Adminfo - and Vice Principals

scoff at any mention that it would
eventually revolutionize teaching by
teachers and learning by the learners.
Many of us plunged head first into
the technological revolution, all the
while anxious about the anticipated
ambiguity that this new technology
would bring to our profession.
At the outset of the revolution,
most of us were unprepared for what
was about to hit us. Lewis Perelman,
author of School’s Out (1992),
argued that schools were out of sync
with technological change, “ … the
technological gap between the school
environment and the “real world” is
growing so wide, so fast that the classroom
experience is on the way to becoming
not merely unproductive but
increasingly irrelevant to normal human
existence” (p.215).
In 1993, Seymour Papert, one of
the most important thinkers of the
past half-century wrote, “ In the wake
of the startling growth of science and
technology in our recent past, some
areas of human activity have undergone
mega change. Telecommunications,
entertainment and transportation,
as well as medicine, are among
them. School is a notable example of
an area that has not.”
Granted, our concept of schooling
had evolved and there were more and
more attempts to change the formal
structures of education, (how can one
forget the Year 2000 project, circa
the early 1990s) but these shifts in
educational trends were led more
by changing demographics as well
as economic structures and cultures
than by our desire to rethink education
so that it would be more in sync
with the real world. For most of us,
the arrival of technology into schools
took us completely off guard. And
yet, the writing had been on the wall
for quite some time.
I, for one, had first read the writing
in 1963, in a prophecy uttered by a
wise 71-year-old nun.
Sister Pierre-Joseph was not only
the grade six teacher of our small village
school, she was also the Mother
Superior to the other sisters and thus,
the educational leader and pedagogical
savant of our school community.
I remember her greeting us every
morning with her habitual shortwinded
‘Bonjour les enfants,’ panting
after lugging her 4-ft 8-inches, 200
pound frame up the old school/convent
grand staircase (at least I remember
them as being grand), her red face
accentuated by the blackness of her
habit and that starched white visor
that framed her face. Sister Pierre-
Joseph was strict, but then, she was
a nun, and all nuns were strict. What
I remember the most about Sister
Pierre-Joseph was that she was a true
visionary.
One day, in one of our math classes,
Victor, my cousin (we were all cousins
in that school), tired, bored and exasperated
after having spent the past 90
minutes working at five pages of long
divisions, shared out loud his frustration
in regards not only to the complexities
of long division, but also to
the redundancy of the whole long
division phenomenon. The class’ collective
gasp preceded what seemed to
be an eternity as all of our eyes anxiously
and nervously turned to Sister
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Editor
Pierre-Joseph, perched high behind
her elevated desk in front of us. Time
stood still, the deafening silence individually
punctuated by the inner
sound of our pounding hearts, for
some in excited anticipation, for others
in anticipated terror.
Needless to say, we, all 38 of us,
were taken aback by Victor’s dare
devilling and reckless outburst. Alas,
the strict and mandatory silence permeating
the classroom (essential element
to the learning process, we were
told) was broken. More importantly,
Victor, a child, a student, and thus a
mere minion in the vast pool of ignorant
children that made up our world,
dared question the validity of what we
were asked and needed to do in order
to one day, as all adults had done before
us, ascend to the world of wisdom
and knowledge. The silly girls in
the front of class were of course scandalized,
if not traumatized, by Victor’s
outburst. I, on the other hand,
was impressed. This was not the first
time that he would get into trouble
for saying the wrong thing at the
wrong time and consequently, Victor
had a bit of a reputation as being the
black sheep of the school. Victor was
my hero.
Sister slowly rose from her pedestal.
Slightly leaning towards us, both
hands firmly on her desk as to get a
Richard Williams
20
NUMBER 3
February 08 • Adminfo • 5