Overview

This book is not a memoir. Nor is it an autobiography. Neither is it a diary nor a scholarly essay, a confession or a consolation. It is not a Menippean satire. It is not entirely a personal philosophy about how teaching should be done or how teachers should be constructed or how educators should proceed about their jobs. It is not a manual. It is not a history of educational practices nor is it a diatribe concerning social trends and behaviours as they pertain to the classroom over time. It is not an exercise in cultural studies. It is not an accounting or a field notes or a scientific study or a demonstration of hyperthymesia. It is not a cock and bull story, at least not all of it. ... So, what is this book? Well, you've been to school and you know what it was like; in your reading here, you will be the one most qualified to answer that question. What is this book! For now, best perhaps to think of Epimenides' old syllogism and go forward with the simple idea that, in all probability, everything written in these pages is false. And there, let the lesson begin.

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9781998324200

Table of Contents

Reviews

Brian Way has written an unusual memoir that can easily be described as a literary tapestry woven from strands of autobiography, educational theory, and cultural commentary, all enfolded into one well written accessible book. In rejecting a conventional genre Way has written over 400 pages of personal history wrapped in the educational history of his times. In contemplation of the title I realized that ""Hickory Tunes: A Life in School"" is suggestive, evoking a certain nostalgia but also serving to highlight the strong shaping forces of schooling across a lifetime, even critiquing the tradition of corporal punishment in education. On some levels, overtly or subtly, the title questions how memory and myth are shaped by our lived experiences. I understood on a sociological level that the title was making reference to the Hickory Stick as a weapon of corporal punishment but only after I Googled the reference did I realise the title directly references an old nostalgic American song ""School Days, School Days... taught to the tune of the hickory stick"". At its core, this book serves, the way so many memoirs do, as a chronology of life-shaping events but it also manages to reclaim one's own history, a history often rooted in traumatic recollections. Reminiscent of the stunning events of a novel like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in one scene Way portrays the brutal strapping of his schoolmate, Red Thompson. I found one of the most compelling aspects of Hickory Tunes to be its clear interlacing of personal experience with broader societal transformations. The book spans decades, from the postwar era of the 1950s through the educational reforms of the 1970s to the digital age of the 2000s. I was born in 1953 and have lived through the shifting sand of these Western schooling eras that Way describes. I found it interesting that he does not merely reflect on change, one might say that he interrogates it. Take a look at chapter 2 and dare to take the ""test"" he includes from 1895, a Grade Eight Examination from Kansas. He does not present this as a nostalgic longing for ""better days,"" but rather a pointed critique of rote learning. He notes how such tests privileged the student with a high capacity for memorization-personally, I would have failed such a test as rote memory skills never served me well. See how you would do!

Author Information

Brian T. W. Way was raised in Prince Edward County, learned how to fish for trout and hunt for whales in university, then taught at various secondary schools and in higher education (Departments of English and Education, Western). In retirement, he has served on Boards of Governance for the Royal Military Colleges of Canada, the national Al Purdy A-Frame Trust and the Prince Edward County Library System, as well as teaching at Loyalist College, taking up the creative keyboard and becoming a failed painter. Recent publications include Somebody should've told Fred, magic birds, Orchard of the Gods, Heads or Tales, american mankillers and Perilous Journey in the Prose Fiction of Don Gutteridge. And in process, Bee: a book for all ages. (Photos: Grade Two, Massassaga Public School, and, a bit later in life, at Thoor Ballylee.)

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