Republished with permission from Online Opinion
“Revolution, revolution … there has already been one.�
Lu Xun, The True Story of Ah Q, 1921-22. (trans.)
The great Chinese satirist and social critic Lu Xun knew a thing or two about revolutions.
Lu Xun wrote that line when the newly-awakened nation of China had thrown off the dynastic Emperors barely a decade before. As his characters smashed clay tablets proclaiming “Long Live the Emperor�, Lu Xun offered a darkly prescient vision of the cataclysmic revolutionary violence that would again convulse his nation a generation hence.
That is why this quote, delivered by a weeping nun sheltering from the rampage, is in my view the lynch-pin of Lu Xun’s legacy to us. His warning is stark – that revolutions have a tendency to roll you back round to where you started, and that things get broken along the way.
That is why I fervently hope that the latest revolutionary, our Prime Minister Lu Kewen, has read Lu Xun. If so, then perhaps he coined the term “education revolution� as an ironic homage to Lu Xun’s prophetic warning. If not, then I fear we are in for a bumpy ride.
We should not ignore the spirit and intent of language such as “revolution�, even when it is thrown about casually or for PR purposes. We know there is still a rump of old-guard ALP who get excited by such terms, but they really ought to check their heart medication before manning the barricades. If Lu Kewen announced the “education revolution� to give these old warriors one last thrill, then it would be cheaper and less troublesome to simply write them a prescription for Viagra.
Regular readers would know there have been many revolutions in Australian education, each of which has been explored, contested, celebrated and lamented by a range of writers here. Knowledgeable participants, like the weeping nun, know that when it comes to a revolution in education, “there has already been one�.
So if, as it seems, Lu Kewen’s education revolution is a merely a rhetorical catch-cry to unify a range of disparate initiatives, then it is far less a revolution than a continuation of Australia’s long, diverse, sometimes chaotic yet always fruitful development of public education.
Whatever are the results of Lu Kewen’s revolution, we should all hope that Australia does not, in a revolutionary frenzy, abandon the public system of education that has served it so well for so many generations.
Personally, I would have preferred to work towards an education Renaissance. There is much to be done to restore public confidence in our education system, and the public discourse currently abounds with Cultural Revolutionaries who smash the tablets of public education without a thought for their heritage and value. These thieves in the temple voice pious prayers to the secular deities of “choice� and “falling standards�, when what we really need is to bring our children together into a place that lets each learn, participate and express their identity without leaving their religion, language or culture at the front door. At stake is a socially cohesive future for this country.
Doubtless the critics will remain strident and cloth-eared with their harrumphs that kids today can’t write and can’t spell. And doubtless today’s Year 6 class will fulminate in 2050 that the youth of tomorrow can’t compose a Flash animation, program a Facebook application, or write a blog to save their lives. But that is all part of education’s wheel of karma, revolving us back to where we started.
In any event, I shall now have the opportunity to observe the spinning wheel from a distance, as I depart these shores for the USA, the land of No Child Left Unturned (sic). Those “Foreign Devils� too are no strangers to revolution. While, of course, I owe so much thanks to my family and friends, I reserve the greatest share of gratitude for our system of public education, which still consistently and quietly helps to raise the next Australian generation, and enables us to spread our wings across the world.
Merc, great to have met you the other night and we look forward to your intelligent missives from LaLa Land.
I read this article yesterday on Online Opinion, and again this morning, and I just don’t get it. Are you just saying:
1) The word ‘revolution’ is overdoing it.
2) You like public education
3) You’re moving to the US
4) You read that Kevin Rudd gave himself a Chinese name
Or am I missing something?
Long bow award for this one – the comparison between the violent and bloody destruction of 20th C china and the disparite changes to the workings in a foreign education department ?
Lu Xun’s story of Ah Q also contains the prophetic end where the landlords beome revolutionaries in name so that they can retain power.
Poor old Ah Q can’t write so can’t sign his name on his confession( which will lead to his execution ) thus ending a sad life which was based on self delusion.
Rather than being concerned about the nature of revolution Lu Xun was using the True Story of Ah Q to reflect of the diminished and weak spirit as he saw it of his fellow countrymen.
And why bring the Cultural Revolution into this discussion – the Red Guards were of an entirely different age and political era ? There is enough paranoia about furtive maoists working in education departments as is.
Murph, there is not a long bow in sight here, because Mercurius is not suggesting a direct comparison or causal link.
Mercurius is fundamentally making an argument about how Rudd has framed the project of educational reform, and how he feels it would be better understood going forward. Revolution, as a broad concept, tends to suggest destruction, whereas Mercurius feels that public education needs to be preserved and restored.
The use of Lu Xun has several purposes: it reminds us of another history of revolutionary change and its attendant problems, and it does so in terms that are consistent with Rudd’s self-styled ‘Lu Kewen’ image, thus elaborating further an ironic frame (given the conservative obsession with Maoists). It is not about suggesting, or implying that the Cultural Revolution is somehow consonant with Rudd’s agenda.
This is the key sentence, which reveals the substance of Mercurius’ position:
“Whatever are the results of Lu Kewen’s revolution, we should all hope that Australia does not, in a revolutionary frenzy, abandon the public system of education that has served it so well for so many generations.”
I’ve got to agree with the above comments, I’m not really sure what point is being made here.
What he means is this.
Mercurius
While I am sure your heart is in the right place and I congratulate you on your impressive successes and awards (listen on the OLO article), you need to sit back and work out what you are actually trying to say, and then say it. Like most here (but obviously not all), I am reasonably broadly educated and recognise the historical actors and events you mention, but what the fuck do they have to do with educating Australians and Rudd’s Orewellian “education revolution?”
FWIW I read Mercurius in a similar way to how Klaus K read his post.
All praise to Lu Xun… prescient and wise. Likewise, praise to George Orwell in “Animal Farm” and “1984″. Even in the 1970’s, 1980’s, persons living under the wreck of Bolshevism, reading Orwell for the first time, would remark how accurate his portrayals were.
Raise High the Banner of Lu Xun!
Let a Thousand Satirists Bloom!!
May a Hundred Fred Daggs and John Clarks Contend.
Follow the 08-Fold Way of Lu Kewen.
“Like most here (but obviously not all), I am reasonably broadly educated and recognise the historical actors and events you mention, but what the fuck do they have to do with educating Australians and Rudd’s Orewellian “education revolution?â€?”
Good God you’re dense. Yeah, how could you possibly tie into one post the wildly disparate subjects of critical analysis of revolutions past with critical analysis of a revolution pending.
Orwellian? Umm, yeah no shit. See #8.
The fact that this beautifully constructed, intelligent and witty piece of writing is beyond some commentors here is not an indictment of Mercurius. If you want literal-minded, dull, tautological prose (as seems to be so valued), then say it, instead of implying there is some fault in this piece.
Great post Mercurius. You are a gifted writer, so don’t let the dullards get you down.
I agree with adrian @ 11.
BTW, Mercurius, do they have the internet in USA? If so, could you please continue to blog for LP over there?
Come on, JG. I thought this was a good piece, albeit one that repeats the old lie about public education’s role as guarantor of social cohesion. Mercurius’ instincts are quite correct, and one wonders whether Rudd will ever be criticised by Teh Left for promising an ‘education revolution’ but (mercifully, for us) delivering tinkering. I really doubt it. It will probably be enough that he doesn’t cut funding and is not right-wing. Issue ownership and all that. And of course, truth in politics is something more often (but admittedly not exclusively) demanded of the wingnuts.
Cheers
BBB
Mercurius
While you are obviously a passionate and sincere budding educator, my friend YOU are the problem. Your attitude towards education is evil and to be resisted by all level-headed congnisant beings.
Whatever are the results of Lu Kewen’s revolution, we should all hope that Australia does not, in a revolutionary frenzy, abandon the public system of education that has served it so well for so many generations.
The Australian people are already voting with their feet on the supposed transcendent “good� of public education. The flow out of the public system to the private system has been rising since the late 1970s, and today more than 40% of High School students attend non-government schools. Even Kevin Rudd has made it clear he has no romantic attatchment to the “public system of education.�
KEVIN RUDD: I don’t care whether schools are government owned or non-government. What I am concerned about is the quality of education provided through those schools and their physical assets, infrastructure and the training of their teachers.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2089994.htm
There is much to be done to restore public confidence in our education system
What evidence do you have “public confidence� has fallen, and when did this decline begin? Even Mark insists
I, for one, would like to know whether there actually is a “crisis in education�. It seems to me that before we get to the policy nuts and bolts, a bit of evidence to base it on would be worthwhile, and this may come out of the McGaw process. Too often I see statistics misapplied, tendentiously interpreted and generally bent into whatever shape fits the particular barrow being pushed.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/02/04/rudd-and-gillard-kick-start-the-national-curriculum/#comment-435619
Mercurius continues
and the public discourse currently abounds with Cultural Revolutionaries who smash the tablets of public education without a thought for their heritage and value. These thieves in the temple voice pious prayers to the secular deities of “choice� and “falling standards�
So you argue that while the public has lost confidence in the education system (presumably you mean public schools), you claim it is only “Cultural Revolutionariesâ€? who blame “falling standardsâ€? and lack of choice. So you include people like Julia Gillard (the er, er, er Minister for Education). On choice, you include the NSW Education Minister and his recent decision to allow public principals to choose their staff? And the federal government’s commitment to continue funding private schools? And the state governments’ continued commitment to a class system of public education declining from the elite selective schools to the schools in upper-middle class suburbs to the suburban comprehensive detention centres.
OR are you suggesting that in fact standards are not falling and that “choice� is a non-issue among the confidence-less public?
And aren’t our cultural heritage and values EXACTLY what the “critics� are trying to preserve?
when what we really need is to bring our children together into a place that lets each learn, participate and express their identity without leaving their religion, language or culture at the front door. At stake is a socially cohesive future for this country.
Ah yes, some good old-fashioned 1980s identity politics indoctrinated into our eight and fourteen year olds? But what “identityâ€? do children have? Of course. “Religion, language, or cultural.â€? No mention of “Australian” we see. So you think the way to restore public confidence in public schools is to encourage children not to think of themselves as Australians, but as what their parents and grandparents left behind? But the money-shot is surely your claim this deliberate and evil inflaming of balkanisation somehow is the holy grail of achieving “a socially cohesive future?â€? A quick review of the dictionary on “cohesiveâ€? would have helped this article immensely.
Doubtless the critics will remain strident and cloth-eared with their harrumphs that kids today can’t write and can’t spell.
So you think not being able to write or spell is a fart-in-the-bath? A beat up by “conservative cultural warriors� and the Murdoch press? What are you trying to say? That these unidentified “critics� are wrong, disingenuous, or irrelevant?
And doubtless today’s Year 6 class will fulminate in 2050 that the youth of tomorrow can’t compose a Flash animation, program a Facebook application, or write a blog to save their lives.
But wait, there’s more! Now, you are truly psychic. Flash animation and Facebook in 2050? ROFL!
In any event, I shall now have the opportunity to observe the spinning wheel from a distance, as I depart these shores for the USA, the land of No Child Left Unturned (sic). Those “Foreign Devils� too are no strangers to revolution.
While the US has a much greater left-tail of educational disadvantage which reflects great economic disparities and the depletion of social capital that attends high levels of multiculturalism/racialism, the US education system is far less sympathetic to your Freiresque Critical Pedagogy nonsense.
All that aside, you are clearly passionate about education and have achieved great successes. I hope you knock ‘em dead in the US and please keep us posted on your progress!
“That is why this quote, delivered by a weeping nun sheltering from the rampage, is in my view the lynch-pin of Lu Xun’s legacy to us. His warning is stark – that revolutions have a tendency to roll you back round to where you started, and that things get broken along the way”
Klau K and adrien,
I think this sentence is a poor understanding of Lu Xun and the True Story of Ah Q.Lu Xun died well before the revolution of 1949 and wrote the story of Ah Q at a time when contending warlords plunged China into political turmoil.
Mercurius’ idea that Mr Rudd should promote education reform without using revolutionary terms is fine and not disputed – I just think trying to draw lessons from this particular story was not thought out.
He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
I think I liked HH better. Less prolix so less nonsensical waffle.
Excellent post, Mercurius.
The flipside of the literacy and numeracy study showing not much improvement over the past forty years is that it also demonstrates that there was no golden age of universal excellence in literacy and numeracy. Education is a very complex policy domain, and it’s very hard to move a massive system in one direction – for a start, if you have a whole lot of teachers trained in one era, you can’t suddenly wish them away and wave your magic wand and bring into being a new wave of replacements, teaching whatever the Culture Warrior ideologically correct version of schoolin’ is… It’s obvious to anyone with any actual literacy that Mercurius is alluding to this – there’s no quick fix, and what has to be done has to be shaped by evidence about what works and careful planning, not some nonsense from the collected works of Kevin Donnelly.
“The flipside of the literacy and numeracy study showing not much improvement over the past forty years ”
If that is correct, and in view of the massive increases in funding, the reduction in class sizes, etc. should we not conclude that public education in Australia represents a case of government failure ona truly grotesque scale? If education were a proper market, Teh Left would be screaming blue murder.
BBB
Murph, I think Mercurius’ use is only in one sense alluding to 1949 specifically – he says that Lu Xun was ‘prescient’ – and otherwise drawing on Lu Xun to make a more general point about ‘revolution’. Perhaps his citation is incorrect in the sense that his interpretation of Lu Xun is incorrect. I don’t have the authority to make that judgement, but the substance and construction of his argument remains.
“Education Revolution” LOL. That’s almost as good as WorkChoices. A completely ridiculous name for it! I can’t believe that the media and public have allowed Labor to use this joke of a name without being completely ridiculed.
BBB, what it demonstrates is that teaching kids to read and do sums is not an easy proposition. If you cared to look more closely at the actual evidence, you’d find that we don’t do very well with the “long tail” – that is, the kids who are very difficult to teach. I hate to inform you of this, but not everyone is endowed with equal intelligence (and indeed just as crucially advantages from literate and stable middle class households). What I’m trying to suggest is that there will never be a time when everyone leaves school writing perfectly turned sentences or solving quadratic equations. Nor was there ever such an age.
Written very well Mercurius, if a little bit choreographical.
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Consideration for a voucher system is being entertained by at least one progressive think tank. The Weekend Oz ran an interview in The Weekend Oz by Chris Pearson with Michael Cooney former ALP advisor. Cooney’s part of a new think tank Per Capita which defines itself as progressive. Pearson and Cooney talk a little bit about what this means and it’s a constructive and courteous bit of trans-ideological conversation.
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Cooney also advocates a voucher system for education!
Pearson also ask him: Surely not everyone on what you’d call your side of politics would support that?
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Translation: most people on your side will be opposed. (Will they? The Left will but the ALP might not.)
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Cooney doesn’t answer the question.
In addition, much of the “massive increase in funding” goes into infrastructure and salaries. Kids aren’t all in non-airconditioned classrooms writing on slates with ancient textbooks anymore, BBB.
Education is one of the areas where economic theory is at its most useless. It’s nothing like some simple matter of tweak this variable and you get results, as in suggestions that if suddenly class sizes were raised kids would be better educated! Only a freakin economist could believe that. A proper study might actually pay attention to the actual problems of teaching and learning and also hypothesize that other variables than class size might be the independent variable.
Re Voucher System:
I have my doubts that thinking about education as a business is a good thing. My reservations stem, among other things, from the current predominant business ethos by which quality is non-essential, even undesirable. There are those who will argue, and there are businesses that do provide quality. When the market demands it, it is delivered. But still…
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However I’m also in favour of innovation in education. Lots of it. Nicholas Negroponte remarked in Being Digital that a 19th century surgeon transported to an operating theatre in the 20th century fin-de-siecle would be baffled. But a teacher from the same era would find a contemporary classroom reasonably familiar.
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Why?
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Obviously we are conservative with education. We fear experimentation will damage the future of our children. This is a reasonable concern.
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But I also think that our much increased (yet still limited) knowledge of brain functions, emotional incentives to learning, communication techniques provide the potential for a much better, more individualized, more flexible and more relevant system than we have now. More fun even. And no this doesn’t boil down to more gadgets in schools. A blackboard can be used creatively.
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Of course a voucher system wouldn’t necessarilly give us that. However if schools had to survive on their own they would have to do something to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. They may even tailor themselves to different kinds of kids and the result might be that different educational techniques designed for different kinds of minds would develop.
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Or maybe not. There are issues of equality and access that are important. One thing that seems certai is that innovation is not fostered by a centralized system. As Kim says:
That is my primary reason for favouring decentralization of one sort or other. it’s much easier to do things differently in a classroom than it is overseeing thousands of classrooms thru the extended apparatus of one of the more massive government departments.
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I think there is an unecessary prejudice against this reform direction amongst the Left. The last time I was in a left-wing political organization (2 years) discussing these aspects of policy the issue of choice was met with an obtuse insistence in bolstering up the public system. The person bringing up choice was not advocating a voucher system merely bringing up his own experience. He grew up in a small town with two schools: a ‘working class’ Catholic school and a non-functioning state high school. He said: if I’d gone to the public school I’d be unemployed.
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The response was a condescending request that he not show up to the Education policy discussion the following night!
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There are non-functioning schools and the reasons why they do not function will not necessarily be addressed by throwing more money at them. Given that this country is a developed economy in the Digital (and soon to be Biotech) Era we need an educated skilled population. Persons who are otherwise are likely relegated to the underclass. Not much fun. So ol’ Kevvie’s right about his
revolutionreform; Mercurious is likewise right we’ve been undergoing constant reform since the late 80s. But it ain’t over.>
I’d suggest an debate in which everyone put aside their default prejudices and try to examine different ideas – including the voucher system – with an open mind. I haven’t decided to support any idea in particular. I haven’t heard the arguments against voucher systems in any detail.
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However, given the issues of equity, given the Liberal Party’s default prejudice for the Greater Publc School circle. If a voucher system were a cure for our ills it would be better if the government responsible for its design were not of the Old School Tie set.
Well if you think the Tony Blair switch and bait trick of suddenly announcing how progressive it is to adopt right wing dogma is really and truly a shining third way forward, I imagine you’d agree with their self definition. It’s a bit sad that a “think” tank can’t think of anything else to advocate than old hat Blairism.
Ah yes, everyone who’s actually involved in education is “the left” and sound common sense is whatever economists and columnists say. It’s all the fault of the teachers union and the education faculties! OMG! Not every year 10 kid can write a beautiful essay! Who’s to blame? What’s the solution? There must be an easy one!
My worry is what will happen to school education if it gets hijacked by the boosters and urgers making their careers on the back of simplistic solutions…
That’s a dumb and trite remark. A surgeon would be familiar with the act of making an incision. What has changed is the technology (among other things). A 19th century teacher might or might not recognise the classroom layout, but wouldn’t have a clue how to use powerpoint, or to do anything else but drum in things by rote. With a big stick.
Lord save us from too much “innovation” – I thought it was the conservatives who claimed that kids’ lives weren’t some laboratory for policy wonks to try out their bright ideas on?
I think everyone who pontificates about schools should spend a week in a classroom or talk to say, ten actually existing teachers. No one runs around pretending that they can wave a wand and fix health – because there’s a recognition that many medical issues are technically complex. But everyone’s an insta-pundit when it comes to education.
Kim, the only thing I can infer from your comments is that you believe public education peaked in 1970 and no matter how much we put in we aren’t going to get much more back. I tend to agree. We need structural change, not tinkering around the edges of a system that fails to capitalise on extra resources.
BBB
All the statistics analysed surely include private education, BBB. If it’s considered that “teacher quality” is the issue, you may or may not get better teachers in private schools (the religious ones do seem to attract more pedophiles…). But if the idea is to raise standards generally – and the figures usually cited are national aggregates – a marginal improvement in the performance of a cohort whose likelihood of success is going to be greater before they ever step foot in a classroom – ain’t gonna do it.
In short, my argument is that the area to which effort ought to be directed is the relatively poor performance compared to international benchmarks of those who find literacy and numeracy difficult to start off with. That’s an enormous number of children. You need a systemic approach, not a few shiny new demonstration schools that people will go spend their vouchers at, because most of the “bad” ones will, surprise, surprise, be found in lower socio-economic areas. And before teacher performance is pinged as the reason – well, let’s see some figures. Everyone in education seems to have their own pet barrow to push. As if one change will fix everything. Very few seem to take either a big picture view or combine that with an actual appreciation of what goes on in classrooms.
Anyway, gotta dash. Unlike some of you mob, earning a living for me isn’t easily reconcilable with spending all day on a blog thread!
“I hate to inform you of this, but not everyone is endowed with equal intelligence”, “Kids aren’t all in non-airconditioned classrooms writing on slates with ancient textbooks anymore, BBB”, “suggestions that if suddenly class sizes were raised kids would be better educated” Jeez, what’s with the attitude? Who ever said those things? Who are you talking to?
“Education is one of the areas where economic theory is at its most useless. It’s nothing like some simple matter of tweak this variable and you get results” Sigh. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know much about economics, next to nothing in fact, but on the strength of your assumption here, I reckon I’m a touch ahead. I’ve never seen so many strawpersons!
BBB
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/teen-performance-on-three-rs-in-decline/2008/02/10/1202578601344.html
Kim a little present for you when you return.
I thought that was something he learned from Paul Keating and Bob Hawke.
Personally I think Tony Blair resembles a Vatican gargoyle who was struck by lightning giving him the power of speech and movement whilst simultaneously driving him mad with powerlust. The guy’s responsible for starting a shithouse war and he can go live at the bottom of a well-used septic tank as far as I’m concerned.
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Not sure whether that indicates support for him or otherwise. Maybe you can tell me.
Yes and that’s about it. Was there something you were saying about dumb and trite remarks?
A generalization. I believe part of the genius of American culture from the late 19th century on is grounded in their sadly decayed, formerlly excellent system of public education. In the 19th century this would have been relatively decentralized. In fact the extensive bureaucratization of American education is concurrent with its decay perhaps. But anyway, you don’t get all those inventions by teaching kids to recite stuff.
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Interesting allusion to powerpoint which I’d wager wasn’t in wide use when Being Digital was published 11 years back. But of course…
I’m sure the use of powerpoint has been incredibly destructive to pedagogical endeavours. So we should rid ourselves of this damn integrated circuitry and get us hence to a birch tree in order to retrieve a choice and sturdy length.
Yes as I understand it it, they do. However I’m not a conservative.
I agree.
I’m afraid I don’t see why that is so. Why are the designs of meta-bureaucrats better than teachers who are free to try things their way? I’m not making a stand against it. I’m likewise not advocating a voucher system either. I’d like to hear reasons not declarations however. You say we don’t need:
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Which is why I made the comments about the Old School Tie set. I’m strongly opposed to changes that will make it more difficult for the disadvantaged to get a decent education. However my friend, the Catholic school graduate, has a personal anecdote that says the existence of an alternative helped him get just that. Hello?
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Now I attended 9 different schools most of ‘em private. I chose to graduate from the local state high school. The History and English departments were brilliant. As I’d decided to pursue the Humanities this suited me. A science/maths student would’ve been peeved however. Except the Science Master (who was outstanding) we had one fellow who set fire to labs on a regular basis, another who not only accidentally dissolved his own roof but lacked the basic common sense to refrain from mentioning this to a Grade 11 chemistry class and a whole cadre of creationist Biology teachers!
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I could also write book about the commonplace venality of the Catholic boarding school I was interned in. Maybe I will sometime.
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I am not advocating a voucher system. I’m open minded about it. That’s all. One of the things that attracts me to it is that it gives people a choice. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions vis a vis how it’ll actually work, and there are access issues which I take very seriously. But I’m not going to reject an idea because it comes from the Right or because it disrupts the Doctrine that the public system is sacrosanct.
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And I’m not saying ‘one change fixes everything’, I’m saying many small changes may lead to great improvement.
Err, um, Adrien, it’s decentralised still in most states. Local school boards (elected) get to hire principals and set curriculum. And it’s appallingly bad.
California, which used to have an education system the envy of other states sunk rapidly after the 70s tax revolt when its previous high level of funding was radically stripped back.
Adrien – in respect of a ‘voucher’ system – you might look closely at the Long Day Care (0-5 y.o childcare) sector – which was once dominated by community based not-for-profit centres, and is now dominated by one private for-profit company, which has lowered standards of care, across all areas.
This sector has a ‘voucher system’ introduced by Howard, off the back of Keating reforms. This ‘voucher’ system has overseen a huge increase in parent fees, and a massive underwriting of private profit by the Australian tax-payer for lower standards.
BBB, you’re entitled to be skeptical about the claims that a broad-based public education system underpins social cohesion – but I’d like to know the basis of your skepticism, and perhaps also your ideas about from what other social institution such cohesion might emerge? From top-down moral guardianship? Noisy nationalist tub-thumpers? Spontaneous public displays of adoration for the Great Leader? Backyard cricket? Kangaroos and Holden Cars? The Stasi? Illuminati mind control?
If social cohesion isn’t encouraged or at least potentially provided for indirectly in our schools creating a common public space in which children can be socialised (in the psychological, not political, sense), then I can’t think of any other domain more capable of producing it…can you?
Thanks JG for the ‘evil’ comment. I shall frame that one as a souvineer on the wall of my misty castle while I cackle maniacally and play the pipe organ to the accompaniment of the approaching thunderstorm.
And thanks Adrien for giving us the word ‘choreographical’. It’s such a…deliciouvistic word!
I’d be happy to send postcards from America to an Australian audience, because it will be the only chance I get to write using proper spelling and phraseology. Note to self: It’s “couple hundred” not “couple OF hundred”. And “color”, “..ize”, “center”…etc.
That’s illogical if it rests on the premise that decision making should be decentralised to school level. Providing school education is not akin to selling a product in a market. Schools aren’t really “competitors” and have enough to do without looking over each others’ shoulders to see what’s working elsewhere. They don’t have the staffing levels to have people working on policy and innovation. Actually trying to successfully exist in a classroom is more than a full time job for most teachers.
Diffusion of ideas is actually the role of the dreaded educational bureaucrats and academics – to find what works best in a particular school and see if it can be more widely implemented.
Even with a voucher system, and league tables, choosing a school for your kids is not akin to choosing a brand of shoes on the basis (say) of price, style and comfort. You don’t walk into a schools bazaar and make a purchase. The decision is much more “sticky” and much more constrained by exogenous factors. Though people sometimes do move suburbs for the purpose of their kids’ school, you can hopefully see how this is a big thing. And it’s pretty deleterious to most kids to be moved around too much – you wouldn’t yank your kid out of a school four months into semester because you’d heard that there’s a better one across town. In any case, if the same curriculum wasn’t being taught, there’d be an obvious problem!
As to the Per Capita mob, what happens to the kids when their “bad school” gets closed down?
Here’s a take on the ANU study at New Matilda by an actual teacher:
http://www.newmatilda.com/2008/02/12/smarter-teachers-not-answer
Mercurius
You could at least pay me the courtesy of addressing my more more explicit points about your “ideas.”
JG – you fail to mention that public schools are reversing the trend in NSW and that there has been a surge in enrolments in public infants/primary schools and also a reversal of the decline in enrolments in secondary schools on the north shore and in the inner city, over the past 5 years or so.
The increase in numbers of enrolments in these high schools are a direct result of state Govt. investment in these areas. (Which sort of negates some of the comments following JG’s.)
If the Rudd-led education renaissance (a much more apt title Mercurius – thanks ) gets underway nationally, there is no doubt that parents will increasingly move back into the public system.
The flight of middle class parents from co-ed comprehensives was a result of the under-resourcing of public schools, at the very time when education in this country, was ‘extended’ to include working class boys in particular, who in previous generations left to pursue apprenticeships or blue collar jobs, that no longer existed.
Public high schools were totally unprepared for this significant policy direction of massively increasing the numbers of children nationally, who completed Yr 12, during the late 1980’s and 90’s, and unfortunately, this period coincided with significant changes in school discipline policies, uniform policies and other student focused reforms.
The apparent lack of faith in the public high school system does not reflect on the public system overall – many, many parents happily ‘use’ the public system for infants and primary education and then opt for a private high school, making it very clear that parents are not wedded to private education, and would choose a public high school, if a suitable opportunity was available.
Hopefully, we will also see an integration of vocational opportunities through a reinvigorated TAFE system, and of course the opening of more schools for children with serious behavioural issues – a not insignificant factor in dysfunctional public high schools.
The other point – to which JG always refuses to respond to – is that public selective high schools ‘win’ the HSC in NSW every year…..every year!
This is either due to superior children or superior public school teaching – and I think we’d all accept that it is exceptional students, often will much poorer facilities and some excellent teaching, which makes these schools outperform even ‘selective’ private schools like Sydney Grammar, year in, year out.
Why then, is it so hard to accept that public comprehensives, which by law, must take any child living in their geographical boundary, are therefore doomed to always ‘perform more poorly” than any private school in the same area, which selects it’s students?
What is however, becoming apparent to many parents, is that the so-called ‘investment’ of a private education is just not worth the money. With private school fees rising exponentially over the past decade – educating 2 or 3 children in the private sector for 13 years, is equal to, or greater than a second mortgage, with no guarantee of any capital gain to show at the end.
There is already a steady flow of parents back to the public high school system, where there has been significant investment in those schools. Rudd actually doesn’t need to do anything about the private-public divide. Parents as JG keeps stating, will vote with their feet.
My local public co-ed comprehensive high school now has a waiting list, after being considered ‘slacker central’ for a decade or two.
Merc –
I was aware of its constructionality.
And you’re most welcome.
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Kim – My comment isn’t illogical. I am in favour of innovation and I believe I’ve made a case that it’s desirable. I don’t think decentralization will fix everything. I think it may allow teachers more leeway for experimentation, schools even. I believe innovation will lead to improvement. I’ve long given up the idea that humans will ever fix everything. Or that we should, what would we do with ourselves? There are many ways to educate we don’t use most of ‘em. Obviously there is a limit to decentralization of, say, curriculum design. We’d have all sorts of batshit courses on offer.
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I agree that education itself is not reducable to a commodity. It’s too sublime. However providing tuition can be and has been. Again I am not saying it should be necessarily. I am advocating choice and I am advocating creativity. What best facilitates this is a matter of interest and I have been searching for a non-ideological discussion about these issues, thus far to no avail. However:
As you yourself here indicate the current situation is hardly ideal.
JG
Sorry JG, but I lost interest in paying you any courtesy round about the time you described me as “the problem” and my views as “evil and to be resisted by all level-headed congnisant (sic) beings.”
So here is my discourteous response:
1. It is truly asinine of you to state in one breath that people are “voting with their feet” about public schools, while in the next breath questioning my claim of an erosion in public confidence. What a pity you don’t possess the level of critical literacy that might have prevented you from making such an embarrassing discourse error.
2. Given the excellent standards of higher education in Australia, even 1st year students of anthroplogy understand that religion, language and culture somewhat pre-date the “1980s identity politics” that you seek to demonise, and that religion, language and culture also pre-date by millennia the recently-arisen national identities on which you place such priority. And if you had been paying attention at all during the last 30 years, you would also know that globalisation raises some rather more urgent questions of identity than your assumed primacy of nationhood.
3. Yes, JG the claim that we are raising a generation of illiterates is indeed flatulent. It *is* a beat up by conservative cultural warriors and the Murdoch Press. The people making these claims don’t compare apples with apples, and ignore the fact that our education system is teaching many more Australians both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population, across more subjects, to a greater depth of inquiry, across more advanced skills, than at any time in our history. It is also as wrong, disingenuous and irrelevant to claim that the young are witless as it was when a NSW Deputy Director-General wrote in the 1940s that he didn’t think the people taking their leaving certificate that year would ever amount to anything, or when the Ancient Greeks lamented the dissolution of youth. It has always been impossible for elders to see beyond their own magnificance and to understand that they are being eclipsed by the young.
4. And you know very well, or would know if you had been paying attention in critical literacy class, that my comment about the generation of 2050 was simply to make a rhetorical point that today’s generation will be just as blind in their dotage as every other generation that complained about the young. But still, it’s very considerate of you to save them some time by being obtuse in this decade to avoid the rush.
5. Education Ministers are politicians first and educators a very distant last. Since conservative commentators have made it the fashion these days to talk about ‘falling standards’ and ‘choice’, that is what the politicans find it politically effective to talk about. They will parade these false idols before the voters because they don’t know any better. They will serve up s**t and call it ice-cream and be believed right up until the voters take the pegs off their noses and realises they’re all paying thousands of dollars a year for what their parents got for free. That is what ‘falling standards’ and ‘choice’ are all about.
6. As I said, the critics will remain strident and cloth-eared. Go on, prove me wrong.
While you’re on about proper spelling it’s souvenir, not souvineer.
“It’s “couple hundredâ€? not “couple OF hundredâ€?.”
“Of”, in this instance, is understood. Or elided, if (as Gable said to Harlow in Red Dust) that makes you feel any better.
Go check how variable Shakespeare’s spelling was! I mean Shaykspear. No, it’s Shaykespearre. Etc. Etc.
As I’m sure most others here would agree, you actually don’t remember that much of what you were taught at infant, primary and secondary school. Without googling, can anyone name the second longest gerund tributary of the Amazon that formed one of Wilson’s 14 points?
On the other hand, we all learnt an awful lot athat was never on the official curriculum, didn’t we? It’s all basically about socialising the young of the community. And if you have a good teacher, giving you a taste of what might be interesting to explore further at the tertiary or vocational level.
I had a great English teacher that got me into thinking that playing with words could be both fun and profitable, a great sports teacher that introduced me to the fun you you could have on team junkets and how to fiddle the expense accounts afterwards and a great history teacher who encouraged us to take the piss out of the received textbook wisdom.
And an inimitable drunk of a Physics teacher who taught us fuck all about the periodic table and such like but provided a fascinating life lesson in how to successfully go through the motions when you just don’t care about your job anymore.
However once you got him talking about his time flying fighter jets in the RAF until his nose exploded during a high-G turn, he was fascinating. He spent a whole period once, with his “fruit juice tonic” in hand, trying to demonstrate with a bunsen burner, the silver foil wrapping from his ciggie packet and other props, exactly how a afterburner worked. And how it didn’t work if you weren’t paying attention to your level of jet fuel or fruit juice tonic consumption. I can still smell his burning polyester shirt even now.
It was about that point that it dawned on me that grownups were often making it up too as they went along. Suddenly I felt better about my future. But you wouldn’t find that kinda explicit lesson in any secondary school set texts or courses.
Sometime this debate will be raging and someone will bring it to an abrupt end by inventing digital/nervous sytem interface that let you download anything you want to know.
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Reminds me of a sci-fi story I read when I was a kid. In the future, there’s no school. Kids do whatever they want to. When they’re ten they’re ’scanned’ or some such. And the results shown determines their optimum role in life. They find this out when they’re 18.
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The hero of the story is very ambitious. He’s gravely disappointed to learn that he’s been selected to do nothing. He’s not destitute. he’s taken care of but he has no outlet for constructive activity. And he rails against it.
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At the end he’s told that he fits into a special category. Those in the category are given nothing to do. The one’s that accept it become teachers. The ones that don’t become writer/philosophers.
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I know. It’s totally irrellevant and meaningless. I apologize prefusely for my existence.
Adrien – you’re right. “I know … jujitsu”
It’s Isaac Asimov’s short story Profession, Adrien. Good story, one of the rare ones of his that hasn’t dated.
“Good story, one of the rare ones of his that hasn’t dated.”
Liam , you might also appreciate his ‘Guide to Shakespeare ‘.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov’s_Guide_to_Shakespeare
It helped me get through high school English .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov’s_Guide_to_Shakespeare
Sorry that link is a dud.
Mercurius
Did you read about that woman Rhodes Scholar, who despite having degrees in Maths and Law, and taught at university could not get a job in the public school system as she did not a fricking Dip. Ed (1 year Critical Literact indoctrination boot-camp). The public system lost their jewel to the private school.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23172235-13881,00.html
JG, far from being an “indoctrination boot camp”, a 1yr dip ed. is only just enough time to cover the minimum compulsory requirements to teach in the public system:
1) A compulsory unit on Child Protection procedures, which include understanding how to identify children at risk of abuse, recognise the signs of abuse, and how to protect children in accordance with ethical guidelines.
2) A compulsory unit on educating children with special needs such as physical, intellectual, behavioural or emotional disabilities.
3) A compulsory practicum component to test whether the teacher is ready for the classroom.
4) Compulsory unit(s) on their chosen subject area(s).
Now, I’m sure Ms. Stone will be an asset to her school. But I’d caution any parents who are thinking of sending their children to a private school to first ask the school whether all the teachers there have been through each of the above steps. If you’re sending your kids to a public school, you needn’t worry about this because all public school teachers have done at least these four minimum things in order to gain or retain their accreditation.
I was a practicum supervisor for some years.
In NSW some teachers have not gone through those stages. In the transitional arrangements which converted two- and three-year-trained teachers to four-year-trained (compulsory in NSW DET) some in the private sector missed out.
If the teacher fulfilled a role as, say, a religious education teacher or sports coach, they were often left there.
This is not to say that these people were/are “bad” teachers or even “incompetent”. After all teachers are a lot of things, not just instructors.
But in terms of the pedagogic skills they could pass on to beginning and student teachers, they could be somewhat lacking.
And the example given, academically qualified though she is, may well fall into a heap when confronted with a class of disruptive adolescent boys. They exist in the private system too, and in spades.
Hey thanks Liam.
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Merc I know Jujitsu too. These crazy Japanaese punk chicks I tell you what.