Katie, I apologize…

I’d read about the first three words in your post and I immediately thought “Oh God! Another teacher, another soul crushing ‘I KNOW better than you’ and my hear sank, sank sang…

You know that my story isn’t so unique. I meet “damaged property” almost every day. We were all beaten, scolded and belittled by the all knowing super class.

Guys – Its time to admit that, for a significant part of our kids, the education just isn’t working adequately. We need to do something different and I know this system has merit because I’ve done something similar. Yes there are sexual overtones but believe it or not, learning about the other sex is part of growing up. It also makes the interaction exciting and the participants try harder so they can impress.

Oh, but what the heck do I know about education? I was just that absolutely dumb, stupid, shambling kid who deliberately walked into the desks and knocked things over. It’s a strange revelation to sit here knowing that today I am much more capable and qualified than those cruel bastards (well maybe bastards isn’t a strong enough word but I don’t want Thought Leader to delete my post). I got my education outside the traditional system after it (and the teachers) had failed me and it’s a pretty good education too mind you, so when I say it’s time to try something different for those that education is failing, I can speak with authority.

LONG LIVE THE INTERNET (and facebook and Mixit and all those other terrible new pastimes)

Secondly, fanfic is self-selecting. People are in online fanfic communities because they already like to read and write. Someone who does not like reading and writing would probably not like fanfiction either.

Because anyone can post just about anything on the internet, a substantial proportion of fanfic is very overtly sexual and/or violent (often to the point where it is pornographic). Do you really want to bring this into the classroom?

Don’t get me wrong, I think fanfiction could be a very good learning tool, but many articles on fanfic either only represent the bad side for sensational value or gloss over fanfic’s problematic parts entirely. I can see why you haven’t mentioned the bad quality/completely unrestricted content part up front as that would drive people away before they had even considered the idea, but it does need to be taken into consideration.

To better facilitate learning, you could set up a school intranet, maybe with participation from another school from an english-speaking country, and host the fanfic on school servers, rather than letting your students out into the wilds of the internet. The core of this idea, which is to get students to write about something they are interested in and make it socially rewarding for them, is a good one.

We talk about catering for different learning styles and inclusive education, but we carry on teaching in the same old way…John’s story is very inspirational and hopefully as teachers we will start sit up and take notice. There are many of us with the same problem.

Thanks for showing us this new tool for learning Steve!

This would make a huge difference to the learning challenged as well. How would I know?

I failed three years at school and never got a matric. I was dyslexic, I was dyspraxic (very uncoordinated), I was stupid, and I was probably also an undiagnosed ADHD. I’d always been fascinated (mesmerised may be a better word) by mechanical things and I wanted to know more about 2 stroke engines (the 1st book I read), epicyclic gearboxes, Lanchester torque converters, helicopters, etc so about 6 years after I left school, I found a remedial teacher who was prepared to have a second go at teaching me to read. What material do you think he used?

It was initially embarrassing for me, a 24 year old to sit at the little desks among kids aged between seven and twelve. On one occasion, a nine year old watched me read, then read the same page I had and asked me why I read so slow.

In time, my reading and comprehension skill improved from 140 WPM at Grade 4 level to 480 words at grade 12 level. More important though is that this teacher taught me to scan so I can get the gist of a 10 000 word document in less than 10 minutes (and I now have the VERY bad habit of scanning rather than reading!)

I still couldn’t really write and my spelling was shall we say “very creative”. I went off to night school though and the people marking the scripts were warned that I was dyslexic so, provided the technical details were OK, they shouldn’t penalize me too much for my presentation. I started collecting qualifications. Boy, did I collect pieces of paper.

In 1984, I met the IBM 8084 PC with word processor, spreadsheet and most important, spell check. I played with computers before this because I knew that eventually they’d be my savoir but I didn’t anticipate the impact the IBM PC would have on me.

Amusingly, In the late 1970s, I did an extensive battery of psychological and aptitude tests and one of the recommendations was that I SHOULD NOT WORK WITH COMPUTERS. That same negative recommendation has come up in two subsequent sets of tests.

I can’t live without my computers

I eventually went to university (at night). At 47 I became the SRC Rep and had the childhood I’d never had at school. The poor young profesors and lecturers often had to reprimand “the old guy” in the back row. I was granted the “Golden keys” award and a bursary as a promising YOUNG student. This was a mistake but once awarded in front of a thousand students, the university couldn’t exactly take it back. I ended up with a Masters Degree.

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn to read fiction. My next goal is to read two novels a month. I’m finding it tedious because of the different structure and lack of a stream of facts.

The moral in both your article and my odd story is that if you can show the student something he wants, but the only way he can get it is through learning. Guess what? He LEARNS (in capital letters).