Interview with Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams in Mount Currie

The Mind of a Child
Face to Face Media Ltd.

SR 53 - LORNA INTERVIEW AT GEORGINA'S HOUSE
LONG TONE

GARY This is just kind of studio recording, so we'll just um, keep it rolling. Um,

maybe I should start out, um, where did you meet Lettie Battle and um, ah what were

some of your first impressions of her and how did your um, relationship develop wi-

what, what brought the two of you together into discussion and wh- if you're - when

you're answering these things if you can generally give me, sort of fold back the, the

names and places and things so that if I ask you about Lettie Battle, you can say I met

Lettie Battle at, so that ah, y-you will help me introduce them, as well on the film.

LORNA Okay. I met Lettie Battle in Washi- no, I met Lettie Battle in ah, Jerusalem,

Israel in the summer of 1992. Um, we attended ah, the International Association of

Cognitive Education and um, I, that's where I first met her and had some opportunities

to um, talk with her about her work in Washington and I think it was probably in that

week, that um, in early July, that um, I was hearing some stories about ah, about the

students she was working with in, at the Options School in Washington, D.C. And alot

of the things that she was telling me, um, or sa- um, were um - The stories were very

similar ah, to other students that she was working with, to the ones that, that I work with

in Vancouver and in other parts of British Columbia.

I think o- probably the main um, where we were coming from, which I think

is different from where other people are coming from and that is um, what

is foremost in our minds is to be able to work with um, with our students

um, so that they would be perceived differently by themselves and by

other teachers and other people who are involved with them, because I

think for African-Americans, the we- the students she was working with

and for my students, the First Nations students, our students are always

perceived as though they're not able, they're not capable of um, of

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demanding academic work and so that the institution of education, itself

then um, makes students believe that they're not able and so that they, so

that they begin, then, to tune out.

The other thing is that our students are in - another way that they're similar

is that for, for our students, they de- they develop really strong survival

skills to survive on the street, to survive in um, in homes that are, that are

not always safe and home situations that are not always safe and so they

develop all of these skills outside of school but when they come to school,

because schools tends to devalue the skills that they develop on the street

as being not the skills that are ne- required for school, that um, so that it

gets left outside and they come into the school and and there's um - and if

they look like they don't have any skills, but it's because the school is not

allowing them to bring what they ha- what the, their ability from outside,

inside.

So, for example, on the street today, they learn really um, they have really

highly developed problem solving skills. They have really highly

developed um, ah, decision making ability. They have - they can plan,

they can organize, they can analyze situations, they can in- um, they can

interpret um, situations, they can think hypothetically, they can think

inferentially. So all of those are, are ones that w-we say that we're trying

to teach in school, but yet we don't allow students who learn those on the

street to bring them into the school.

GARY Could you give me ah, an example of the um, the kinds of things that kids

are doing on the street that would have some of those qualities and sort of point out as

you do, where they're using those kinds of skills, so people can see this clearly. I think

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it's a really in-interesting, kind of important point. Um, hang on just a sec, um.

I'll just take a head slate on this one. D-does that ah, a good question?

[Lorna: Uh huh.] Okay.

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Head slate no: 278

beep.

LORNA For example, um, say a child is um, I'll use ah, an example from one of

our, from one of our students. Um, in Vancouver, one of the students who was in one of

my instrumental enrichment classes, at um, when I read this boy's um, school reports,

they concentrated on his lack of ability to pay attention, his lack of ability to focus, his

um, and that he was coming to school every day really tired and um, and often late and

that he was passive, that he'd very seldom engaged in um, interaction with ah, with ah,

his classmates and his teacher. And so basically what they were saying was if there

was, that there were so many things that were not right about this student that um, and

that he's had so many um, deficiencies that um, it was impossible, in a way, to teach

him in the- in this, in the school setting.

But um, as I got to know him I realized that um, I found out and this - It

took me, it must have been two or three months for me to find out why he

was coming to school in this way. And so, I um, and over the next few

months I found out that um, the times that he was late were the times

when his father, who was a longshoreman, um, went on a binge. And um,

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a during pay- ah, usually tra- during, you know, when he would get his

pay. And so this, this young man who was fifteen would take over his, his

dad's job as a longshoreman and he'd work for most of the night. He'd go

home and um, and have a couple of hours sleep, and then he'd get up and

get his ah, seven siblings ready for school and he'd bring them to - feed

them - bring them to school, then he'd come to school.

And so, in order for somebody to be able to do that, he would need all of

those, those ah, those skills that I said that he'd need. He'd had incredible

organizational ability. He had an ability to plan because he had to plan

that, his time really well. He had to um, plan um, schedules so that um, so

that his siblings would be cared for and so he took over adult

responsibilities and yet, none of those skills were ones that um, that

showed up in the schools, and those are the exact same skills that, that

one needs in order to be able to um, to do the tasks that are required

from, from school subject to learning.

And um, so, instrumental enrichment helps us to do that. It helps us to be

able to have students call from their own abilities that they've developed

and to see how they're related to, to the ones that are necessary in order

to be successful at school, because it's often thought that for these

children, because of their life situations, that life in the school and life for

them outside of the school, are entirely um, separate and that there, that

one is not relevant to the other and so instrumental enrichment in the

process of bridging and developing um, the ability to reflect on and to

generalize what is being learned so that you can see how it relates to

many situations.

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GARY Why is it that there's such a gap for one group of kids and not for another?

Why for this group of kids is there such a gap?

LORNA I'd just like to tell one more story [Gary: Yeah, just -] and then I think that

will illustrate, probably will lead into that.

GARY Okay, this is gonna be about a, a story about a kid? [Lorna: Yeah.] Okay,

let's r-roll on this. Could we take another head slate, please?

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Head slate no. 279

LETTIE This one is an- is separate from instrumental enrichment but I think it

might be even a better story. Um, there was um, a number of years ago, it must have

been, now, about six years ago, and um, I was quite new, um, quite new to my job and I

didn't really have an experience of having to deal with children who survive on the

street. Anyway, we, we began to experiment um, with um, with some programs in the,

in from one of our pr- one of our alternate education programs, and this alternate ca-

education program deals with kids who really are street-smart and um, I had found out

that um, children as young as um nine years old were basically living on the street or

they lived on the street for, for um, for time, for you know, certain times, not fully, but

sometimes they would be out there for say, from um May 'til October.

And so we began to try to find ways in which we could reconnect alot of

those kids back to the school because once they've had the freedom of

living on the street and adults are perceived to be, in a way, the enemy,

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and um, so they don't um - they have a very difficult time with adult

authority and um, so, in order for a child to live that long in, on the street,

they have to be able to organize and to plan. And there was this one boy

who -

GARY C-can you hold just there? I just ran out of film, so I just want to -

Beep. Slate no: 280

There was a boy who was um, we were working with um, trying out some

new ideas of how to draw street kids back towards the school and so we

developed a program where a child care worker went out and um, and did,

we um, and began to work with some boys. And so this one day they

were gonna go out for, I think it was to go roller skating. He was going to

take him out roller skating and they had agreed to meet um, at a certain

place um, downtown and um, so he got there with the van and five of the

boys were there and so he waited for a while and he thought in his head,

well, this - the last one I guess isn't gonna show up.

And then the boys who were waiting said, no, just wait, um, he'll be

coming along pretty soon, and so he was um, so he was waiting and

waiting and then he saw, then he saw the boy that they were waiting for

and he came into his view and um, on a bicycle, and he went and then all

of a sudden he appeared again and he didn't have a bi- the bicycle and he

ran across this field to where the woman was waiting at a picnic table, and

she was sitting there and he, he went over and he gave her something

and so then he, ah, so this child care worker asked, you know, what um,

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what do you think he's doing? And um, one of the other, one of the other

boys told him that um, that he was stealing a- he had stolen a bicycle and

that he had um, and he went to sell the bicycle so he could buy drugs for

his mom. And um, and so he went o- and so that was what he was

bringing to his mom.

And um, I mean, this kid is ten years old and so, when you will hear a

story like that, you think about the wrong thing that is happening, that this

boy is stealing, that he's getting drugs and the horrible way that this

mother is behaving in that she's relying on her son to get her drugs, but

we never think about all the things that this child already has, has to know,

some really highly developed um, problem solving skills, to do all those

things that he had to do to care for his mother.

And so we, in the schools, in our righteous way, we don't think about all of

those, and so then we think, well, you know, those are all illegal acts, um,

against society's rules and therefore they can't come into the school and

so we, we then devise really, we devise ways of never having, giving

children an opportunity to begin to appreciate what they do know and what

they're able to do. Uh huh, it's -

GARY And if you, if you do recognize those things and you bring that knowledge

into the classroom with the kid, then what happens?

LORNA Uh huh. [cough] Well it works, um, well they bring it into the classroom

and we bring it in and I guess instrumental enrichment gives us a vehicle to bring it in

and, and so that the student knows that they have the ability, they have the capacity to

be able to um, to do school, that it, that they're not um, mutually exclusive parts of his

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life.

GARY So if the kid has this ability [Lorna: Uh huh.] out on the street [Lorna: Uh

huh.] why don't they have it in the classroom? How come they don't know it there?

LORNA Because they're never al- never allowed to bring it in. They don't, they

can't, they don't use it for say, um, they don't, they think that they need to le- that those

are the ability to survive on the street and they're not the what they need in order to be

able to say, do um, um, lessons in, in um, mathematics or um, because they way that

we teach mathematics is um, is that we cut it off from somebody's experience and we

can learn things in ah, an abstract way, in a way that's representationally

representational but in order for us to be able to do that we need to be able to help

students to see that what they've, the, what they can take from their street reality can

be, can be, the principles are very similar to what they're learning in school subjects,

and so, um -

And in schools, the teacher is i- is the one in control of the, of what is to be

learned and the teacher is in control of how things are going to be learned

and they, they very seldom um, illicit from the student how that student

um, is relating to the world, 'kay so they don't bring their re- their reality

into a situation. And the way that we learn is when we can see a direct

connection to what we already know to something that is new, 'kay so, if

the teacher do- leaves that re- reality out there, then they're not helping

students to make that connection. Uh huh.

GARY Kids seem to be able to learn without making that connection each time.

Is it ah - [Lorna: Um.] I mean, I, I guess alot of people would think, well, I mean you,

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you can't make every problem in math relevant to something; truly math is a subject in

itself.

LORNA And I'm not saying that it's relevant. I'm not saying, like, one of the things

that people ha- people tend to do in a very paternalistic way, is they say, okay, so we're

gonna, we'll, I'll set up my math problem then, so that I can say that um, somebody had

to steal one bike and how - so therefore how much ah, dope are they gonna be able to

buy, okay, so that's not the relevancy that um, that we want, it's that um, it's, it's um,

what we're wanting to be able to do is to um - hm, how am I gonna say this?

So, the teacher doesn't have to know, but they have to set up the situation

so that they make it safe and acceptable and valuable for students to say,

to be able to bring their experience into the classroom, so that the student,

also, isn- is a participate and in control of the way that they understand

new information based on what they already know.

The way that schools have been set up, they've been set up so that um -

GARY Could you start that thought again? [Lorna: What?] Start the way the

schools have been set up, I just - [Lorna: The - what, why?] I'm sorry, I, I just started

the camera running, there - I I started to interrupt you; do it again.

LORNA The way that schools have been set up is that it acknowledges the way

that people um, that where there's a match between a way a person is brought up, a

way a child is brought up in a home, who- say, where um, there are two parents, where

the- where they, the family is engaged in, in evolving and developing a body of

knowledge within that child, there have lots of opportunities, so there's a match between

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the way that the child has learned to perceive the world and the way the classrooms in

schools are set up, okay? So it works, there. So you don't need then, to um, to pay

attention to um, to thinking about the, the experiences of this child, because that's

already built in.

But when you are working with a group of students who are different in a

major way, um, like where there's a real difference in world view, where

there's a real differ- there's a difference in language, there's a difference in

the way in which people um, share knowledge, there's a difference in the

way that people um, um, regulate and control behaviour, there's a

difference in the way that a child begins to evolve and develop um, an

identity. Like, when those are really different, then it's m- it's important for

a teacher to have the ability to be able to bring that experience into the

classroom.

So, not one person, if you're working with say, twenty-five kids, you can

sa- people then can say, well, you know, how can I, one person, one adult,

um, be - how can I possibly learn and know all the, the cultures of those

twenty-five kids and because, you see, they're thinking about it in terms of

I'm in control, me, adult teacher, I, I'm in control of what's - of the

knowledge in this room. 'Kay, so when you turn it over and you say that,

that m- I teacher and all of those twenty-five bo- their bodies are in control

and in charge of their knowledge and that those are, are - we're gonna use

that knowledge to learn something together and so that there's more of

um, um, there's more collaboration and it, and it demands a respect by the

adult for what the children, for the knowledge the children have.

GARY And can you bring this home for me, and talk - [cough] ...running here just

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talking -

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Tail slate no: 280

GARY ...um, the um, you were talking about how some children really are

different from those who are raised in those two parent families. They have really

different experiences and could you then just bring that home? How, how does that

apply to the children that you and Lettie work with, then?

LORNA Well, the children that Lettie and I work with um, um, they, they, it, their

knowledge is never um, is, is very seldom if ever, um, acknowledged and it's not

acknowledged for a number of reasons. One, is which I talked about already, is that

um, is that their, that these children live on the street, or they live part-time on the street,

or they li- or they engage in illegal activity or they might engage in um, in all kind of

activities that, that um, that usually in the classroom people, the teachers don't have that

kind of - The- they don't live that kind of experience. 'Kay, so that sets them apart.

So, two things sets them apart, because the teacher doesn't exper-

doesn't have any experience with that, secondly, they think well, um, those

children are bad or they come from bad families or bad home situations,

dysfunctional situations and therefore I can't do anything with this child

unless they're fixed out there. 'Kay, so that sets them apart.

And the, the other, I think for what I've talked, um, had discussions with

Lettie and with other um, with other teachers of African-American youth,

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the other thing that I- I'm looking at the history of African-American people

in the United States and the history of aboriginal people, both in the United

States and in Canada. There is another ar- way in which, I think we share

something in common and that is that um, that there has been, there is an

ingrained belief on the part of the educational institution that our children

are not able and that they're not able because we are not as intelligent.

So, when we came into this world, we were born with less intelligence and

people um, in a way, they say that in jest, today, but it's been a belief that's

been there for many, many generations, now and so that if a child, then, is

perceived, even if it's not in the foremost part of a teacher's mind, the child

is perceived as not being able, then I'm not going to invest the same

amount of time and energy in being able to work with that child in the

classroom.

Secondly, um, that because um - Another area I guess that we're, that

there is some commonality is that um, um, is that, I think in both countries

the- where, that our children are not valuable. They're not valued in

society, and um, and that we're, somehow we're, we're disposable, that,

that society can, you know, can just throw us away and I think that that's

another thing. So, if that's what, if that's the, the way that peop- that

children are perceived, then, again, you don't need to invest as much time

and energy into um, meeting their needs, um, educationally.

GARY Can I ask you what kind of evidence that you've experienced ah, of that

kind of attitude, whether it's what people say or what you see happening to children?

LORNA Oh, there're so many examples of it. Um, okay, um. I guess evi- the

evidence of it is that up until very recently um,

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[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um, when - I think I wanna start a little bit, probably before that. [Gary:

Sure.] Um. When we were in school, um, my brothers and my sisters and our, and our

friends and members of our, our community, when we um, were - before, before we left

our home, before we left our community to go to the public school, we used to have long

conversations about what it was that um, that um, you know, that people want - what

people -we talked about what people planned for their future. They - and um, our house

was um, a meeting place and so alot of young people um, our friends used to meet

there and um, and they, and alot of them, them - alot of the times they spent alot of, alot

of their time outside on the land doing alot of things that um, that our parents and their

parents did um, but at the same time um, we were going to school and I gu- I think that

we were the generation that was probably the first ones to enter public schools in this

area and um, and I remember the conversations although we really spent alot of time in

a traditional lifestyle, but we also knew that we were the ones who were going to have

to really adapt to Euro-Canadian society and as far back as I can remember, my friends

um, ah, had aspirations that they were finding, or we were finding ways in which we

could ah, adapt to a very different lifestyle than our parents and that we felt that we

were able to do that and um, um -

And when our generation went on, then, to public school after grade eight,

I was - I went away - I wa- um, for two years. And when I came back to

school, to high school, with um, with these friends that I grew up with um,

none of them were on a path that would lead toward the making - fulfilling

what their aspirations were. And some of those aspirations were that ah,

to um, you know, to go on to university to study um, to study medicine, to

study um, engineering, to study forest management and so um, and it, and

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it, and so it was quite broad and yet, when I came back not one of them

was then, if it, if it meant college or university, would have been able to do

that because they were streamed into um, general programs. 'Cause I

remember yesterday I was telling you about the - us not um, that only two

people being above the mentally retarded range, and so this justified ah,

placing all of these people on um, a vocational track.

And so there I saw my friends um, put alot of energy into, into physical

sports because the door had closed on them and they knew that it had

closed. And um, and s- and I remember one year that, that um, we were

given some tests and from those tests, in the high school, we were further

streamed and so that um, so that what the stu- the students were learning,

our group was learning, or um, were classes that were not challenging,

were classes in which um, it wa- you know, they weren't really important.

They were modified programs. And -

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Tail slate no: 281

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TONE

ROGER This is roll 54.

LORNA Um, so none of the, the students were able to go on um, to, to move

towards their career path. And um, and people might say, well, if they really wanted to,

you know, there were other ways of doing that, but I think that um, that um, I have a

brother who is um, who, who I've always really respected as somebody who can, who

was really, really um, um, who had some real I- intellectual strength um, ah - He was

somebody who did a, a lot of um, who provided, actually for almost the whole, our whole

village at one time be- when um, when people were having a hard time um, hunting and

getting food and he supplied everybody pretty well, with um, with food and um, because

of his knowledge of um, ah his knowledge of animals, his knowledge of um, of the, of

the terrain, the geography, his knowledge of ah, climate conditions and changes in

climate conditions and how that it influences - it would influence um, you know, how you

function on the land. So those were really, really highly developed and um, and he um,

to this day, ah, says that um, that he could not go outside of this kind of lifestyle, that

because he had knowledge of this kind of lifestyle so well that it- that he could never go

into a white people's kind of institution.

And yet, when you look at his, his knowledge, it's, it's similar

in that, in that he had all of the skills that are necessary. The

world vi-view may have been different, but that doesn't

necessarily mean that you cannot adapt and to change

without - You can do that without losing that's, that

knowledge that you have. You use that knowledge to access

other ways.

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And um, he tells this alw- often, the story that ah, or he, he

shares with us the, what the princip- his principal who he

really respected, who was a very nice man, I'm sure, very

sensitive, but the convinced my brother that he was not able

to go, to go beyond, beyond living this reser- on the reserve.

He convinced my brother that it, my brother's only place was

to live in the bush and therefore become a logger, and um,

that any other kind of vocation was inaccessible because we

were not, we were not as able, we were not as intelligent

and um, that, I think probably um, that always stays with me

to- you know, because I, because I know him so well and he

was never able to overcome that and so all the decisions

that he makes, he's made as an adult, are based on, on

what this principal, who he really, who he respected,

convinced him of. And so, I think um, it's that um, it's that

kind of thinking that plays itself out in the classroom even 'til

today.

And so, um, I remember coming back to ah, Pemberton and

ah, to school and the principal try- and trying to convince me

and getting the teachers to convince me that I could not stay

on the academic program, that I had to go, I had to switch

and, and I, maybe I didn't know any better, that's why I had

put on my form that I should ah, I was on the academic

program and um, um, and so when I refused to, he set about

trying to prove to me that I, that I shouldn't be, think of myself

as being able to be on an academic program.

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And he used to teach senior math and I remember in our

classroom, our grade - I can't remember if it was elev- grade

eleven or grade twelve; he taught both years - that he would

start the class, some classes by saying um, he - and he

would name all the white kids in the class and he'd say, you

come up here and I'm gonna teach you this math topic. All

of the rest of you, you don't need to know this, so just go to

the back of the room and um, and you can do page sut- or

this paper, you know, the, a work sheet. And um, and so that

in the classroom, that they actively then segregated white

kids from Mt. Currie kids, First Nations children. And um,

and that, to a certain extent, maybe not as blatant, but that

exists - has e- continued to exist on into this, on to, on to,

until recently.

And so, when we first started the, the school, um, we were

looking at why our children were not successful in school.

So why was there um, a ninety-five percent failure rate? So

only five percent of all aboriginal kids were successful in

school. So why was that? And people tried for many years

to, to say that it was because we were culturally different,

that our cultural difference made us um, not successful.

Why? Because the schools were fashion- ah, fashioned

from a Euro-Canadian experience and not from an aboriginal

experience and so they, they thought that until we could

catch up to um, the rest of the nation, technologically, indu-

industrially um, that we would never, that we, that there was

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no way that we could catch up. And um, and this has been

something that they've tried to do for years and years and

years, is to make us catch up along the evolutionary

continuum to finally come within range of the rest of

Canadians. So people tend not to think about that but that

it's based on that.

And so, some of the things that people then, were writing

about us, um, in the seventies was that we were not

successful because we were a silent race, they said. And

ah, and the once- they set about proving, proving that that

was the case and um, that we were, that we were culturally

silent, quite, and that we didn't communicate um, um, with

um, with one another.

And I remember thinking, you know, like, how can we be a

silent race? How can they just- anybody justify that when

um, and how could we be incommunicative when our whole

history and the whole transmission of knowledge amongst

our people happened by, through - happened through oral

language? And so that a person's - One of the highest

qualities a person could have was um, and still is, to be able

to speak in a convincing way to others, so, to be able to put

to- ideas across so that everybody can understand those

ideas, so, I mean, so that's highly developed communicative

ability.

And that um, that's that throughout um, throughout the year

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there were - the stories were told and that there was a

structure to the stories and that um, that it was clearly

thought out and um and that people spent alot of time, also

um, sharing their experiences, for example, er- when, I

remember when um, when ah, people would go out to trap

or to hunt or, you know, to so- do something on the land, that

when they'd come back, they would recount, they would

retell all of what happened and so um, and I can hear this

brother that I was telling you about. I ca- I still hear him

telling everybody at - 'round the table um, um, exactly how

he was able to, how he caught one a- a deer, for example,

and how he, he, he planned and he watched the deer and he

saw what they were gonna do and he was able to anticipate

where they would move and so that guided him to move in a

certain way. He conveyed the changes in the land that we-

that he hadn't no- that w-w, you know, that there differences

from previous times. And so there was a real relationship

between him and the animal and him and the, and the, and

the, and the land. And so that, so that all of the things that

people did, they retold in detail, and so we were -

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Tail slate no: 282

GARY So we were just at the point um, then of ah, hearing the kinds of story

telling that he was doing as an evidence of the kind of ah, communicative ability that he

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had. We're working our way back towards ah, I guess the -

LORNA Yeah. Um, and so we then had to begin to look at um, at ah, the way that

language um, the way that language is used, the way that um, traditionally, and um, so

rather than to say that it didn't exist, it did exist but in, in, in um, but in a way some of the

rules were different and I think that that's probably a really important point and that is

that what has happened in trying to understand why groups don't succeed, people think

- ah, people, the people who are studying it or the people who are in control of um, of

making dec- educational decisions um, they think that when they don't see it as the way

that it exists for them, that it doesn't exist, rather than saying that it's, it's a difference

and that um, you know, and that we recognize that there's a different way. What they

tend to say is that it doesn't exist.

Another example of that is that um, ah, that time um, has

been a- one of the issues that I think that um, that has really

um, impacted on our work life and our school life and so the

people used to say um, Indians are never on time and/or

things start on Indian time and Indian time means that it's

gonna start later, so the- nobody comes at ah, at the right

time and um, I remember reading al-all kinds of literature

about this, you know, it was always when they were trying to

describe our difference, that was one area of difference, and

- But it wasn't that, that we had, that we um, that we related

to time in a different way, it was more that um, that it didn't,

that we didn't have this, the same relation to time as, to clock

time as to, as a European - Euro-Canadians did.

And so that um - And I remember my mom - I was asking

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my mom one- this once and she was pointing out to me, you

know, about not being on time, and she was pointing out to

me how um, how we had, we had to strictly adhere to time

um, especially ah, um, time as it relates to, to um, what

happens during the year to our, to our, the land around us,

and also the time um, I guess spiritually, psychologically and

biologically and um, and that - so that we were tuned into

time but it wasn't to um, it wasn't so much to um, a separate

time that um, in a - and a clock, in a way, is a separate time,

ti- the way of coding time. And um, so it wasn't true that, you

know, that we, that we didn't have time.

And so when I - The first year that I began to work in

Vancouver ah, it was the Vancouver ci- the Vancouver

School District, one of my tasks there was to review

textbooks and materials and I remember, I think it was in my-

the second week that I was there ah, somebody sent me a

textbook that um, that the district was gonna purchase for

the high schools, grade nine. And um, and there was a

chapter in it on native people and I was really excited

because n-n-native people are gonna be- are going to be

mentioned in grade nine, very different from, you know, from

previous times when we were only mentioned in grade four.

And so I opened the chapter and I opened it up to the

chapter and in the first paragraph, never mind the late- you

know, ah, later on in the chapter - the first paragraph it said

that aboriginal people or native people do not have a

concept for time and of what use is time if we, if you're

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chasing the caribou mile after mile? Of what use is time if

you're waiting at a, at an ice hole for a curious seal to

appear? See?

And so that was - so it really, finally hit home to me that, that

often times when we perceive the world and, and what we

perceive is not the same as the way we look at it, that we

say it doesn't exists and we don't leave the room open so

that we can see that there are differences. So, it isn't really

the difference, it's the way that we relate to the difference.

And so, um, so when we started the school then, we were

looking at um, so there were th- we were looking at the, at

language.

The other thing that was happening was that in the

assessments that people were doing of children, what they

were noticing was that, that um, that aboriginal students, and

this is during the seventies, had ah- what they - they had low

verbal scores, but they had high comprehension scores, but

nobody, nobody um, really talked about the high

comprehension scores. They talked only about the low

verbal scores and these were um, word, um, word

recognition, often times. And um, and so they relied on that

then to say that we had poor language ability. Okay, so

that's how they translated it. They didn't translate the other

one to be able to say that if they're comprehending then

there's something going on up [Gary: Uh huh.] in their brain

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and um, and there's, and there's understanding, so there's

language there. And um, so they disregarded those.

And um, [cough] um, the other area that they didn't look at

was um, was that, that cultures different- differ in the way

that they interact and they way that they um, they talk

amongst each other, they way that one person knows when

they begin to speak, when it's okay for them to begin to

speak and when it's time for the- another person to speak.

'Kay, so there are lots of those kinds of rules that are really

important in a language community and so, instead of

though, looking at it that, that our children, who are going

into, into a public school classroom was a different, with that

kind of a difference, that they said that well, you have to

learn how to do it our way and if can't learn how to do it our

way, then please go somewhere and get fixed and then

come back. So rather than creating an environment in a

classroom that helped to, to know that they can ad- that they

can adapt, that they can engage without ha- without giving

up their own way, you see, and I think that that's really, a

really crucial point that we always demand that somebody

who is different give- has to give up of themselves before

they can be-become a part of a group.

GARY And how does that, is that um, perceived from the child's point of view?

What is the child getting and how do they respond from what you've seen?

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LORNA I don't understand.

GARY When, when those kinds of ah, when the teacher is making those kinds of

demands, not recognizing those things um, cutting themselves off from the way -

LORNA Oh, I'm leading, I'm leading up to that. [Gary: Okay.] Um, so because

that there's the difference and it's not acknowledged 'kay, in, in um, in the language

community of the classroom, what happens is that children then, um, they become

passive so they don't- because they, they don't have a way of engaging. So gradually,

over time then, those children pull back. They withdraw and they, then they, and they

wait and they sit quietly and um, and wait. And so in that waiting, the teacher responds,

because the teacher and the, the other group of students, their cultures are more um,

are compatible, 'kay, so they know, they know those unspoken language communication

rules and so it's more comfortable then, for that teacher to, to engage in a- in

communication ah, in the interaction with those children and so, gradually the teacher

shifts their focus from this other group then, to the group that is more responsive to her

and so it then, that causes the children to even more um, withdraw and to, you know, to

be shut out, really of the, of the teaching/learning experience.

So, and pacifity is another um, way aboriginal children have

been per- have been described, so that we are passive

learnings. And um, and it's interesting because people t- se-

um, tried to dis- to um, interpret that, too, in a cultural way in

that they said that we, that aboriginal children learn by

watching and then by doing, so they, so they hold back and

they watch and they watch until they can, they figure

something out and then they do, then they, then they act,

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which, you know, which is okay. But what they, what,

[cough] what they miss out is the- is the way that the adults

communicate um, with their bodies, with the tone of voice,

with the way they communicate for their child to know how to

watch, to know how to observe and so, and so that they've

learned all of those processes, then, for really active um,

engagement and um, and then they, and then they try and

they practice and then they, they learn then through

experience.

And so, we weren't passive. The point is that we were not

passive in watching; we were active in watching and

observing. And so then, the way that they tried to um,

interpret then, this passivity, by say- attributing it to

something in the culture is, was, I think, a real serious error.

GARY Can I ask you when a, when a um -

Beep.

GARY ...a child comes to you with that kind of passivity, um -

LORNA 'Kay, don't ask me that yet. [Gary: Okay.]

ROGER 283 tail.

GARY I guess I - You're certainly raising - No, I'm, I'm - You're raising the right

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questions in my mind and you're about to answer them, so - [laughs]

LORNA But I um, but right now we're still on the -

GARY On the perceptions and the - Yeah.

LORNA Yeah.

GARY Okay. Continue to roll.

ROGER We're rolling. [Gary: Okay]

LORNA Um, 'kay, so the children are children and were said to have low language

abilities and passivity, were passive learner- learners and the third that um, the third

reason people thought we, we lacked achievement in schools was our lack of motivation

and so the way that that was um, described was that we lacked motivation because um,

we didn't have the same goals as the, the, as Euro-Canadians, 'kay.

So, they said that, for example then, that um, we didn't have

the goal of um, of making alot of money. We didn't have the

- or of having um, long-term employment because, you

know, we had um, our employment rate was so low - ah, was

so high.

Um, and they said that we didn't have the same kind of um,

of work ethic, so that ah, they said, well, the Euro-

Canadians, you know, they know how to work really hard.

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They get to places on time. They put in a good day's work,

they plan and they put money away for their future and, and

they said that, but whereas we live more day-to-day and in,

and they some, in a way tried to use um, that we um - They

perceived that we lived um, that we did things in our

communities just for bare survival, for bare um, sustenance

and that we had to work really hard to, to just barely survive

from day to day which is a totally different wrong way of

viewing us in our lives.

And so they said, well, so if that's the case, then, if they're

just living day-to-day, barely surviving, doing things,

following, you know, animals and fish and stuff around um,

then of course they don't plan for the future, so of course

they don't um, they don't um, want the same things and so

because then, in our school system, they said is, is designed

to um, make, to help our children to um, to strive for a career

and um, and so that, that's a real difference, then, they said.

And so, of course then, they're not as motivated because the

scho- the, because their scho- they're still tuned into this

other kind of a lifestyle.

And um, and so then they tried to m- then, and so they mo-

tried to motivate us, um, um, by extrinsic rewards, in a way.

So they said, well, maybe if we give them, for example, if we

give them new clothes maybe they'll wanna s- come to

school more and so then the Department of Indian Affairs

gave an allowance so people could go to sch- go and buy

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some school clothes. And they said, well maybe they're too

tired, maybe because they live they're having t- they're not

spending all their time on the land any more, on barely

getting, sort of, what they need to survive, then they live in

poverty because they don't have any money in the bank so

therefore we should give them some food. And so they

devised the program to give us extra vitamins and some high

energy biscuits. And um, and so they thought that would

help us to be better motivated.

And um, and so, but the ways in which they tried to motivate

us, I think, were making us even more dependent on, on

things outside of, of our lives and our families. And -

GARY Slate here.

Beep. Tail slate no: 284

GARY Keep going.

LORNA And so this lack of motivation um, or this perceived lack of motivational,

then was, was again, something that was written extensively about in the, in the

literature. And so they said - And the other was um, well, because their reading levels

were low, so then they, so then they said, well, it's because those children are not

growing up in homes where there's lots of reading and because, to live on the land you

don't need to read, therefore, of course they're not motivated to learn, th-that's why they

can't learn to read.

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GARY A little bit of anthropology is a horrible thing.

LORNA And um, [cough] um, [pause] so I think that, that there are others which I

can't remember right now.

GARY It, and, um, I'm curious. At, at various times did people send all this stuff

directly to you, ah, [Lorna: hard to understand] to the child as well as trying to get in all

the research and [hard to understand] everywhere?

LORNA Of c- yeah, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. T- um, and people,

aboriginal people began to ah, we adopted that way of viewing ourselves, you know,

because it's ev- it's in every part of our lives. And um, um, I, I talk about those as being

key. There are many others. Um, because tha- those are directly, I think, the, the goals

of instrume- like tho- the goals of instrumental enrichment are really looking at those,

the motivation, passivity, um, language.

And um, and so when we started this school, then we were

looking at that literature. And um, and we were doing alot of

talking about the dilemma that we were in. And um, but I

think that because we were - in our valley, um, it, the valley

opened in the mid 1800s for the gold ah, the gold rush and

then it closed up again, and so that um, alot of us could still,

we still knew people who had never been to school. We

knew people who were um, who we could see were um,

highly ah competent people and who were highly um

intelligent and they demonstrated this in our social

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institutions. They demonstrated this in their, their um, battles

with um, both the Canadian governments, with all the

Canadian governments as well as internationally and that

they had a really good grasp of this.

And so, I think that um, and so there was - There's always

been then a conflict between how we were being perceived

and how people wrote about us and how people treated us

and how we, and how we could see our- you know, um, and,

and how we, we perceived ourselves, even though we were

quite um, shaky 'cause, you know, w- it's hard to not believe

things that, that so many people say, that it's written, it's in

the media, it's in, you know, it's the way that you're treated

on the street, it's the way that you're treated in a store, it's

the way that you're treated in a text book and um, but still,

we knew that it wasn't, that wasn't the true story.

And um, and so we began to look at um, in the school, at the

work of um, um, Paulo Frierie, and we were looking at the

work of Fanon, we were looking at um, at colonization and

the effects of colonization on people. Um, and we did alot of

real serious study about this and we tried to look at people

who lived in communities surrounded by a very culturally

different way and who seemed to be able to sustain a

separate identity from those around them, for example, um,

ah, we studied the, the Amish ah communities and as, as

one of those, as an example of that. We studied the way in

which people lived com-

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LONG TONE

[off-mic discussion]

ROGER This is roll 55.

LORNA Um, hm, we are aware that our um, that our way of living had changed

um, quite dramatically, like within I'd say um, fifty to seventy-five years and um, and we

knew that um, we were, we were relating in our families and between adults and

children in a, in a really different way and so we looked at other - We then went out and

looked at other um, the ways in which other people dealt with this. So we went, for

example, through our reading and study to um, to Russia and looked at how um, in the

writings of Bronfan vrin Bruner, I think is his name and um, at the way that at the, the

day care system, the child centres that they had created and um, and that um, and how

people ah, could live communally. We also um, we also studied the, the kibbutz system

and because they lived communally and they rai- were raising their children communally

and so it wasn't the way that we raised our children, communally in the past, but um, but

we were trying to look at how we could adva- how we could um, create a new present, a

new way of doing things that respected the old ways but also respected the changes,

the enormous changes that we were under, undergoing.

[cough] And so, so in start at looking at all of those then, we - it led us to

looking at um, what happens to societies where um, there's um, there's a

dominant group that dominates another group, so there's a dominated

group and a, a dominant group that imposes the social rules and devises

the institutions. And um, and we, and so that really, and it began to lead

us to understanding what um, was happening in, in the classrooms

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because, basically, that's, that, that was constructing itself in each of the

classrooms. And so that um, so that there was a group then that were

being um, who were being treated as though they, they're the ones who

knew. They owned the world. They would go on to have a choice in

employment, they had a choice of what, of how they would live their lives,

but this other group didn't.

And so we really struggled, I think, for a long time on, on that issue, on

that, just that question because it's important to remember that every

decision in the last, here in Mt. Currie, in the, in the last hundred years,

every decision that was made about what would happen to us was made

by somebody else. It was made by somebody else outside of our

community who didn't know us, but that, but um, and so somebody

decided when we could leave our community. Somebody decided when

we could um, for how long we could leave our community. Somebody

decided how much money we would have. Somebody decided how much

um, where we could go on our, on our land. Somebody decided um, when

trees would be cut down and when they wouldn't be cut down. Somebody

decided every part of our li- our lives. Somebody decided about our

health and so, our ability to um, to um, to um, what medicines we would

take and so that um, ah -

An example of this would- is that in the health area, is that um, my mom

ah brought ninety kids into this world as a mid-wife. She'd, she'd never

lost one child and when - And she fought and worked to get a doctor into

the valley and when the doctor arrived he, he told her she could no longer

bring child- could no longer attend to births and if she continued to do that

he would have, he would get her put into jail. And so that, then, that, the

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engagement of the extended family and the community in the birth of a

child, then, changed.

The other thing was that um, the medical model is - The European

medical model is really different, the scie- the so-called scientific view, and

alot of the people here ah, practised um, more preventative medicine so

that they purified their bodies and they looked after what they ingested so

that their bodies could remain strong. But then when the doctors came in,

what did they do? They, they said don't take any more of those herbs

'cause you don't know what you're doing 'cause it's not scientific. And so

that al- then the world, then, of um, knowledge about plants and how it

affects our, our health, then began to be eroded.

The other thing that they did was they said that ah, they changed the

agricultural practices of the people. They changed the way that people

lived with one another in a home and so that um, rather than living in an

extended family situation they were seperat- so the families were

separated. And um, so all of those, then, are um, undermine the, the

traditional knowledge and the traditional way of being n- wh- ah, living wi-

you know, like, on our land and with one another. And um, and so that the

power relationship then, that plays itself out in the classroom is fashioned

from the greater society and that's what we were seeing in the classroom

and I've just lost my way.

GARY I'm just, um, slate please. Um -

Beep. Tail slate no: 285

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? ...It was great, though.

GARY Oh well, I, I think it's a, it's a, it, it brings it home um, if you can just - I

guess it was the, it was the question of passivity that you were trying to make the

[Lorna: No, I was -] the power of relationship that you had all the -[Lorna: Yeah.] You

had started off with all of, ah, depriving the child of the opportunity to speak and then

depriving people of, of two things and that was the largest idea and, and we're going

back to the child and I had also probably raised in the air, as well, a question you were

working towards which was um, the um, experience of the child and then what - I was -

? All the decisions were made by exterior, so there was no self-

responsibility, there was no [Lorna: Yeah.]

GARY Yeah. [Lorna: Uh huh.] And ah, the passivity, but I have a sense of

something kind of seething beneath the surface of that passivity that you, or something

going on under the passivity that you wind up dealing with when the kids come to you.

Am I on the right track there? Is that?

LORNA Uh huh. [pause]

[off-mic discussion]

GARY So do you, do you have a resuming spot there?

LORNA Uh uh.

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GARY Um. I guess [Lorna: Uh huh.] you just said that, that, that this - [Lorna:

Yeah, I, I do.]

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um. So I think that what we were doing then, during those, those ten

years we were taking over the school was to try to understand, to have some way of

understanding what had happened to us. Like it gave, it um, and there were many

people in the community who were searching this and I remember that I wasn't always

of discussion and um, and I think one of the main things that was happening was that it

was - was we - that we were giving ourselves the time to, to study, to reflect and to

reflect and to discuss.

And I remember that um, um, that um, in one of my co- in one of the - our

courses, I decided to do um, a study of medicinal plants. And um, so I

asked - I talked it over with my mom and um, so we decided that we would

go and she invited ah, two other women along with, along wi-with us and

we'd make a lunch and go up into the, into the, into the woods and um,

and as they learned that, that we wanted to learn, the, they began to teach

us. And I think that um -

And so alot of the ideas that we were, you know, we were tossing around -

We'd talk it over with um, with ah, some of the older, older people, and I

guess for me it was my mom and Albert's mom, Maggie and ah, Pidashe

and Yanna and Marileo would be, wo- from the community would, would

have been the ones.

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And um, and, and I think that we were working - I, I - we were beginning

the early work of trying to articulate and to code our traditional cultural

knowledge, okay, in itself, like um, what it was and how it was different

from um, the rest of Canadian society and then, so we were s- beginning

to really delve into this.

The other part of our story, then, was to understand the effects of a, a

colonized people or a, a dominated people, a people who don't have, who

are not allowed to have a separate identity but they're not allowed to have

the European identity, okay. And so you're always excluded from that and

so -

GARY Could you say it again, just, just make that point for me again about not

having one identity and not the other? [Lorna: Uh huh.] Just elaborate that.

LORNA So, hm. We were working on um, articulating who were were, like who are

we as Lil'wat and so what is um, what does it mean to be Lil'wat? What history is there?

What knowledge is there? How ar- um, um, and so we're really looking at how we were

different, 'kay. And, so that was one area that we were working on.

The other area that we we- we were really beginning to understand was

what the effects are when a people are not able to retain their own identity,

but also are kept from having um, well, in this case, a Canadian identity.

So, for- that's - so when you look at um, the destruction of many of our

social institutions, 'kay, so, by removing -

beep

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LORNA ...children, by removing the children, sending them out to residential

school, you stop the natural processes of the development of an identity, 'kay. When

you um, when you withhold cultural knowledge, you're withholding the development of,

of your i- identity. When you're in the residential schools, then we were removed from

our traditional um, ah, way of life, but we were also removed from th- the development

of this country as Canada. See? So we were, in a way, suspended. Suspended in a

um, in a different kind of a reality that had nothing to do with either worlds that we had to

live in.

And so, and, in the residential school then, we were supposed to be be-

becoming civilized and Canadianized but, you see, we're kept from

developing that kind of, that identity of being a Canadian. It was foreign

from that, our experience in residential school. And um, and so when um -

So, on the one hand they were saying that we needed to be industrialized,

okay. So we, we needed to understand t- ah, industry. And so then they

put our- put to the students who were in residential school into, into

different kinds of trades that had really little relationship to a life back

home. And um, so it, it didn't really have that much meaning, because

you're not going to bring it home, but yet, on the other hand, you can't

practice your trade off the reserve if you're status on reserve Indian, and

so um, and if you - because we cou- we couldn't uh - If we wanted to

retain our right to our homelands we had to stay here; we couldn't leave,

you see, and so there wasn't really any way, then, that you could, that you

could um, participate in the developing - in the development of this society.

GARY Uh huh.

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[off-mic discussion]

GARY Where are we headed next in this ah, stage of the narrative?

off-mic discussion]

LORNA So through the seventies then, that wer- um, we were um -

off-mic discussion]

LORNA ...um, [cough] that we were really exploring ah, and trying to understand

our situation. And um, and we were going, I guess, through our studies, like, far beyond

um, North American because we had, we knew that it was, that people who were

educated and who were discussing our situation, really were um, we- they were blinded

by that overall impression that we were, that somehow that we were less than, you

know, than others, than other nations.

And in 197- so we were studying the language, we were looking at our

history, we were looking at um, recording the knowledge that um, you

know, that still existed amongst our people. And um, and finding ways for

us to have these, you know, these extended and long discussions that

were, um - So that it was quite, I think, um, an ex- really an exciting time

and um, and it was using, I think, the energy of the young people at that

time, to um, to begin to redesign our community in, you know, in the taking

from the old and also taking, taking um, from what we've, in a way, the

oppression that were, that we were under, taking that and understanding

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that and then, and then from those two bodies of knowledge, knowing

what, you know, beginning to, to move towards um, redesigning our social

institutions. So that's what I think, or where I think I left off.

And um, so um, and so we were looking at um, at the whole area of health

and how um, and how we had ha- had to abandon our traditional, um, way

of um, of viewing health and relating to health and the western notion.

And um, and taking some measure of control over what, how those two

would relate, the new - the old and the, and this new way. The same with

um, we- what was happening in the classrooms and in the classrooms we

wanted the cla- the - we were - what we were trying to build were

classrooms with no walls so that ah - or to extend those walls so that they

included the community again.

And um, we were um, doing alot of work on the language, recording the

langauge, so that - and it was though looking at words, word by word,

sentence, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, story by story, that um

we were suddenly beginning to - or I was, and I, and I know that other

people were, too - um, that we were finally beginning to understand our,

the way that we related to everything, in time, space, just everything. And

um, and that was really exciting, to be able to th- the ability - our new

ability to be able to, to write a sentence, to write an essay, to write a poem

in our langauge and to give it somebody else and that they could, and that

they could um, share and understand, like, this with us was really um, it

was really quite exciting and um, um, recording our histories, um, being

able to set up situations so that people could begin again to recount

histories and to become aware of um, of the, of the beauty and the

richness of our land, the- but also, at the same time, to look at the

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destruction, the rapid destruction that was occurring and um -

I said, er- I was talking earlier about doing this um, this ah, study on plants

and I remember doing this study in 197- beginning this in 197- It must

have been '76 and then I, and then in a, in 1980 I studied, I continued it. I

wa- I was going to publish in a, in one of the books through our little

publishing company here, that we developed and so I wanted to learn

more and I wanted to real- and I wanted to recheck some of the

information that I'd received four years previous to that. And I was going -

and again I was going up into the mountains with ah, the same people

who were, who had been teaching me and only to find that in some of the

places, those plants no longer existed. In four years they were wiped out.

And so that um, and some of the plants were really rare, and they, and

they only grow in certain conditions, and they were gone.

GARY Why?

LORNA Why were they gone? Um, and they were gone because of the logging.

They were gone because of the, the spraying that they do ah, that they had started, like

so when they ah, logged an area then they, then they sprayed a herbicide which then, of

course, ran down the mountains. And Hydro was doing alot of spraying under the

power lines and so that was just really um, just going through the whole, like, all through

the mountains, then. It wa- It doesn't just stay in that local area and um, um, and so we

were really aware then, of um, really the, the incredible damage that was happening.

And um, and so, and so that we were - I think by, by doing all of this work,

um, then we were, we were really searching, then, for, for answers that

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were more ah - more broad than, you know, than band-aid changes, or

small changes that people were, you know, like some, that were doing.

And um, in - so we were working on the language, the social studies, the

history and um, one of the projects that I was involved with, a lum- with the

grade six class, was a language immersion in which we brought um, away

from our community for ten days where there were no radios, no

television, no electricity, none of those and we brought, brought [cough]

knowledgeable people um, in certain - people who had different - real

good knowledge in certain la- um, you know, in certain areas of

knowledge, like hunting and, and ah, land and that.

And um, I remember watching my, my little grade six kids and this old man

was telling them this story in the night-time - see, it wasn't really telling

them a story, but that they were there and ah, he was telling the story and

which was a very natural kind of a setting ah, for our way of telling stories.

And he didn't speak any English, and the- the - and the, that the language,

our language that he spoke was - I was learning words that I hadn't even

heard of, I was- realized. And um, and then I started to listen to him in

other situations and when he would be talking so, at a funeral, he would

use um, a language that I had very little knowledge of, but the thing was

that I understood - I li- I, I hadn't um - and the thing was that my little grade

six kids who are just learning a language, our language again, understood

him, that they, that the understanding comes before, before the ability to

speak, in a way. And so, just by being exposed to this, you know, for um,

twenty-four hours and the - in a - and in different settings, they were

picking up alot.

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And so, I guess it was then that we - I realized the - that, in fact, our

language could live again - it wo- it could be a living language. And so, so

history, language, looking at the, the change in social and community ah,

institutions. And um -

Beep

LORNA ...we were looking at governance. The way that um, that our community in

the past were, were governed by um, by family and family head - the family head

system. And um, and to come up with a way of resolving then, that kind of a system

with this new system, the D.I.A., Department of Indian Affairs system. So we - I just - I

wanna say all of that to convey that we were looking at, you know, in, you know like, a -

how our lives are impacted.

Then in 1979 I remember getting this - some articles appeared on my, on

my desk and um, um - and they were articles that were um, written by

Feuerstein and um, and um, the articles were talking about his theory of

structural cognitive modifiability and mediated learning and I remember

trying to, even just to say those words and I, and I was reading and I set

them aside and I'd go back and I'd read, read some again and you know,

and I'd look words up in the dictionary and um, and although I was um,

intrigued by what he was saying, I also was fi- well I was reacting to his

words, just really violently, like I, I was just becoming enraged, um, I felt,

and um, and what it was that, that was making me angry was that he was

talking about cultural deprivation, that we, that when we are culturally

deprived it um, that we, that, that it um, affects our cognitive development

and um, and so that if we're not mediated to our - if we don't um, um - So

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if - that if we're not - So if we're not taught a culture, then, then it results in

de- deficits and so those are what I was really reacting to, cognitive

deficits.

GARY Whi- which are?

LORNA I'll explain that. Um, so there were - The two ideas then were that um,

that ah, that he was talking about cultural deprivation and so he - so I we- But the way

that I was defining co- cultural deprivation and the way that everybody was talking

about, about culture and cultural deprivation was that we, as aboriginal people were not

successful in school because we were deprived of Euro-Canadian culture, so I couldn't

gain access to um, to William Shakespeare, 'kay, because I was deprived of that culture

and um, and so I wasn't, I was really, I rejected that. I was very violently - and um, but I

must have been kind of um, knowing that I had to reject it violently because, because

everybody - I was fighting against that and didn't have a very sophisticated - the way, I

think, of fighting, dealing with that at that time and the other, the other thing was that he

was talking about cognitive deficits and, and so these are er- deficits in your way - in

your mental ability, your thinking, so I remember we were tested as ah, as um, ninety

ah, eight percent being retarded, and so um, so I wasn't ready to be deficit, again. I

wasn't ready to let anybody tell me that um, I didn't do well because I had deficits or our

children weren't doing well because they had deficits.

But there must have been something there that I didn't throw the thing into

the garbage and I kept it on my desk and I remember, every once in a

while, going back to it until I realized that what he was saying was that um,

was his thesis was that every culture has a way of devises, develops ah,

an efficient way of passing on knowledge from one generation to the next

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generation in a way that it's efficient for that people, for tho- those people

and that one culture doesn't ha- doesn't do it any better or any less than

another culture

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Beep.

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LONG TONE

Beep. Beep. Head slate no: 288

LORNA Um, hm. [cough] In this article - There are these articles that Rueven

had written, um, and the way that he was talking about cultural dif- deprivation, was

entirely different from the way that we- that others had defined cultural deprivation and

that his theory was that um, that it wasn't cultural difference that created um, ah,

cognitive deficiencies, but it was when people are deprived of their own cultures that it

results in cognitive deficiencies and um and that his, and that basically what he was

saying was that everybody has a - establishes and develops efficient and effective ways

of transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next generation to - so that the

next generation is prepared and is able to meet all of life's challenges and um, and that

not one culture does it in an inadequate and in - and if- inefficient way, that um, that one

culture doesn't do it better or it doesn't do it less than somebody else.

And so that the important point was, then, for us to be able to finally say

that, as Lil'wat maho- Lil'wat people that we could look at the way that

knowledge was constructed in our Lil'wat world and that, that that made us

able to adapt and to, and to um, to any li- of life's situations and that, that it

helped, then, for us to understand that when our social institutions were

destroyed, like the potlaching system, the, the, the ceremonies, the winter

and summer gatherings, ah the, the destruction of the languages, the

removal of children from the communities and the removal of children and

ah, of grandparents, of elders from the lives of the children, when the

aunties and uncles were re- were removed from the care of their nieces

and nephews, that it, that those um, that tho- that that resulted, on our

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culture, our way of life, our traditions, our knowledge, wa- then was not

transmitted to us in a holistic way and that that we needed to focus on

that, rather than on, on that we're not able to do well in school or in

European - Euro-Canadian life, because of our cultural difference.

So, I'd say that um, that as I struggled to understand what he meant, it

suddenly, um - All of the previous study that we've been do- that we'd

been doing, kind of opened up, so he helped us, I think, to really

understand um, our situation. And so that we knew, then, that it, that there

was um - that if we continued to work on Lil'wat knowledge and um - And

knowledge is not just what the stuff or the content, it's also the processes,

the, the - we're able to see the role of um, um - bu- Just to give you an

example, I think, um, we could then see the role of um, um, of some of the

activities that, that, that children would be engaged in and how that

prepared them for more than just knowledge of, of things, but of, of a

mental state or an emotional state, a psychological state, and um, the -

During puberty training, and this - There are people still in my community

who, who lived through this, where - and um - So, one of the examples is,

is, um - One of the activities from um, from girls who are entering puberty

- And what they would do is ah - One of the tasks, their tasks, was to -

They would be given a bough of ah, um, a tree bough of cedar or um, of

fir, and that they had to pick each needle off the bough, one at a time and

they had to practice so that um, that they wer- became really fast. And um

- And we knew that um, you- we can just run our fingers along the bough

and all the needles would fall off and that would be done, but it wasn't the

completing of taking - What wasn't - was taking the f- the needles off the

bough was not what was important and what - That wasn't the purpose of

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the activity. The purpose of the activity were ah, so that um, so that alot of

the work that we have - that we had to do to, to live in our environment

was to be really quick with our fingers, to have really good manual

dexterity, and so that you had to - and you had to train yourself, then, to be

really fast and, and to be able to control your fingers and your hands.

But the other part of it was that we had to - What it was also training, was

that this is a really tedious task, okay? So, if you're sitting there and

you're picking these up and needle, you know, just needle by needle, that

you - What, what happens your mind begins to drift, you become bored,

you become frustrated and, you know, the, the - doing something that's

mindless, seeming to be mindless and senseless and what it, you know,

what is this for anyways? Is it to fill in time or, you know? Because you

had to be separated and you were by yourself and they did, and you di-

ah, but really what it was, was that when, in many of the tasks that we're

engaged in, they - you have to be able to concentrate and to stay at a task

fo- for a long period of time, so until you finish and so, you have then - you

have to practice, then, wilfully practice, how to be able to control your

frustration and your anger and, you know, at doing it, your boredom. And

so, it was, it - so it was set up to train that.

So, through Feuerstein's work, then, we were able to look at - or I was

able to look at um, at alot of the things that we did in our community ah,

and to under- and to d-dig beyond just the surface to see the purpose and

behind it, and, and the place that it had. And so the point that I'm trying to

make is that according to Feuerstein, then, that it's not only the contents or

the subjects of the, of knowledge, that gets transmitted, it's also the

processes and the procedures that, that are transmitted. And um, and it

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gave us, I think, a whole new way - it gave me, anyway, a whole new way

of, of being able to look at - I - that, tho- the two realities that we live, one

to understand how we're culturally different and to be able to understand it

so we know um, we have a clearer sense of who we are, but also to know

our other reality of um, of what happens when we're oppressed and

dominated by somebody else. Uh huh.

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um, ah, I think I left off um, saying that um, that what Feuerstein and his

ideas did, was it helped me to look at um, what processes were in place in Lil'wat

culture in the way of training their children. Um, that it helped me to understand that,

that process much better. And um, we could have probably arrived at that without his

work um, but I think there are a number of other um, components to his ideas that, that

um, make - made it really valuable to us.

And um, um, so I talked about cultural deprivation and um, meaning that it

ah, that it's deprivation from our own cultures. Now, there can be many

different reasons why um, a person's culture is not passed down, or not

accepted by an individual and it could be because of forced separation

from family and community or um, language - fo- ah, separation from

language community. It could be um, the withholding of knowledge by the

parents, which I think happened here, that people were - ah, it was so

engrained that um, cultural knowledge, Lil'wat cultural knowledge was

detrimental to the success of children so parents withheld that knowledge.

Then it worked from the other side in which um, um, children, through th-

through the, the way that they were perceived by the greater society, um,

that, that they saw that their Lil'wat heritage was a- deficient and that it

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wasn't ah, useful any more, and so they rejected the knowledge, and so

there was an active um, rejection by the, by the young people.

GARY When you say they saw, [cough] could you [Lorna: What?] elaborate on

'cause, I mean ah, i-it - [Lorna: Saw it -] there's several different senses of seeing -

[Lorna: What? I don't -] You said that the, the children saw that their Lil'wat culture was

[Lorna: Ah -] deficient and I guess, I mean, they were sort of made to think that? Or

they, they didn't actually have evidence of it? Or -

LORNA Sure, they had evidence of it, ever- everywhere.

GARY Uh huh. Oh yeah, okay. [Lorna: So -] So there's that sense of seeing.

LORNA Yeah, that um, okay, if you look at um, at um, movies and the way that

aboriginal people are portrayed in movies. They're portrayed as, as animal-like, um, but

animal-like in a, in a negative way, as though they're not as good as humans, which is a

different relationship that aboriginal people had with animals. They were perceived as

being um - They were always portrayed in movies as being um, never able to protect

themselves or their communities, so you know, in the western movies. Um, that um, so

that the stories that were told broadly were not um, were not the reality of aboriginal

people.

They - of um - They saw it in the way that leaders were treated, um, um,

by politicians. They saw it by the racism that they experienced whenever

they we- left the community. So, if you go to a bank um, you don't get

served quite as readily. If you go to a restaurant, you don't, you, you don't

get served the way that other people are served. If you go to a store,

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people are - people's impulse is that you're stealing, so they, they see

that's so. People from here, we used to go to Vancouver for, like, my

father would go down to sell his furs. He was never able to go into um -

You couldn't just go into any part of Vancouver to um, um, to ah, go into a

hotel. So they were not allowed to g- ah, they weren't served in, in most

hotels. They weren't ser- we weren't served in most restaurants, and so,

nobody has to tell you then, that you are, that your Indianness is um, is not

valuable. It's, it's um, it's an albatross, and so that's -

If that's your experience, what are you gonna do? What is one gonna do?

They're gonna - If that's the reason, then I'm going to try to distance

myself away from that so that I can have another experience and many

times ah, people did that then they lost, then, really in several, many

different ways. They lost because they don't have a complete - they,

they've turned their face away from the teachings of their own people.

They've turned their face away from being com- becoming um, identified

with, with um, a nation, and that their identity becomes rejection, that the

only person I can be is that nobody wants me, nobody, nobody um,

accepts me for who I am because of the colour of my skin and ah, so tha-

that, idea can be passed on to the next generation.

The children can grow up a- in that kind of an environment and so, but

nobody really, fully explains it and um, and so they, they remove

themselves then, you know, another step away and um, and that still

happens today in, you know, in this day and age. It still happens in

Vancouver, in Vancouver schools where um, if a sa- sa- In many cases

where a student is - can pass as um, as a person of another culture who,

you know, with ah, their colouring of their skin and hair, that they choose to

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do that, and that parents will, when we're identifying aboriginal students in

our schools, parents will say, I don't want my child identified as an

aboriginal student. Why? Because they know that in the past, in their

experience, when they've been identified as aboriginal students, that's the

end. The doors close. And so they want their children to have some kind

of equity that they have to - they, that, th- the, the, that the recourse that

they think that they need to - that they must take is to deny, deny their

heritage.

Beep. Head slate no: 289

[off-mic discussion]

GARY So, I had asked, I had asked you how people came to see that. That's an,

an interesting - which we've recapped some of what you had been saying um, earlier

and we're coming now, I guess, to the point where you're talking about um, I guess,

doing something about it with mediation, um - Where are we going?

LORNA [laughs] Now I can't remember after you - [Gary & Lorna laugh.] Um -

[Gary: Um -] ...ask me to clarify. [Gary: Yeah.] I was talking about - What was I talking

about? Um -

GARY You had come to see some of these principles and thought you might

have come to see them yourself and um -

LORNA Na- um, just let me - Um. Oh. Okay, so what I was explaining was that

there are many ways in which we don't um, yeah - There are many ways in which we,

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we don't um, develop the - or participate in the systems of transmitting knowledge from

one generation to another, that's where I was. And so I was talking about um, that it's -

that it could be the withholding of knowledge by the parents, it could be the rejection of

knowledge by the child, 'kay - or it could be - or it could be that a child doesn't have

access because of um, um, problems or difficulties with a- organically, so with their, with

one of their senses, hearing and sight and so on. Um, or poverty or socio-economic

status also has been used as a, as a reason and um, but um, the important point with

socio-economic status is um, according to Feuerstein that poverty, in and of itself, is not

the, th- is not the cause um, that there are many people who grow up in poverty and yet,

con- had developed really efficient cognitive functions and um, and that ah, there are

um, you know, they are able to adapt to life. And so, and culturally difference is also

said, the um - has been used, remember, um, to try to um, um, the cultural difference is

used to attempt to explain why certain children didn't do as well in school and um,

[cough] and so Feuerstein s-said that, yes, a cultural difference can create some

problems, but again, it isn't the cause. There's something else that's the cause, and so

he -

So the- we come then to the next part of his theories - his theory, that I

think has been the most valuable to me, and he calls it the mediated

learning experience. So, what he's, what he - He's using this idea, then,

that a child could then grow up in, in an environment - in an impoverished

environment, a child could reject or, or a parent could with- withhold um, or

there can be some um, physical problems, neurological problems that, but

they're not the whole cause. And he's - And instead he focuses on - in a,

in a, I think in a mo-more positive way, in by saying, if I can understand

what it is that's, that one generation transmits to the next generation that

we'll be able then to devise a way of um, of working with people who have

not had that natural process. And so, what he says - al- always, and that

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I've appreciated, is that um, that everything that he's - the way that he's

described this, what he's learned in the process of trying to describe this

um, this transmission process, is that he learned from the mothers and the

grandmothers, and what those mothers and grandmothers did for their

children to, to have them um, learn how to be in this world and so,

basically that's what the mediated learning experience is, according to

Feuerstein.

The other part of mediation that I think is really valuable to us is that um,

um, is that he's tried to develop universal criteria that um - And so that

the, that the cri- that his twelve criteria of the mediated learning

experience is universal, to say that they take place and - but it's also for us

to- to begin to understand, then um, how they're different, how those

different processes um, ah differ from one culture to another. And um, to

give you an example, um, in every culture people taught their children or,

or the next generation, how to regulate and control their behaviour, but we

all did this in different ways. So, it's universal that we did it, but the way in

which it was done was, was more specific to a culture. And so, that um,

um - Or the way that um - The way tha- in which we became a separate

self, an individual with a, with a, with um, a unique identity, 'kay. It was

universal that, that everybody does this, but they do it in- with dif- in

different ways.

And so that um, understanding then, the mediational process helps us in,

in real- I think, in really, in two main ways and the first one is um, for me

that I saw that would, was, was, in, in absolutely valuable, was that I could

take this, these twelve criteria, and I could look at it and look at traditional

Li-Lil'wat culture and begin to describe what those are so that people

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could see that um, that in fact, that, that our way of life, the teachings and

the stories, the teachings through the games, the teachings through the,

the demonstrations and the inclusion of children in, in people's lives, that

um, that I could use the criteria in a way as a, as a map to be able to begin

to have people see that in fact our ways were, were, were very complex

and ver- and suitable to us and that they, in fact, continue to be with us,

even though we haven't described them in texts or, or but in - And it's

through this discussion that they can see that, how valuable our traditional

ways are. And if they're not valuable, and if we let some go, that that's

okay, too, because sometimes we're pushed into believing that if we let

any part of it go, that somehow we're diminishing who we are, but people -

Again, it's a natural process that when change occurs, people make a

choice as to what they're gonna leave and what they're gonna keep and

by articulating it and having intense discussions about ah, the way that we

mediated knowledge inter-generational then, is valuable for that purpose.

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Tail slate no: 290

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um, the second way in which um, um, the way that I think that

instrumental enrichment and mediated learning - When we can recreate, in a

classroom environment um, so that we can mediate um, to students, ah um -

GARY I-I didn't quite get the sense of that. Could you take another run at that?

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LORNA Uh huh, 'kay. Hm, let me think now how it, where I was, how I was gonna

frame this. Um, the second valuable way in that mediated learning helps us ah, today,

is that um, is that when our students, when aboriginal students go into the classroom,

they come with - even if they, even if all of the students were from one culture group, so

take an example of the students in Mt. Currie, and if they, if they were all attending one

school um, they still come as individuals. They still come culturally different from one

another, even if they come from one nation and for aboriginal people, we have some

families who have remained extremely strong in um, remaining true to the, to the Lil'wat

traditions.

We have families who have decided that, that they wanted to support their

children um, by un- by getting to know and to interact with the world

outside of our nation and they have less knowledge about - less traditional

Lil'wat knowledge. We have other um, families where they may not have

made a d- ch- decision but in a way, the choice was made for them to not

ah, teach their children. So we can't really predict, that even if, if all of

these children come from one nation, that they come with the same kind of

knowledge and level of understanding.

And so, the way that um, um - So that the way that instrumental

enrichment helps us then, is [cough] through the mediational teaching

techniques that he developed. He had - he - We're able to not lay on the

kids what we think they know or ought to know or make assumptions of

what they bring. So we bring their experience into the classroom, so that

we look at the child for the chi- for what that child brings and we, and we

create an environment in which that can come out, that can be um, to the -

but it comes in the way that the children - that respects what they want to

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share.

And um, and so for our - I think, for our children, that's really important

because um, because one of the wa- the responses to ra- our lack of ach-

our children's lack of ability, or our lack of achievement in school where we

tended to say was well, they're not able because the classroom is so

foreign. They're not able because there's - they don't recognize anything

about themselves in the classroom. So then we were ah, pressed to

develop curriculum, to develop ah, activities that we thought was who they

were. Okay?

And so, for example um, in some of the exercises that we would do in the

classroom was - had to do with singing or dancing or making um, material

cultural products, but um - and then the student who- So there would be

some students who could come and they have that knowledge, 'kay, so

they can, they can connect to it. Then we have other students who, who

don't have any of that knowledge, so how do we make them feel? We

say, you're ah, First Nations and here we're having something about First

Nations and you can't and you don't and it's - you don't know about it. And

so, here we're saying again - We give the message that again, you're

inadequate. You know, you come with ah, without the, without certain

knowledge. 'Kay, so um, and so that in the instrumental enrichment class

- Are you okay? [Gary: Yeah - I'm -] Then [cough] I think that that's one

valuable tool that we have, that we, that we can set - create a situation

where students' knowledge is ack- acknowledged by, by the, their

community, the group in the school.

Um, the second way that it's valuable um, is that wh- in my experience in

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Vancouver classrooms with aboriginal students, is that sometimes they

know far more about their cultural traditions and their histories and their

awareness of um, of ah, traditional ways of relating - They know far more

than they think they know because it has never been um - they, they've

never had the opportunity to really explore that knowledge. And I've

watched um, in classrooms as, as students um, began to um, to - began

to recall and to discuss what they knew that it, it opened, in a way, a whole

door, a whole wide area for them to um, you know, for discussion. And I

think that um, and that has to be empowering to know that, that already, I

have lots of knowledge that's, that's um, that's valuable. It's valuable to

me and it's valuable to others and it can be appreciated by me and it can

be appreciated by others. And um, the other thing is that um, I think the -

[off-mic discussion]

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LONG TONE

ROGER This is roll 57. Speak.

LORNA So this, the ah, the third um, way in which ah, instrumental enrichment

and, and mediational teaching is, is valuable is um, that - One of the comments that I

often heard teachers say to me and these are non-aboriginal teachers, is that um, can I

teach children who are culturally different from me, like so, I can't um - so my

experience, my upbringing, my area of study, is not in this area, so I don't, I, I -

In Canada, up until ten years ago, the average Canadian teacher would

um, would really have not studied anything about aboriginal people sa-

and what they knew was a- was often anthropological information which

was not useful anyway and all of that, that ah, biased um, research that I

talked about earlier - Um, and so they say, well, I, I - How then can I

adequately teach these children because they're so culturally different

from me?

Well, instrumental enrichment, by the way that it's set up, um, it narrows

the distance between the content of what is going to be discussed um - It

narrows thistra - distance between the student and the teacher so that the

teacher isn't the one that controls the knowledge any more. It's, it's in the

wa- It's the, the ca-, the, the conversation, then, really is um, is between

the, the students and the teacher so that one doesn't need to be above the

other or in more control over the other and um -

GARY How does it manage that? We're going to be seeing people doing these

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activities in class, and I think by the time we get to Lettie we'll probably have a real

sense of it, but I'm thinking sort of early on here, where we're looking into the, kind of

the principles of what Rueven's laying out in the way of the relationships and in the

instruments. I'm wondering, how does the - maybe it just should just wait until we just

go back and talk about the kind of the, the relationship?

LORNA I'll try it. I'll try it here. If we don't - If I don't get it, we can [Gary: Okay.]

go- try it again. Um, so does it - How then does it do this? So, if you take um, a class -

If you take, say, um - If you're doing an exercise from one of the instruments, we're say

organization of dots, and um, and we take um, hm - And then it's - What is happening

in an instrumental enrichment class i-i-is multi-levelled, okay. It's um - And the, and the

teacher, in a way, is like a, is like a really skilled orchestra leader in, in which that the -

You have to really - You have to listen to the parts and how those parts relate to one

another to come out with um, with the um, the right tone and quality um, that is

necessary to convey a message.

And um, and so, the music then, that comes from each child in a class is

different and you're creating an environment where you're listening and

everybody is participating to make the music of the whole class, and the

teacher is the one who is, in a way, directing that. And, and you direct it

through um, through your - the - your ability to let go your own ego, in a

way, and to totally concentrate on, on, on helping students to, to search

their mem- memories, to connect what they're doing right now to

something in their, in their past experience.

And so that, [cough] you can have a class then, wh- in which you are

discussing um, um, labelling, for example, is, is one of the ar- one of the,

the keys in instru- in the early um, instruments of instrumental enrichment,

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and um, what you do is that you, you ha- um, you help students to be able

to understand that when we're conversing, when people are establishing a

language community, that one of the things that is important, is that you

use, is that you create the language that everybody will understand, and

that um, and that when we come upon something that is um, that is ah,

not common to us and what we tend to do is we formulate somewhere in

our minds, a label for it, and that we all - And what- and we bring our

personalities to this. We bring our experiences to this and um, and what

the teacher i-is - wants to do, is to be able to have them reflect upon that

and to realize that everybody, really, that they're, that they're are some

people who might have a similar label and there might be other children

who have a totally different label 'kay, so, the teacher doesn't know what

this will be and so the teacher then elicits that from the students so that

they can say in life, um, it's important, it is sometimes important for us to

all agree on a label, and so um - for an object or for whatever. And the,

and the importance is becau- is so that um, um, so that others can

understand you, okay, and that, so there is - it's then a need to have

others understand you, but it's also - it has to do with your need to be

understood, 'kay, to -

And so that um, it doesn't happen in a, in a, in a vacuum, and, and so that

that then, becomes a topic of, of discussion, so that, so that each member

in that class um, can be part of the discussion, because they're bringing it

- to it - their own experience of that. And so the teacher is skilled and is to

be able to create those moments, to create those opportunities a- for peo-

for children to ge- ha- gain insight into the way that they relate to

everything in their worlds. Um, I don't know, it's getting pretty elusive.

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GARY I have another way of um, ah, focusing on that if, if you want to try um,

which is, from the child's - it's a, it's a way of trying to get at what a teacher goes

through in preparing and thinking once they've absorbed Reuven's approach, and that

is, from a child's point of view, what is going on - What, what is different, maybe, about

the way they're approached by teachers from the way other teachers approach them?

Um, is it possible to look at it from that point of view? [Lorna: Hm] Um. I guess I'm

thinking in a way of trying to get at the um -

LORNA Okay, so you can ask me, then, the question is um, how it changes, what

changes does the teacher go then, so it's a - [Gary: Yeah.] So why is this valuable to

teachers, I um -

GARY And why is it valuable for students, I guess, um - [Lorna: No. I -] Yeah,

okay. One at a time. [Lorna: Huh?] Well I was just - I-I guess part of me was thinking

at it from the point of view of the ah, that -

ROGER I think your question was how would a student perceive the difference

between a teacher who was using this approach and a teacher that wasn't. What would

the student - [Lorna: Okay] ...experience. [Gary: Yes.] Is that the question? [Lorna:

Yeah.] [Gary: That's a good -] Okay. Just be proves that I am still listening. I'm still

here.

LORNA Um. 'Kay. The dif- um. Hm. Why is instrumental enrichment training,

then, useful to the relationship between the student and the classroom - ah, the, the

student and the teacher, 'kay, and um, the teacher and the student, the one who is there

to learn. I'd say that the main difference is that in um, in a, in - the ways in which

teachers have been trained to teach, they've been trained to tea- they've been trained to

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teach a body of information, okay, so, I'm gonna teach the, this, the chil- ah, it's my job

to teach the children how to read. It's my job to teach the children how to um, do

mathematics. I'm trained to teach students to um, to learn about um, the world, um,

through ah, stu- the study of history and the study of geography. I'm going, I'm taught to

teach the students how to be able to understand scientific concepts in chemistry and

biology and so on.

The instrumental enrichment teacher is um, is interested in creating an

environment in which people learn to learn, in which students are having

an opportunity to reflect on and to gain insights into the way they learn,

and the way that they can use the way - their, their skills, ah, their um,

strengths in um, the learning process to help them in others, in other

areas, so it's to make them more um, able to benefit from um, formal

instruction and to benefit from um, exper- ah, experiences outside of the

classroom, 'kay, so I'd say that that's probably the main difference.

GARY And could you use the example of learning to control your behaviour as ah

-

Beep.

GARY ...to show me how -

ROGER 290

GARY I guess I'm looking for something that I can take out of the classroom, just

to con- con- continue to look at a different focus that most people don't normally think of,

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normally -

LORNA Okay, yeah, now I know where, okay.

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um, when Reuven was doing his um, when he was doing his research

and the research that Reuven was doing was similar to, I'm sure, what Lettie and I are

doing and ma- and countless other people, in which we're do- we're researching as

we're going, as we're doing the job and [cough] when Feuerstein developed the learning

potential assessment device which is the first applied system that he developed, um, he

began to see patterns emerging and over thousands of applica- hours of application, he

began to see some patterns and so he took those patterns and he called them um,

cognitive functions and the cognitive functions are the wh- um, are the way in which we

process information.

Okay, so it's um - And he, and he describes it as, there's this s-s-set of

functions that we use at a - when we're taking in information, 'kay, so um,

through our hearing and our vision and so on, and then there's a set of ah,

a second set of functions that deal with how we relate to that, the incoming

information, okay. So, how do we, how do we process that in our, in our

brain, which is then influenced by our attitudes and our emotional lives.

And then the third phase is the ways in which we express new knowledge,

new information. We can't absolutely separate the phases because

they're inner- interrelated; they're intertwined, but it's valuable for us to try

to understand it in those three phases because where it breaks down for a

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student is what we, as teachers, we need to know, okay, so that we can

then work towards strengthening it.

And so I, earlier I talked about the regulation of um, and control of

behaviour and [cough] in the instrumental enrichment class we're looking

at um, um, at how students can restrain their impulsivity, 'kay. So, some -

and impulsivity means that we can - we sometimes, we act too quickly; we

ac- we, we act before we think about it. Now, you can say well this

happens in every culture and it happens in every family and there are

many situations in which I can be im- impulsive and then in - I can be in

another situation where I'm not impulsive, 'kay, so, again, you see, this is

something that's universal.

Okay, we see this in class and this is um, something that teachers always

- If we made a list every time I met with a group of teachers that this

would be on that list, that ah, that something that, that, that they want to

be able to help students to, to inhibit their action. Okay. So, it has two

parts to it, then, we- the student needs to know how to -

Beep.

LORNA ...um, to keep from acting too quickly, or sometimes, it happens the other

way, where the- where, where a child is, is so um, um, s- ah, where a child can be so

ah, anxious ah, and, for any, any kind of reason, that they don't know how to begin an

action, 'kay, so, and again, this is something that's ah, that's part of everybody's

experience, okay. And so, he takes that idea then, and, and, he creates, and through

creating an instrument and a, and um, and a way for a teacher to um, to deal with this,

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that you can then teach, then, through the students gaining an awareness and insight

into wha- how they approach a task, then you can do something about it, see tha- so,

um.

And so in order to do that, you don't really need to know that this child is

um, African-American, Lil'wat or Heltsuk or German or whatever, 'kay, so

you're focusing on that individual. Now, we can look at it culturally,

though. And we can look at how, how did we help our children in

traditional Lil'wat culture? How did we help them to not be impulsive?

How did we teach them to um, to restrain themselves and then to act

when it was appropriate to act? Those begin from babyhood. Those

begin in the way that children are engaged in a family. Those take place

in the way that children engage in community affairs in um, in knowing um,

being out on the, on the land. You have to, you, you can't act impulsively

out there, otherwise it becomes life-threatening 'kay, so, um -

So, for a teacher then, um, you don't need to know, like, how those things

happened on the land, but you need to be able to know when a child um,

is not being a- is not able to access what is being taught because of

impulsivity and then you create an environment to deal with it.

GARY How would that show up ah, for example in um, a dot exercise? Um -

[Lorna: Hm.] 'Cause we have so many dots I was thinking you might just be able to

say, you know, for example, that these, that the class is working on a page of dots.

LORNA 'Kay, so the class is working on a page of dots. Oh -

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GARY Sorry, go ahead.

LORNA Um. 'Kay. In the, in the early - in the first unit of the organization of dots is

where you would, you would um have an opportunity to look at each o-of the individual

students to see where I would need to invest time, 'kay. And um, with this list of

cognitive functions. And the way that it would show up would be um, when a child doe-

uses the strategy of trial and error but, but who isn't really learning from the trial, okay,

the trial and error, but they don't have another strategy and so they just keep doing, you

- trying this and trying that and trying um, you know, in, in different directions until the

um - until they get really frustrated and the, the frame is all um, is filled with um,

erasures and um, and so on and so forth.

And so what the teacher does, then, in that situation, is to help a child to,

to think and to plan systematically how they would approach um, the task.

So, can ah - so you, you go all the way back to having the - just through

questioning. 'Kay, so can you pick for me a dot? Any dot. And you could

teach them to - that it's sometimes better to, to, to begin in a certain place.

So, where would you like to begin? And so you - and so once they've

chosen one, then can you pick another dot near by that would be the

same distance as the one in the model? 'Kay, so that helps them to know

that they ca- they can refer to something else on the page and that they

don't need the teacher to tell them. If they picked a dot that was near um,

tho- the ah, one of the li- the lines of the frame, so one of the boundaries,

that you ask the child then, you know, in which direction do you need to

look? So that they know that they don't need to look um, to, so that

they're outside of the frame. And so you help them, even as - to know

where to look and um, and then ask them to pick a dot, 'kay. So then,

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once you've picked the second dot, can you find the next two? Um, and

so to slow their action down, to break it down to the smallest little step and

to begin to go - to start over and so that um, so that they begin to see that

it's, that if they invest the time to, to think about what they're going to do,

that um, that they would meet with more success than trial and error. And

trial and error is one that of- that students often use, but we teach the

students tos, to think that trial and error is a good strategy but it's a - but

where it works best as a strategy is if you do the trial in your brain 'kay,

and so that you don't - and that you don't initiate action too quickly. Hm.

GARY So what are you hoping, in, in that kind of activity, [cough] what are you

hoping that the kids will take away? How does this connect back to their life? How

does that -

LORNA Okay, so then you can ask the students, once they've gained that

awareness, that insight, you can ask them now, where, where in life, um - Give me

some examples of where in life, um, you've used um - you've in wh- e- Give me some

examples of times in your life when you've acted too quickly, and that you couldn't

change the action, 'kay. Because that's -

So, trial and error works as long as you don't - as long as you don't act

because, in some situations, you can't take it back, you can't reverse the,

the trial, 'kay. So you ask them to give you some examples in their um, in

their school life, so, say they went to um - They were in chemistry or they

were in P.E., where in those two - Can you give me, we ask, can you give

me an example from those places in which you'd, you'd, you use trial and

error and that you acted and you couldn't change it, or in -

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So then - And then you ask them, where in your peer relations, so you're

out there with your friends, give me some exa- in an example of a time

when you used trial and error as a strategy and you acted too quickly and

couldn't, and you couldn't change.

Give me some examples in um, in um, the work place. And so you ask

this even to very young children and ah, because they already are aware

of the world of work. And you say, where, in, in your knowledge, where

might - and the - this changes just a tiny bit - where in the work place -

Can you give me an example of where in the work place somebody might

d-do, use trial and error as a strategy and, and they can't reverse the

action, okay.

And so you've now looked at an academic subject, you've looked at um, at

a peer, at peer relations and the work place. We also um, ask them to - if

they, if this is um, important to the class, is where in home life, has this ha-

do y- Can you give me an example from home life and I encourage

teachers to add the fifth area, which is to give examples from, from a

cultural area. And a cultural area is really um, broad, so it can be, for

aboriginal children it could be from the aboriginal traditional culture. It

could be the culture of youth. It could be the culture of, of, of urban

people. It could be the culture of rural people and so that they begin to

see - to look at, at all of those different worlds that we're engaged in every

day.

Okay. So, that's where the child's knowledge is there for discussion and

it's not um, controlled by a teacher's understanding of what those might

be. Okay, so the, the focus then is - has shifted. Uh huh.

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GARY So I'm wondering, from your experience um, do you sense that these

kinds of discussions make a difference to children? I mean, we, we've, we've talked

about children going through this process of engaging. Do you see changes [cough] in

different - what do you see, what do you hear, from people?

LORNA Um. I guess ah, what evidence is, is there because people say, well, you

don't need instrumental enrichment to do that, or you can create that in a classroom.

That's true, we can but um, tha- but sometimes we, we're too ready to go um, to shift

the focus on something that we want to teach and not something that we create and

insights to learn from, 'kay. And so what I was saying was that um, in an I.E. class,

we're trying to establish a way in which children can benefit from all opportunities to

learn, okay.

And so an example I would like to give is the story about this one boy who,

I think he was ten years old, and he had moved from one class - one

school - to another class - to another school - and um, and he had had

instrumental enrichment training at his first school. And um, I was at the

second school doing um, a workshop for some of the staff to learn about

instrumental enrichment.

And there was a teacher there, good teacher, um, um, um, and so he was

taking, he was taking the workshop but I could tell that he wasn't really

that interested and I wasn't able to convey my passion about this to him.

He wasn't ta- having any part of it. So, when the coffee break came up

um, he came and he said I, I have to do something, Lorna, I-I'm really

enjoying this but I need to go and do- and take care of a number of things.

I knew that um, that tha- that he was just saying that because he didn't

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want to listen any more, and so I was gracious and accepted his

explanation and he went out.

And um, he was walking down the hallway and he had his folder and the

student saw him in the, in the hallway and he said, oh, you're learning I.E.,

you're learning I.E., great, you know, like, and he was getting all excited.

And the teacher said, uh huh, now I'm going to know how this is useful

and what, of what benefit was it really to this, to this child. And so he

stopped and he said, oh, did you, did you take some classes in this, and,

you know, and he, and the boy said, yes, at his old school and um. And

the teacher asked him, um, what did you do, what did you do in this?

What - how did this help you? How did it help you in your life?

And this little boy said, um, well, he said, y-you can see that I'm really

small and, he said, and I-I go, I go to the hockey rink and I want to play

hockey but I never get picked because I'm too small and um, and he- and

um, and he said, and I really, really like to play hockey. And he said, but

now, I'm the perso- I'm the one who get's picked first. And, and, he said,

and it's because I know how to develop strategies. And, and I.E. taught

me how to make strategies. And so, so he said that it's, it's helped him,

there. Uh huh. You know, so for a ten year old, I think that's, that was um,

you know, that he knew how it had helped him and when we ask students

in what the- um, how -

GARY And people who don't know hockey, how does the strategy help? [Lorna:

Pardon?] How does the strategy help in hockey. 'Kay, somebody's watching this,

doesn't know anything about hockey.

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LORNA Oh, well you would devise plays. You um, um, as to how you're going to

um - I mean, I don't know hockey, either. [Gary & Roger laugh.]

Beep.

ROGER You're asking the question to the wrong person.

GARY Yeah, right.

ROGER 293

LORNA Yeah, the point was [Gary & Roger laugh] if he got any strategies. God, I

didn't ask him all what strategies he came up with.

ROGER Yeah, yeah, that's another movie. [laughter]

GARY That's a hockey movie. [Lorna: Thank you.]

LORNA Well, I was trying to - [laughter]

GARY Help me out here. [laughter]

ROGER It's another hard question. We made them in sometimes. I should maybe

do a tape change.

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LONG TONE

ROGER This is roll 58.

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Uh huh. Um. One of the things that I've ah- that teachers have a-and

school administrators um, and I would say that this was in the mid eighties and until ah,

fairly recently, about up until a year, two-years ago, is that um, they'd say well, you

know, this child - in my school I have forty- four hundred children and um, and those

four hundred children come from forty-seven different cultures and aboriginal children

have consistently been at the bottom 'kay, they were, were just totally not successful

with, with these kids and they, and then they'd say, well, we're not successful for - with

them because um, because they're, because, you know, they're different. They're so

different from the other kids and so there's not- so because we don't understand this,

you know, then um, you know, how can I do anything about it? How can I help my

teachers? Or how can I - What do I need to do on Monday morning that would help me

reach those children because I don't know the culture?

But on the other hand they'd say, well, some of those kids don't even know

their own culture. They don't even know which band they came from or

which nation they come from. They don't even know what the- if they're

status or not status. So, if they have such lack of knowledge and how am

I going to help them? And then they would say -

Beep.

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[off-mic discussion]

ROGER 294 tail.

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA So how am I gonna help these um, children when they come from such

um, from such poverty? And then they'd say, well, you know like, um, you know, the

kids come in dirty, they come in tired, they come into school um, late, they seem to just

pick up and leave whenever they want to. How can I help them when their parents are

on ah, social assistance, when they, when they, there is so much alcoholism in the

family, there's um, when there are so many people who live in one house and there and

all these kids are coming, coming to school and I never know who the parents are and

um, and so they will just come like then, with this long litany of, of why they can't teach

those children. Why they're fail- Why they're justifying the reason why they're, they've

failed to be able to help those students in the school, you see, and so they're focusing

then on a child's deficiencies and they're focusing on the parents', the family's

deficiencies and their ability to parent and look after their, care for their children.

What?

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Head slate no: 295

LORNA So the, so then the, the teachers and the administrators, then, think, say,

well, there's nothing I can do for this group. There's nothing I can do for that group

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because, because of all of what we're faced with and so the impulse on their part and

the way in which schools have um, have um, tackled this whole issue is that they've

removed children out of the classroom.

So, they've allowed the teachers to say, I can't deal - I don't have the

resources to deal with this population, so please take them away and fix

them and then bring them back because if I have one or two of those

students in my classroom, I have to spend time with that individual, those

individuals and then I, then I don't, then I don't have the, the opportunity

and the time and the energy to deal with, with learning for the other

members of the class.

And so, our response, then, to anybody who was different has always

been to segregate, to, to exclude them from being, becoming participants

in a classroom. And, initially, I used to try really hard to try to come up with

ways to help teachers to accept our children, to view our cultures in a, in a

more favourable light. I used to spend hours trying to make changes in a

child's home life. I used to spend hours trying to figure out how to help the

parents be more supportive to the children and ah, and so, and t-t-try to

get them social programs, to um, food programs and, you know, you name

it, everything, the whole gamut, medical help, um, but the one thing that

I'm trained to do, I wasn't doing, and that was, that I was, I'm trained to be

a teacher and I wasn't focusing on, on what I was trained to do. I was

trying to be all those other things, and I could see that alot of

administrators in our schools, and alot of teachers who were concerned

about the students, they were doing the same thing. And so that ah, we

were poor therapists. We were poor social workers. We were poor um,

justice people. We were ju- and, and - which in turn, was taking away

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from what we were trained to do.

And so, I had- but then, it is a reality. It is a reality in Vancouver that many

of our children come from homes where they don't get the kind of care that

we would like all children to have. They come from homes in which

they're unsafe. They come from homes in which there's um - there're

long-term alcohol and drug um, abuse. We come - they come from homes

where there, there, they witness violence, more violence than, an- a- that

I've seen in my lifetime, little children are witness to these.

And so that, when we, or when I assessed then, the situation, I finally

came, and I - and it was, I'd say, through Feuerstein and through his work

that I began to see that if - that I have, as a teacher, um, a very, very

significant and powerful role in the lives of children, that I have those

children in my school where they can be nurtured, where they're safe,

where they're warm and where they can see beauty and experience joy,

that I have those children for six hours of a day, and that when, that then, I

need to be able to focus on what we're doing over those six hours to

ensure that they are in a safe environment, and that the stronger that I can

make those children, and I have the capacity to do that because I'm a

teacher, that the stronger that I can make them, um, to learn how to

problem solve, to learn how to make decisions, to learn how to plan and

achieve goals, to learn how to um, to understand their actions and their

behaviour and to understand other people, to understand themselves and

to understand other people, that if I can help them to do that, to develop

strategies that I can only make them stronger for all of those other things

that they have to contend with outside of school.

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And so that when I look, then, at um, at the goals of instrumental

enrichment and the, the primary goal is that for um, an instrumental

enrichment class, is to help students to benefit from all their experiences

and that means the experiences, the experience of that boy that I um, who

um, stole a, stole a bicycle to buy drugs for his mother. It means the

experiences of the child who went through um, a naming ceremony in, in

hi- in their community. It means the experiences of a child who of, um,

who had, who has to take care of their siblings and to take over the role of

parent, so all of those experience. We can learn from those and we use

those experiences to learn new things.

And so that um, so it gives us, then, those tools and those opportunities,

but the other thing is, as we, we develop a relationship with our students

and we begin to appreciate what they come with, that our view of the child

changes, so no more is it, take this child out of my class. No more is it

that I don't have the, the, the resources and the don't have the, the time or

I don't have the ability, I don't have the capacity to make a difference in

this child's life because they have so many problems.

And so that the teacher, then, has be- what we're working on, is to have

the teachers renew their commitment that they took when they bec- when

they decided to become teachers, and that commitment was to be able to

teach, to teach children of our society, whatever that might be. And, I think

that, that that commitment, or that renewal of that commitment on the part

of teachers is a really important step in the tra- retraining of teachers and

the training of teachers to, to do instrumental enrichment or the training of

um, people who do assessments in the learning potential assessment

device, that what we have gro- We, in a way, we've gro- we've grown up

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our-

Our educational institution has grown up in a land of plenty and so that

we've become comfortable and we say that um, um, that there's nothing

that I can do for you, so you- wor- you're disposable. We don't need you,

so we'll just set you aside, and we're gonna concentrate on these other

people who um, have more to give society, we say.

And so, sometimes in our - th- also, I guess, the other part is that

sometimes when teachers um, or people who do assessments, they, they

are so sensitive to hurting a child, maybe - possibly hurting the child,

they're so sensitive to ah, being not really sure how to deal with certain

populations and so what'll we do? We make those - then we set up a

situation where those kids become helpless and we take up the challenge.

We take up the fight for the, for that child.

And so when David Sireal, I remember, came to Vancouver and he was

teaching - He was doing an, a learning potential assessment vice-training,

that in the second night of the tr- evening of the training - he was working

with this boy who had been incommunicative for two years. He was a-

working with a boy who um, wasn't coping very well and he was in the only

class in the city that would accept him, the only class in the city that would

accept him, miles away from his home.

And when David began to work with this child, and he worked with this

child for, for two and a half hours straight, and I could feel, in the room, the

tension building and building and building because, because um, of what

ah, because David was extremely demanding. And um, and he, and when

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the boy left the room, the room erupted because people were so enraged

at the way that, that David was making this boy focus on the task at hand,

that way that um, um, that he kept pulling him back to pay attention, the

way that he was pushing him and pushing him and pushing him to, to

respond to his questions and um, and when it, and the te- and the people

who were in that room said, you have no right to do this. Who gave you

this right to mistreat this child? To abuse this child? And um, and so he

took every one of their questions and he dealt with it.

And I remember the next week, the boy came back to work with David

again, and when he was - and what happened was that he came and he

was ready to work and um, and he was anxious to get started and he was

just really focusing on what David was doing and just really reading him.

He didn't care about all those twenty-five people who are in the room

watching him and the camera was watching him and wh- and what David

did was he reviewed what they, what had taken place the week before,

and he, this boy, remembered everything, remembered everything that

they did.

And then, the next week, he came back again and David was going to

continue to work with him and the teacher um, told the group that when

this boy was going back, when he went back to the classroom, he taught

the other children in his class what David was teaching him, and so here

was this child who was incommunicative for two years, couldn't get a word

out of him in the classroom and he was talking and he was teaching the

other children.

And so when those twenty-five people left and we were talking about what

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they learned, what was of significance to them, they said that they realized

that they gave up far too easily. They gave up far too quickly, that as soon

as they saw what they thought was distress, they stopped. And um, and

so they said, that they, that they, that they'll never be the same. So that

when they're working with a child, they'll always remember not to give up

too quickly, that they had to focus, they had to be committed to creating a

learning change and to find a way to do that for every child.

And so, in the instrumental enrichment training, that's also then, what I

want to be able to have teachers say, is that um, is that not one child in my

class is disposable, that every child has the right to, to learn. Every child

has, has a right to be able to learn in an environment that will challenge

them to learn.

And um, and so I think that um, Feuerstein talks about um, or his

philosophy is that when we're working um - when we're working with

children, when we're teaching or doing assessments um, that we cannot,

then, passively accept that certain children cannot learn, whatever, for

whatever presenting um, ah, difficulty that they might come with, whether

it's a cultural difference, poverty or um, um, or physical or a emotionally, or

mental handicaps. He said, he says we cannot passively accept that we,

that we, that those children, those people won't learn. And that's really,

really, I think, difficult.

It's difficult to, to change people because it's become so ingrained that

certain segments of our society are um - can't, and we've consistently, in

the past, put them away. We, we went through life in which people can

say, I grew up in my community. I didn't ever see a person who was um,

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ah physically handicapped. I didn't ever see a person who was mentally

challenged. I didn't ever see an aboriginal person. I didn't ever see

Chinese people, and so we, and so we grew up the- we grew up then, in

sterile communities where, where we made individuals who we felt didn't

fit our society, we made them invisible.

And so that it becomes, then, really easy for us to passively accept that

we can't make a change and so that when a person li- more recently,

when a person is, is um, um, has problems, 'kay, so, say a child um, was

bor- ah, has an accident, or is born with um, and has cerebral palsy wh-

and has, for any reason, and then we, what we - Our response is not to

work as hard as we can to see, to see the children have the best life they

can have, instead - and to, and to have the best life that they can have

because they're in control of, of what they're able to do, that we give them

that, we allow them that right and that gift that we all have, but instead,

what we do is we say, oh, you poor thing, you, you can't um, you know,

you have this problem, you have that problem, you have that problem, and

so we're gonna just fix it for you and sometimes in the fixing we make

people helpless.

We make people um, also passively accept their inadequacies, their

inabilities and that's, I think the, one of the areas that we need to

challenge and tha- and it's one of the areas that Reuven's work has

constantly challenged and um, and so [cough] he looks at then, the belief

system and he, and he, and he makes us examine our belief system. He

makes - and um, when I began to look at the belief system I, I - it - things

that I had been struggling with became very clear and [cough] one - And

so when I'm working with teachers, I talk about their belief, their belief

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about, about certain children in their classrooms and that it's important that

we, we reflect on what we believe about a child's ability and/or a child's

inability to function in my classroom. I also ask teachers, not only to look

at the belie- that their belief about the students but also their belief about

themselves. So, how capable am I? How adequate am I, as a teacher to

make a sig- to, to make a significant learning change in these individuals

who are in my classroom? So how able am I? And it's important that

teachers look at that because if I feel somehow, somewhere I've been

given the idea that I'm inadequate, so certain parts of me are inadequate,

then I pass that inadequacy along be- in this relationship that I have with

children.

We also need to look at the belief system of children and what do they

believe about their own capacities, their own ability to learn, because

children are given messages about how, how effective they are, in the- in

their ability to learn, right from the time they go to school. If you can't learn

- If you didn't learn to read um, as quickly as your neighbour then you're

not as intelligent. If you can't respond to questions [snap] in a snap, then

you're, and your, then you're a little bit slower than everybody, so you're

not, you're not quite so adequate, are you? If um, if I get um, um - On a

quiz I get ten Xs, then of course, I'm not, I'm not very good at this, and so,

and -

In our society, we, we, somehow began to equate intelligence with the

ability to read, and so for children who have, who aren't able to learn to

read, for any different reason, begin to believe that they're not quite so

intelligent because they can't read.

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And so [cough] what instrumental enrichment does for those children, is it

shows them - it reveals to them, I should say - their ability, their capacity

that they have, that they have brains that, that function and um - This

sounds silly to be able to say that children, some children can't know that,

but there are so many cases in society that, that tells them that they're not

and so that - And in schools, they get that message and um and so the

belief system then, of the child, is something that we need to, we need to

spend time reflecting on and um, and to know what, wh- um, how we're

playing out, or having them play out that belief about themselves.

And so, when David was working with Clarissa, that's what he was doing.

He was having her see that she was able to think things through, that it

was there.

The other belief system that we work on -

GARY Could you mention why he was focusing on that particular thing, do you

think? [Lorna: Oh.] Like, how he came to choose that and to focus on -

LORNA We focus on it. It's for every child. It isn't, it isn't one that he said for

Clarissa, this is what I need to do. Uh huh. Um, because Clarissa already knows she

does- ah wasn't um, doing really well in school. She was meeting with lots of

challenges and um, lots of failure, and so what do you, wha- and what he was doing in

the, in his assessment was he was um, he was trying to bring to light her um, her ab-

her ability 'kay, her ability to be able to do whatever the task - or to do the task, that

given a structure, given encouragement, given guidance, that she wa- she was able to

think things through. Uh huh. Um, and so when it, when -

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So instrumental en- enrichment and the L.P.A.D. is set up to ah, so that it

doesn't rely on, initially, on a reading ability. It's, it focuses on in- instead

on um, on um, on being able to do the task, a task, 'kay, that doesn't

require reading and um, so that children and teachers and assessment

people can see the, what um - Two things, I think, one is um, what did I

need to do in order to be able to make a learning change for this, in this, in

this child? Okay, what did I have to do as a teacher? And I had to actively

teach until I found a way and then I can see, then I can give another

problem and then I can see if they can use what they learned previously.

Okay, once I can see how - what energy and effort that I had to do in order

to be able to make this, make this happen, then it tells me something, lots,

about this person. And it tells me that she's, sh- and, for Clarissa, in the

case of Clarissa, that she's teachable, that it, it says that as a teacher, I

have to, to work from many different angles but that she can cha- that she

can learn. And so that's what I'm looking at. That's what I'm looking for,

and it isn't only for me, as the teacher or the 'cessor but it's also to be, for

her to be able to see that she can learn.

GARY Did that lead him to a different understanding of her than other people had

held, do you know?

LORNA Well, for David, and if you're, if you're involved in the work of Feuerstein, if

you've been in any way touched by him, you don't start with saying that they, they're not

able. You don't start with saying that um, you know, that they have so many handicaps

that there's nothing that I'm going to be able to do. You start believing that they can do

it. The- you start believ- with the belief that they are able and that your job is to find out

what you need - we need to do in order to be able to make that happen, okay, so um, so

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what -

Okay, so I guess that it's a good place then, to, to be able - to say that um,

that for me, in 1984, in Vancouver, I realized that my job was to find ways

in which I can make people see aboriginal kids in a different way so that I

can keep them from saying, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything because

they're not able, you know, for all those reasons. I wanted them to be able

to see that they were able.

And so, that was m- that was um, initially, the reason why I got engaged in

this, 'cause I knew that if I can - if these kids - if we can tr- teach them and

train them to be, to be able to really be efficient learners and we put them

back into a classroom, that's how they'll perform because there were

teachers in the system who sa- who had the attitude, I've been, I've been

hired to teach grade five.

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LONG TONE

ROGER Speak. This is roll 59.

LORNA There are teachers who think that because they're hired to teach grade

five, see, that's, that's their focus. So, if I'm gonna teach grade five, then I need to cover

a s- the certain things in the curriculum, but then they don- then m- but really what is

unspoken, is that if I'm teach- if I'm hired to teach grade five, the grade five curriculum,

that I'm not teaching kids. I'm not teaching individuals in my classroom.

And so that it's easy for them to take the next step which is to say that I'm

going to teach the grade five curriculum and if you are not able or are not

ready to, to learn this grade five curriculum that I'm teaching, then that's

your fault. It doesn't have anything to do with me.

And so um - and then because of all of the challenges, then, and because

of this belief, that, of what my so- my be- my - the idea of my job is that

um - and because basically people were saying that, you know, those

parents aren't involved, we know that in the - and all of the research, they

sa- they used to say to me, was, is that um, if a child's parents aren't

involved in um, in their education, then there's not much a school can do.

And so then, I thought that, then, my challenge to be able to give those

children the strength that they needed in order to be able to cope in that

kind of an environment. And so my purpose was to be able to help

teachers to see the, that - to look at their ch- the students in a different

way, to look at them as unique, beautiful, unique individuals that they have

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their own stories to tell. And um, I wanted them, I wanted the teachers to

be able to see that they were able and I knew that I had to create an

environment to show them that.

And so, in our first experiment, it, it happened exactly in that way, that um,

we started instrumental enric- teaching ex- pulling out the small group of

student and teaching ah, and teaching them instrumental enrichment.

Nobody else in the school was really that interested and they didn't care

anyway because they were failing with this group.

And um, and so the teachers - the rest of the teachers saw some changes

in the students. The teacher - the instrumental enrichment saw incredible

changes and um, I remember th-this one class that had instrumental

enrichment training in grade four and they continued i-in grade five eh- the

second level. And then [cough] um - and this group of students that was

put into the class where there was um, this kind, that kind of a teacher,

that kind of a teacher who said, you know, my job is to teach the

curriculum and it's your business to learn it, and ah, and there's not a

relationship between the two things.

And um, and what happened was that in grade five, for those kids, was

they were going into that class and they were picking up things faster than

the other students in the group. And he wouldn't accept it. This teacher

couldn't accept it. And he, and he refused to acknowledge it for, for

months and then finally he had to because - And I went in to watch this

ah, this group as they were taking, having an instrumental enrichment

class and they were in this um, book room, so there was one tiny window,

way up in the high ceiling, dark in there, musty. They had one little

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blackboard. I remember, I was sitting kinda, in the - really crowded into

this little corner, and the kids walked - filed into the room, hardly heard

them. They sat down, they were ready and they started their lesso-

lesson immediately, and the teacher was able to - they enga- kept in, in

intense engagement throughout the whole lesson and they were di- they

were discussing things, topics that were absolutely incredible and when

they were finished, they picked up their stuff, went out.

And so - and we had been trying to learn how to help students learn um,

to be prepared, to learn how to help students, that being prepared didn't

mean only being prepared to - with the stuff that I need in ord- in a class,

but also to be prepared cognitively, to be prepared emotionally, and to be,

be prepared with a right kind of attitude toward learning. Well, this was all

there. And um, um, and that's the way that the students were behaving,

also, in the class.

These kids wrote - They did homework that they make up themselves.

They made up their own writing assignments. They made ah, they were

talking on topics in- from all the subjects in their classroom and they were

bringing it to this I.E. teacher to, to get her to comment on their pieces. So

you don't have that, that very often where kids make up their own, their

own homework and their mo- own writing as-as-assignments, while at the

same time, doing what the- what was required of them in their classes, so,

so it's - It works, then - It has, then - t- It works, then, on those, the belief

system of the teacher and the student.

The other belief system that um, that we've we- that we need to really look

at is the need - is the belief system of the parents. And the beliefs- And

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we need to examine this and we need to explore this because ah, when a

parent thinks that what they have to offer is not adequate, does not help

their children, then they don't engage. They don't actively participate

because there's no place for them, and they want their children to

succeed, like any parent.

Parents want their children to become productive members of their

society. They want them to become full participants in their society, and

so, and so if they feel that they have nothing to offer that would help them,

then, then they break off this engagement with their children. We also

have parents that believe that um, certain members in their families don't

need to learn, they don't need to be successful in school, and some of

those are the- are parents who believe that girls don't need school

learning and um, and if that's the case, then they don't support this- their

girls in the school. They don't support them in - by not giving them the

time to study. They, they devalue their um, efforts in the school and so,

um -

The other thing is that sometimes parents might believe that my child is so

handicapped by, you know, for any number of reasons, that I, I'm going to

protect my child and, and I, I make, and by my over-protection, I make my

child helpless. And so it's important for us -

Beep. Tail slate no: 296

LORNA ...to examine um, to spend time, really, looking at the belief system of

parents.

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GARY I was wondering if you could use - I - it occurred to me when you were

talking about that that the Ethiopian footage might - and the - some of the material there

might really reflect and demonstrate what you were talking about and I was just

wondering if you could mention what you saw in, in Ethiopia in the context of - Maybe

the parents, the parents, the beliefs of the parents is the next way to focus on that,

because, so much of that exercise was based on trying to restore the parents or the

continuum of the children. Um -

ROGER We, we got it as an example. [Gary: Yeah.] [Lorna: 'Kay.]

GARY And maybe just starting it off by saying when we were in Israel -

LORNA Okay.

[off-mic discussion]

Beep. Head slate no: 297

LORNA And I, and, and an example of um, of a parent's belief that they're not um -

that what they have to offer is inadequate for their children's success would be the um -

what we witnessed in, in Israel when we visited the, the Ethiopian trailer camp.

And um, and what I saw at that trailer camp, as I sat in the shade and I

watched the children playing and I watched the, the activity around,

around the camps, and I saw um, in a, in a way, the aimless - what looked

to me to be aimlessness on the part of some of the, the adults. I really

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remembered um - I was reminded, I guess, of um, of a very similar scene

here that I, I witnessed often in which um, in which the um, the adults,

especially the, the younger male adults, who um, feeling that they, that,

that they were not worth anything, that they're not able to live um a

traditional life and they weren't able to contribute to that and, but also, that

they couldn't really participate and be involved in, in um, the community at

that time, that they didn't have the ability or the skills or the knowledge to

be able, say, to um, to contribute in a meaningful way to um, to the family,

and so um, so that because of that feeling, that belief that I have nothing

to offer, the, then, we go back to in- th- to the idea that when we learned,

we learned through our active participation and our active involvement in,

in the life of the community, in th- in, in the life of ah, what is, whatever our

environments are.

Beep.

GARY Um, do you wanna - can you carry on any more wi- about the Ethiopian

camp there? You, you were witnessing the kind of dislocation of the young adults which

carried you back to here, and I'm wondering if we can continue a little further with the

observations that you had there about the connection - I guess the delicacy or the

danger to the connection between the parents and the adults and just a, a comment on

what one of Feuerstein's associate- or what they were try- what was trying to be done in

the camps 'cause we did have some footage of the kids listening to the parents that

could be used to show an effort to try and re-weave that - help re-weave that bond,

connection. [Lorna: Okay.] So if y- ah, I guess you could carry on in, in the sense the

sense of, of saying what you saw and -

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[off-mic discussion]

LORNA Um, what it - ah - was um - Something that was happening at the camp

that was a project in which um, students from the United States and students from ah,

teenagers from Israel were working together with ah, their, with Ethiopian-Israeli ah,

teenagers to try to - And the goal was to increase - To do two things, to increase the

interaction between the older people in the camp with their children, but also to, to try to

convey the message that the older Ethiopian people had lots of knowledge to contribute

to everybody's wealth of knowledge and so that it was interesting, it was valuable, it was

meaningful, and all of those.

And um, and so they were working at-t-t-t activities and then they had

some story telling because story tellin- telling was a- one of the, the tools

that wa- was used traditionally amongst the Ethiopian Jews. Um, the

other thing that was happening was that um, was in the camp, they had -

there was a place where the children could go and in this um, facility were,

was a television. There were toys. There was um - there were different

games, um, lots of craft things that the kids could do and um -

And I remember watch- looking at this and watching the children and se-

and, and in a way, the very thing that, that was being done to help s-so-

co- stimulate the kids to get them ready for school was further taking those

children away from their homes, away from um, communicating, away

from um, with their ah, peers, with their families, with their parents, their

grandparents, if they were there, because the kids in - when we visited

some of the, the families, they didn't have those games. They didn't have

television and a VCR. They didn't have all of those bright um, materials to

make crafts. They didn't have um, um, toys um, and, and so, in a way, the

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message was that um, that we have something better, that, so that you

can do better in, in our society, you have to have all of these, these other

things, you see, and so it was giving the message that you don't have

enough in your own environment. You don't have enough um, in your own

um, traditional forms of play, you know, that we're gonna, we're going to

ah, we have something here that's better. And so, in the very act of

helping, they're creating distance, and that, I think -

That's the same thing that's happened here and it's happened, I'm sure, all

over the world in which people are perceived to be um, deficient and are

not able to cope in, in a new society.

Beep.

GARY Um, I wonder if you could just comment on the -

ROGER 298. Tail.

GARY ...um, the things that ah, the Ethiopian children had in common with

aboriginal children around this question of language, 'cause that was something that

seemed - that um, um, Terry um, f-focused on alot, seemed to be a pulling away, there.

So my question for you would be - I'm just, just for audio, here, is um, what did um, was

there something in common then between, in what you were witnessing between ah,

the experience of the aboriginal children ex- here, and experiences of ah, some

Ethiopian children there?

LORNA Ah, on language.

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GARY Yeah, it wa - it seemed to be a wedge that was just being driven between

the parents and the children - another way of -

LORNA I can't see - I can't um,

GARY Hm. Um.

ROGER We can come back to it.

GARY Yeah.

ROGER Another interview.

GARY We can come back to it. Um -

ROGER Another interview.

GARY Wa- I guess a-another - yeah, I think we're almost to the end of this. I

think we're ah - I'm starting to lose a bit of my concentration and I think it's ah, it's

enough.

LORNA Uh huh.

ROGER I have one but it's only -

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GARY You have a question?

ROGER Yeah, but not ri- just when you're finished. [Gary: Um -] When you get

what you've done, and then -

GARY Let me just look here just to see if there was something here that I thought

ah - one sticking up, um,

[off-mic discussion]

LORNA The only thing I can say about language um, and the Ethiopian experience

in, in Israel is that, is to say, don't make the same mistakes that we've made- that we

made here. Don't um, don't treat the language that, that, their home language as

though it's not important, that to value it ah, because by valuing people's heritage is

better than devaluing it, because I think that um, one - that um, that what happened to

aboriginal people and la- and, and um, the devaluation of our languages um, created

so- it had some really serious effects and um, and so that um, we're more beautiful

when we, when we um, speak different languages. We don't have to speak the same

language. We need to be able to appreciate um, the differences.

The other thing is that in order to learn - in order to learn a second

language, you need the strength of the first language and so, one of the

things that happened in, I think, in, in our communities, was when they

began to erode the ab- the - our ability to think and converse in our

language, that we didn't have - that many of our children, younger children

who were - wh- um, who were in the situation of where they were removed

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in order to forget their language, then, had a re- I'd say, had a really

difficult time learning a second language.

And we see the same thing in Vancouver to- to- right, today. In some of

the classrooms in which we use instrumental enrichment, we've found that

instrumental enrichment is valuable for those children who, for some

reason, did not have a good sa- and sound and natural beginning in their

first language. They have a very difficult time learning a second language.

And so we, then, learn o-our second language on the strengths of our first

language and if there's any message to give to Israel where they have a

multi-cultural society and a multi-lingual society like we do here, in

Canada, ah, it's, it has to be that, to respect and to encourage and to

value and to have those, those communities value the retention of their, of

their, of their own home language. That it doesn't, it doesn't mar or, or

affect the ability to learn a second language. So it's -

GARY Thank you.

LORNA So, what was your question?

[off-mic discussion]

ROGER ...come to learn from Reuven Feuerstein about what is the mind of a child,

okay? And then, after leaving - ah, so that would be the first question, that sort of that

realm, and which would have been the couple of years that you spent with Reuven and

reading and so forth. What did you - what was the kernel of the mind of a child at that

point in your understanding or your - And then, later on you took all this, you've

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practised, you've thought about it, you work with kids, you, you've just struggled and

dealt with it in close to ten years of life by the sounds of it, and so what - Have you

come to any kind of embellished, ah, new realization or a kind of greater on from the

one that you started with about what is a mind of a child? That's, it sort of echoes

around the title of the film and um, may be too big a thing to talk about, but anyway - It

sort of - it comes out of all of our discussions. You want to think about it if it's useful.

LORNA Um, hm. Well, I think that um, [cough] I've always been um, to a certain

extent, um, not comfortable with the title, as Gary knows that, that. Um, I guess

because our knowledge is so um - I feel that we're just beginning um, to really, um,

understand the relationship between um, you know, about what ha- goes on in our brain

and um, and I certainly began this whole process because people said that we didn't

have as a good a brain as others, and um, and so I've ha- I did, I've, I've really um,

looked at this and um, [cough] we talk, today, about holistic education and we talk ab-

whol- and for us, holistic education from a First Nations perspective is that there's a

relationship between our um, um - about what happens in our brains which is um,

thinkin- you know, like our thoughts and um, our um, perceptions and the rela- and, and

how that relates to our emotions and our attitudes, 'kay, so there's a real important

relationship there.

And um, um - And so - And we, we need to know what those are from - in

order to be able to um - Even, even t-to figure out what is holistic.

And I know that um, for a long, long time, it was thought that um, that the,

that aboriginal people, or indigenous people were - that we were more um

- we lived more in the realm of our feeling lives around in the, in the like,

with - in the realm of the - of spirituality than we did in thinking because

thinking, it was thought, spends too much time in, in analysis, in, in

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analytic perception and um, and that um, um, and that that's what, in a

way, that the white race focuses on. It focuses on the stuff of the mind,

the stuff of the brain, and that that's their realm. And um, and so alot of

times people have ro- forced a separation and said that it wasn't - that

we're um, that we're not going to spend time looking at um, you know, at

um, at ah, thinking processes, mental abilities, um, the ah, the brai- issues

about the brain and how it functions and all of those, that that isn't who we

are.

But then, um, when I began this process, I began to see that um, ah, when

I read transcripts of the people talking, you know, um, um, aboriginal

people talking, indigenous people talking, that, that really, in fact, they

spent alot of time exercising their mental abilities, exercising their um, their

brains and so they actively did this and just as they actively um, did

exercises to help them to, to right attitude, to be balanced, to, to be able to

approach um, everything in the appropriate, in the balanced way, and um,

just as they had to - they trained themselves physically in order to be able

to have their whole bodies able to do what it needed to do in order to be

able to function um, and the same with um, spiritually, that people

engaged in, actively practising how to relate to the world, um, of the spirit,

to ah, to acknowledge that we have a spirit. And um, and so, so then we

had to then, really explore this.

If that was the case, then, that it's the um, it's the white race that um

focuses on um, the intellect, on the brain, on the mind, um, then - and

that's how schools are built. That's how the schools are built. They're

built by the white race, 'kay, so that's the case, then if we go over there,

and we begin to um, explore this, then are we really um, doing ourselves a

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disservice?

Okay. And so um, I guess what I arrived at was that um, was that in the

teachings it always says that you teach towards harmony and balance and

respect. You learn um, to respect and you learn how to be balanced and

you learn how to be harmonious with everything so that everything then is

connected and so that we cannot, then, cut one away. And um, and in the

teachings that um, that yes, there are certain races that develop and ce- a

certain aspect, but then, in the world we need all of, we need all of it.

And so that for years, then, um, we were told that we didn't have, you

know, quite the, the um, the brain capacity because when they measured

our cranium sizes they found them to be sa- um, a minutely smaller, and

the brain weights were minutely sma- less. And so then, for, you know,

two hundred years then, people believed that we were not as intelligent

and so that I feel that we had to ah - So, number one, we have to, to deal

with that bang on and to um, um, so that it really, that can be set aside.

The second is that um, area I guess, is that um, what Feuerstein ah, says

is that he does not disregard those other aspects, those other spheres of

who we are, but he said he's chosen the brain, or the mind as an entry

point because our brains are adaptable and they're flexible and they

influence all the others, so let's use, let's use what the creator gave

humans, because that's what the creator gave us. That's our gift and so

let's use that. And so um,

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LONG TONE

ROGER This is roll 60. Speak.

LORNA Um, how was I starting this?

GARY Yeah, the point was making public the way in which the knowledge is, I

guess, created and used, a way of understanding.

LORNA Oh. Um, I think that ah, that when we look - when I looked at um, at um,

traditional life and ha- and ah, as, even as I experienced them here, in, in Mt. Currie,

was that do- um, was a- one of the really important parts of um, of family life and

communit- and community life, was that we had opportunities to um, to synthesize

experience and to make them public. And so where do we do that? We do that in our,

in our brains and our minds. And it's through sharing and making public one's

knowledge that um, we truly get connected to others but that we also, at the same time,

become um, um, a separate self from others and it's through the conveying of, of our

experience. And we put all of that together, and we do that in our brains, so that I think

that um, that o- that the biggest message, I would say, that I'm - of this work, is that we

create opportunities to help children appreciate how they can put their own knowledge

together, and, and to express it and to include in the wider community.

GARY Uh huh. Always trying to assemble the story of ourselves, and -

LORNA Yeah.

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GARY And share it.

LORNA Uh huh.

[off-mic discussion]

Rooster clock.

Beep.

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