Assistant Principal (Secondary)

iPhone, therefore I am

A number of years ago, I read an article titled ‘ iPhone, therefore, I am’. This was a play on Descartes' old adage, ‘I think, therefore, I am’. Descartes was a sixteenth century French Philosopher, whose contention was that the ability to think, to have metacognition (the ability to be able to think about our thinking), is what makes us human, gives us identity, gives us a sense of reality. However, with the advent of a phone, the ability to think, to recall and to focus seems to have diminished.

I am of the age that I can remember owning, using and remembering streets in a Melways. A ‘historic’ map that was very much a part of the Melbourne identity. I can actually remember the page that I lived on (page 3 for those who are interested). My daughter is constantly amazed that I can drive around much of the western and northern suburbs without using Google Maps. I can remember having a phone book (prior to my Nokia 3210) in which, I actually listed people's phone numbers; numbers that I actually remembered, some of which I can still remember to this very day.

What we seem to find today is that our phone is an external addition to our brain. We no longer need to remember phone numbers, we no longer need to remember how to find our way around the streets - our phone (our external brain) does all that for us. We’re used to getting all the information we need instantly, and it is always ‘right’ (it’s either black, or white- no grey).

However, when leaning a new skill, new information, new abilities, new thoughts - it’s rarely black or white, there are many shades of grey that we need to embrace. When a student first learns how to use letters in Mathematics (algebra), they rarely learn it all right away, there are many attempts and mistakes. We can forget that to be human, to acquire new knowledge, skills, understandings; we need to have many attempts and not getting things instantaneously does not mean that we cannot do it. This form of ‘academic resilience’ is something that I believe has suffered over the past two years of living online. People seem to believe that if you don’t get something straight away, then for some predestined reason, you’re unable to ever get it and you might as well give up. However, in life, we hardly ever find a place where we know everything instantly. Our life is a journey (and there’s joy in our individual journey).

With our children, it’s important that we embrace the journey, embrace the grey, embrace the fact that they are trying to find themselves, to learn, to grow - and they won’t get it perfect every time. We need to embrace mistakes, not because they (or we) are wrong, rather they show us the spaces we need to work on, they show us that we are improving, that we are heading in the right direction.

As we head into the last full term of classes for our Year 12s, in particular, I believe it’s important that they realise that they haven’t finished, they are still a work of art yet to be finished, they still have this term (but also the rest of their lives) to continually shape themselves into the person they want to be. We need to embrace life and a journey and find joy in its path, knowing that life is not about the destination, as we hardly ever reach a place saying - "yep, I’ve arrived". 

Mr Chris Graham

Assistant Principal (Secondary)