I didn’t think Stephen Smith’s performance as Shadow Education Minister warranted his appointment as Minister, but creating a part-time Education Minister – Julia Gillard will have to combine it with being Deputy Prime Minister, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister and Minister for Social Inclusion – is bordering on bizarre. It has unfortunate echoes of the two Ministers for everything in the early days of the Whitlam government.
While the media was preoccupied yesterday with ministries and Opposition leaders (another eyebrow raising decision), the ABS issued a report showing just why we need a full-time education minister. It was their second adult literacy survey.
It shows a slight prose literacy improvement on 1996, but still nearly half of all Australians are below the level 3 skills regarded as the ‘minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy’. The same is true of document literacy. (Prose literacy is understanding narrative texts; document literacy is the ability to locate and use information in various formats, including schedules, maps, tables and charts).
On the numeracy scale, more than half of all Australians were below skill level 3, and for a problem-solving scale, only 30% were at levels 3, 4 or 5.
There is also a further clue as to why 20% of graduates don’t have jobs suitable for graduates (pdf). By interesting coincidence, about 20% of bachelor-degree holders have only level 1 or 2 prose and document literacy. They are slightly worse on the numeracy scale, and much worse on the problem-solving scale. Further information is needed on whether these graduates are migrants, and their disciplinary backgrounds.
Regardless of the situation with graduates, there is clearly much work to be done to improve literacy. But will Gillard have any time to do it?
Andrew Norton 
A Minister for Social Inclusion? What next, a Minister for Being Really Nice?
BBB
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Andrew, I’m just thankful Macklin didn’t get the education portfolio, unfortunately, Rudd found another spot for her somewhere else. Lets give ’em a chance to screw it up before we start carping.
As for the unfortunate Mr Nelson, well, I’m sorry. Really I am (chuckle).
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I wish Jenny did get the ed portfolio. She would have certainly screwed up faster than julia Chavez.
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Really disappointed in that Gillard ‘super-ministry’ idea – if only Penny Wong had been given education.
Surely one reason to have shadow ministers is that they would come into power with some knowledge of their portfolio. It looks like we’ll have to give a lot of these new ministers 6 months just to learn what’s going on in their areas of responsibility.
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Andrew, isn’t education a state responsibility?
BTW, the title of your post made me think Julia had a problem with her reading skills! But that is just me being uncharitable to a proto-socialist.
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The idea of a common set of requirements or standards or an assessment tool that must cover every employable school leaver in terms of maths, english, mountain climbing ability or their recent history knowledge is outdated. Our society just keeps on hoping that the new church, unchanging, non-adaptable “school education”, is still relevant.
In the same way that every individual is different, and learns only what they want to know, rather than what’s thrust upon them by centrally driven and controlled education systems, and they’re told by people who are typically without life experience that they must know, it is also true that the range of occupations and needs of employers is as diverse and different.
It is not necessary to have such common standards and requirements.
People, even young people, will work out for themselves what they need to know to equip them for life during and after compulsory schooling. But in order to do that they need a suitable supportive, learning (as opposed to teaching) environment and time and space to work things out for themselves. And they will work out that different occupations or higher education pursuits will expect, need and / or require different education qualities and standards.
The problem that society has had for decades and won’t admit is that we teach young people a huge range of stuff most of which is not what they’re interested in or need to know in order to pursue their interests, because governments need to justify the ever increasing huge education capital and recurrent expenditures and to fill the time of teachers, but not efficiently however. And more often than not centralised education systems get it wrong and are out of sync in their grand education plans with the world that will change and exist when a young person completes between 12,000 and 15,000 hours or 10, 11 or 13 years of compulsory service to education masters in which they have had little choice or say, and doesn’t necessarily even match their values or beliefs.
If it is accepted by some that the School system was effective, then it would not be the case that after 12 to 15,000 hours in School every single person ought to have a high command of english or maths. But they don’t.
Let people work out for themselves what information they need and what choices they need to make to satisfy employers and higher education institutions. Let them be responsible. It is likely to resolve the issue of why University Graduates have not undertaken courses that might lead them to employment suitable for Graduates, instead of the other way round (i.e. Graduates expecting that they’ll have a suitable position, just because they Graduated with a specific degree). I suppose, though, this undermines this cash rich, but individually rights poor, conservative social democratic utopia we keep pursuing, where the State has primary standing and the individual and their needs, aspirations, interests, beliefs and values comes a poor second.
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Yeah, the literacy results overall were disappointing – we’ve made very little progress in Oz since the last survey.
But how does that become Julia Gillard’s fault? If we’re gonna point the finger, it’s got more chance of being due to the ideologically-driven interventions by the previous government that have diverted resources from needy public to un-needy private schools.
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Let’s hear it for the teachers’ unions!
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DD
Those funds are our money. part of my tax dollar goes towards funding ed. Andrew has shown in a previous piece he did that it is more cost effective for the government to fund private schools than it is to have more kids in public schools.
So stop the grubby attempt at stealing.
standards are low in publics ed because the reality is that the smartert kids on balance tend to go to private schools. The reason for that is an entirely different topic.
So we can throw more money in pubic ed but it won’t raise standards all that much simply because you cant turn a 95 IQ into 115. Those are the simple facts and it would be more honest and less wastefeul if we acknowledged the reality of the situtation instead of playing pretense.
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I don’t think there’s any evidence that private school kids are brighter than govt school students JC. They probably get more attention from their teachers, because classes are a bit smaller and all the troublemakers and no-hopers have been shunted off to the public system. When they are on a level playing field (ie university) public school kids tend to do better than those from private schools. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Uni-easier-for-public-school-students/2005/04/05/1112489491760.html
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Actually, speaking of graduates and graduate skills, one area that gets approximately one mention every two to three years is post-gradraduate education. It might be a waste of time having graduates wasting their degrees, and that might be important, but in my books, the big thing that is going differentiate Australia (and others) in the future is the super well educated. I feel this because whenever I’m in China, I can’t help but notice that they can now churn out graduates every bit as good (or bad if you prefer) as Australian ones. The main difference left is that they can’t get decent post graduate education going (probably for lack of staff), and this is where all the high end science employees come from.
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Byron: Speaking of numeracy and logic, have you thought about what you just said ? If you take out all the trouble makers and no-hopers, then what happens to the overall average intelligence of the class? Similarly, if you have a good versus bad education, what happens to the average intelligence also?
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I don’t think giving Gillard both portfolios is sending the right message about education, I agree…
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Rudd giving Gillard both portfolios highlights that Kev07 was busy reading his Machiavelli during the campaign.
It has nothing to do with reform or policy outcomes but more to do with the fact that Julia Gillard will have her hands so full that it will be difficult for her to undermine Principal Kevin and will make it even harder for her to deliver on the kind of KPI’s that Principal Kevin has set his class.
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This is a really bizzare choice in an otherwise very clever selection of cabinet. As the Commonwealth’s education responsibilities lie with the universities not schools, Gillard’s talents as proudly-philistine bar room brawling socialist are simply not appropriate. Sure, she is perfect for IR and maybe health, but not for the universities.
Let’s pray that Glyn Davis is able to take the policy reins, with Jules just rubber-stamping.
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Most of these sorts of problems would seem to have arisen during primary and secondary school, but I suppose the link with tertiary is the poor quality of many primary and secondary school teachers. I can’t see Gillard overhauling teacher training in any meaningful way – eg by forcing States to allow other professionals to teach without losing a year’s pay doing a Dip.Ed.
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The reference to so called “trouble makers” and “no hopers” is awful and demeaning.
I don’t believe that any young person cannot fit in and succeed. It’s just that the common old mainstream model of education, state and non-state, has not adapted enough and finds it difficult to accommodate a diverse range of intelligent, knowledgeable young people. Usually the “trouble makers” are too intelligent to be squeezed into the moulds designed by bureaucrats and to waste time on things they don’t want or need to know to get on in life. Yet the young people rejected for these reasons are just the people to succeed, the entrepreneurs, creators we desperately need.
At the very least the Catholic Schools accommodate a range of students, and in addition, there are small alternative schools that enrol students with a range of abilities. In fact, alternative schools appear to be far more accommodating than even their state school counterparts.
My experience in non-state education is that when young people, even those rejected or on the outer of State Schools, are in an environment where they are respected and trusted, and have the right to use their voice, have an opinion, no matter what it is, and they are genuinely engaged in communication and dialogue, and even better, have an equal role and vote in the running of their school, they flourish.
When young people feel safe and respected, they become empowered, and they learn so much, especially when they can focus on what interests them most. I have seen young people who have been completely demoralised and disempowered by mainstream state schools, who couldn’t look an adult in the eye, hardly ever spoke to adults, with bowed shoulders, come back to life after a few months of being set free in a supportive learning environment, and learning to take responsibility for themselves, and their choices. Its simply not possible for outdated mainstream schools to accommodate that sort of individuality, especially in large schools with high student to teacher ratios.
My chief concern about Ms Gillard is whether she can let go of her politics and her apparently fairly entrenched attitudes to be impartial and prepared to learn when seeking to understand and accept different models of education and learning, and learning environments, which must be subject to the informed choice of parents and young people, not governments. Only people knows what best for them and that serves their needs, beliefs and values. Governments must change and learn to support the informed and expressed needs of people, not just their political ideology or partisan political policy.
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My chief concern about Ms Gillard is whether she can let go of her politics and her apparently fairly entrenched attitudes to be impartial and prepared to learn when seeking to understand and accept different models of education and learning, and learning environments, which must be subject to the informed choice of parents and young people, not governments.
The office, the entourage and the Boeing Business jet all fired up and ready to go on fact finding missions around the country and the world will focus her mind very quickly is my guess. I have no doubt she’ll make the final transition very quickly.
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That’s very deep Derek. My experience is that a fair few of the kids stuffing up public schools have problems so well set in stone (some undoubtedly of biological orgin), that there’s basically nothing you can do about them. Similary, even the ones with problems of a non-biological origin often come from situations where no school is going to help them (e.g., domestic violence, homelessness, drug addicted parents etc. Just look up the stats for yourself), and furthermore, no school should be expected to be able to help (as seems to be the case now with public schools, who get cop the blame for societies problems).
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conrad
You are correct. When public-school defenders and Denialists start in with the “public schools must take all comers” etc., I wonder how feasible would be a system whereby these “troubled” children could attract a Super Voucher, of, for example, a value 50 (or so) percent above current funding that child receives in the comprehensive system.
This might provide incentive for niche and talented educators to create schools that specialise in educating “troubled” and “at risk” kids. These kids could spend their Super Voucher at these specialist schools.
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Jc,
It didn’t in Queensland. The focus has been all on Labor policy, and education according to Labor, in State Schools of course, and the usurping of curricula (that is mandatory for all Schools – State AND non-state) for political purposes.
Labour shortages are just one of the consequences.
Another is the way it is so easy to put forward superficial motherhood and me too statements and talk about soft drink on FM radio stations in the run up to an election, aimed at naive young voters in order to create a political idol rather than be subjected to in depth questioning. This leads to the question, that while young people go to school to be taught, regurgitating information upon command, how much time do they have to think or to work who they are, how they fit into the world and question, challenge, and debate what’s being served up to them, without being sacrificed as troublemakers?
The question that few ask is how much has this outdated education methodology or Ms Gillard’s ideology got to do with supporting young people prepare for their lives as effective adults in a civil, open democratic society? When will students and apolitical teachers be left alone to get on with learning together?
In Queensland under Labor, totalitarianism has supplanted democracy. Choices have been taken away, not opened up. Discrimination abounds, and human rights are hardly considered. But apparently, I’m told, social justice is considered for a few lucky people who deserve it, in Labor’s view and opinion. Non-conformers and dissenters to Labor’s excessive policies, legislation and regulations are hounded and punished mercilessly. This has profound effects on education in Schools. And Mr Rudd comes from Queensland.
I can only hope that the same does not happen with an Australian Labor Government (but we will be “team Australia” according to PM elect Rudd). I just don’t know how that accommodates individuals whose beliefs, needs, values and aspirations go beyond or are different from Labor’s ideology. I hope that democracy and freedom will flourish, but time will tell. I hope not too many more people are hurt in the process. I don’t want to see more young people become pawns and wasted in others’ grand plans, simply because they remain the largest minority group without rights in Australia.
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Conrad,
I don’t believe any school must accept young people as students if they can’t take responsibility for themselves.
There is nothing to say though that they can’t develop responsibility for themselves and in a collective. The society around us is such a collective. It operates in democratic ways, that at some time, young people need to accept and fit into, even if in their own individual way.
In my independent democratic school environment, I’ve seen young people turn around and become active members of the community. The School community, that is the students and staff, decided whether they could enrol based on a “check out” period. The community created a culture and sought to maintain that culture. This includes young people who had been tossed out of home and living on the streets; young people with the societal labels of ADD and ADHD weaned off stupifying, controlling drugs; highly intelligent young people who were way too intelligent for their hapless teachers; non-conformists who wanted to dress or look a particular way; young people who have experienced and use violence themselves in lieu of communicating in times of stress; young people who want to focus on their interests alone above all else; etc. The great majority of the few students were stable, grounded people, as you would expect in any group representative of the society around us. At times and this was part of the learning by the community and its experience, the community tolerated the intolerable, learnt the warning signs and more effectively used the restorative and real justice system.
It takes a supportive learning community and respect, trust, justice, fairness, equity and above all else freedom, as is the promise of democracy and necessary for the soul, coupled with the expectation of responsibility and the acceptance of the consequences of the choices that they make supported by diverse, life experienced people. The last thing they need is to be compounded and hidden away from other young people with a bunch of other young people who also have so called problems. No-one is free from defects, we’re all imperfect, and labels remain attached to people who systems decide ought to be segregated away from other people.
I believe state schools have allowed themselves to act as a school of last resort. There is absolutely no reason for this to happen. It’s up to State Schools to adapt and change.
Change never comes easily. Expectations of change can only result from changes we all make.
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Conrad – children who disrupt classes or who have no interest in learning are not necessarily low in IQ: it can be a question of attitude rather than intelligence. The current obsession with school retention rates often makes things worse: kids who who would be much happier working are pressured to stay at school by their parents because of the stigma attached to ‘dropping out’, or because of the over-emphasis on the importance of higher ed.
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Derek:
The issue I find amusing is how this new government is combining education with IR.
There seems to be no sense, no idea that a great part of education is education for its own sake, noit just some robotic learing to get someone a job.
This is what ed policy is so damaging and why no ed policy offers the best outcome.
The US higher ed under-grad system is a great example of what i mean. US Undergrad. ed is mostly about learning for the love of learning.
How boring is this new ed polcy going to be.
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jc
You are correct. For the life of me I cannot understand how Labor has managed to hoodwink so many people that it is the “Education party.” The only issues they are concerned with are “access” and “equity.” This is why the only response they ever have to some or other challenge is “more government funding.”
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JC
Learning ought to be fun and enjoyable and for the love of it. Learning can happen all the time, if everything is approached with an open, discerning mind and the right and ability to enter into dialogue.
But most don’t make learning fun and enjoyable. It’s tedious and repetitive and worst of all, time inefficient. The Qld Police Minister recently referred to Schoolies as having finished 12 years of hard work. This equates to the completion of their sentence – so now, for more hard work in higher education or workplaces.
Knowing how people learn has been forgotten, or worse ignored. The research is available, but is often used in part to justify mainstream education the way it is.
Learning, for example, is treated as the preserve of teaching. It is not. Some young people I know actually believed they could only learn if there was a teacher teaching them – some reading this probably also believe such brainwashing. They quickly learnt the opposite was true and have been successful anyhow.
Accepting learning is completely natural, and need not be forced, regimented, and tested every step of the way is often ignored for economic ends.
Young people soon realise what they need to get on in the world. That includes certain proficiency in a range of areas of knowledge, including, but not limited to, literacy and mathematics. These are generally subsidiary to the learning journey of young people heading in the direction they want to take in their lives.
I know enough about the US to understand how many schools and colleges regard learning. And there a number that are able to operate in the way I want a school or a university to operate – democratically, with respect to the open, civil democratic society in which we live, not the way that some would have it become by skewing education and teaching and learning.
BTW I’m not at all surprised by the connection of education, employment and IR. After all it is a Labor Government. They need the order and control exercised in Schools, where there is excessive, highly influential union involvement at all levels, to flow on into IR and employment. It’s either or both a golden or poisoned chalice.
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JC
I’m sorry, I forgot to say, the big difference between colleges and universities in the US and independent / private schools in the US compared to Australia is that they’re truly independent of government, so far.
In Australia, we have too easily accepted money from government. Standing on our own feet is foreign to us.
Of course, the US has sufficient people mass and wealth to ensure private schools and colleges can rely on private income, but the US was not always as big and wealthy.
My co-workers and I suffered enormously and students’ learning was interrupted regularly from trusting government and relying even in part on their recurrent funding. Government proved once and for all for us how coercive, destructive and harmful to learning and community that government funding can be. I now only plan for a self-funded, human rights and responsibilities based, sustainable democratic centre of learning.
US university education research and private schools will stay a long way in front of us while we continue to look to government for financial support. Government funding constrains and is antithetical to choice, initiative, enterprise, entrepreneurship and risk taking.
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There is a very good piece By David Friedman, Milt’s son in his blog about finding a liberal arts school for his kid.
It shows the differences.
And yea, i’m aware of the differences between here and the US as I lived there for 16 years and my kids went through to senior high and almost college…. a truly thankless task in selection as the choices are amazing.
He wrote a few pieces:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
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You can’t have a part-time revolution. I think the WorkChoices rollback will be enough to see the folly of this and that a reshuffle will see a fulltime minister in this role.
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Byron and basically Derek also “children who disrupt classes or who have no interest in learning are not necessarily low in IQ: it can be a question of attitude rather than intelligence”
I didn’t say they all did. But denying the fact there lots of stupid kids out there also high on extroversion (who hence disrupt class), is just denying reality. The same is true for kids with mental health prolems. Its also not practical for governments to kick, say, 12 year olds, out of school (and I presume legal also). These kids henceforth end up in some public school (who are the last resort — and yes, basically someone has to accept them, unlike your claim). No doubt some schools are better than others at handling them, but in the end there are some proportion of kids who are either too stupid or too troubled for any school to be able to deal with within a decent time span. You can say the words “community”, “helping”, “etc.” as much as you want, but it simply isn’t the reality. Most teachers wouldn’t even have the skills to deal with some of these kids (its hard enough for people trained just to deal with them). In addition, I doubt most parents with normal kids would want there kid’s education disrupted for a few years such that they can do the community a favor as some proportion of these kids are reintegrated. As I’m sure you are aware it takes _years_ of effort to re-integrate these kids, and some with mental health problems (or just plain stupidity) never will be no matter how hard you try. THere’s cold hard data out there on mental health in children (as there is on the stability of IQ over time), and it isn’t very pretty.
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Conrad
We’re hardly talking about the exceptions here. We’re talking about big population numbers and statisical ananlysis of these numbers.. The exceptions are just that exceptions as normal distribtuion charts will indicate.
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Conrad,
I’ve told you my experiences, and what you’re doing is contending that my direct experiences are incorrect or untrue. I can only assure you that they’re not. The changes we observed was not over years, but over weeks, months and rarely, but sometimes, up to 2 years. This what it takes to shed the effects of past poor experiences of mainstream education.
What you are also doing, and failing to recognise, is:
– expecting all schools to be the same (just as much as governments would want them to be), and
– overlooking that very few schools could be properly referred to as learning communities, where learning is not restricted to just young people, but also staff AND parents.
The common mindset seems to be that it’s only kids that need to go to school to learn, and everyone else is an expert who must teach kids what they know, especially about their pet passion (usually interesting, but irrelevant to other people). Only when it’s realised and absorbed that learning is a whole of life activity, that it ought to also be accepted that learning does not stop simply because someone is a parent or a teacher, or a bureaucrat. In learning together and communicating as equals we also adapt and compromise and don’t assume that anything remains the same.
I believe that education like most government controls ought to be reverted to community level. If that happened in education and local communities were involved in their State Schools and had input and responsibility for those Schools, then issues that arise from what you declare to be “lots of stupid kids” ought to be able to be responded to more directly, because the people involved live together in community.
If schools were places young people valued, and wanted and needed to be and where they liked spending their time, then they’d be reluctant to be anywhere else. When young people invest themselves in their school community and “own it” they prefer to spend as much time at school as possible, as we and other sister schools around the world have found. If young people were respected and treated as whole, intelligent people as they really are, with human rights, just lacking in some knowledge and life experience, then they would soon realise that exhibiting behaviour and making choices that were detrimental to their being at School would cause negative effects leading to the community deciding they needed to take time out and reflect on their actions.
I don’t believe there are “normal” kids. I think all young people are extraordinary individuals who are simply different from each other, just as adults are different. Its the environment, the culture and the other constituents of their chosen School community which determine how they’re treated and responded to. And the democratic values that I have referred to previously have a vital impact and positively support learning by all the people, especially about accepting people for who they are, as individuals, and neither expecting nor demanding change, but leaving it to the individual to decide those things for themselves, which they will do, given the right learning environment and the space and the time.
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Conrad
You will never get a great outcome from government schools as they are a government program that have no hope of offering choice in terms of matching the right kids with the right schools. It can’t happen. Only private markets can do that.
Think of it this way. Would you trust your food supply to come from the government and receiving the same qualties you get now including choice? Why on earth anyone would trust the government to offer a superior outcome in Ed is beyond me.
Why treat kids as though they have no differing needs. This is what amazes me about people touting government Ed. It’s a wrecked concept and will always remain that way no matter how much money we throw at it.
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JC — I think you can get good outcomes from government schools (just look at Finland), but I agree with you in terms of Australia. I also think that it would be impossible to turn Australia into Finland, since even authoritarian means would not change the culture.
Derek: Yes, I do disagree with you. I’m not saying your experience is incorrect, since you may have got lucky. Some people win tattslotto too, but not everyone does.
Being lucky enough to work with people that get to deal with mental health (etc.) problems and also people who measure the outcomes (I deal with learning disorders myself), I’m 99.99% sure that your experience is not the norm. We don’t need to trade anecdotes here either, because there is in fact mountains and mountains of data on it. For instance, a quick google scholar search brings up literally hundreds of papers, including meta-reviews etc. . Perhaps you should have a look through some.
Try typing “child mental health outcomes” into google scholar, and you’ll get a mountain of papers to wade through, including literature reviews etc.
You might like to type in specific terms like “childhood depression rates” and so on so you can look at the evidence in different areas if you’re interested.
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What about Finland, Conrad?
Some cultures are more compliant than others in terms of the desire to learn. Asian kids topping everything comes to mind. Why should they slowed by Euro kids for isntance.
My old shool was Melb. High which was supposed to be for kids who could pick things up quickly. Why allow for that tiny differentiation and not say for kids who are not so quick to grasp things. The government hasn’t got a hope in hell in changing the outcome.
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Conrad,
There was no luck, just the right learning environment for the people who created it and who subsequently chose it; people who cared and were prepared to invest their time, energy, their money and lots of patience into supporting one another; the right to be treated as equals and not lesser persons; the right and the freedom to express their opinions and be heard; the right to debate and vote on any decisions, especially those affecting them.
Your experiences are clearly different than mine and the environments you are aware of are also different. I don’t think that you’re trying to see or accept that things can be different or the extent of the differences. Perhaps you don’t want things to be different.
I wasn’t prepared, and still am not prepared to accept the unchanging problems of the status quo. The very last place to look to for solutions are governments. People who expect and grasp being free, and are individually collectively responsible, will always believe enough in themselves to seek the best and to do better, because they’re unconstrained by norms or others’ expectations or their dogma.
I was involved with people to create a better solution, using our own resources, selecting and appointing our own staff, seeking and providing our own campus, creating the necessary facilities – and it was succeeding, irregardless of, and in spite of, the mountains of research and papers you refer to. To the contrary, we know of supportive research, but we weren’t relying on it, because common sense and being informed by the combined knowledge of many diverse real life experiences, prevailed.
We can always do better. To even do better is a choice. Many don’t make that choice. To do better sometimes means stepping outside the square, and creating an entirely different paradigm. It so happens that we thought and acted similarly to others in other countries, who are similarly successful.
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JC — I agree with you. Its funny that you mention that. Perhaps the East Asians do have a right not to have whites in their schools, although as far as can tell for places like Epping Boys (public), its the smart whites trying to chase them around, so there isn’t too much worry about at present.
Derek: I’ve spent years of my life looking at these problems. In my particular area (reading) , I can tell you that despite the millions and millions of dollars spent, you are still going to find some percentage of kids who won’t get anywhere, no matter what you do (and everything has been tried), and they’ll have other problems because of it. Similarly, things like pscyhosis, depression etc. are also extremely difficult to deal with. So I think the only place I agree with you is the government isn’t going to think of the solution — although I think this is in part because there is essentially no solution, which I assume you don’t.
As I said before, I don’t care about anecdotes, just real data, and the real data is on my side. If you have some mystical cure to mental health, learning difficulties etc. that cures people in a few weeks, then my recommendation is to tell everyone. If you’re correct, I’m sure you’ll get the Nobel prize, and you’ll help millions upon millions of people that struggle with these things daily. Either that, or a mob of angry pschiatrists/psychologists will lynch you for putting them out of work.
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“You will never get a great outcome from government schools”
I understand that two kids who were at Nambour High School at about the same time are now Prime Minister and Treasurer.
That’s a great outcome.
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Spiro
Still gloating, Mr. Tifosso. By the way you skulked away like a dog that stole dinner when you were asked to explain the economics of free labor markets and why regulation is superior to promoting allocative efficiency.
That’s a great outcome.
Yea, it is. And?
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Conrad,
When will you get it? Our “mystical cure” is simply treating all people as people, nothing more or less although the learning environment includes: Neither positive discrimination to favour some, nor negative discrimination. No labels, no badges, and in fact, no uniforms (or uniformity) for that matter, by choice of the people. Everybody on first name terms. Not compressing people into small spaces or artificial timelines. A natural regenerating environment, because we believe people learn so much from the natural environment. Being in a built environment in which the people decide the design and use and aesthetics of buildings and rooms. Not compelling people to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise choose to do themselves. Giving people the right to choose and decide who they associate with or who they won’t associate with. Allowing learning to happen in any way that it suits the learner. Not prescribing or setting what people will or must learn. Believing and trusting people to work out things for themselves, in their own time. Importantly not having experts, but people with real life experience working, living and achieving things with other people.
Unlike you, I don’t wait around for the results of other people’s work in order to make changes. I do broad ranging research basing decisions on my experiences, and the knowledge and experiences of others.
Too often past research is the excuse for burying our heads in the sand, and not trying things our own ways in order to achieve the results we need and want. There is research out there. It’s just separating wheat from the chaff to find what works best.
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I get it Derek. However, I’m a scientist, not a witchdoctor, and I base my opinions on evidence, of which there is mountains (and mountains) in this area. You also sound like the type of postmodernist socioligists that screwed up the early childhood curriculums designed to teach children to read in Australia (amongst other things). That led to countless reading problems that shouldn’t have otherwise occured. This statement being a perfect example:
“Not prescribing or setting what people will or must learn. Believing and trusting people to work out things for themselves, in their own time.”
Sometimes this is just rubbish. You can be nice to people and wish for them all you want, but that won’t always solve your problems. Personally, the first time a bumped into a normal looking kid with an IQ of 65, I found it somewhat disturbing. The thing I know now is that there often isn’t a lot you you can do to help them educationally (alternatively, you can make their lives better other ways). THese days I’m just used to this, and thats just reality. Life isn’t fair, no matter how much you want it to be.
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“Learning ought to be fun and enjoyable and for the love of it. ”
On the face of it, this is not a bad idea. But why we could get a formal if boring education 30 years ago and present kids can’t? Was it fun in Newton’s time? Why we suddenly need to change teaching into entertainment.
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Andrew did you notice that the two most recent education ministers were so enormously successful that they became leader and deputy leader of their party?
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Conrad,
With the greatest respect, you don’t get it.
I don’t think there is anything that I have said suggests that I believe there is any one way and even any one right way to learn, and I rarely even refer to the word “teach”.
The label which you so readily want to apply is just apparently your way of understanding something that doesn’t fit into any neat boxes, groupings or research. I’m talking about people not theories. All I see that you’re looking for is some single descriptor that captures and cages it so it can be understood.
So when you “bumped into” a young person who looked “normal”, you sat them down to a test to determine their IQ? And that then determined your attitude to them? And what methodology did you use to determine their IQ? By asking general knowledge questions? Did you happen to ask them questions about anything remotely like what they’re interested in? What do you do when you bump into a kid that doesn’t look normal, don’t bother with them, because being normal counts and is important? What is your description of normalcy?
I have a friend who wasn’t considered to be normal. He received special education. He was taken away from his friends at School and put into special classes. It was determined that he ought to attend a special school. He’d been diagnosed, and treated and abnormal. Yet after his parents decided to take him away from such an environment and placing him in the sort of learning environment I’ve described and by treating him like anyone else, he grew immeasurably. He knew what others were doing to him, and how he was being treated. He wouldn’t come up to your measures, but to those who know him, now 10 years later, he’s a fully functioning person who has an incredible memory and recall for things that matter to him and can live a full independent life. You could argue that the special classes and schools could have led him to the same point, but it wouldn’t have because his self-esteem, belief in himself, his ability to be self-reliant, to communicate with people as equals would have been absent.
I’ve never described life as being fair, but I do say that people can treat other people fairly and justly and with respect. In describing groups of young people as “stupid”, or of low intelligence, undermines their fundamental worth as human beings. I don’t try to find answers for everything or to look for a single solution, because there’s a myriad of different ways and means for people to relate to each other and be included. I’ve already said it’s up to communities and individuals to deal with and respond to individuals and how they present themselves. Not every person will fit into every group. We don’t need textbooks and theories when we deal with each other, and we don’t need to package anybody with a label. Every person has abilities and can contribute. Treating them like science experiments is not the answer. Kids (and their teachers) get treated like this every day while at School, with new learning and teaching fads being tried on them, new politically expedient education policies being rolled out and tested on them endlessly.
For each person there is a different way because they’re individuals and different from every other individual. I believe people like taking responsibility for themselves and it is the social nature of people to want to fit into the world around them, and they will if they have the liberty to do so – others need to shed their socio political beliefs and let them take responsibility and stand on their own feet. People don’t need prescriptions, they simply need to be treated like people with humanity and respect, as equals, and enabled and empowered, otherwise take their own power, to find their own answers, with support if they ask.
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Boris – I did notice that strange coincidence. Perhaps they will be able to score some early points off an under-briefed and over-worked Julia Gillard.
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Boris,
Let’s just keep repeating the past. That’ll get us a long way. That’s not how many discoveries happen, which often is about going beyond what is known, into the unknown, playing, making mistakes, failing, trying, and perhaps succeeding.
Was learning not fun in Newton’s time? Are we better people because learning was not fun for us? Serious study isn’t entertainment, but it’s fulfilling if it’s of interest and beneficial, and that can be fun. It’s a pleasure when you’re on a journey or a quest of your choice to seek out new knowledge.
Where is the world at right now? What crisis do we need to analyse to work out whether education, or learning and teaching as you thought it was, is right for today and the 21st century.
I can remember writing on slates when I was young. Shall we revert to that? We are in a post industrial, information age. Learning happens differently. Information swamps us. By comparison, mainstream Schools and teaching and curricula are still somewhere back in the militaristic, control and order of the 18th century. It’s only by looking around us that schools and curricula were found to be wanting. For decades we were taught from the curricula of the National Schools of Ireland, and meanwhile, as we were learning about things masqueraded as “facts” that we were supposed to learn by rote that typically related to people, events and places overseas, we weren’t learning from and about the people who knew more about this place and its seasons, its bushfoods, its natural remedies, its wildlife, through thousands of years of habitation of this continent, than we still know or bother to ask. And still, how many people know the language of any one of the indigenous peoples who were here and are still here. But then, I learnt French for 2 or 3 years, and that was obviously better in the view of educrats, because they made decisions about what I had to learn to pass the tests they set.
Having an open, questioning mind, and being able to have the time and space to think, and deeply, and look at the world around us, with access to the wealth of knowledge that exists (the mountains of research relating to many facets of life and living), the ability to engage in dialogue with people enables more learning than can be taught.
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Derek I appreciate your passion for this subject but I do not share your views. I agree that we don’t need one size fits all approach, but at the same time I definitely think there should be a MINIMUM standard that everyone should adhere to. This is because 1) kids have no way of knowing what skills they will need later in life and 2) the most important aim of public education is to prepare kids for adulthood where they will have to swim on their own. In a sense, the only reason to have public education is to remedy a fundamental inequality of opportunity stemming from the fact that kids do not choose their parents. This inevitably leads to some sort of equalisation approach.
My education (in the Soviet Union) was very much in the style of 18 century yet it equipped me with skills to survive into 21 century on 3 different continents. Sorry I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it . Sure, improvements and modernisation are always possible but they should be done carefully, and, most importantly, without throwing the baby with the bathwater. In my view traditions are at least as important as innovations.
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Derek, Conrad, Boris – I’ll close this thread tomorrow morning (ie Sunday 2 December).
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Boris,
People in Russia have been great innovators with regard to education. I know of examples of education that have been happening for at least decades that do not follow the norm that you talk of.
A free, natural learning environment, an open questioning mind in which young people are connected to the real world, and not separated in compounds in an artificial world devoid of the democratic values that exist in the society in which they live, enables young people, supported by a range of resources, facilities and life experienced staff, to see, hear and check out what they like doing and best of all supports real learning. Creativity and innovation are byproducts of learning in this manner. Even more importantly, its accessible, relevant learning, where tuition is readily available according to expressed needs in small committed and interested groups with prepared, committed and knowledgeable tutors. even better, there are no roadblocks to learning. Progress in learning happens quickly as a natural consequence.
I have no difficulty with setting my standards to what I expect of young people who have decided they were ready to demonstrate how they’ve prepared themselves and what steps they’ve personally taken to be regarded and to live as independent, effective, responsible adults in an open, civil democratic society. But then my standards will be different from yours, and certainly different from, and much higher than those standards set by the State. So whose standards do we work from? The minimum standards? As a parent, as an employer the minimum is not enough.
Individuals need, instead, to work out for themselves, what skills, knowledge and standards they need to have to function in the world around us.
I know young people, and I know of many others around the world, who were working these things out for themselves from ages 11, 12, 13 and upwards. They were studying their chosen interests and pursuing their passions, because they could, supported in the ways shown above. They were seeking part time work, negotiating their wages and conditions, knowing and realising and valuing their labour and the skills and knowlege they brought to their work and deciding for themselves what worked best for them, withdrawing their labour if the work or the employers’ conditions did not suit them. They realised and accepted from a young age that the objective of their education was to be independent. They went on to further education and / or employment (sometimes doing 2 or more jobs) and / or established their own enterprises. Typically they had emotional intelligence and were ahead in knowledge, in practical skills, maturity and life experiences than others of similar age, or older, who had been required to follow the one way set by others for them, by satisfying at least the minimum standards. They had taken on their own responsibility for their lives and directions and didn’t leave it in the hands of others who were remote from the real world and the needs of business.
I guess I generally disagree with you on the practice of public / State Schools. I think that it ought to be their raison d’etre to support young people prepare for their lives as independent, responsible, effective adults. I think that this purpose got lost long ago in a fog of political interference. It’s been more often the case that young people have emerged from schools as dependent adults, who cannot or are unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, because for most of their lives responsibility has been taken from them, not expected of them and not given to them. They’ve been responsible to others, but not for themselves. Being responsible to others is not empowering and only serves to suit more powerful people, organisations, employers and governments. It allows others to exert power, control and to easily direct. It is therefore antidemocratic, and severely mitigates the incredible benefits of liberty and freedom. If the purpose you ascribe is accepted as being accurate, then there is sufficient evidence that State Schools are failing in that role for a large minority of young people.
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Derek, I don’t think we are ever going to agree (and yes, the way I get the scores is to sit down and do the testing — or at least someone else does for me). Basically, I believe in science, psychometric testing (and I quite understand that types of problems it potentially has), etc. I also realize that there are relationships between things like standard IQ and creativity, which you appear to think are independent.
Oddly enough, you also appear to believe in emotional intelligence, which is, of all the things we’ve talked about, the the construct that has the least scientific validity.
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