Thanks for this, and for empowering yet another educator of color. Annie

Greetings, José: I’ve just read your marvellous and passionate and honest book: This Is Not A Test (down-loaded to my iPad Mini via iTunes here in Australia). Bravo! Yes, I am a teacher. Now into my 66th year. My wife and I have a niece (via my wife’s big brother) and her husband now into their fourth year working in the US – in Manhattan. They love sky-diving – and during our recent visit (back in October 2014) broke a group record in Massachusetts hands linked in a circle plummeting free fall head-first. I don’t understand that at all – but then I undertook all kinds of daring challenges (aka foolhardy acts) when I was in my early 20s! While in NYC (staying in Bed-Stuy) we attended a small literary event at which Charles M BLOW (op.ed. writer New York Times) spoke to his newly published autobiography. And I began reading just published Roxanne DUNBAR-ORTIZ’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (paying respect to Howard ZINN’s A People’s History of the United States which I was given by an historian cousin in Arizona on a visit there in 1999). Well, yes … I am a teacher – and a reader. I studied English and History and Education at Sydney University in the latter 1960s. Along the way during my pedagogical journey I taught secondary school in New South Wales – I taught English to adult professionals in Madrid (Spain) and in Munich (Germany) – I studied post-grad (in the US: grad. school) diplomas in Multicultural Education and in Aboriginal Education (inspired, the latter, by some educational officer colleagues in the unit alongside my own in Sydney) – I taught TESOL programs to both adults and to secondary students who were refugees and/or immigrants to Australia of non-English speaking background – and both regular secondary school and then began studying and teaching junior level (i.e. upper elementary school level in the US) Japanese. That took me to Japan – where I spent much of the two decades 1990-2009 teaching English Communication/Oral English at university level, senior high and middle school level.

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist (a narrow fundamentalist protestant faith – a development/mix out of Methodism and Baptist you might say – a health-centred and medical missionary church) – our weekly Sabbath focus was our regional mission field (Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific) and there were always pastors/missionaries home on furlough to present sermons, slide nights (1950s-mid-1960s). The focus was over there. Indeed, I saw myself as a missionary. My mother – the great encourager of my educational pathway saw in my ambition some hope for her own battles with faith and redemption, I am sure. Nevertheless, during my years at university, that faith dissipated – disappeared totally in fact – the hypocrisy of church elders – and my own passionate idealism put paid to it. I searched other ways – read the Qur’an, too (very surprised at how it had all the stories and characters I knew so well from my reading of the Bible – plus a bit more) but eventually understanding that I didn’t need others to tell me what to do – to give me lists of things I had to avoid for fear of eternal damnation – I found my own path (not my own of course – actually pretty much the same path as most decent kind folk of any religion/ethnicity) to leading an engaged contributory life. During my time in Japan I uncovered three maxims/sayings which pretty much summed up my personal philosophy: (a) “Ichi-go Ichi-e” = One Time One Meeting (a kind of “carpe diem” – don’t waste the moment with the trivial. When you meet someone – dive into the opportunity to learn and share serious reflective thinking; (b) “Seken-wa semai” = The World is Narrow (It’s a Small World) – that in the conversation – and an ongoing conversation in any case, too – one is going to learn lots of things about the other person – and that – for goodness sake – we know someone in common – we share a liking for a kind of music or a movie or some sport – or whatever! That degrees of separation are actually never as much as six but can sometimes be as low as one – if not more often two or three! That we are all related if we would but follow the links and clues in our stories as they flow together; and (c) “Sekai-wa kagami” = The World is a Mirror (as we smile at or sneer at or greet with warmth or poke at another – that that same face/manner will be reflected back at us) In other words – The Golden Rule. Treat as one wishes to be treated – or Be sure you will be treated as you treat others. Some call this Karma. They say that what goes around comes around.

When I returned from Japan as I turned 60 – I eventually got up the energy to get myself registered to do some relief teaching. Which I did, though not very much of it. Enough though to want to reflect on the experience – especially from a three-week period I did teaching 13, 14 year olds some French but mainly Japanese (for an old former colleague taking some long service leave and making his first ever trip to Europe with his wife. About 25 years since I had last properly taught in a school in Australia. I was an unknown to the students – in what we would dally a residualised working class area. Where I live lies alongside the Pacific Ocean south of Newcastle 30 kms and 130 kms slightly north-east of Sydney – scenically outstanding. But politicians have wrought their worst here in Australia, too – the encouragement is to send one’s children to the private St Grammars – and off these boys and girls go in their buses in the morning – while those who are left behind (in a number of ways) have much to act out about. But so much potential nonetheless!

While staying in Bed-Stuy we visited some people down in Flatbush. My mother’s father was English. (Born in 1893 in rural Kent – went to Australia arriving in Fremantle – on the west coast near Perth – before his 19th birthday.) From the early 1970s I have been making family treks to the UK – catching up with and making firm the family threads of connection – my father’s mother was a teacher from Scotland. One of my mother’s cousin’s sons (my second cousin) lives in Brighton – on the coast south from London – a university and holiday town. His partner is a former nurse – she’s from Trinidad. Basically the same family name as yours – but spelt Wilson. Not Vilson. All her family were Seventh-day Adventist. They left the Caribbean – and ended up in NYC – then some to Canada – most of the rest to Florida. But one sister – Viola – and husband James (from Guyana) live in Flatbush. They have a son and daughter – both living, married, working professionally – in Florida. It was a lovely visit – so much that was familiar to me from my childhood – the same Bible verses on the walls – the same titles on the bookshelves.

Last week Monday I attended the funeral of one of the most significant of my many many significant students (you understand me – in fact all my students like yours to you – were significant – and taught me everything I know – if indeed I do know it)! His name was Athol B. He was only 56. I was just nine years plus his senior. He was in my – what in the US would be called Sophomore Year – in 1975 (in Australia the school year is a calendar year – from the end of January till about mid-December). Of Indigenous descent. In a beautiful northern New South Wales town which I was beginning to understand had a dark racist undercurrent. There were three incidents I observed which offended my hitherto blinded sense of fairness – as well as the “friendly” jibes I would parry from some colleagues who could see I was getting a little bothered by evident injustice towards “aborigines”! Anyway Athol was in my Form IV class. A bright smiling lad – full of promise – good at whatever sport – but what place could he hope to gain in this town – and how might I might I treat the class to becoming aware of the situation so that they too might deal with it…? And I was too young and had never articulated the ideas of inequity and bigotry and stereotyping – let alone use the word racist. Racism? In Australia? Really? Surely that was only in the US “Deep South” – or in apartheid South Africa. We were a new school. Our resources included as much as we could get with our excellent librarian – but also a lot of old texts unused by the high school from which our new school had been split. So I found in our text-book room some classic books which gave me the voice/voices I needed. You will know them I think: (1) Cry, the Beloved Country – by South African writer Alan PATON. A South African writer friend who lived many years later in another town in which I taught (and began my studies in Japan) and all of whose books were banned by the apartheid government of her own country told me that she had been on cheek-kissing terms with Alan PATON – and that if I were interested in knowing how he spoke – that all I had to do was listen to Archbishop Desmond TUTU. Alan PATON died in the spring of 1988 – my wife and I were spending some weeks on the Greek Island of Samos – a kind of recovery travel from the premature still-birth of our first child – a daughter. You will know Samos, naturally, as the home of Pythagoras. (2) Harper LEE’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Still powerful – and – sadly – given the focus on Ferguson – Trayvon – and more recent inhuman killings of black citizens in the US by police – not yet beyond the realms of offering insights. I do recall many years ago that reviewers for choices of literature for upper secondary students were suggesting that it was time to let go of Mockingbird and take up Snow Falling on Cedars. Nowadays in Australia I would be selecting appropriate Australian texts of a more relevant and contemporary focus – but those were the mid-1970s, then. And (3) – a poem by Wole SOYINKA (a Nigerian writer who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986) who studied at Leeds University – in fact was there when one of my later bosses was studying Italian and Drama there. The poem is “Telephone Conversation” – about an African student trying to find a room to rent – exasperated by the petty (and powerful) racism he was uncovering. When I was in Japan on a two-year teacher exchange (1991-1992) I was awaiting the publication of a book on teacher experiences dealing with racism through literature to which I had contributed a couple of chapters. I caught an article on Wole SOYINKA and wrote to him. A distant English cousin of some significance had lived out his colonial life on into his retirement and eventual death in Nigeria – in Lagos and I wondered if he were in fact known to Wole. Peripherally was the impression I got from his reply: He was an eccentric, he wrote back, rode a bicycle, swam a lot, lived a Spartan life. In fact he had studied with noted potter-philosopher Bernard LEACH in the mid-1920s – among other famous crafts people in England – and went out to Nigeria in 1927. He was in charge of Nigerian antiquities and Art education. (His student of the 1930s – Ben ENWONWU – wrote his obituary in 1972.) He set up the National Museum in Lagos. He ascribed the names of the craftsman to their works – (not referring to the works of genius as simply “native carving” and such-like dismissive and racist non-attribution) saving as much as he could from the depredations of both Christian and Muslim missionaries wishing to destroy the heathen objects as well as of foreign art thieves trying to remove priceless objects to the museums of Europe and North America. Pardon my asides! I can’t recall anymore the details of our study – but I know I would have had my students write something on the three pieces we had read together – though I doubt that I asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the protagonists. But I never forgot those first faltering steps leading me to a social justice reading of my future teaching. Six years later I was choosing Australian literature for my recently arrived students of non-English-speaking background – good literature offering insights into the national story of its own Indigenous and immigrant society background. And in 1994 a 20th reunion – and a number of our old students – and most importantly for me – Athol! Since which time we had remained in contact – while I was in Japan (email arrived) and since being back. He had moved away from that town where he was born. For many years he was the director of the Indigenous Studies Centre at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. Then over the past nine years – the director of Wiradjuri Home Care Services (for Indigenous people across the south/south-west of the State of NSW). He coached football teams – and supported his sons in their own sporting development – his two youngest reaching state and national rep. level in Association Football (soccer) and basketball – before taking up interests in music. His second son Brendon is part of the singer-song-writing duo – with wife Tessa – known as “Microwave Jenny”. First son Athol Jr is an Indigenous cultural guide – and public official. After the funeral the body was taken to the Lawn Cemetery and Athol Jr performed a traditional smoking ceremony (green eucalyptus leaves are set on fire – the smoke waved among the mourners. After which he played a kind of dirge on the didjeridu – and then he sang in Gamilroi language a song of farewell to his father. More than moving. My father was killed in mid-1951 in a car accident when I was just two, my little brother 10 months – my mother just 21. Anything to do with fathers and sons chokes me up. There was a step-father from when I was seven going on eight – but a very difficult relationship – he passed away 30 years ago.

José: I’ve rambled on here. I highlighted many things in your book when I saw the parallels in our lives and in our teaching careers – and I have not gone back to refer to them here. But I was so impressed by your clarity, by your passion for justice and equity. And so young. You give me hope for our profession and that it will not give up the struggle to serve all our children – not merely those whose parents have money and privilege – but ALL our children – to make of our national futures the very best from the best – all of them!

My pedagogical hero in Japan (all countries have their heroes already close to hand – one doesn’t have to search other lands for models/heroes) and to whom I referred on all occasions – in the class room or at teacher seminar days – was YOSHIDA Sh?in (1830-1859). He was from the region in which I lived nearly 15 years – nowadays called Yamaguchi-ken – the far western province of the main island. The current PM ABE Shinz?’s 4 x great grand-father was one of Sh?in-sensei’s teacher, by the way. Though the current PM could be described as rather rightwing (and one of my closest Japanese friend’s fathers who was a noted professor of philosophy at Sekei University in Tokyo was his teacher) that was not the position of Sh?in-sensei. (Sensei = teacher, btw.) He believed in equality (despite the rigid hierarchies of his time) that girls should receive an education, that Ainu were the same as other Japanese, that Untouchables were his equal – one Untouchable woman he had speak to his students in his little school – he wrote her story – he wrote an inscription for her one can read nowadays carved into rock in the town where she was born; he believed that diligence and sincerity and associating with good friends was essential for learning – that one should begin from the basics, learn other languages, travel abroad to study – and return with that knowledge (and this when Japan still lay largely secluded – apart from a little Chinese & Korean trade – and the Dutch – but by 1854 Perry had opened up some ports to trade – the light of other lands was beginning to reveal the technological backwardness – in fact Sh?in-sensei and a mate had got out to Perry’s flagship in late March of 1854 hoping to stowaway – but it wasn’t to be. Nevertheless – under house arrest back in Hagi – seat of the Ch?sh? clan – he began teaching in his little school. Some 42 students altogether I think – usually on a one-to-one basis (not unlike such classes with Apple these days) – maps of the world on the wall – talking of his own travels around Japan and of the people whom he had met and conversed with – he wrote voluminously, too – and of the contemporary problems of the age – seeking from them solutions (very different from other rote learning schools of the time). And he didn’t give tests – unlike other schools! He wrote private letters in which he offered encouragement to his students. He was sent to Edo (Tokyo) in May/June for what became his execution in October, 1859. Of his students who survived the coming civil war of the early mid-1860s – a group went off to study in London and in Scotland in 1863 – now known as the Ch?sh? Five: one became the first modern PM, another the first Foreign Minister – one the founder of the Mint, another the Father of Japan Rail – the other the Father of Technical Education in Japan. Others became diplomats and bureaucrats. One, MASAKI Taiz?, was interviewed by Robert Louis STEVENSON and so Yoshida Torajiro became known to the world when it was published in The Cornhill Magazine in 1880 – and again in a book of sketches two years later. (You can Google it: RLS: Yoshida Torajiro). Every year NHK (imagine PBS is CBS) in Japan presents the absolute best heroical drama every Sunday night at 8.00pm. The final 10 minutes of the hour deals with explanations of the historical sites or personages – professors from universities the experts. This year’s NHK drama is the story of Sh?in-sensei – as seen through the eyes of his little sister Fumi. I wish every Sunday night I could be in Japan. In 2004 I established the Yoshida Shoin International Paedagogical Fellowship – a Charter with 13 points – and an enamel pin badge! Over 750 members by around the time of my return to Australia!

Thanks for reading all this – if in fact you have. Congratulations for your book – it is definitely among the top circle of such reflections upon the practice of teaching! You give me heart. Thank-you! Jim KABLE