As an educator I’m always worried when politicians and various authorities push certain aspects of learning over others and it seems to me to be as a result of unsophisticated thinking or market pressure rather than the real importance of balanced human development.

Wisdom seems be lacking in our world today and leaders who have it in abundance seem to be a little scarce on the ground or on the bridge of our good ship Earth. More than ever a teacher’s responsibility is beyond the single subject and should be mindful of their student's developing wisdom. So often it is not just the teaching of a fact or process but encouraging students to see its application in the World. The World is ever changing and changing quickly.

Change is presented tirelessly through the twenty-four-hour news cycle which seems to be impossible to avoid. My secondary schooling through the 1960s was marked by our first TV war in Vietnam, nightly reported and well and truly felt in our lounge rooms. Now I have to remind myself that TV only hit lounge rooms in September 1956 and whilst the reception was fine in the big cities it was often poor or non-existent in the country. Besides that, not everyone had TV-my family didn’t. News was rather the 10 minute grab on the radio. Furthermore TV was black and white and colour didn’t arrive until 1975, after Cyclone Tracey and in my second year of teaching. In fact TV reached the NT on November 11 1971 with the launch of NTD-8 Darwin. In those days I made heaps of slides (old fashioned ones) and in the end had my own slide projector to enhance interest for the class. Movies were more often shown on the Bell and Howell projector which required a licence to use which we were encouraged to get at the end of Dip Ed. Teachers had lots of fun with the projectors, threading the 16mm movie film through the projector, getting it wrong, busting the film, trying to splice it and blowing the lamp. How easy AV is today!

I once volunteered to show the epic movie “Lawerence of Arabia” to most of the school. I was excited as it was a favourite of mine so I dutifully hired it and it came in the parcel post in those large familiar cases. I threaded well, brought the students into the hall ensuring the safety of the projector and cranked up the Bell and Howell. The movie went swimmingly until Lawrence was in the middle of the desert, whereupon the film broke and Lawrence started to head for the hall door. I frantically leapt up and stopped the projector. (I probably should have been standing beside it). Well, that would never happen with today’s AV. The world for students is so, so different today.

The following quote will appear in The AISNT History and came from the Honorable Austin Asche’s speech at the annual teaching awards ceremony, held at Parliament House in 2008. The Honourable Austin Asche is indeed a master orator, and it is a joy to read his annual speeches immortalised in his booklet “Teachers on Top”.

“To recognize teacher excellence is to recognize the future. For nothing is surer than that, in the vast technological and scientific changes occurring every day, the nation that falls behind on education, falls behind in the welfare of its people. It is a dangerous thing to fall into the third world and very hard to get out of it if one does. And not only are technical skills needed. The Arts are there to assure we have alert and intelligent citizens capable of conversations beyond texting, judgment beyond slogans, and initiative beyond blind guess. Today’s gathering is to help us understand that we have teachers and the will to achieve such things.”

Long term survival in the modern world demands critical thinking, not blind acceptance, particularly of news items which so often have another agenda other than delivering news in a reasonable, unbiased way. Rather than blindly accepting something we should encourage students to don their filters to see whether they think it is reasonable or not and even if they get the wrong answer at least they have thought about it and can therefore exercise “judgement beyond slogan, and initiative beyond a blind guess”.

Thus, teachers have a huge task as they seek to encourage wisdom. It is not good enough to just bang out Pythagoras without the cloak of wisdom. The historian Geoffrey Blainey who is dripping in wisdom who made famous yet another cause for the Eureka Rebellion at Ballarat December 3 1854 - the weather! Would it have happened if the licence hunt held was not on an unpleasantly hot day. It is so important for our students to have the wisdom to think creatively and laterally to find the track towards the truth.

I have mentioned the International Confederation of Principal’s before and their convention I attended in 1999 in Helsinki - a long time ago! The convention was enlightening and a number of NT principal’s attended it. As previously mentioned, Yassar Arafat’s presentation on education in Palestine was thought provoking. But so was the presentation of the CEO of Nokia, the telecommunications company which held a significant part of the world market. Like so many, I had a Nokia phone. From Global dominance to a major fall on the world market, Nokia sold out to Microsoft in 2013 after having controlled an amazing 51% of the total global market share. But after its meteoric rise it then faced the same type of fall. The name Nokia did not die and its brand is controlled by HMD Global which is a company founded by former Nokia employees.

Nokia started in 1865 as a single paper mill operation. It diversified over the years into making cable, paper products, tyres, gum boots, televisions and then mobile phones. The CEO’s presentation was thought provoking for educators. He said that the company had decided to employ the smartest university graduates, defined by their academic results. They did this for a short time and then ceased the practice. Whilst these graduates had the ability to solve defined problems, they were not lateral thinkers and the narrowness of their study had not resulted in them having much initiative. The company then change its approach to employ young people who were diverse thinkers who had a good general knowledge who had the capacity to use initiative and were good problem solvers. A very narrow education is unlikely to produce such an individual. The company was very pleased with its change in approach and the positive results that emanated from it.

This is of course not to say that brilliant, targeted thinkers are not valuable but like anyone the “horse must fit the course”.

I guess this experience highlighted the importance of Principal’s taking the opportunity for renewal and ongoing input, though with the frantic nature of the job it is hard to do - but very important .My Board was very much in favour of supporting my quest to improve my educational thinking and indeed in the “getting of educational wisdom”. In my experience if you don’t make it happen it in fact won’t happen, and becoming stale, or perhaps burnt out, is a real danger. The kit bag on educational thinking I carried in 1974 was very different from the one I retired with in 2016. It is this one that I keep safe beside my chair in the lounge room, ready to refer to whenever needed. Education should be constructively dynamic and the question “is there a better way to do A, B, C etc.” always hovering overhead. This ongoing challenge continues to be stimulating.

Well, back to “Telationship” (PT 2023 4). I’ve had the pleasure of conversing with some recent school graduates, including one starting his fourth year at Uni. I listened intently to try and determine what had made their schooling a positive experience. It wasn’t so much amazing facilities but rather the relationship which they had with certain teachers. The teachers they related to were not clones of one another - some were very strict, some easier, some were comedians, some extroverted, some very serious, but all projected a love of their subject, an enthusiasm for teaching, especially communicating a genuine interest in the student and a desire to make a difference to students in general. Well I’m really glad for this input this week and it’s gone into my kitbag and Austin Asche’s booklet, with his words of true wisdom, is always near at hand.

Written by Chris Tudor