The book that changed my life: Flip the system Australia

 Following the advice of many, rather than learning antiquated nursery rhymes that I have no real connection to, I’ve taken to singing songs I know well to my newborn. This has made me realise that there are many songs we think we know, songs that we like, but the songs that we ‘know’. Know enough to recite from memory. Are never those songs that we would like them to be. For me, many of these songs are very old Australian Hip Hop tracks. Whilst digging back through these songs, I’ve discovered recollections and interviews of the seminal MCs of this time, Trem, Bias B among others. Each of these artists present the arrival of ‘Beat Street’ (1984) as the moment when there life was altered towards the culture of Hip Hop, for me the moment that my eyes were open to the world of education, was reading Flip the System Australia.

This 30 second clip from the seminal graffiti documentary ‘Style Wars’ explains my feeling upon discovering this book:

Before reading this book, I was interested in Academic research into education and teaching. I enjoyed the nature of this literature as a complex system; but found few real connections to my day-to-day work as a Secondary school teacher.

During this period, I spent a lot of time writing about and reading research on ‘teacher voice’ before I had fully grasped that research was carried out by real people who could be interacted with. When I realised that this was the case, it also became clear that teacher voice wasn’t really present in much of the research literature. Or rather, that as always, teacher voice was deidentified, anonymised or given a pseudonym so as to turn the most biting, precise and accurate parts of papers less impactful.

Then and still, there is much tokenism of teacher voice and teacher contributions, limited to the use of proprietary products (usually technological), to the promotion of existing Departments, limited scope case studies or research partnerships.

This book spoke of teacher excellence, but it also was an example of teacher excellence. It practiced what it preached. I’d been familiar with Jelmers Ever’s work, his speaking and writing, and had read his Flip the system book in small sections. So the concept of the book was clear to me, but the Australian edition brought together people whose names I recognised, whose ideas resonated and who were able to string together the research I’d read previously with what I faced in my full time, teacherly employment. 

It taught me that:

  • Teachers can pull together an incredible book
  • Each amazing teacher has at least one thing, innovation, or special project that they can write about (notably, due to conditions and workload, almost only ever one and not more than)
  • There is a collective movement of teachers of all kinds that would like to see education improved
  • The response to these common problems (collectively phrased as Neoliberalism, GERM, or the audit / accountability push) can be school-based, or aimed at the broader teaching community

Overall, it provided me a tribe, a group that I feel likeminded with, bridging research, policy and practice and connected ideas into the global conversation, building upon a series that did the same.

As I turn now to co-edit a volume with a similar viewpoint, a clause that feels strange to type, it’s pertinent to reflect on the massive impact this volume has had on me.

Thank you to Deborah Netolicky, Jon Edwards and Cameron Paterson and all of the contributing authors for the book that changed my life: Flip the System Australia: what matters in education.

 

Running word count: 42,294

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