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The World of Illusion Knitting

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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

At about the same time that we created Metafourmosis  I was also being employed on an occasional basis by Lancashire County Council as part of a scheme known as Parents as Educators. Keen parents attended sessions which covered different aspects of school life and how they might best help their children. Sometimes these were in the daytime and I went alone; others were in the evening so Steve came too. Our aim was always the same. We did not want to intimidate parents by showing them methods they might not feel happy using but we did want them to understand that methods they had learned at school themselves, and which they considered to be the ‘normal’ way, were not necessarily the only way. We tried to encourage them to keep an open mind and to realise the child might not be seeing the problem, or trying to solve it, in the way they did. We did this mainly by looking at designs such as Tilting at Windmills and by repeating that simple exercise in fitting shapes together, that we had used at our first Easter Conference.

I don’t know, and will never know, how effective we were. I hope they went away with something to think about but was always dubious when, after spending such a long time trying to change their way of looking at the world, we gave them a pattern of numbers asking them to say what should come next. The first pattern was 1, 2 …. Without exception they would answer ‘3’ and would take a lot of coaxing to arrive at an alternative possibility. The second pattern was 2, 4 …. and the answer was always 6. Had we changed their perception at all?

At the same time there was a fund of money becoming available to inner-city schools for activities to excite ‘Gifted and Talented’ pupils. This later became available to a much wider range of schools and was aimed toward the most able pupils in the school, to raise levels of achievement. In the early days, the ways in which schools chose to spend the money were somewhat varied. I ran workshops in a few schools, often taking Ben along to help out when it fitted in with the temporary and part-time jobs he was doing. Most of the events were unspectacular from our point of view. The pupils, and their teachers, enjoyed them but to us they were routine and went according to plan.

One, which was in a school very close to the centre of Birmingham, now stands out from the rest. It was spread over two days so Ben and I stayed overnight at my mother’s, which was only about twenty miles from the school. On the first day we set off with plenty of time to spare and a reasonable idea of where we were going. At the time Birmingham Bullring was being rebuilt and many roads had diversions. There were very few familiar landmarks and we got lost several times. It became obvious that we would be late so we phoned the school and were reassured that it wasn’t really a problem because many others were also going to be late and, anyway, the time we had been given was not the actual starting time. When we eventually arrived we found several familiar faces sitting drinking coffee and waiting for proceedings to begin. These were people we had often worked with before and we were all now on a list of ‘Mathematical Performers’ who could be booked for such events.

As time progressed it became obvious that the set-up was somewhat different from any we had been to before. It was very near the end of the Summer Term and the school had combined various pots of money to provide activities. The school had been split in half, by ability. As any teacher will tell you, a division like this very often proves to be more a division created by attitude, commitment and application rather than any innate ability, or lack of it. The ‘top half’ were all to be taken out to places of interest on the first day and the roles reversed on the second day.

The collected performers were to inspire the ‘bottom half’ (read ‘awkward and disinterested’) on this first day. Some of the performers were experienced teachers, others had a passion for their own particular field but were inexperienced in handling truculent pupils.

Groups of about thirty pupils had a timetable for the day where they were ushered into various workshops for an hour or so. At almost every session pupils were shown in by staff who then left. I would not consider this to be good practice in any school but I could sympathise with staff who probably saw this as a brief respite from their demanding pupils. I normally go into events like this in a very pleasant manner with no concerns about the discipline as the regular teachers are on hand to intervene if necessary.

We weren’t far into this day before I adopted my strict-teacher-with-disruptive-pupils stance. “It isn’t good manners to walk round the room when someone is talking to you”; “Do not throw my equipment about”; “Take your feet off the table.” This is not conducive to an inspirational workshop! And it had to be repeated, to a greater or lesser degree, as each new group arrived. We did make progress and, as is often the case in these circumstances, some of the most awkward turned out to be the most involved. Some even stopped to thank us at the end. None could bring themselves to apologise though they gave the impression they would very much like to.

It was a hard day for me but some of the others had it a lot harder. Mine had been sitting at tables, in groups, so were relatively confined. Put pointed wooden sticks in the hands of thirty tearaways, give them a school hall to work in and you have a lot more problems. Some of the performers looked shell-shocked. The second day could only be better – though the staff on the outings probably didn’t see it that way.

On Day Two we knew where to go now and which roads to avoid. The performers arrived on time - to be met by mayhem at the school. I omitted to mention that the school, which was already a sprawling building, was in the middle of a construction site. Around the existing school there were narrow walkways with high fencing and, beyond this, a new school was under construction. Just as the builders started work that morning they hit the mains water pipe, sending a jet of water high into the air. There was absolutely no water reaching the existing building. It had quickly been decided that all outings could go ahead as planned as the pupils would be out of the way and could be forgotten until their return.

The pupils remaining in school posed a much more serious problem. For Health and Safety reasons they could not remain on site and would all have to be sent home. There was a strict truancy control in Birmingham at that time so it was not sufficient to tell the pupils they had to go home. Each had to receive a letter stating the reason for not being in school, which they could produce if challenged. Throughout the chaos the performers sat and waited. There was no audience but nobody wanted to be first to suggest we should leave. We were all being paid for being there but there was nothing we could do. Eventually we were told that we could leave whenever we wanted to but they would appreciate us staying until 11.30 as the lunch was already ordered and, if we didn’t eat it, it would be thrown away. We stayed and Ben did his best to solve their problem.

20c. THE WORLD WIDE WEB OF KNITTERS continued