Lessons in Humility is the bizarre story of Barry Dickins' life as a teacher. He gained his Diploma Of Education at The Melbourne State College forty years ago although he failed Classroom Management. He has taught Drama and Creative Literature to cherubs at a primary school and prayer-composition at a secondary college. The recollection unfolds at the point of doom but cheerfully expands when the author experiences enlightenment when he is put in with Grade Ones forever. Barry Dickins' writing has been called 'The defeat of the desperate by the bizarre' which means of course that his stage characters are inevitably overcome by not themselves but their surroundings. Join the catastrophic but noble hunt for meaning as our indefatigable community-loving teacher collides with life head-on. Nietzsche once wrote that 'only with laughter do we slay' and never was that epithet truer for a willing servant of education who not only clashes with bureaucracies but can't comprehend society either. What he is brilliant at is never teaching but the forgotten art of listening. Children adore to be carefully heard and practising that fact is what gets him through Hell in one piece.
The fantastic and fatal daily hurts and contradictions are faithfully recorded here by a writer who loves poor people so well he knows what lollies they've knocked off. Many essays have been composed and published upon teaching in the 200 years of the strap. Many are marvellous but this is true. You too will feel as you have held class at The Boil Street Special School in Sickening Road. The author learns the timely lesson in modesty at the rickety helm of teaching chaos. It's not that his kids are stupid but that he is arrogant. He teaches poorly because he listens worse. It is only when he surrenders his portrait of himself as an artist to the wheelie bin of life that he finally learns that teaching is to do with others and not vanity. Vanity is interesting but it will never get the soul a Roadworthy Certificate.