Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Learning sinks in a sea of claptrap

What do Education Minister Brendan Nelson and Don Watson, author of Death Sentence and Dictionary of Weasel Words, have in common? If you think it is their political affinity, you are wrong. The correct answer is that both have attacked the cliches and jargon that are drowning Australia's education system in a sea of claptrap. Nelson has been arguing against student reporting where levels of achievement are described by vacuous terms such as "beginning", "established" and "consolidated". Watson is reported as describing the Tasmanian education department's Essential Learnings pamphlet for parents as being full of buzz words such as "key element outcomes" and he tells parents: "There's absolutely no shame at all in saying you don't understand it."

Welcome to the world of edu-babble associated with Australia's adoption of what is called outcomes-based education. Even George Orwell would be surprised if he knew of the tortured language use that parents, teachers and students face.

Most parents will remember the time they went to school and, based on the belief that teachers taught and students learned, there were subjects such as English, history, geography, mathematics, science, art, physical education. Such is no longer the case. Teachers are now "facilitators" and "knowledge navigators". Children from prep to Year 12 are no longer students; instead they are described as "lifelong learners", "autonomous learners", "connected lifelong learners" and "self-directed and reflective thinkers".

In education departments across Australia, curriculum is no longer defined in terms of subjects such as mathematics, science and English. Instead, the priority is given to what are termed "essential learnings". A South Australian document describes essential learnings as: "Understandings, dispositions and capabilities which are developed through the learning areas and form an integral part of children's and students' learning from birth to Year 12 and beyond. They are resources which are drawn upon throughout life and enable people to productively engage with changing times as thoughtful, active, responsive and committed local, national and global citizens. Engaging with these concepts is crucial to enhancing the learning culture within and beyond schools/sites."

Education once focused on teaching students the content associated with particular subjects such as history or mathematics. The emphasis now is on teaching students to have politically correct "understandings and dispositions". The result? While many leave school culturally illiterate and unable to properly read, write and add up, at least they exhibit high self-esteem and are sympathetic towards the disadvantaged, the dispossessed, the environment and world peace.

The Northern Territory education department, in line with the psycho-babble reminiscent of the age of Aquarius, defines essential learnings as the "inner learner, creative learner, collaborative learner and constructive learner". Tasmania, not to be outdone, defines education in terms of "Thinking, communicating, personal futures, social responsibility and world futures".

The justification for overturning what many teachers see as a more sensible and practical approach to education is because, in case you haven't noticed, the world is changing. Phrases such as "rapidly changing world", "the world is rapidly changing", "meet the challenges of the future" and "meet the challenges of life in a complex, information-rich and constantly changing world" litter state and territory curriculum documents. The cliched nature of such phrases is cause for alarm. Repeating the mantra of change is also no substitute for acknowledging the truism that without knowledge of the past it is impossible to understand the present or to address the future.

Most parents probably expect that the curriculum is divided into year or grade levels, with students expected to learn what is taught and to show a minimum level of achievement each year. Given Australia's adoption of a developmental approach to learning, this is no longer the case. Not only does the curriculum, described in terms of standards or learning outcomes, equate to a number of year levels, but there are also few, if any, consequences for failure. To quote an SA document: "All children and students learn and progress in different ways and at different rates. Standards include specific outcomes and guide educators when tracking students to achieve a higher standard, rather than 'passing' or 'failing' at a particular point."

The NT Curriculum Framework also embraces a developmental approach: "Learning is a lifelong journey in which all learners develop at their own pace as they progress via many different pathways. Development patterns follow a broad continuum that builds on demonstrated knowledge and understandings." Although there is an element of truth in the observation that learning is a lifelong journey following different pathways, there is also the reality, especially in areas such as numeracy and literacy, that those students who have not mastered the basics at each year level are educationally at risk.

Source




Hasta la vista to literature in Australian schools

As noted in "Fahrenheit 451", one of the strategies oppressive governments use to maintain power is to destroy creativity and freedom by burning books. In a world where nobody reads, especially the classics, the culture becomes shallow and impoverished and people are easier to control. Of course, destroying books is something that only happens in Hitler's Nazi Germany or in Cambodia under Pol Pot. It could never happen in a civilised country such as Australia. Our education system ensures that students read great books, become culturally literate and sensitive to the moral and aesthetic value of good literature.

Wrong. Judged by the draft Victorian Year 11 and 12 English study design, those who should be the custodians of our literary tradition are happy to feed students a weak and insipid gruel guaranteed to make them culturally illiterate and in danger of being emotionally and morally adrift. Historically, one of the foundations of English teaching has been literature, defined as those novels, plays, poems and short stories that say something lasting and profound about the human experience and our relationship with what D.H. Lawrence terms the"circumambient universe at the living moment". In the new study design, the more traditional definition of literature is exploded to include: CD-ROMs, websites or blogs, computer games, hyperfiction and "multimodel texts which also make use of visual, auditory and digital features".

The result, the dialogue from an Arnie Schwarzenegger movie has the same value as a Shakespearean sonnet and students can spend their time watching films and giving oral reports instead of reading sustained works of fiction and having to write an essay inresponse. The situation is made worse in that, unlike the existing English study design, where students have to read at least four novels or equivalent works over the two years, in the new study design students only have to read one novel a year.

Compare the new Victorian English course, which has much in common with other English courses around Australia, with the course students have to complete when undertaking the increasingly popular and more rigorous International Baccalaureate. Not only does the IB language course place literature centre stage, there is no mention of song lyrics and videos, but students are expected to read 11 works over two years. A look at the IB English syllabus outline for Melbourne's Ivanhoe Grammar School shows works such as: Medea, Antigone, Othello, Macbeth, the Romantic poets, A Room of One's Own and The Virgin and theGypsy. Unlike the Victorian English study design, unashamedly the expectation is that students value their "literary heritage" and learn to read with discrimination and to "express ideas with clarity, coherence, precision and fluency".

Judged by the report recently released by academics at the Australian Defence Force Academy detailing the poor writing skills of many undergraduates, this is something students completing mainstream senior school English courses find difficult.

The flaws in the Victorian English study design are manifold. First, as has already been suggested, literature deals with human predicaments in a unique way. No amount of watching Neighbours, googling the internet or SMSing friends will teach about human nature as does studying Macbeth or Greek tragedies such as Oedipus Rex. Such plays reveal in an imaginatively compelling way the influence of elemental emotions such as greed, jealousy and ambition. Students also learn about the destructive influence of hubris and the fact that, being human, we are not always in control.

Information is not knowledge and understanding should not be confused with wisdom. One of the benefits of great literature is that it tells us something significant, lasting and profound about the human predicament. Especially among young children, as argued by the American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, literature is also important in nurturing emotional and psychological wellbeing. Classic myths, fables and legends such as The Iliad and Beowulf address in an immediate and profound way many of the uncertainties and dilemmas faced in growing to maturity.

Literature, unlike the more general category of text, is also unique in the way language is used. Reading a computer manual asks for language tobe taken literally and the reader seeksinformation in its most straightforward guise. Reading literature, on the other hand, requires language to be read aesthetically, and when reading William Blake's poetry or the novels of David Malouf one encounters similes, metaphors and a musical quality in language impossible to find in an SMS message or most movie scripts.

The new study design is also seriously flawed in that one of the justifications in making English more entertaining, contemporary and relevant is the argument that not all students, especially working-class students and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds, are capable of reading theclassics. As we now live in the information age, where students spend much of their time communicating in internet chat-rooms and via SMS text, and where visual images are so pervasive, the written word is obsolete.

Ignored is that while some students, especially those labelled as disadvantaged, are denied our literary heritage, others are free to read widely and, as a result, are culturally enriched. Christopher Lasch, in The Culture of Narcissism, wrote of those who argue literature is not for all: "In the name of egalitarianism, they preserve the most insidious form of elitism, which in one guise or another holds the masses incapable of intellectual exertion."

One of the defining characteristics of the draft English study design is that everything is a worthwhile text for study. Not only is literature devalued, but there is also the belief that the function of reading is to analyse texts in terms of power relationships. Ignored is the aesthetic and moral value of literature and the basic human need to find some more profound meaning in life, the type of meaning that cannot be found in a hypertext document, a blog or a multi-model text.

As argued by S.L. Goldberg: "People are more likely than not to go on being interested in people, as much as they are in abstract theories and ideologies, or impersonal forces, or structural systems, or historical information, or even the play of signifiers. "So it is more likely than not, I'd say, that people will go on valuing those writings that they judge best help them to realise what the world is and what people are, and to live with both as realistically and as fully as they can."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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