Didactic teaching

 We've been updating our training statistics form at work, and I've been finding myself in the middle of some very interesting conversations about words I thought were better known than they are.

First, I used the word "narrowcast" to refer to the lessons we teach via the LMS or Zoom, and then I had to explain to people what "narrowcast" meant. Apparently that's not a common word. In case you were wondering, narrowcasting is like broadcasting, only you have a precisely delineated audience (for example, only people who can log into your electronic classroom).

To wit: if anyone can get it as long as they know when and where to look, it's broadcasting. If you can only get it if you are in the group that has access to it, it's narrowcasting. Public radio = broadcasting, police band radio = narrowcasting. You get the picture.

The second word that brought the discussion up a bit short was "didactic". Rather than talking about "lectures" and "workshops", I was going to suggest "didactic" vs "activity-based" classes. Most of the people in the room had only heard the word "didactic" used in the same context as "preachy" - if they'd heard it at all. Apparently, that wasn't a common word either. Turns out most people don't just randomly talk about pedagogical methodologies unless they've done an Education degree at some point.

When writing up my notes, I wanted to link to something that said what didactic teaching was in a nutshell, but couldn't find something I liked - so I'll just write my own:

Didactic Teaching in a Nutshell

Didactic teaching is the presentation of information to an audience.

It's commonly (and often derogatorily) referred to as "Chalk and talk" - the idea being that the teacher stands in front of a board and simply talks to (or "at") the class, who sit passively and listen, theoretically taking notes.

Didactic teaching isn't necessarily passive, though. Or, rather, it isn't necessarily unengaging just because it is passive. Like anything, it depends on the execution (and the audience). You can regularly ask the students questions to check their understanding, and you can field questions from the class members who wish to clarify matters or offer comments. Active listening is a thing, and you can encourage your audience to listen actively. Technically, using questions is bringing in a spot of dialectal teaching (see below) but it's still a didactic class.

You can also be interesting and humorous in your delivery of the content, so that your audience finds your presentation engaging, even if they aren't engaged in any interactivity at the time. A stand-up comedy routine is technically a didactic presentation.

However, didactic teaching can be very boring, so if you are a naturally boring presenter (or you have a class that refuses to engage in active listening), it is a dangerous method of teaching to use - even if it is one of the most common.

And now for a digression:

Lectures are considered to be didactic, as the lecturer presents/delivers information to people who aren't engaging in any kind of "activity" per se. The word "lecture" actually means "read" - in the olden days, the lecturer would literally stand at the front of the room and read their notes aloud. If you tried doing that these days, someone would complain (unless you got someone like Stephen Fry to read them for you, I suppose). Interestingly, "lecture" is often used with negative connotations - like "didactic" and "preachy". It seems people don't like being expected to listen while someone talks at them.

Not didactic teaching

Traditionally, the opposite of didactic teaching is dialectal teaching. In this method, the teacher and the students participate in a conversation in which they both talk about the subject matter (even though the student might not have had any information "presented" to them yet) and let knowledge and understanding unfold from the conversation.

The famous Socratic Method (okay, possibly not famous if you haven't studied Education or read much about Greek philosophy) is a form of dialectal teaching that actually consists of the lecturer asking the student questions in order to walk them through thinking out the logical conclusions. It's probably much more suited to philosophy than the inner workings of volcanoes, but I expect the right teacher could make it work for anything.

Most non-didactic classes these days are based around activity-based learning or problem-based learning. In these classes, students are presented with something to do or a problem to solve. The teacher should make sure it's possible for them to find all the information they need to complete the challenge before them (although not all teachers do this). In the process of doing the thing, they actively engage with and apply the information, theoretically making it more memorable.

Work-integrated learning is a cousin of activity-based/problem-based learning, in that students attempt to do the job they would be doing in the real world, had they already learnt what they are learning right now. It's sort of what an apprentice does, learning on the job.

You may notice a slight shift in  language for these methodologies. Rather than didactic/dialectal teaching, we've moved to activity-based/problem-based/work-integrated learning.

This is because the focus of the class has shifted - it has moved from teacher-centred to student-centred.

Now, if you're anything like... well pretty much everyone who talks about this in any kind of professional capacity, you're probably thinking "well that all sounds fabbo - so much better than that awful teacher-centred didactic teaching crap we've been forcing on students for generations!" I'd just like to point out that, once again, it's all down to the execution.

Activity-based learning needs to be really well designed to work well. I've been in activity-based classes that were about as engaging as having someone read their lecture notes to me, and I felt like gauging my eyes out with a spoon rather than doing their stupid activity. I've also heard many a student make similar comments.

The fact of the matter is, a good didactic class can be more interesting and engaging than a bad activity-based class. It all comes down to how engaged the teacher is. If you are connecting with the content and the students, the students will connect with the content as well.

Of Pastiches and Steak-and-Ale Pie

What's the difference between a collage and a pastiche?

You might know the answer to that, but I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it. I think the core difference is that a collage is made up of actual pieces of other works/things (cut up magazine articles, photographs, bits and bobs like ribbons, etc) while a pastiche is made up of elements taken from other works (mimicking someone's brush-strokes or phrasing).

Consulting Wikipedia to gain more insight, I discovered that "pastiche" is closely related to the word "pasticcio", and a pasticcio just happens to be a musical term for an operatic work that splices together the work of several other composers (which sounds a bit like a collage, really)... but it also means "pie".

As in, actual pie. That thing we do where we grind up a whole bunch of ingredients into a mince or a stew or a paste and then stick a lid of some description on it and call it a "pie". It doesn't matter what the ingredients are, to be honest. Or even what the lid is. Meat and vegetables under a lid made out of mashed potatoes and grated cheese is a pie. Chopped up apples completely encased in a short-crust pastry is a pie. Thickened lemon curd on a crushed biscuit base, topped with a layer of meringue, is a pie.

"Apple Pie" by Didriks, CC-BY 2.0

I'm rabbiting on about pastiches and pies because I've been looking into the difference between a Collection and a Remix in regards to using Creative Commons works.

Works that have a Creative Commons license are available to be re-used by members of the public (and aristocracy, I suppose). Many of them can also be adapted. If you have given your song, photograph, short film, painting, epic poem or blog post a CC license that allows adaptations, then some enterprising soul could come along and use part of it in a collage (or a pastiche).

If the license doesn't allow for adaptations, it could still be used in a Collection - as long as the collection itself doesn't try to give that work a different license.

I'm probably making a meal out of this, so let's make an actual meal out of it.

Let's say we have a piece of steak that is licensed CC-BY-ND (attribution, no derivatives) - this means we can't adapt that steak in any way. But we could still serve it with a side of vegetables which had a CC-BY (attribution) license, as long as we made it clear the steak and vegetables were separate items with separate licenses. If we also had a glass of ale that was CC-BY-NC-SA (attribution, noncommercial, share alike), well we could have that along side our steak and our vegetables but then we couldn't sell it (we'd have to give it away freely, and not bundle it with the meal, or we wouldn't be able to sell the meal - we'd have to give away the whole thing). Once again, everything is being shared together, but kept separate - with separate identities so we can make the licensing conditions clear for all. This is a Collection, in Creative Commons terms.

"Steak & Ale Pie - The Cat's Whiskers" by Cross Duck, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

If, however, the steak was under a CC-BY-SA license, we could mix the whole lot together and put it in a pie (a Remix). The subsequent steak-and-ale pie would still need to have all of its sources clearly acknowledged (that's why the BY is for), but it would be okay that you can't separate the steak from the ale without sorcery, as long as you didn't try to sell the pie (the ale is still NC licensed). We can only make this pie because the licenses are compatible - if they weren't then we wouldn't be able to mix all the ingredients together. The pie itself would need a CC license, by the way. And the license given to the pie would need to be the same as the most restrictive of all of the licenses. In this case, the ale is the most restrictive (CC-BY-NC-SA), so that's the best license to use for your steak-and-ale pie.

And remember, "there is no ND in pie". If any of your sources is ND, you can't use it, and if it's SA, you have to use it carefully. You can read more about that here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses.

"Stevens pie" by CloW, CC-BY-SA 4.0

And since we're on the subject, I could also just mess with the steak by turning it into mince, or cutting it into strips for a stir fry. That would be a derivative (both derivatives and remixes are kinds of adaptations). There's no ND in derivative, either.

The really important thing to remember is that you still have to give full credit and license acknowledgement for any work you use, regardless as to whether or not you made something new and exiting and different with it by turning it into a pie.

"Key Lime Pie" by sk, CC-BY-ND 2.0

By the way, you might have noticed I have a collection of pies in this blog post (just to be a smart-arse, really). I have assembled a collection of pictures (of pies) with incompatible licenses, but you can clearly see what they are, follow them home and use the right license for each, should you choose to re-use them yourself. This means I also have to be careful if I want to apply a CC license to the contents of this blog post - because a collection also needs a CC license if you want people to share it, and that license has to be compatible with the spirit of the licenses of the individual parts of the collection. I cannot make this post available commercially, because one of my pie pictures has an NC license.

I actually don't understand that part of the process, to be honest. I get that I can't use any of the images in a way that would go against the licenses, but I don't know how to license them as a collection (I'd have an easier time with a pie, er, I mean remix). I've been trying to find a good example of a collection with a CC license that honours the incompatible wishes of the items in the collection, but I haven't been able to. So I'm just going to get around this particular issue by giving the text of my post a CC license independent of the images held in it. If you want to re-use my text, go for it - I think you can also choose to re-use the images I've chosen on their own merits, or substitute them with your own pies.

If you know the answer and can link me to a good example of best practise for applying a CC license to a collection, please let me know in the comments.

Text: CC-BY 4.0

Images: See individual images for attribution and licenses

A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind (a Book Reflection)

 It has been far too long since I have reviewed/reflected upon a book. For those of you who haven't come across one of my "Book Reflections" before, it's basically a gonzo book review - I'm ostensibly reviewing the book, but mostly just talking about my own ideas and opinions.

Today I'm talking about A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind, by Shoukei Matsumoto.

This is an "Amazon knows me too well" find. Because I read books about Zen, and books about tidying and decluttering, the Amazon algorithms recommended a book about cleaning written by a Zen monk. This is, by the way, why I'm happy with this Faustian deal I've got going with Amazon - yes, they are the devil and they know too much about me and my reading habits... but dang that's come in handy.

Matsumoto's book is not technically about decluttering, but if you followed the advice in this book you probably wouldn't own a lot of clutter after a while - if for no other reason than the fact that you have to clean it.

If I was going to summarise the book in one sentence, it would be to "clean everything often and well so the dirt doesn't get you down."

Like many of the other self-help books I read for fun (and for which I am very bad at taking the advice contained therein), I found the book to be a mixture of "good, practical advice" and "that's totally nuts". It's not as crazy as Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying (Matsumoto never once suggests storing carrots upright in the fridge), but there is a deep and abiding flaw in the book that he never addresses, and it is impossible to take on his advice properly with this flaw in the way. But I'll come back to that. First, I want to talk about the dirt on my heart.

Matsumoto is constantly talking about how dirt on this or that is dirt on your "heart". How the ink stain on the cuffs of your sleeves is a stain on your heart. How the dust on the floor is dust on your heart. An insufficiently cleaned bathroom reflects on the heart of the person who was supposed to clean it as well as weighing on the mind of everyone who uses it. This is a refrain he comes back to over and over again in the book: we clean to rid the dirt on our hearts and minds.

I was really struggling with this language and definitely leaning towards the "you're a little bit insane" interpretation of his book, before I suddenly asked myself what he meant by "heart". I was taking it from a Judeo-Christian, Western view of things were the idea of "dirt on your heart" meant that you were deeply flawed and a terrible person. But then I started to wonder if "heart", in the context of this book, wasn't one's "essential essence" or "soul" (which was a very weird attitude for a Zen monk to have, it must be said), but rather one's sense of happiness and joy. 

We sometimes talk about "heart's ease", things that are "good for the heart", or having something "weighing on our hearts". There are things that dampen our spirits and lift our spirits, but have nothing to do with our "Spirit" (capital S). And I think, this is what Matsumoto is getting at when he talks about cleaning our hearts. We are far more intertwined with our environment than we realise (and even if we do realise it, we tend to forget), and seeing jobs of cleaning and maintenance left undone in our world weighs on us in ways we're not always conscious of.

Dust, stains and broken things that need mending get us down. They tickle at the backs of our minds, stopping us from being completely at ease. Taking the time to clean it/fix it lifts our spirits. Taking the time, every day (or at least on regular days), to keep things clean and mended makes as feel generally better about the universe.

This book is a mixture of "how to" advice for cleaning (as gleaned from centuries of monks taking care of their temples and grounds) and philosophy about the relationship between people and their environment and objects. And, yes, you will probably end up owning fewer things and taking better care of them, because it's not really possible to have a giant household full of stuff and keep it all clean and well tended.

And now for the deep, abiding flaw:

Matsumoto is a monk. He's a monk at a Zen temple with other monks where all of the monks clean the temple all day. That's what they do, that's what their day consists of - "service" (i.e., cleaning) and meditation - and there's a bunch of them to do it. They rotate the tasks so the person cleaning the floors on Tuesday might be tending the garden on Wednesday. The advice he gives on cleaning is based in a reality where a) a task is done everyday or at least several times a week, b) the person doing the task has time to do it well, and c) there are enough people around to do the tasks to make sure they are all done every day or at least every other day.

As a single person with a full time job, I look at much of what he says in the book and think "that's not physically possible - I would have to be in two places at once for every single hour of the day to do all of the supposedly 'daily' tasks." I would have to be or have a full-time housekeeper to keep on top of it all - and then I'd probably need a groundskeeper as well. It simply cannot work in a world where you don't have at least one person whose entire job consists of taking care of things. 

Now, there are days when I long for that to be my schtick. I could happily play monk for a while and just sweep the floors and clean the kitchen and bathroom all day. Who knows, one day I just might do this. But I'm not financially in a position to do it at the moment. I doubt most people are.

I am probably going to start cleaning more things more often, though. I've already started doing this with my desk at work, and it is definitely calming and relaxing to start the day with clearing away whatever dust might have accumulated in my space.

I was saying to someone recently that I'm thinking of developing a cleaning disorder. Hopefully, if I cultivate it on purpose, I'll be able to put it to good use without becoming too obsessive about it. And even if it does get out of hand, it's better for my health than other "disorders" and I might be able to make a living out of it - hey, it worked for Marie Kondo.

Too Many Forks in the Road

Just to make life interesting, I've just had yet another idea for a PhD I'd like to do, and it's in yet another discipline.

I have a slight problem in that I want to do a PhD, but I've got half a dozen different ideas of what I'd like to tackle at that level, and they all have slightly different disciplines. I've got an idea for something I'd like to do that looks at serious games and applied linguistics, something I'd like to do that looks at librarianship and applied linguistics, something that I'd like to do that's educational design and applied linguistics, something I'd like to do that's comparative religion (no linguistics in this one, just to shake things up)...

And now I've just noticed I could do a PhD in Creative Writing and use it as an excuse to deep-dive into two "young" genres of poetry that I've been enjoying playing with lately (Estonian Haiku and American Cinquain), which have both evolved from Japanese Haikai and write a book of poetry as part of the project.

The only flaw with that plan is I need to have "a substantial record of publication appropriate to the proposed project", and so far I don't have anything published at all.

Would it be too weird if I just said "stuff it, I'm going to see how many of these I can do?"

Title your work

 Dear artists,

Title your work.

None of this Untitled 1 and Untitled 2 nonsense. If you are an artist, and this is a work of art, then it deserves a name and you should name it.

If you don't title your work it shows a distinct lack of emotional engagement with this thing that you have produced - heck, it shows something of a lack of intellectual engagement with it as well. You are an artist, not an artisan. You are "creating art", not making a cabinet. Heck, sometimes even cabinets get names, if they're fancy enough. Title your art.

People need to be able to talk about what you've created - they need to mention it too each other. Without the words to discuss things with each other, they lose meaning. They stop existing, just a little bit. If you were making a cabinet, they'd say "the cabinet in the lounge room". But you are making art. You are making something that is, let's face it, useless. It serves no purpose, apart from engaging people's minds. If they have no words for it... 

Well, it becomes useless, nondescript, purposeless and barely existent.

Sure, they could say "the artwork in the lounge room", but, then, it really does render your work no more special than the average cabinet.

Or, they'll make up their own ways to talk about it.

There is a work of art in my work place. It is called Untitled, but we never call it that. Most of us have our own names for this work. That might sound like something an artist might aspire to - to inspire people to engage with the art so well that they name it themselves, based on what the art means to them.

Some people might work that way, but they are quite possibly the exception, rather than the rule. Most people will just call it what it "kind of looks like".

This nameless artwork is a plinth topped with two half-spheres held together with a curved bar. I call it "the Prince Albert" - and I'm not talking about the person. Everyone in the office has heard me call it that at least once, and there's a good chance it will be known as "the Prince Albert" long after I leave. It has no other name, and I refuse to call it "Untitled". That's not a name. As far as I'm concerned it's a bigger insult than "the Prince Albert".

Would the artist care if they knew exactly what I have named their art? What right do they have to care? They didn't care about it enough to name it themselves.

Dear artists, title your work.

Kettle and Toaster (or Still Life)

One of my friends at work was an artist in her former life. She went to art school and everything. I suspect there was a point in her life when, if you asked her, she would say she hoped to make art for a living when she "grew up". 

Similarly, there was a point in my life when, if you asked me, I would say I wanted to write poetry for a living when I grew up. I didn't exactly go to "poetry school" (largely because such a thing doesn't exist - certainly not in regional Australia), but I did study literature and once submitted a poem for an assignment on Literary Criticism (something that didn't go down as badly as I had expected).

My friend did, at least, produce art that ended up on walls in galleries at some point. Apart from a couple of competitions (and the odd assignment), I've only ever "published" my poetry in blog posts. I still dream that one day I'll put together a tome of verse and have it published - even if I have to resort to vanity publishing.

My artist friend and I both have trouble sleeping, and I joked recently that we should spend our extra waking hours producing still-life works (one of my favourite artistic genres) - she in pen and ink, me in verse and short prose. We could put together a multi-format show from our midnight sketches.

Of course, having said that, I had an overwhelming urge to sketch some household objects with poetry, didn't I? Well what's the point of having a blog if you can't use it to self-publish your own two-bit verse?

So, for your reading pleasure (or otherwise), I present a verse still life:

Kettle and Toaster

The kettle and the toaster

do not match.

It's not just that they are

different brands

different colours

different materials - 

But that they are so clearly

bought at different times

from different shops

with different budgets.

The kettle

metal

sturdy in silver and black

Is upper middle class

and meant to last.

The toaster

plastic

flimsy and white

Would look at home

in a make-shift kitchenette

in the bedroom of

an impoverished uni student

in a share house in Kirwan.

They do not match

Right down to their cables

Side by side 

Black and white

in the electrical plug in the wall

- "Karuke"

Book Reflection: Zen Master Raven

It has been a while since I've written a "book reflection", so it might be worth my while explaining what they are again, before I get stuck into this one. It's a bit of a gonzo book review - I'm ostensibly reviewing a particular book, but I'm really just talking about myself and using the book as a medium. Sometimes my "book reflections" are more focused on the book than they are on me, sometimes they're more focused on me than they are on the book. Sometimes (well, probably more often than not), they just reveal me to be a bit of an opinionated jerk. Such is life. Now, onto this reflection:

I've just started reading this book for the fourth or fifth time. I've kind of lost track. And it's not like I've had the book for years and I come back to it after I've had a chance to forget most of it, I'm actually reading it consecutively. I get to the end of the book, think "that was nice", and then flick thorough it the way one does when one has finished a book one enjoyed... and then I just end up going back to the beginning and starting it again. 

Zen Master Raven: The Teachings of a Wise Old Bird, by Robert Aitken, was an early purchase for trying out a new Kindle. I had just bought an eBook reader for the first time, and I was picking up a bunch of books from different genres to play with my new toy. One recommendation lead to another, and Zen Master Raven ended up being one of my first purchases.

It was the first book I have read by Robert Aitken. I’ve since picked up a few more of his books – also on the Kindle. It’s become something I do at doctor’s surgeries and other places where I know I’m going to be waiting around for an interminable period of time: I read Aitken. I find his writing undemanding and yet stimulating. It doesn’t seem to matter that I’m hovering in some limbo where I could be interrupted at any moment (but will probably be kept waiting for another half an hour). I think his writing style is just pitched at the right level of easy-going conversation about deep and meaningful things.

It has also put me in a bit of a weird spot when I find one of his books in print in a bookshop (which has happened a couple of times but is, I’ll admit a rare occurrence). Part of me wants to buy the book because I enjoy his writing and don’t have any hard copies of his books. The rest of me doesn’t want to buy a book when I already own a copy. It’s a strange side-effect of owning a Kindle: you both own and don’t own the books at the same time.

If I ever did stumble across a print version of Zen Master Raven again, I probably would buy it (even though I won’t go out of my way to get one, because I already own the book), simply because it has become one of my favourite books and I’d love to be able to lend it to people who might enjoy it.

It’s an odd bingdingle of a book – a collection of fables written for grown-ups by a retired Zen Buddhist priest. It’s surprisingly hard to say what the book is, as I have no idea what genre it might belong to. I can only really tell you what it’s (sort of) about.

Raven (a bird), after talking to a number of Zen masters, finds a teacher in the form of Brown Bear (a bear – these aren’t people with critter names, they’re critters). After studying with Brown Bear for a while, he becomes a Zen teacher himself, and establishes a Zen community in Tall Spruce forest, where creatures as diverse as moles, badgers, woodpeckers, wolverines and porcupines come to sit together for zazen around the Assembly Oak and ask Raven questions about Zen (as well as life, the universe and everything).

These short fables aren’t really fables, as there isn’t much of a plot to them, they’re more conversations. They fit in perfectly well with a lot of traditional Buddhist literature (especially within the Zen schools) which basically consist of Monk X asking Master Y a question and getting what appears to be a ridiculous answer in return. In these stories (often featuring in books of koans), the answer is meant to challenge the assumptions behind the question – and the assumptions you brought to the table when you read the koan in the first place. Once your frame of reference has shifted, the answer isn’t ridiculous at all.

That’s what these fables in Raven are – short conversations in which the meaning shifts around depending on where your understanding happens to be at the time. In addition to other works by Aitken (including commentaries on koans), I’ve been reading books by other Zen teachers, and I swear that every time I re-read Raven, I’m picking up something new. I’ll notice that a character isn’t being treated the way I originally thought, but rather he’s been pushed to realise he’s got the wrong end of the stick. I’ll notice that an answer given to a question I originally read one way is actually quite profound for completely different reasons.

And because I’m underlining things that make me smile, or make me think, or just really appeal to me at the time, I’m coming across things I underlined on my first reading that now mean something different to me – or which were so of that moment in time that I can’t remember why I underlined them in the first place.

The stories and characters are the kind of thing we would normally regard as being “for children” – but they aren’t really. It’s not that they are unsuitable for children – the language isn’t beyond kids and it’s not not for children – it’s just that the stories make very little sense if you aren’t studying or practicing (or at least reading up on) Zen. You could read them to children, but I don’t know why you would. I expect most children would find them boring, confusing and utterly pointless. And those who did enjoy them would probably look back on them as an adult and realise they had missed the point entirely.

I expect I’ll look back on them in my old age and realise I’ve missed the point entirely.

I guess what they really are is koans for Westerners – for those of us who grew up with stories of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Br'er Rabbit. The trouble with the “serious” koans in the “serious” koan collections is they come from another time and place and culture. Half the time you miss the subtleties of what’s going on, because someone needs to explain the undercurrent. These tales belong to a more familiar cultural milieu, so it can challenge your view of things without needing to explain what’s going on first.

The reason why I’ve read the book so often is because it’s perfect bed-time reading. I like to read something short and “devotional” before I go to bed. It’s a longstanding habit from my days as a devout Christian, when I used to read actual devotionals. I really love the genre and format of devotionals. They are complete works – you read one short page of text and you’ve read the whole thing, so you can just put down the book after that page and not get suckered into reading another one “just to see what happens next…” They often have a little bit of a story, and maybe also a few lines of verse, and they leave you with a thought. Sometimes it’s a warm fuzzy thought (“God is looking out for you”), sometimes it’s a challenging thought (“are you making the most of your time on this earth?”). At no point is it such a demanding thought that you’ll be lying awake at night trying to nut it out.

I’m not a great sleeper, but I do notice that I sleep better after reading a devotional than I do after I’ve read almost anything else. Zen Master Raven’s tales give me the same “hit” as a devotional. They’re short and complete, and it doesn’t matter if I’ve been up late fussing about things I should have dealt with hours ago, I can still fit in one or two tales to help settle my brain before turning in.

Oh, and it also fits in quite nicely with my fledgling collection of books with bears in them. In addition to Brown Bear, Raven’s teacher, there is also Black Bear – a student of Raven who is slowly working out what it’s all about.

One of my favourite lines in the book belongs to Brown Bear, and I’ll leave you with it:

Owl said, “What are Right Views?”
Brown Bear said, “We’re in it together, and we don’t have much time.”