subtext

Spent the day at the Education Service Center with the entire high school faculty for our professional development day. The topic was toxic vs. Supportive school culture. In our groups we defined culture following one of four prescribed metaphors: Web, complex pattern, garden, or glue. I thought of George Lakacs’ book “The Meaning of Metaphor,” where he makes the case that our thoughts are controlled by the metaphors we put into play. I went to one of the “web” poster papers and wrote: culture traps us like flies, culture is a normative agent, and culture is control. I was not in a cooperative mood. We also got to investigate our “belief sets,” which I believe meant our tacit ideologies, but using that bit of terminology would have taken most of the afternoon to explain and would have engendered too many offended sensibilities. As it was “belief sets” caused enough of a tremor through the room. My herniated disk was acting up so the day was fairly painful until I remembered I had my pain pills in my bag; then I didn’t care. We were fed pretty good bar-b-que however, and as the storyteller at Williamsburg said in the middle of a ghost story, “Free food is free food.” All cynical attitude aside, the principal of my school is trying to change the culture of our school; he has made progress from the first year I started here. I think a lot of progress could be made simply by teaching the coaches to stop handing out packets of worksheets, and helping them learn to teach. But then the football team is winning so no one complains.