Monday, July 14, 2008

Australia: Safety warnings about fairytales?

TEACHERS are being urged to give children safety messages after reading them fairytales warning not to copy characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Hansel and Gretel. A new child protection curriculum being implemented by the Education Department also requires teachers to refer to children's "sexual parts" and use their correct anatomical names with children as young as three.

Child development experts have backed the measures, but critics believe they are an example of political correctness overkill that could turn children into "little nervous wrecks".

Parents across SA are being briefed on the impact of the new curriculum, which aims to teach children from preschool upwards the early warning signs of being unsafe and recognising abuse.

Teachers have been trained to be wary of storybooks in which characters put themselves at risk - and to respond by offering safety messages. For example, children would be warned not to talk to people they don't know as Little Red Riding Hood did with the Big Bad Wolf; not to walk around unsupervised like Goldilocks; and not to enter unknown houses like Hansel and Gretel. Popular modern books would also face scrutiny. The picture book Pig in the Pond, in which a farmer strips off to have a swim on a hot day, would be followed by explaining that it would be inappropriate to undress in front of someone you did not know.

Emeritus Professor of Child Development at UniSA, Professor Freda Briggs, who was consulted in the curriculum's development, supported the measures, calling for them to be implemented nationally. "This is about appropriately empowering the child," she said. "Kids are talking about sex at age five now. It's so in-your-face, I'm afraid that innocence is gone. They are sexualised younger and younger. "We need to use correct body terms because by giving children silly names or names that only the family understands, you're telling your child that you can't cope with talking about it. How does a child get help if nobody understands?"

But Australian Family Association spokesman Jerome Appleby said the measures - the first update to the child safety curriculum in more than 20 years - encroached on the domain of parents. Putting safety messages on fairytales risked frightening children unnecessarily. "You don't want to scare children too much and create an environment of fear," he said. "We don't want to create little nervous wrecks. "Parents are best placed to determine how much they need to tell their children and at what age."

Mr Appleby said teaching young children about the correct names for their "sexual parts" would contribute to the early sexualisation of children. "This will destroy the innocence of children too early," he said. "I don't think it's appropriate for very young children. They aren't ready for those sorts of adult concepts and it's a sad indictment on society."

Social commentator David Chalke said drawing modern morals from fairytales was fine, if stories or characters were not altered. "A lot of nursery tales are cautionary tales in their original sense, so I don't see a problem with making it relevant to today," he said. But Mr Chalke said it was "political correctness overkill" to introduce pre-schoolers to sexual concepts. "This is bureaucratic meddling; it's absurdity and it smacks of overkill," he said.

"To me, this is education bureaucracy getting above itself. "The heavy hand of the state is impinging on the parent-child relationship. They are saying that you must be correctly programmed from the age of three. We're talking about children who can neither read nor write. Leave the pre-schoolers alone."

Federation of Catholic School Parent Communities spokeswoman Ann Bliss said it was positive for pre-school teachers to incorporate safety messages into fairytales. "It's a good compromise. We're not throwing the fairytales out but we're engaging in conversations with our children, keeping them safe," she said.

In an emailed response, an Education Department spokesperson said: "There's no easy way to deliver a message about such a sensitive topic, and that is why the State Government enlisted the advice and assistance of local child protection experts in developing the program. The curriculum is taught in a way that is relevant and appropriate for each year level, and includes the use of anatomically correct and respectful language."

The Keeping Safe program was developed in conjunction with SA Police, Family and Community Services, the Australian Education Union, the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Source






Australia: Mathematics teaching dumbed down

STUDENTS are being taught maths at the most superficial level by teachers rushing to pass on the basic skills while shying away from complex ideas. In yet another example of children being failed by national school curriculums, a special report for the state leaders finds maths teaching is failing students by setting the bar too low.

The National Numeracy Review report, released to The Weekend Australian, criticises the national benchmarks in maths, which assess students against minimum standards rather than requiring a desirable proficiency. "The implication (is) that minimum standards are good enough, at least for some students," says the report on numeracy commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments. "All students and their families, however, have a right to expect high-quality - not minimum - numeracy outcomes from their schooling."

The review committee, chaired by the former head of the NSW Board of Studies Gordon Stanley, says the time spent teaching maths in classrooms has decreased over the past decade, yet students are expected to learn about a greater number of mathematical concepts. "Curriculum emphases and assessment regimes should be explicitly designed to discourage a reliance upon superficial and low-level proficiency," the report says. It recommends phasing out the streaming of students according to their ability, citing research that says it has little effect on achievement. "It does produce gains in attainment for higher-achieving students at the expense of lower-attaining students," it says.

The report recommends that all teachers, regardless of their intended speciality, be trained as numeracy teachers and maths be taught across all subjects. The report says primary school students should spend five hours a week and high school students four hours a week on maths and numeracy, including time spent learning maths in other subjects. The report also suggests introducing specialist maths teachers to work shoulder-to-shoulder with other teachers, particularly those without specialist training in maths teaching. It says students from the early years of school should be given complex maths problems and the language of maths should be explicitly taught.

The review was commissioned by the human capital working group of COAG to review international research about teaching maths and advise ways in which teaching standards could be improved. The report says literacy has received enormous attention and resources in recent years but numeracy provides a bigger challenge for schools. It uses the term numeracy, as opposed to maths, to describe the mathematical understanding required in today's workplace, defining numeracy as the capacity to bridge the gap between maths and the real world. "The mathematical knowledge, skill and understanding people need today, if they are to be truly numerate, involves considerably more than the acquisition of mathematical routines and algorithms," it says.

The report cites research that says Australia suffers from a "shallow teaching syndrome". Compared with other high-achieving countries in international maths tests, Australian schoolrooms have the highest percentage of repetitive problems and the highest percentage of problems of low complexity.

While the new national numeracy tests introduced this year will assess students against levels of proficiency, previously students were only judged against a benchmark set at the minimum level of knowledge required to progress through school. "They do not describe proficiency in numeracy or even the minimum standards that the community expects from Australian schools," it says.

The low standards expected of students are compounded by remedial programs targeting students failing to meet those minimum standards rather than aiming to assist all students to acquire some proficiency. "The rush to apparent proficiency at the expense of the sound conceptual development needed for sustained and ongoing mathematical proficiency must be rejected," it says. "From the earliest years, greater emphasis (should) be given to providing students with frequent exposure to higher-level mathematical problems rather than routine procedural tasks, in contexts of relevance to them."

Part of the problem facing schools is trying to teach more maths in less time, with some evidence suggesting the class time spent on maths has diminished over the years. One study estimates a Year 4 student in Australia spends about 250 minutes a week and a Year 8 student 210 minutes a week on maths. The report recommends primary school students spend 300 minutes a week and high school students 280 minutes a week on maths.

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