Making time for sci-fi in class can open a whole new dimension

Published on Tuesday 18 May 2010 21:01

"BATMAN stood at the top of the ledge as the car sped past below" …now finish the story. This is one of many uses for the comic character Batman that Gerry Dignan has used during 20 years as a primary teacher.

There's a 6ft cut-out of Michael Keaton's film portrayal of Batman at the back of Mr Dignan's class to which he pins notices. Maths can taught using questions about sales of picture cards, and learning to draw superheroes fits in with art classes.

"I have about 10,000 comics and have always had a thing for Batman because my mum made me the Batman costume from the 1960s' series as a Halloween costume one year," said Dignan.

"I can use sci-fi in various ways. Any class I teach ends up with a more active imagination after I'm finished. We've done stories on time travel, or what you would do if you were invisible.

"There is a huge interest in Doctor Who, and I use that as well. I will use anything. I talk to pupils about shows they don't think adults would watch. You can capture their attention, then try to impress things they're not aware of."

Science fiction has long predicted advancements in the worlds of technology and society, from air-conditioning in Jules Verne's 1863 novel Paris In The Twentieth Century, or CCTV in George Orwell's seminal novel on surveillance society Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949.

Scottish sci-fi has been described by some as starting quite late, in comparison with other countries, with notable exceptions such as Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886.

Mike Cobley, who was educated in Clydebank before studying engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, penned the Shadowkings Trilogy and the Humanity's Fire trilogy.

He said he encountered his first sci-fi novel when he was aged nine, reading Welcome To Mars! by James Blish.

"It really allowed my imagination to stretch," he said. "My imagination was already pretty active, and at that age there are plenty of avenues for your thoughts.

"I think most science fiction teaches its readers to see reality in terms of rational cause and effect. Even if a sci-fi author is depicting a wildly exotic machine, he or she has to provide a rational underpinning for it, otherwise the story shades off into science fantasy, like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars adventures, or Star Wars.

"Sci-fi in general seeks out ways to a better future, sometimes by pointing out the wrong turnings on the road ahead.

"It can also be a literature of hope and humanity, reason and compassion, technology and wisdom. There are many possible ways of seeing the world, or other possible worlds, and science fiction helps young minds to understand, while avoiding prejudice and closed thinking."

Mr Cobley is an author who has also imagined alternative histories, such as The Intrigue of the Battered Box where the Jacobite rising of 1745 was a success and Edinburgh became capital of the UK.

So-called "what if" history has become a familiar way of exploring the causes and effects of historical events and is a mainstay of science fiction in its imagining of possible Utopias or dystopias.

Authors such as Iain M Banks, Naomi Mitchison and Alasdair Gray have explored alternative visions of technological development and "western progress", while Paisley-born screenwriter Steven Moffat has created terrifying aliens for the Doctor Who series.

Matthew Fitt, author of But n Ben A-Go-Go and education officer at Itchy-Coo, which promotes children's books in Scots, said science fiction had learning potential for pupils right across the curriculum.

"I read and collected Doctor Who books until about the age of 12 or so," he said. "I gave it up for good at the end of the episode Logopolis, when Tom Baker reincarnated as Peter Davison.

"Oddly enough, one of the provisional titles of my next novel is Mukkillopolis, so all that Doctor Who book reading must have sunk in somewhere. Science fiction offers pupils a great deal.

"Take some everyday object from the present and fast-forward it a century or a millennium or so into the future. What will mobile phones be like 100 years from now? Will we still need them, or will we all have implants in oor heids?

"If teachers sell it in the right way, they can even get sullen boys writing about emotions and experimenting with unknown phenomena, like metaphors and similes.

"And if a whole school can muster up enough vision and innovative thinking, sci-fi could easily provide a platform for learning across the curriculum, wi' weans dabbling in chemistry, expressive arts, language and other disciplines."

Despite the success of the BBC's Doctor Who on television, sci-fi books are still the order of the day for many Scots schools, rather than DVDs.

Sara Gordon, primary six teacher and primary school English subject co-ordinator at Albyn independent school in Aberdeen, said it supplements reading with science fiction, and primary six and primary seven pupils are encouraged to read 12 books throughout the year in different genres.

She said: "This has led to many of the children becoming enthralled by many of the new fantasy/science-fiction series that are now available.

"My view is that it is a valuable teaching tool for imaginative writing. It can fire up children's imaginations and be really helpful when teaching concepts like simile, metaphor or personification.

"The children can compare and contrast their own world with the ones they have created in their imaginations."

And Ms Gordon's pupils seem to agree.

Amy Doherty, ten, said: "Science fiction is so imaginative, yet the style of writing is so realistic that it's so easy to imagine. Me and my brothers used to read or watch a science-fiction film or book, then act it out."

Susan Heywood, also ten, added: "Sci-fi can go anywhere it wants and doesn't stick to things like real life and can always have an unexpected twist."

Finally, ten-year-old classmate Niamh Duthie explained why she loves the genre. She said: "It takes you off into a different world, a world you could never imagine."

But the worlds that pupils exposed to science fiction might imagine could very well produce future inventions – advances on air-con or CCTV? – or simply the script for the next Batman movie.