NOTES FOR TEACHERS - WINTER 2003
The best days, the worst days
When a first novel is successful there is always the fear that the one that follows will not live up to the expectations raised by the first. Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi certainly found its way into the hearts of young readers both for its ability to convey an authentic story of teenage experience and also because it did not patronise its intended main audience in any way. Marchetta’s second novel, Saving Francesca, is another triumph for its author.
The book includes a teenage girl learning to settle in to a school that is admitting girls for the first time: a remarkable and dedicated teacher who helps his students to realise their full potential and a mother who is suffering from depression, a condition which is affecting all members of her family, especially her daughter Francesca.
As a teacher working in a Catholic school, Melina Marchetta has had the opportunity to appreciate the vitality and the problems of the young people she meets in the classroom and, no doubt, has learnt to enjoy and respond to the stories they tell.
Students might like to read the article The Best Days, the Worst Days together then divide into three groups each group being given the task of presenting one aspect of the article to the class as a whole. Suggested topics:
- Melina Marchetta, the person
- The novels of Melina Marchetta
- Melina Marchetta, the teacher.
‘Imagination has a role to play in everyday life… It can help find a path through the labyrinth that most people actually live in.’ A general class discussion of the role of the imagination in everyday life could follow. Most of us live fairly ordinary, humdrum lives and yet it is out of such material that novelists like Melina Marchetta fashion the stories they tell. Students might like to think about aspects of their lives that would make good material for a story and jot down some points in their journals.
Stereotyping
Several years ago people across the nation were involved in a campaign to achieve Reconciliation between white Australians and the Aboriginal people. We planted the Sea of Hands, wrote our names in Sorry Books, marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge or through the city streets of other state capital cities. There were speeches and debates and quite a few bitter arguments, but overall it seemed that the majority of Australians believed that something had to be done and that it would happen soon. One overwhelming impression was the wholehearted participation of the young people of Australia. The great case has now vanished from the front pages of the newspapers and the TV screens and we have either moved on to something else, or shrugged our shoulders in despair and surrendered to the inevitable. Evelyn Scott, on the other hand, has refused to let these setbacks discourage her. Instead, in her discussion of stereotyping, she has endeavoured to discover the reasons behind racism and the process by which we allow our minds to be captured by racist attitudes. In other words, she is saying, ‘Don’t despair. Think more deeply. Explore the issue and find another way.’
After reading the article, students might find it helpful to engage in a short discussion of the relationship between racism and stereotyping. Ten members of the class could then be asked to speak for a minute on the topic, followed by a five-minute quiet time in which students jot down their thoughts on the topic in their diaries.
The class could then divide into groups and role play one of the verbal traps which Evelyn Scott suggests betray the existence of racist attitudes in the speaker.
‘I’m not a racist, but…’
‘You know, it’s well known that Asians are…’
‘It’s a common fact that Negroes are…’
‘Everyone knows that Aborigines are…’
After reviewing the role plays, the class might end with a quiet moment of reflection and examination of conscience in the area of their own racist attitudes.
A volunteer abroad and
Watching the puddles join
A Volunteer Abroad introduces us to an Australian who helped to change our patronising attitudes to volunteering for overseas service. Working overseas among the less fortunate had been a vocation that had inspired many young people in the past, but the motive for going over had been to change the lives of those primitive people. Noble sentiments, indeed, but patronising. Motives such as teaching people how to grow crops more efficiently, or how to love God more correctly or… Well, we had so much to teach these poor people, didn’t we? Those who went with such attitudes, were trapped, isolated by their own certainties, by their very desire to do good and saw the people they were living with through a veil of superiority. Perhaps, they hardly saw them at all.
Herb Feith, in his work of initiating Australian Volunteers Abroad, helped to change this. As a member of the Student Christian movement during his university days, he had lived the decision of that movement to argue ‘against proselytism and in favour of simply standing alongside “friends in need”’. Herb Feith’s scheme was to send young men and women overseas to work alongside the people of the host country, earning local salaries. Since that time thousands of Australians, not only young but also middle-aged and old, have had the wonderful experience of living and working as part of this scheme.
- Students could be asked to read the article and answer the following questions:
- What was the policy of the SCM to people of other faiths and ethnicities?
- What events in Herb Feith’s life might have drawn him into membership of the SCM?
- What elements in their lives and characters drew Herb and Betty Feith together?
- What was the request made to the delegation of the National Union of Australian University Students at a student conference in India in 1950?
- In what ways did the initiating of the Australian Volunteers Abroad scheme conform to this request?
Margaret Coffey broadcast a tribute ‘In Memory of Herb Feith’ in ‘Encounter’ on Radio National, 9 March 2003. For a transcript of the program, see www.abc.net.au.
The students might like to read together the article, Watching the Puddles Join, in which Grant Morgan tells us about his experience of working in Indonesia. A class discussion could follow, during which the following points might be discussed:
- Does anyone in the class know someone who has volunteered for overseas service?
- Would anyone in the class like to volunteer after they have finished their education?
- What qualifications or work experience might best prepare you for overseas service?
A returned volunteer, perhaps a past student of the school, could be asked to speak of his or her experience of living and working abroad to the class at a later date.
Read together the words of Grant’s song, ‘Upon the path of change’. He wrote this at the time he was moving from Australia to live and work in Indonesia. Ask students about times when they have experienced the same feelings of uncertainty and panic at the prospect of a new experience in their lives. What for them has been the ‘candle in the corner’ — the possibility of something good, rewarding, positive, that might be offering in the new experience? How did they feel about their fears once they had settled in to the new situation?
For further information on Australian Volunteers International, contact AVI, PO Box 350, Fitzroy 3065, or see www.ozvol.org.au. See also Caritas, www.caritas.org.au and Jesuit Refugee services, www.jrs.net.
A just war
On Friday afternoon recently I took to the streets of a capital city to take part in the march against the war in Iraq. It was an inspiring sight to see all those people: mothers with babies in pushers, people in business suits, others in casual clothes, some in fancy dress, and many in uniform, having come straight from school. They were carrying banners with all kinds of messages, some funny, some abusive, and there were so many people that the march was at a standstill.
The march was unable to proceed until, after a couple of hours, the crowd began to thin out as some left to go home in the assurance that they had shown their solidarity with those protesting against a war in Iraq. Since that day there have been innumerable arguments and endless explanations showered on us by the media.
Andrew Hamilton’s article on the just war theory will surely help us to clarify the fog created by all this discussion and expert opinion. The class should read the article together and then each student could be required to frame a question arising out of the reading of the article. The questions could be printed on butcher’s paper and displayed in the classroom, after which a debate could be prepared on the topic: ‘Is a just war possible in our time?’
The Australian Catholic Social Justice Council has released a discussion paper, ‘Pacem in Terris’, to mark the 40th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s encyclical. The text is available on the ACSJC’s website: www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au
Odd places to pray
Where do people find they experience a closeness with God? How can we bring God into our everyday lives? This can be discussed with students, or you might find some useful help in the Daily Prayer reflections on the Madonna website. Here you will find a brief reflection on the liturgical readings of each day. This can be a prompt for your own reflection for the day with students, or, combined with one or other of the day;’s readings, it can be a form of shared prayer for the class. See www.madonnamagazine.com.au.
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