(Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand.)
- Xun Zi
„Leviathan school had one advantage and also one disadvantage“, Mr Tuniak said. „The disadvantage was that there were no real teacher. No one had the right education. That's changed nowadays, George is a real teacher for instance, but he wasn't even born yet when I went to school.”
“You said... or implied that the grown-ups did the teacher's work”, I said.
“Yes, and that meant that they were learning some of the things we learned at the same time as us”, Mr Tuniak explained. “There were even times when we pupils were preparing subjects to tell about everyone else in class...”
“Like presentations?”
“Yes, like that”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “By the way: Did you notice an important thing missing on the island?”
“Important for teaching, I guess?”, I asked and he nodded. I thought back to our walk through the temple and all the things we had seen, but I couldn't think of anything missing. But I had the feeling that it had to be something big and – theoretically – very obvious. “I don't know”, I said.
“No library”, Mr Tuniak said. “There simply isn't space for one anywhere on Leviathan. Of course, thanks to computers that's not a problem today, but back then...”
“What did you do?”
“I've got a problem”, Estevan said to Miriam and Helen. They were in his office and Miriam was holding the baby Alexander – just over two months old – in her arms. “I wanted to give the children here a good education, but I can't do it. I don't have the necessary equipment here. Simple, but important things, like books, are missing. But I don't have any space for them.”
“What about the big hall you are creating under the temple?”, Miriam asked.
“That's for the water recycling and treatment machinery”, Estevan said. “It was Ricardo's idea.”
“Ah, that's why he always appears so busy”, Helen said. “But don't worry about the books. Give us an hour and we'll solve that particular problem for you.”
As the two women left the office, Miriam asked: “Are you going to do what I think you are going to do?” Helen nodded.
One hour – and one voyage through time – later they had returned to Estevan. They put something on his desk he couldn't identify. It looked like a very thin and very flat TV screen.
“What is that?”, Estevan asked.
“A computer”, Helen explained. “A tablet computer to be precise. They are going to be invented in about thirty, forty years. And they are capable of storing the complete knowledge of a whole library.”
“The most important thing you should know about the Leviathan school is that there were no clear and separate courses”, Mr Tuniak explained. “In theory, children of the same age were always learning together, but it was not a strict rule. If you were gifted in any given subject, you could change groups. If you were really gifted, it was possible that you were teaching your friends.”
“And which subjects were taught?”
“There was no clear, defining line between them”, Mr Tuniak repeated. “A typical day could start with a history lesson, let's say about Roman conquests, and then continue to mathematics and physics – e.g. calculate the path of a catapult's projectile. Or Optics: How many mirrors do you need to set fire to a galley.”
“That works?”
“Quite well, actually. You should look up the attack on Syracuse and Archimedes' defence of the city. That's tactics and physics in one. We even built scale models to test his theories. Manh and Minh helped us with those. And Ricardo of course.”
“Who's Ricardo?”
“A young man from Peru, but he was basically one of the grown-ups of the island”, Mr Tuniak said. I could hear a note of sadness in his voice, when he said that. “I will tell you about him another time. But we were talking about class. Since the children came from all over the world, some of them didn't know where Syracuse was. So those who did, described it to them. Which, of course, led to biology: plants and animals in the Mediterranean Sea. Sometimes this also covered the subject of: which of those can you eat.”
“And in spite of this... chaos, you were basically taught the same things that I was taught in school?”, I asked.
“No, most definitely not”, Mr Tuniak said. “There are huge areas we didn't even touch upon. There was no curriculum, if you want. Except in sports.”
“Why?”
“Because sports was the only things taught exclusively by one man”, Mr Tuniak said. “Louis, Alice's uncle. Not her real uncle, they were not actually related, but she called him that and so did everyone else. They came to Leviathan together.” Louis, he continued, had acted in American vaudeville theatres before the Second World War broke out. Because of his skin condition he had been named the “Human Reptile”. After the war, most of those theatres closed down. He went to the UK, where he appeared in a few music halls, but it became more and more difficult to find a gig. That's also where he met Alice's parents, who faced the same problem. After their death, he took care of Alice and together they left the country and came to Leviathan. It was a relief for both of them: No longer were they looked down upon as freaks and swimming in salt water turned out to be very healthy for Louis and his skin condition.
“When he was young he had been working in a circus for a few years”, Mr Tuniak continued. “He made friends with a family of acrobats there. And I'm pretty sure that he copied their training program to torture us with.” He smiled as he said that, making it clear that it hadn't really been torture.
“And with the time machine you were also visiting all the cultures you learned about, right?”, I asked.
“Not that often, no”, Mr Tuniak said. “Although: I do remember that we boys were very fascinated by heroes and battles and the like. We begged our mothers to take us to the famous battles of history, because we wanted to see them.”
“Isn't that dangerous?”, I asked.
“Of course it is”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “Which is why it took some time, before they found a battle we could savely observe.” He was shaking his head at the memories. “We were stupid. Or naïve. It's one thing to read about battles and wars, but to experience them... for several weeks afterwards we all had nightmares about what we had seen.”
“I can imagine”, I said. “But your mothers should have seen that coming.”
“They did. But if they had simply refused to take us there, it would only have made us more curious”, Mr Tuniak said. “My mothers were firm believers in: Learning through experience. If you are only told about the cruelties and horrors of a battle, there is... let's call it a filter in your brain that shields you from imagining the worst. But once we saw the reality... we never read about battles in the same way... Which reminds me: I mustn't forget another.... teacher. Bill!”
The screams had lasted for only a few moments, but still long enough to wake everyone in the school.
“What was that?”, Alexander asked his room mate. But Mowgli only shrugged and together they left their room. In the corridor outside other children had already gathered, curious about the nightly disturbance. Alexander repeated his questions, but no one seemed to have an answer.
“I thought you woke up and couldn't find anything to eat”, Alice teased him. She remembered the times when Alexander was still a baby and often woke up hungry in the middle of the night.
“Didn't a new child arrive today?”, Sarina asked. “I think I saw that Russian guy from last week and he was accompanied by a child.”
She stopped when she saw that Farid has gesturing something. He, too, had seen the man and he also knew that there was some connection between him and Alexander's mothers.
“I don't know anything about him”, Alexander said. Then he saw Cate and Ricardo coming towards them. “What's happened?”
“The first month after Bill's arrival at school was very difficult for everyone”, Mr Tuniak said. “Bill never told anyone what had happened to him before he came to Leviathan but it must have been terrible. He had nightmares and he would start screaming in the night.”
I could imagine it. The temple was big, but it was not that big. It was probably quite easy to scream loud enough so that everyone on the island could hear you.
“Later, two or three months after his arrival, he started to join us in class”, Mr Tuniak continued. “But it became obvious that he had trouble concentrating. The slightest sound, the slightest... thing could distract him.”
“ADHD?”, I asked.
“I'm sure that would be the diagnosis nowadays”, Mr Tuniak said. “But back then: Any other school would have complained about his bad behaviour and that he was disrupting the lessons.”
“But you found a way around that?”
“Of course”, Mr Tuniak said. “That's what we did best at Leviathan. Take a disadvantage and turn it into an advantage. Bill couldn't concentrate, so he was excused from attending classes. He only joined us at the end of each lesson and then we had to repeat to him everything we had learned. Now, he would try to listen, but he would be distracted of course. So, every time we noticed that he wasn't really listening any more, another one of us children had to continue the recapitulation. Because that was a new stimulus, Bill would concentrate on that child for a while and once he got distracted again, another child continued.”
“And that was also good for you, because you repeated everything you had learned.”
“When we played games with him, it was quite similar”, Mr Tuniak said. “Bill was excellent at chess, surprisingly. Simul chess, to be precise. And we all admired him because he was the only one of us children who could beat Johann at the game. The Spider... sorry, Johann, was regarded by everyone on the island as the one with the highest IQ.” He leaned back in his chair. “But what I told you today, was only one part of our education. We also went on several excursions, but I will tell you about those next week.”
NEXT WEEK:
A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen