“Uncle Bob”

The education system, dominated by the politically correct Left and its powerful teachers’ unions, is plagued by many problems, especially ideological bias and shortfalls in teacher quality. Rather than just complain, my approach is to show students how to make the most of both the system’s shortcomings and attributes so they eventually emerge educationally triumphant and emotionally unscathed. As with the first volume, my purpose with its sequel, The Little Black School Book: Volume 2 (Exams), is to empower individual students to effectively deal with classroom reality. What follows is an extract that climactically draws the thematic threads of the argument together. Although primarily pitched at high school and university students, it has much to say to the rest of us former students who remain concerned about education issues.

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However, there is another important characteristic of the system to recognise that is often overlooked. When dealing with teachers you are dealing with a section of the workforce who are, for the most part, separated from the consequences of their actions. When you make a mistake in your studies, you suffer the consequences. However, when your teacher makes a mistake in their lessons, corrections or assessments, you also suffer the consequences.

This characteristic of the system, which is currently accentuated by the prevailing education policy regime and the power of the teachers’ unions, can have a significant impact on the motivation of teachers to produce quality work or to address their mistakes and rectify injustices. This also puts the responsibility back on individual students to protect your own interests by taking responsibility for your own education.

In this context, I have encouraged you to adopt an optimistic attitude, so you are always looking for the opportunity in every situation. If you have the right attitude, you will find an opportunity in almost every situation, including apparently adverse situations. For example, if you find that you have an extremely biased teacher, this need not be considered a setback but rather an opportunity to learn how to tune into the mind of someone who does not see issues as you do, so you can ultimately manipulate this teacher to dance to your tune, to reward you with high grades despite himself. Alternatively, if you have a dull or lazy teacher, this is an opportunity to develop the skills required to effectively deal with such a person, as well as to develop your capacity to compensate for a poor-quality educator by cultivating your ability to educate yourself and to expand your educational horizons by drawing on other resources, such as quality textbooks, clever friends, or a knowledgeable private tutor. On the other hand, if you have a knowledgeable and broad-minded teacher, you can capitalise on this as an opportunity to develop your academic merit.

Similarly, you should analyse any disappointments regarding results in an equally optimistic fashion, by asking yourself what you can learn from this experience and what you can do differently next time to improve your chances of success. In this way, nothing is lost to you as a source of your development into a formidable student. For example, one of my very capable Year 12 English students had taken care to tune into the pro-feminist bias of her teacher, and to reflect these values in the first essay she submitted to this teacher for assessment, hoping that this would do the trick and secure her an “A”. However, when the student received her essay back, to find that she had received a “B+”, the student was able to determine from the teacher’s corrections that her essay was not feminist enough for this teacher’s tastes. It had to be unequivocally pro-feminist. My student promptly increased the degree of feminist fervour in her next essay and received the “A” she desired. My student learnt that sometimes it is not enough to tune into the examiner’s bias. It may be necessary with some examiners to take care to precisely mirror the degree of the examiner’s bias to receive the high grade that you desire.

The ability to get inside another person’s head (in this case your examiner’s head) to see the world from their perspective is extremely advantageous, especially when dealing with those people who are in authority over you. You should be trying to do this at every opportunity, to gather any information that facilitates this insight, because it is a prerequisite for your ability to persuade. When you understand how your educators tick, assessment will no longer appear to be a mysterious or fearsome process. Consequently, you can become very skilful in the way you influence the assessment process, a dimension of education that too many students, in effect, virtually leave to chance. When you know what is really going on and understand precisely what you need to do, study becomes a game with which you can have fun, much fun.

This attitude was evident in one of my Year 12 English students. He was the younger brother of a former student, so he came to me knowing what to expect, being aware of the Method, that of establishing a psychological profile of the examiner so that everything put into an essay is calculated to pay a dividend in grades. I was only too happy to help this enthusiastic student follow in his brother’s footsteps. During our first lesson, as we became acquainted, we chatted about his older brother’s accomplishments, which included the episode, recounted in Volume 1 of The Little Black School Book, when his class had to write an essay about their personal hero. The older brother had used the psychological profile he had compiled of his teacher to create a fictional but supposedly real character, his “favourite aunt”, who had all the characteristics of his English teacher, such as a hatred of racism and a strong sense of charity. And, of course, what grade did this teacher award this essay about such a wonderful person? That’s right, an “A”.

The younger brother loved this story so much that he wanted to emulate it when he had to produce his creative writing folio. His chance to do so came soon, when his teacher assigned the class to write an essay on their favourite person. However, on this occasion the repetition of the nifty trick, used so well by my student’s older brother, posed a problem. The younger brother’s teacher was a notably bad teacher. There was very little about him to admire.

According to my student, this teacher was noted for coming to class with a well-read copy of the Age newspaper tucked under his arm (which is the preferred journal of the politically correct Left). His lessons were not very informative, seeming to be more like self-indulgent conversations with himself, where he often complimented his own wisdom and laughed at his own jokes. On some occasions, when the mood took him, he would teach the class little or nothing, telling the students to “get on with your work”, after which he put his feet up and read the newspaper. He appeared to teach for his own amusement rather than for the students’ benefit, and on one occasion when a perplexed student pestered this teacher for additional explanations and references to consult, the teacher dismissed the student with the telling remark, “I don’t get paid for results”. This teacher was well aware that he was protected by a powerful teacher’s union and he was going to be paid whether he did a good or a bad job or nothing at all. It appeared to my student that his teacher’s profile offered him little in terms of material upon which to write an essay about one’s favourite person. Or so it seemed.

An interesting tendency in human nature is that it is very difficult for people to see themselves as others see them. In addition, it is also the case that we all go through life with the continual narration provided by the voice of our imagination, which provides a very personal story line for our lives that only we as individuals are privy to. In addition, individuals tend to be highly selective when choosing characteristics about themselves from which to define their identity and worth. For example, an individual would be more likely to define his identity and worth by a recent act of kindness rather than by more numerous and frequent acts of laziness or unreasonableness. In this context, it is also often the case that an individual is likely to remember doing an act of kindness more readily than their more numerous displays of unreasonableness, which are often forgotten shortly after they happen. Furthermore, such an individual would have had excuses provided by his “internal narrator” that justified any incidents of apparently unreasonable behaviour in a manner that is acceptable to that individual, while it may not appear to be justified to others. Consequently, it was therefore highly unlikely that this teacher saw himself as his class saw him.

I explained these tendencies regarding human nature to my student, and I told him that if he conceptualised a significantly idealised version of his teacher, he would probably come up with a version of this character that resembled how this teacher saw himself as a person, as a good person.

That is precisely what my student did. For his essay on his favourite person, my student created the fictional but supposedly real character “Uncle Bob”. Uncle Bob was approximately the same age as my student’s English teacher, fifty-five, and like him, married with two children. My student made Uncle Bob a high school Politics teacher who was, coincidentally, never seen without a well-read copy of the Age newspaper tucked under his arm. With some mutual amusement, my student and I used pictures in one of my history books on the peace movement to place Uncle Bob, who was then a radical student anti-war protester, in the crowd in the famous Vietnam moratorium march in Melbourne in 1970. We also used some of my books on the history of rock to describe Bob’s tastes in music, and then my student used information from the notes he had taken in his English classes to depict Bob as liking the same television shows as my student’s English teacher, comedies on the ABC that featured political satire. However, the main reason why Uncle Bob was my student’s favourite person was because of the way he would enthusiastically talk about history and politics with wisdom and humour to anyone who would listen.

My student had much fun writing his essay about Uncle Bob, and frankly, I had just as much fun helping him. I was not surprised when my student announced to me at a subsequent lesson weeks later that he had received an “A” for his essay on Uncle Bob. However, what was more of a delight was that the English teacher had approached my student, telling him that “your Uncle Bob sounds terrific”. He wanted to meet Uncle Bob, using the excuse of asking my student to invite Uncle Bob to do some guest lectures on politics at the school. But Uncle Bob did not exist. Consequently, my student had to tactfully explain, several times, to his teacher that Uncle Bob would be shy about speaking at another school. 

The “Uncle Bob” essay was a success because my student had tapped into the power of an individual’s narcissism and cleverly exploited it, by inviting his English teacher to fall in love with his own (idealised) reflection. This example demonstrates that the study skills in these volumes will make you very powerful indeed when dealing with those in authority over you. Consequently, it is important that you exercise this power responsibly, with an insightful shrewdness regarding your self-interest and compassion for the feelings of the people with whom you are dealing.

If it is clever to be able to outsmart someone, it can be cleverer to resist the temptation to let them know that you have outsmarted them. Put simply, this means not letting them know that you know. If we are honest with ourselves, we would probably have to admit that often the motive to reveal the trick to the person whom we tricked comes from a desire for external validation, which in turn comes from an underlying sense of insecurity about one’s ability or worth. Instead, when you have outsmarted someone, you should ask yourself whether you can benefit more from revealing what you know, or benefit more from knowing something but pretending to those with whom you are dealing that you do not know it. You should also ask yourself the ethical question of whether you will be leaving happy people in your wake by revealing your methods to the people who were the targets of your methods, or whether this revelation will compromise what is currently a win-win situation. You will find that it will often be in your interest to let the people in authority over you maintain their impression that they are in control over you, even if the reality is otherwise, as was clearly the case with my student’s manipulative “Uncle Bob” essay. Despite the appearance of subordination, you will be able to influence the behaviour of those in authority over you without them knowing that they are being influenced. The power balance will be tipped in your favour. You will be a free agent, your own boss, and in control of your own destiny.

My student never revealed to his English teacher that the true identity of Uncle Bob was actually an idealised representation of the English teacher himself. This was the noble thing to do. He protected his teacher from a revelation that would have been hurtful. If one acquires power, and consequently the capacity to hurt others, it is often both nobler and cleverer to refrain from doing so. By keeping the identity of Uncle Bob a secret from his English teacher, my student successfully finished the school year, graduated, and left a very positive impression of himself in the mind of that teacher. Ironically, it may be necessary for you to exercise this restraint and compassion towards some teachers who were themselves unwilling to exercise similar restraint and compassion when dealing with you or your peers. Your ability to do this will help you to develop your character, as you make the progression from vulnerability to magnanimity. There is much more you can learn from school than the content of the courses.

Dr Mark Lopez is the author of The Little Black School Book: Volume 1 (Essays) (published by Connor Court, 2008). Its sequel, The Little Black School Book: Volume 2 (Exams) was published by Connor Court in July this year, $29.95. An extract from the first volume appeared in the October 2008 issue.