SAVE THE WORLD FOR FUN AND PROFIT
by Janet Vickers
An Entertainment, Performed November18, 2000
PATRICK: Good evening and welcome to this moment in history, where well known Canadians have come together to celebrateAdult Education and discuss it's promise in determining social policies, economics and the state of modern hedonism. I would like to welcome our esteemed panel, Pierre Certain - historian, writer and journalist, Maude Farlow - Canadian par excellence, the gr-r-reat old CBC radio host- Peter Growlski, and last but not least, a journalist with a large vocabulary- Barbara Amiable.
Well Maude, your lifetime commitment to creating a discourse on better worlds, makes you a good candidate to start off this debate.
MAUDE: Thank you Patrick. And thank you students and faculty of the University College of the Fraser Valley, Adult Education Department, for inviting me here this evening.
Adult Education happens all the time whether we recognize it or not. If you read tabloids, watch the World Wildlife Wrestling on T.V., listen to pop music, radio talk shows, or even gossip around the water fountain- you are learning all the time . . .
BARBARA: What a typically banal statement. Everyone knows this - only left wing pedants offend the intelligence of ordinary people by stating the obvious.
PIERRE: The important thing is to look at the history of Adult Education in Canada and the work of J.Roby Kidd . . .
BARBARA: Let's start before Kidd - let's look at the establishment of the Art, Historical and Scientific Association, founded by ardent imperialist, R.Edward Gosnell in the late nineteenth century, as revealed in the researchof Ian Hunt. Theirpurpose was made clear during many of their lectures - to civilize British Columbia - to keep it British and to quote Gosnell "where the British flag will forever fly".
MAUDE: That small interlude hardly compareswith the ideals of the Antigonish Movement, Frontier College, National Farm Radio Forum, Women's Institutes, National Film Board, right up to CBC Radio's Morningside,which seems to have come out of a social concern. What is often disparagingly called 'left wing' or 'socialism' today, was then a kind of optimism that as technology became more sophisticated, we would simply have the means to educate our nation on how to live better. If there was any socialist propaganda among the teachings, it is hard to extract it from a concern that Canada must work hard to remain a single nation of citizens who could live in harmony, given the right education, or at least, the opportunity to be informed.
PETER: Do these models provide hope for the future of Canada? Is it simply a matter of educating the people to participate democratically, to be informed?
BARBARA: Who are we to assume they are not informed? These questions are laden with superior undertones. Besides, in spite of their imperialist attitude and national chauvinism,the Art, Historical and Scientific Association achieved a civilizing effecton a province invaded by opportunists from America, Asia and Europe. If we can link Canadian futures with Canadian people, we will see that adult education must provide a means to create profit if it is to survive . . .
PIERRE: The drive to create profit needs to be balanced with questions as to the health of the community it getits support from . . .
BARBARA: but the models of independence, courage and single-minded pursuit that characterized the gold rush era were inspirational . . .
*VOICE OFF: (in a clipped English) "We live in society precisely so that we can tackle collectively the problemsthat we cannot solve individually."
PATRICK: Who is that?
VOICE OFF: the Canadian conscience
PATRICK: Who are you?
VOICE OFF: It doesn't matter who I am.The question is who are you?
BARBARA: but jobs were created. Peoplecame setting up hotels, grocery stores, transportation . . .
MAUDE: saloons and brothels . . .
VOICE OFF: "The stakes are whether Canadawill be a strong united nation or a loose confederation of shopping centres . . . "
BARBARA: So the communities were primitive in structure in the beginning. Then later came the civilizing influences of well-bred, educated people . . . doctors, nurses, teachers, then churches and . . .
VOICE OFF: "A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leavestanding there to defy eternity. A country is something that is builtevery day out of certain basic shared values. And so it is in thehands of every Canadian to determine how well and wisely we shall build the country of the future."
PIERRE: History has shown that not all communities are created equal. There are civilizing and alienating forces at work in every age. But people must have the right education to choose where they are going to spend their talents.
PETER: In what way can we encourage the development of the noblest expressions of human nature, while acknowledging the huge pull of self-interest?
MAUDE: Well the teachings of Andrea Kastner in program planning, ask us to reflect over and over againhow we can negotiate with the ever changing landscape of power, how we can make the world better without sacrificing ourselves to martyrdom.
VOICE OFF: "If the state can organize afire brigade to protect our goods, why should it not organize a teaching brigade to develop our minds, or knock down slums to protect our way oflife?"
PATRICK: Why don't you just come in andjoin us.
VOICE OFF: I have set off in my canoe and can't return.
PETER: Has education come full circle toinclude all elements of human nature? Self-interest, a concern for all others, community development, development of individual potential,self- expression, self-discipline, knowledge of the past, awareness of the future, towards an honouring of diversity in unison?
MAUDE: Not yet, Peter. Wendy Burton points out the obligation educators have to reflect on theirpractice and how it impacts the people who are on the receiving end of that practice. She does this not by preaching but by telling stories ofher own teaching experiences "invocations of the classrooms of my past". Burton builds discussions within an epistemic community through storytelling. Here the learners bring the text from their own stories that come fromtheir own experiences. The teacher or instructor is not held separatefrom the students - all are there to learn.
PETER: Doesn't that sound like play, like fun?
PIERRE: Why should fun be taken out of education? The teaching and learning models that we most recall from institutions have more to do with power than with learning. When I started school the first lesson a child needed to learn was who had the power and who didn't - that was in the classroom and in the playground.
MAUDE: And now in adult education, Pierre,you would be asked to share your experiences, to examine what you learned from them, and along with your colleagues, to discover new insights into the best practices, the best means of educating adults.
PETER: But how will students know when they are right or wrong, if the teacher is just part of the class?
PATRICK: The teacher still teaches, justas good journalists teach - by telling the stories they know. It's justthat the teacher doesn't stand on the stage and say "this is what you needto know and I will be the judge of whether you have learned it or not". The educator becomes aware of the exchange of information that happenswith every exercise.
BARBARA: What muddled thinking. I'm aboutto hear, I'm sure, that teachers will not mark papers - that they do not have the right to impose their experience and knowledge on the students.
MAUDE: Ah well that brings us to the post-itnote. Don Chapman engages in a discussion with the learner's paper not by using red ink andcrossing out all that he does not agree with, but by placing his thoughts on a post-it note, then placing them on the paper. This way the learner is given the opportunity to read the responses, and being asked to reflect,as part of her journey into discovery.
PETER: So are we moving from the age ofreason, to the age of reflection?
MAUDE: A reflective nation could offer the world some alternatives to the destructive patterns that have so long determined national and global issues, seemingly bent on conquering everything to its death - even our own future.
VOICE-OFF: "We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege."
PATRICK: So here we have hope that adult education will save the world. Well that's all we've time for today. Thank you honourable guest speakers and thank you . . . that voice out there- whoever you are. Be sure to tune in next week, when we'll have more in depth discussions with more substance -- in the classroom of your choice.
Goodnight.
*Note: Voice-off comments are quotes attributed to Pierre Elliott Trudeau
