Faculty-Teacher

Sandy Yule

I am grateful for the opportunity to attend this consultation. This presentation was written last night, and expresses many of the thoughts in my background paper on the Australisan situation for Tertiary Education ("Up a Gum Tree"). I wish to present some reflections on my experience as a teacher, both within a tertiary institution and beyond, and through these reflections, something of my personal vision (which is formed in dialogue with others, and in response to broad collective visions).

I believe that my role of a teacher is primarily to exercise leadership in exploring reality, and thereby achieving an increased understanding and awareness of reality for myself and others. In my teaching, I have responded with a high level of personal commitment to Paulo Freire's conception of education in terms of "liberating dialogue", and I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration that I have personally derived from Paulo Freire, however recognizable or unrecognizable that may be.

Visions are held by people who are inspired by them, and I believe that the organizers of this consultation have the order correctly when they place vision ahead of reality in our title. It is vision which informs committed action, including the intentional acquisition of new knowledge of reality, and our experience of reality can be very grim if we have no vision to follow and to test.

I believe that, both in the WSCF and in the Churches, we are in the business of promoting, fostering and testing visions. While our experience of reality is of critical importance, it cannot constrain the acceptance or rejection of vision, however it may succeed in reshaping its form and expression. For vision is of what is not, or not yet, and cannot logically be refuted by what is, Yet vision is more than ideology, because it exercises the compulsion of our conscience on pain of the loss of our sense of personal integrity. When we are able to share our visions, we are forming that fellowship of mutual support and affirmation that I understand to be the gift of the Holy Spirit; in sharing our visions, we work at harmonizing our conflicting energies into that rare form of

peace which is a central element in my own hopes for our world, and for my own life. As an aside, I would challenge us all to continue to both the global dimension and the personal dimension of our vision.

When I was resting yesterday, I had one spontaneous image that I want to share with you. I saw an old, ramshackle building, about four stories high, in a bad state of disrepair. Suddenly, there was a new column of support for the floors and roof that came up in the middle of the wall that I was facing. This support was made of some quite new material and I watched, parts of the old building were grafted onto it while other parts fell away. Then a whole new section was added, covering new ground, and forming a circular building with the original column at the centre.

My interpretation of this image is that the old form of University, or perhaps society is dilapidated, and that a new form can emerge which covers both old and new ground. I offer this image as a fragment of vision that may or may not mean something to you. Part of our problem is usually our past successes, and as an example I would mention the tyranny of facts. Our intellects have been trained to deal with facts, and this is good; but there is the danger that we shall miss, or misconstrue, the meaning of our experience if we allow the facts currently in our minds to have an inappropriately dominant role. We need to balance facts by attending also to possibilities, dreams and fantasies which can help us to identify, and create, new facts. We need to reflect on and wrestle with those facts that do not fit our present ideas, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, until we receive, like Jacob, the wound and the blessing.

In my teaching, I seek to do this by creating an open space for dialogue with each class, in which students are encouraged to share questions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, stories, comments, and whatever else they find to be relevant to our shared undertaking, that of exploring reality through some particular starting point or focus. The unknown is usually scary, and I do not feel that I have the right to launch students into it unless I am prepared to go there myself along side them. There are many forms that this can take, such as opening up questions about the threat of global thermonuclear war, and the possibilities of peace and of peace education: sharing critical information about hidden political processes and manipulation of the mass media: opening up questions of personal meaning and vocation: raising questions of the ecological sustainability of the life-style of affluent societies: discussing issues of injustice such as racism, sexism and economic exploitation: tolerating silence when a hard question is asked: pressing for an argument to happen so that it can be a source of growth and learning: getting in touch with our own intuitive imagery and body knowledge that we normally leave unconscious: seeking to promote positive visions that

people make their own: investigating "grey areas” such as miracles, psychic phenomena and life beyond death: and in general allowing ourselves to remain in touch with the sources of our creativity and responsibility. My experience has been that this work has been most rewarding, which has encouraged me to explore further. Perhaps the price that is constantly demanded is that intimacy is sooner or later followed by absence and separation; there is then a special loneliness to cope with, which I take to be a common feature of serious moral and spiritual struggle.

I spoke earlier of leadership, and it is in the many arenas outside academic institutions that teachers also have a contribution to make. My own experiences here includes many hours on many committees and meetings; two examples would be my involvement as an early member of the Movement Against Uranium Mining, and more recently, of a group promoting Peace Education in schools. Experience gained in these arenas is an important resource for classroom dialogues, along with more traditional academic resources.

Another essential aspect of education as dialogue is the creation of a form of assessment that combines honest feedback to students about the quality of their work with a collaborative rather than a judgemental approach. For the last six years at least, I have proposed to students in my classes that they write a journal (or intellectual diary) of their own reflections upon the subject, based on class discussions, their reading," audio-tapes they have heard, and other relevant experiences out of class. I usually write a half-page or so in response to each journal, with the grade. I use to insist on grading pass/fail only, but this was disadvantaging students, so I now grade in terms of the quality of exploration, discovery and reflection displayed.

You may have noticed that I have not made much use of theological language in my remarks. This is because I have tried to stay close to my own experience, and tried to restrain myself from too many claims about the actions of God. Nevertheless, I do believe that all I have said is decisively shaped by Christian reflection and experience and whatever other influences there are.

Without a vision, the people perish. I see our calling as being able to struggle to find, or be found by, our own visionary experiences, which will always have both uniquely personal and broadly collective elements, and to be faithful to the heavenly vision in all aspects of our lives.

I thank you for your attention.