Playing chess with the enemy #blimage

Here's my latest contribution in the series of #blimage challenges. (Someone sends you an image and you write a blog post about learning based on it - that's the game of #blimage). This image was sent to me by Australian educator Aaron Davis (@mrkrndvs). So what do I make of it? How can I frame this image in an educational context?

It looks as though Bart Simpson is having a cup of coffee with Darth Vader (how surreal is that?). Maybe they have been playing a game of chess ala Seventh Seal (the film directed by Ingmar Bergman in which a medieval knight plays a game of chess with Death), and are now taking a break. Coffee or chess anyone?

Drinking coffee with the enemy is less risky than playing chess with him. Generally it's not as formal, and the rules assume less importance. Strategy is still involved in conversation, but its a different kind of strategy, low stakes. Playing chess with the enemy can be very dangerous because ultimately, it results in a winner and a loser. Chess could be a metaphor for formal education where testing separates those who are 'bright' from those who are 'not so bright'. Testing naturally promotes success, but it can also generate failure and stigma. Personally, I prefer the coffee drinking analogy, where everyone participates, and where there are no winners and losers, just a community of people, all interested in the same end. To learn as much as they can, and to share their ideas together, simply for the joy of learning. To me, this is the kind of learning you will see in schools where teachers take a back seat, and where students are assessed on a continuous and formative basis. There is plenty of latitude for improvement, and plenty of opportunities to learn better next time.

Drinking coffee with your enemy may also bring its own rewards. You get to know them better, and the more you discover, the more you are prepared to meet future challenges. That quite easily relates to he deployment (or not) of technology in schools. We should be preparing our students for challenges that are unpredictable, so exposing them to technologies such as the Web or social media at an early age, and in the safe environment of school has to make more sense than banning them completely.

...and what if you don't like coffee? Well you can always eat Bart's shorts.

Photo by Justlego101 on Flickr


Playing chess with the enemy by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.