and scratched. Desolation was the name of the city, the ancient city of the Citadel.

But outside, the walls were brave. The children looked like knights in their armour of tin and satin, where once was bronze and steel. Yet each year, the dilution continued, and nobody noticed, because you cannot watch watchmen when they are gone.

The Grand Inquisitor had decided to go south for his health, or so he had told the remaining officers of the Citadel. Ignominy had never been easy to deal with for the sons of men, and for that man, hardest of all.

He cracked a crippled joke: "Do not leave the Citadel because I have left it," he urged. At the back of the room, several knights laughed grimly and walked out. They had already purposed in their hearts to leave, because they had thought he might stay. They continued to have misgivings about what might come next.

=====

Wolff had sipped once for each of the lost. The decanter was nearly empty. Outside, through the windows of his rooms, the night was full. But he was sure that in the morning, the sun was very likely to rise again.

=====

Note: The fictional adventures of Sir Wolff do provide much that is of interest. You can find them linked here. Just ignore the one about earwax. That was an accident.

The Music Lives On

I used to wake up every morning to my grandfather's odd habit of playing Chopin nocturnes after his early breakfast and before his morning house calls. Sometimes it would be Mozart, rarely Beethoven; on one memorable occasion, I heard Moonlight at sunrise.

Tonight I am listening to some of those pieces performed by my brother-in-law on an old and warped piano. But the music still sounds lovely, and my grandfather's memory lives on in that music.

I am sure that the music has kept the memories and lives of many of its players fresh. Not that long ago, I heard the music played by hands long dead but preserved in the plastic medium of vinyl grooves.

The music lives on, and those who play live on as well with it.

The Prisoner

Today, for some reason, I felt a sudden urge to go even further back in time than usual, to a time just before the Beatles. It was the time of that great Patrick McGoohan series, The Prisoner.

One of the quotes that kept yammering at me was this one: "Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages." It was a dark time, the late 60s — but it was also a fantastic time of baroque invention around the theme of Orwell's 1984.

I have a sudden sense of loss for those early TV shows — The Prisoner, Ultraman, Space: 1999, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, Sapphire and Steel, The Avengers, and of course, the early Doctor Who. There are at least a dozen more I could mention. Somehow, the sheer quantity of interesting TV programmes seems larger than it is today, even in the days of cable TV.

Sigh.

Midnight 18

It's the midnight hour between the 18th of July and the 19th, and I'm sitting here letting iTunes channel my consciousness, from Classical Gas to Scheherazade, from America to U2, from London to New York City and into the plains of Mongolia. For tonight is one of those nights.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like when your nostril hair turns white? Yes, today's great and empowering meditation is on the indescribable feeling one gets as one hits the early forties only to find that some things that you used to rely on are no longer there. One of my former students once wrote:

However, he's still some sort of puzzle outside the class. It's like you have all the various pieces of information about him, and yet you don't really know what to think about him. But that's what's so fascinating about him, he doesn't tell you about himself or chemistry in the conventional way. He lets you find out for yourself.

It's bizarre when you feel that way about yourself. And so, it's the midnight hour between the 18th of July and the 19th, and I'm listening to old Mannheim Steamroller performances of Christmas carols. And a lot of John Williams cinematic soundtracks.

White House

That's a problem. I grew up in the 70s and 80s of the last century, and when people mention 'White House', I immediately think of a mailbox and a house made of wooden planks. You need a bit of thinking to get in, and a lantern to avoid grues. Before long, you find yourself visiting the Great Underground Empire, and hopefully, armed with a sword that glows fitfully, you will deal with the troll, and the maze of twisty little passages all alike, and the guy who keeps stealing your stuff.

Well, a lot of it is back, like nostalgia. You don't have to map it yourself, which is what we used to do with pencil and paper. But there it is. And now you too can relive the glory days of J Pierpont Flathead and his ilk, run along the White Cliffs, enter the Dark Forest, and in general make a nuisance of yourself.

Enjoy!

Postcolonial

It struck me many years ago that the word 'postcolonial' might mean very different things to a gastroenterologist and a historian. And yet, the same coprolithic conclusion might be reached: after all is said and done (or eaten and digested), you have to live with the consequences after the main events.

Right now, I'm looking at a tiny red dot in South-East Asia. It amazes me that the budding and blooming of its education system actually took place in the 19th century. Apart from the early 20th century influx of Chinese philanthropy targeted at securing a cultural outpost of Sinicism on this valuable frontier, most of the institutions underpinning the dramatic modern-day development of this red dot were set up a long, long time ago, in far-flung corners of an Empire that has melted away.

Since that era, less forgotten than rudely thrust out of the local consciousness with variable affect, the single-party government has said many things which are generally true but somewhat dissimulating about the local past. The myth of the present time is that until the present governing party took over, this place was a sleepy fishing village and perhaps a somewhat lackadaisical, occasionally piratical, port. It was not of any consequence and, on handover from the British to the locals, actually was a great burden to bear in terms of finance and lack of opportunities. Without the present government and its forerunners, this place would not have succeeded.

Actually, the problem with alternative histories is that there is no real test. The history we have and what we are today is all that we can look at. But it should be said that the past history of the little red dot has always been one of being a powerful trading centre and strategic location for the projection of naval and economic power. 'Fishing village' doesn't quite cut it. In fact, the mark of its capable governance is really that it has fulfilled its potential in some very obvious and significant ways; whether it has done better than expected is really debateable, considering the assets it has always had.

But the heroic myth always requires the transition from darkness into light; and if the other psychopomps of the journey are cast by the wayside and forgotten, what is that to the promulgation of the myth? I note that the steersmen, the helmsmen, the captains and the kings have mostly departed, and the past they used to straddle like colossi is now populated with many caricatures and monuments.

Dover Road

Tonight I feel an aching melancholy. It is almost as if the elves are going back into the uttermost west and I shall not see them again. I sat in a wood-panelled room on the High Hill, with my kinsfolk. The red wine was deep with spiced oak, and so was the light. We ate, we talked, and I was homesick for the isles and the cold and the damp.

And behind it all, I realised that here too was part of the Family. In the things they said and the secret knowledge that they shared, the Family traits and the family traits shone clear. I felt at home, and yet I knew that I was not, and unlikely ever to go home. Part of me wanted to follow them across the seas, but they wanted me to stay and keep the flame burning.

And that great old masterful poem came to mind, that anchor and touchstone of the long, melancholy, faithless 19th century. You can see for yourself what significance has been attributed to it.

That poem has always filled me with wanderlust and discontent. I remember one evening, having just thrown the garbage out for the night, it came to mind. Before I could stop, I had walked to the boundary of the north and was looking at the narrow causeway to another land.

Why should I stay? I stayed in this country to the loss of my citizenship in the Far Place. I worked, I strove, I used my mind and wasted my body for the cause. I fought under the banner of the Wyvern, I wore the blue and red and gold, I was both hero and champion, and eventually, ronin. I watched as things lost their meaning and their shape.

And so, I leave you with Matthew Arnold, as he watches one form of thought take the meaning out of another.

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Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Islanders

In an odd quirk of fate, I found myself on YouTube last night (and early this morning) in a very retro mood. Although I looked at many clips of TV themes from a bygone era, two in particular stuck with me for no particular reason.

The first one was Dad's Army, with its oddly cheerful lyrics. This show was a 70s hit about the British Home Guard. It's probably worth it (if you're a WW2 buff) to have a quick look at the opening sequence. The lyrics go as follows:

Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?
If you think we’re on the run...
We are the boys who will stop your little game,
We are the boys who will make you think again.

Cos, who do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?
If you think old England’s done.
Mr Brown goes off to town on the 8:21,
But he comes home each evenin’ and he’s ready with his gun.

So watch out Mr. Hitler
You have met your match in us.
If you think you can push us
We're afraid you've missed the bus.

So, who do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?
If you think old England’s done.

It's gems like that which make me remember my childhood in England with sometimes unnerving fondness. Quite a different gem (from quite a different bunch of islands), however, came in the person of the imperious Jack Lord and the 12-season hit detective series, Hawaii Five-O. If you have never seen and heard the famous intro sequence, here it is. I remember the later seasons showed a closing sequence of a bunch of canoeists battling through the waves. Stirring stuff.

Fragment

You dig around in all that storage, and sometimes you find fragments. Here is one such:

She always had possessed a certain place in his heart—not always a happy one, but one which was certainly hers, a sure and abiding portion. That was how he thought of her as the endless traffic streamed headlight-golden before him on a cool grey Singapore evening.

Purple came now, and the afternoon’s last faint tang was swallowed and gone. He looked at the dim dial of his antique silver pocket-watch and began the long walk to Sixth Avenue. It was his only hope of the moment that he might somehow encounter her once more before the end.

I have no idea where that came from and where it was going; I only know that it was written about 20 years ago. I wonder who 'she' was supposed to be though.

Newt

I'm an amphibian these days, halfway suspended between the old world that is passing and the new world that has arrived. I find it hard to shake the memories of voices and places, poises and faces, noises and spaces. I miss them all and yet I am learning to love their replacements. It is a terrible task, but I am working on it.

I feel like a newt, a neotenous salamander, that which should be fiery but which is now watery and squidgy. I am neither here nor there; I breathe air, and I might as well be tunnelling through the earth. It is horribly unfair to the memories of those who are gone and it is horribly unfair to the people who are really here now.

Today I was in a corridor when I bumped into one young lady of the present. I greeted her, "Madame." And I suddenly felt a twinge of pain, almost like angina. It is not her fault she now stands in the feet of power. But it is her position now, and I cannot begrudge her that place, despite the fact that it once belonged to someone whose memory still walks the corridors. I cannot quite bring myself to exorcise that ghost. It is all very silly, I suppose.

And then Trivandrum and Spam came visiting. That was even more painful. They too are now amphibian, not here or there, not even allowed the transforming power of the Green Mile.

We are all caught for now, caught like flies in amber, stuck in halflife between one state and another, somehow unable to move on. It isn't that we can't, I think. It is probably that we fear the pain of an ultimate parting, a confession of unprofessional weakness, a heretical impulse to actually disburse the wealth of our shrunken hearts and write off the loss forever.

In the meantime, a special alchemy must serve. I slowly denewtify. The degree of amphibiosity, of newtness, can be measured and is shrinking by the day, I hope. This quantity must, I suppose, be measured in its smallest quantum. I shall invent a unit of this new thing, this quantum of newtness. I will call it the newton.

The Road Not Taken

I have a cloister here. The honey-coloured wood panelling frames me in a distant cradle of light and shadow, like the petals of some enormous blossom. I am cradled to sleep in it sometimes, I hear the diffused echoes of the distant possibilities thunder faintly through my cloister walls. On rare cold nights, I know she knows, and she knows it too – that we are all human and think of what might have been and what might not.

And so, innocent of deliberate intent or malignancy, I remember the other one. It is on the edge of the penumbra, the interface between daydream and nightdream, that I see her barely unforgotten face, white and grey against the velvet backdrop of sleep.

She was a dancer. I told her she was like a gazelle. Some people are always uncomfortable with long limbs, and yet show nothing to be uncomfortable about. We shared few meals, few moments, and our distances were greater than our proximities. And one fine evening, we suddenly realised that we had stepped completely through the minefield of our overlapping fires and into the safe zone.

We are friends, and that is all; even though I sometimes wonder as I reach into the darkness with the last of my thoughts, I know I will not grasp anything but that. It is awkward for the young to think of affection without desire; it is impossible for one to exist without some form of the other. But it is entirely possible for two people one day to have the first without the second.

I know this to be true.

Cold Logic

Well, at some point one has to give up on concepts like 'holism' and fall back on nostalgia, which always seems like a good idea. Hence my dredging up of this song, which always reminds me of one of my students. Heh. Bonus points if anyone guesses whom. Not so many points if that person guesses it...

This is the Supertramp hit from Breakfast in America (c. 1979, I think): The Logical Song.

=====

The Logical Song

When I was young
It seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical...
And all the birds in the trees
Well they'd be singing so happily,
Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away
To teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical –
And they showed me a world
Where I could be so dependable,
Oh clinical, intellectu-al, cynical...

There are times when all the world's asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am...

Now watch what you say
Or they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Oh won't you sign up your name
We'd like to feel you're acceptable,
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!

At night when all the world's asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am, who I am , who I am...

Old Injuries

All of you have shoulderblades. The technical term for 'shoulderblade' is scapula, which means 'cloak' in Latin. Place your left hand on your right shoulder. You can feel the top of the shoulderblade, a bony lump where your arm connects. The topmost bony process is called the acromion.

If you feel around it, you will realise that it seems connected to the end of your collarbone. That's a good thing. Your collarbone is also known as the clavicle, which means 'small key' in Latin. The connection you feel is called the acromioclavicular joint. (Anatomical language is a lot like that, and if you want to be a doctor, you'll probably talk like that too.) But it means simply that it is the joint between the acromion and the clavicle.

Seasoned doctors call it the a/c joint, unless they want to impress younger colleagues and medically ignorant friends. Or patients. Yes, patients, which is where this story is heading. Please, be patient.

Here's a very short story. Patient used to play rugby. Accident. Extremely hard impact on the point of the a/c joint. Sudden blackout. Odd thing for the pale blue sky to do, that. It turned purple at the edges, and then black.

Later, one doctor would apply force against the ligaments holding the a/c joint together, just to find out what had happened. He learnt two things: 1) patient is very resistant to pain; and 2) patient had actually separated the two bones of the joint.

The patient learnt two things as well: 1) patient is very resistant to pain and even if not, he would never allow some two-bit torturer the pleasure of hearing him express that; and 2) exactly what patient's immediate maternal ancestor meant when she said, "If you get injured, no more rugby."

Patient took six months to recover. He learnt two very important facts that would stay with him all his life: 1) it is hard to change clothes, sleep, or do many other things with only one mobile arm; and 2) girls can be very kind to an injured boy.

Patient didn't get much out of that season. One bronze medal. Three sets of torn ligaments. 22 years of shoulder pain in cold weather. And the determination to do lots of chin-ups, just to prove that he could.

Later on, the myalgia would balance the nostalgia. He would consider this a blessing. And he would smile each time it hurt, for pain is a reminder of sensation, life, mortality and love.

Ex Libris

I have just come from what used to be my library, and now is merely the most well-behaved part of my parents' storeroom. There are about 5000 books there, and most of them are fiction. How are they organised?

It's an interesting process. When I was young, my mother made me unshelve all my books, clean the bookshelves, wait for them to dry, apply insecticide, and replace the books. I did that once or twice every year until I got married and moved out. I no longer do this as religiously as I used to (although recent history has allowed me to recant).

I had three methods, working sometimes at cross-purposes. My father (no mean bibliophile, and originator of my habit) taught me to arrange by author, subject, and (for practical reasons) by size and shape. However, he never dictated which should be of top priority. This led to many interesting hours of bibliophilic angst, as whole sections of books had to be rotated and moved around in order to accommodate shifting priorities.

There were times I thought of arranging them by the Dewey system. That way, you don't have to think so hard, except in rare cases of classification deadlock. But I resisted this cowardly way out.

The result: I have more than 5000 books (and my parents own more than that) in that house. They are almost always arranged by author, sometimes by subject, and least of all by size. Generally, my reasoning has followed these lines: most of my books are fiction paperbacks. This means their subject is roughly the same: fictional characters and universes. Best to classify by author, and while paperbacks may be of different sizes, this is not normally a problem. My reference books are either very large (and have to be stuffed in teak bookshelves of sufficient strength) or very small (and sit above what used to be my desk – and sometimes, bed).

I am thinking of giving about 300-500 of them away. Some are very old, very dusty, classics. Some are hard to find or out of print altogether. And they are a large slice of my older life, when I was actually an interesting person. Any takers?

The Ineffable Qualities Of Friendship

The other day I had a sudden urge to contact an old friend of mine, someone I've known for 25 years now. So I SMSed him – a short, casual message asking how he was and when he'd be in the neighbourhood. I received a reply a few hours later. He was surprised that I was asking at this particular time: he had just dreamt about the way we used to be, and he would be visiting our tiny state this very weekend.

It has been a long road. Somewhere amidst the tomfoolery, the visits to odd parts of the country, the late-night sessions, the banter about life and girls, the practical (and impractical) jokes, you can still find the thread the holds it all together. But the nature of that thread is a difficult one to perceive, let alone describe.

You see the cut-scenes, you remember the insane moments, and yet you cannot quite say what strange weapon was tempered, what familial defence was proofed, what dread chain was forged. I still remember the first long walk we took, around the shopping district. Right in the middle of it was a girls' school well known for its spirit of sincerity, courage, generosity and service. And inaccessibility. We walked around it three times before he figured out I was leading him in circles.

He demanded to know why we were doing this. Then I found the right moment and we were in the school grounds, making friends. Of course, it was a completely illegal activity. But you can't have a school in the middle of a shopping district and not have such goings-on, surely? Well, the defenders of the gate were quite serious about evicting us. Years later, he would recall that we had not appeared to make much progress in our sad little social lives, and yet... there was this incredible database.

Databases were new in that long-ago era. It is difficult now to remember just how long ago VisiCalc and dBase were, how wonderful it was to programme in Assembly, to use a Z80, to touch the face of CP/M. And there I was, assiduously keying in every little bit of data I could find, creating profiles of everyone we knew.

It was odd that nobody thought of me as a geek; it was a relief that I had enough social life not be thought of as a nerd. The database saved me, in a sense. I became a computer-assisted social coordinator in a time when this was uncommon. I wrote little programs to assess compatibility; I devised ranking formulae for acceptability and style. It was a grand endeavour, great fun, and almost completely useless. We never took it seriously, but it was serious enough to consume a fair amount of time.

And 25 years later, with high school and university and other major events behind us, what did all that accomplish? What traits, qualities, behaviours did such a life develop in those who shared this peculiar friendship? I have a few ideas.

Apparently, one of these qualities is the capacity to forge 'psychic' links. I don't mean something paranormal (or at least, I don't think so). We had no cellphones, hardly any internet capability, fast modems ran at 300 baud. It made us compensate in ingenious ways. It was a kind of information tradecraft, the ability to exchange very compressed useful information and have enough redundancy to make it work. Inevitably but inexplicably, some of us developed the ability to communicate without saying anything, or to leave the equivalent of post-hypnotic messages.

Another one of these qualities is the sense of being connected into a huge safety-net. Somehow, in any major city of the world, there is the odd sensation that resources are always available. And they are, often just around the corner. Parachuted into NYC a few years after 9/11, I met up with friends I hadn't seen for years. You turn a corner, and there they are. Walking down a lonely London lane, you find another one. It isn't something you rely on, of course; but in a sense, it has come to be something you almost expect.

These two qualities together really forged the equivalent of a universal knowledge resource. You always know whom to call when you need something esoteric or a person with the right professional skills (intellectual-property lawyer, dermatologist, uranium toxicologist, coastguard commander, and so on). The modern equivalents, I am sure, are not lacking. But I think of the odd talents we found in ourselves as the equivalent of steampunk – not quite cybernetic, but close enough and considerably more romantic.

Very Old Archival Material

A long time ago, there was a young and idealistic (but by no means naïve) teacher. He came from a family of teachers who were always telling him that teaching was an excellent but terrible vocation. He found out how terrible when he was made to write essays like that which follows. It was a very long time ago.

Question No 2:

“Teachers and pupils are seen by researchers to engage in a variety of classroom strategies with a view to gaining control in the classroom.” — R Burgess

“Whatever the dispositions of classroom participants, they have to live within classroom social reality and cope with it. In facing this common problem… teachers and pupils adopt a range of strategies.” — I Reid

Drawing on studies of the classroom, give two examples of such teacher strategies and two of pupil strategies. Discuss how the concept of strategy helps you to understand how classroom order is achieved and maintained.

When one comes across the word ‘strategy’, one tends to think in terms of games such as chess, where considered manoeuvring is carried out for the achie vement of relatively long-term goals. (This is to be contrasted with ‘tactics’, the manoeuvres themselves. For example, little Kenneth’s throwing of paper balls in class is a tactic used to distract the teacher; the use of distraction to escape the boredom of his lessons is his strategy for coping with school.) In the classroom, the teacher’s goals and those of his students may come from wide-ranging spectra and be individually very different. The interplay of the strategies used in pursuit of those goals quite often determines the classroom environment, from a sociological perspective.

With that in mind, let’s consider two strategies used by teachers in the classroom, and two used by pupils.

Lefrançois (1) divides teacher strategies into two types, preventive and corrective. The former is more closely associated with ‘classroom management’ than with discipline, and its goal is that of facilitating teaching and learning in the classroom.

One sort of preventive strategy is the establishment of routine. Routines are indispensable to the smooth running of the class because they define the details of classroom activity: where to, how to, and when to do which things. Doyle (2) says that effective classroom management depends on the establishment of rules and procedures early in the school year.

Corrective strategies are associated with classroom discipline; the goal here is to change or eliminate a particular behaviour, with resultant benefits to teacher and class. One sort of corrective strategy is, of course, punishment. The swifter and more appropriate, the better; nevertheless, it should be noted that there are cases both for (3) and against (4) various types of punishment.

Pupil strategies are, like teacher strategies, aimed at the general goal of ‘dealing with classroom life’. To this end, the spectrum of pupil strategies ranges from those which are socially ‘positive’ to those which are socially ‘negative’. Socially neutral behaviour can mask negative attitudes, as in the case of the apathetic pupils known as ‘puddings’ (5).

‘Positive’ pupil strategies include that of conformist coöperation with the teacher, i.e. discovering what the teacher’s goals are and working overtly towards them in an acceptable (to the teacher) way. Reid classifies this as one of the more positive types of adaptive behaviour in the classroom context (6). ‘Negative’ pupil strategies include the use of ‘subversive’ humour, i.e. humour which is directed against authority and in support of the interests of pupil peer-groups (7).

The concept of ‘strategy’ (fr. Gk. strategos, ‘general’), as used in a classroom context, leads one to think of the classroom as similar to a geopolitical battlefield, on which two forces or power blocs manoeuvre in pursuit of personal gain. On one side is the teacher, whose power comes from socially-legitimated authority (kratos), or less often from personal force (dünamis) or threat of violence (bia). On the other side are the pupils, whose socially-approved power sources are apathy and inertia (and whose socially-disapproved ones include dünamis and bia as well). The possible spoils of victory include increased morale, peace and quiet, job success, and other things that will make the side concerned more happy in the classroom environment.

The pursuit of personal gain in the classroom is not a zero-sum game, however, and it must be noted that either side or both sides can ‘win’ or ‘lose’, or neither, depending on which strategies are used. Classroom order (or the lack of it) is a result of the classroom reality that is derived from the interplay of these strategies. As in much of human social behaviour, negotiation typifies most of these interactions, although some strategies do not allow it at all (for example, excessive authoritarianism or complete apathy).

Normally, both sides realise that classroom order is a good thing. Just as it is impossible for meaningful negotiations to be carried out unless the parties concerned have agreed to a set of rules, so the conduct of classroom life is stressful and even hazardous if the rules are not implicitly or explicitly known and agreed to by both sides.

The first and most important step towards meaningful dialogue is the proposal of rules by the teacher, representative of higher authority. The teacher’s choice of strategy here is very important. If the strategy is one of authoritarian order which admits no negotiation, then revolt could be the response, and the eventual result loss for both sides. On the other hand, if the strategy is one of capricious and seemingly random reward and punishment, then fear and distress will lead to a similar outcome.

To continue with the analogy, the first side to resort to behaviour considered unjustifiable by the other side runs the risk of severe retaliation or provoking serious guerilla activity. Lesser provocations may be glossed over by diplomacy or other coping strategies. Negotiation is thus the premier vehicle of meaningful interaction in a civilised classroom, including as it does a host of faintly provocative or uncomfortable behaviours and the appropriate responses thereto.

In the normal course of events, once the teacher has drawn the boundaries and the pupils have countered by testing and disputing some of them, the teacher then adopts new strategies to respond to the testing and redefine the boundaries where necessary. This continues until everyone is more-or-less equally happy (or unhappy), whereupon a new set of strategies (sometimes analogous to the mutually-assured destruction strategies of the Cold War) aimed at preserving the newly-engineered status quo is brought into play. Thus is classroom order achieved and subsequently maintained.

From all this, it can clearly be seen that the concept of ‘strategy’ is one which leads to an adequate understanding of how classroom order is achieved (and why), and how it is maintained. As Swift said, “Every creature lives in a state of war by nature.” If the battle for education is to be won by both sides, the nature of the classroom reality must be fully understood and exploited.

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References:
1) Lefrancois, G R (1991); Chapter 12 - ‘Classroom Management and Discipline’, in Psychology For Teaching (7th ed.) (pp.312-339). California: Wadsworth.
2) Doyle, W (1986); ‘Classroom Organization and Management’, in M C Wittrock (ed.), Handbook Of Research On Teaching (3rd ed.) (pp. 392-431). New York: Macmillan.
3) Parke, R D (1974); ‘Rules, Roles, and Resistance to Deviati Gon: Recent Advances in Punishment, Discipline and Self-Control’, in A Pick (ed.), Minnesota Symposia On Child Psychology (vol.8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
4) Clarizio, H E and Yelon, S L (1974); ‘Learning Theory Approaches to Classroom Management: Rationale and Intervention Techniques’, in A R Brown and C Avery (eds.), Modifying Children’s Behaviour: A Book Of Readings (p. 50). Springfield, Illinois: Thomas.
5) Sharpe, L (1992); ‘The Sociology of the Classroom’, unpublished lecture given at the National Institute of Education, Singapore.
6) Reid, I (1986); Chapter 4 - ‘The Culture of Schools’, in The Sociology Of School And Education (pp. 77-80). London: Fontana.
7) (ibid.); Chapter 5 - ‘Pupils, Teachers, and Classrooms’ (p. 131)

Prenostalgic Warning

Warnings are pointless when it comes to experiential learning. It is true that the burnt child dreads the fire; but it is the burnt child with the clever support group that learns to tame the flame. And that is why I have come to believe that while I cannot always deliver warnings effectively, I can help by acting as support and shelter for anyone who needs it.

It took me by surprise, though, that I do feel a few regrets about the way I spent my earlier youth. But Simon and Garfunkel say it better here, and just for convenience, I reproduce their bittersweet and yet jaunty lyrics below.

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A Hazy Shade Of Winter

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities;
I was so hard to please.
But look around, leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Hear the Salvation Army band
Down by the riverside;
It's bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned.
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around, leaves are brown now,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Hang on to your hopes, my friend:
That's an easy thing to say,
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again...
Look around, the grass is high,
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life...

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery,
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory slips
While looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme,
Drinking my vodka and lime...

But look around, leaves are brown now,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Look around, leaves are brown...
There's a patch of snow on the ground...

Scrapbooking

Some months ago, I discovered an ancient folder with about 200 poems in it. A lot of them dated back to university days; some dated back to an even earlier time. The poem titled Hawking was first drafted on 3 October 1989. It then lay fallow for about 17 years 4 months until I resurrected it two days ago, with a full set of edits. I felt nostalgic: this poem recalled for me a better time. And then I realised that some of the young people I know were born that year, and for some unaccountable reason, I felt happy.