When I first sat down to write a reply to Nelson’ Budget reply on education, I felt like one of the judges in the first round of So You Think You Can Offer a Cogent Critique of the Education System. The Marcia in me wants to pat earnest Dr Nelson on the head. The Dicko in me is forced to send him home to learn the words, and the music, and how to dance.
To be honest, I’ve sometimes enjoyed the laid-back, anecdotal style of Brendan Nelson’s testifyin’. Journalists call it “homespun”. Ain’t that sweet?
Well, the education section of the Budget reply speech crossed the line from homespun into fabricated. It was a grab-bag of myths and plausible-sounding but incorrect assertions that go straight for parents’ worry-glands and bypass the brain.
The first theme that Nelson explored is the ‘parents know best’ argument. This is true – ask any parent. The assertion wasn’t tied to any actual initiative or announcement, it was just a free-floating thought-bubble, a way for Brendan to tell parents he was on their side against that awful cardigan-wearing crowd who are preparing to do unspeakable things to their children – like teach them science (I owe The Onion for that last quip).
Mind you, since parents do know best, why isn’t the Coalition pushing for mandatory home schooling? You know it makes sense.
This is really going to bake Brendan’s noodle, but many, in fact most, teachers and education bureaucrats are parents too! Oh noes! Infinite recursion! Must. Stop. Program!
Nelson also lamented the demise of the Coalition’s $1 billion “Investing in our Schools” grants programme. It’s true that over 2005-8, this programme bought a lot of shade cloths, playground equipment and flagpoles for schools. And if $1 billion for school capital works was good, then the new $11 billion schools fund announced in the Budget must be 11 times worse.
Then there was this assertion:
The single most important influence in the life of a child – apart from a parent – is their teacher.
Well, numerous sociological studies have found that teenagers are more influenced by their friends than either their parents or their teachers. So why don’t we just let the kids to teach each other now?
The other major theme Brendan explored is to improve the standard of teacher training. Great idea! How much money will they provide to do this? Can you guess? Starts with “z”, ends with “ero”. That’s right, the Coalition are such superb economic managers that they can improve teacher education from Cairns to Perth, without any money! Brilliant!
He then presented several specific claims in support of this assertion, all of which are dubious at best:
Entry scores to teacher courses are too low and so they will mandate higher entry scores to teacher education courses. How high Brendan? Half of my graduate year had an entrance score above 90, and 90% of them had an entrance score above 80%. Drawing from the top quintile of the population ain’t a bad place to get your teachers from. Are you planning to second some astronauts?
They will require “relevant course content” to be set. Gosh, now there’s an idea. We’ve never tried that! Last year, I reviewed the course design of all 42 universities that offer teacher education. Every single one mandated study of the curriculum - in fact, state education departments won’t accredit a course unless it forces the students to get to know the state curriculum point-by-point. My course spent two years studying the NSW state curriculum in my subject areas. During this time, we did 20 - count them, 20 - assignments where we had to design school materials linked to different parts of the curriculum. Relevant enough for ya?
The Libs will also require that trainee teachers are “taught how to teach children to read using proven techniques, including phonics based instruction.” Now, everybody knows that teachers today are trained by holding hands and singing The Internationale. So it’ll come as a surprise to Brendan that I was introduced to dozens of different forms of literacy instruction, most of which included specific phonics elements, so I have a complete toolkit that I can tailor to different children in different situations.
They will require that education faculties appoint high quality teachers to their academic staff instead of “social engineers”. Well every single one of my lecturers was an experienced teacher of many years classroom standing. Some of them still taught part-time. And the real shock? Most of them, were, yes, you guessed it – parents! So according to Nelson logic, they know best.
Brendan also put a new spin on the merit pay angle –
…teachers should be rewarded and recognised on merit as assessed by their peers.
What’s this? Coalition policy supporting a nest of collectivist glad-handing? I’d love to see them argue that dock workers, police and public servants should assess each other for pay rises!
Finally, there was this zinger:
There can be no place for mediocrity when it comes to the future of the nation’s teachers, yet that is tolerated in too many of our teacher training institutions.
Which ones Brendan? Why don’t you name them? Tell us who the mediocre institutions are? You must have specific ones in mind, otherwise, why say it? No?
It’s just a nebulous canard that everybody who’s never visited a teacher training institute, never read the course content, never spoken with the lecturers, just “knows”.
Nelson’s assertions about teacher education are malicious fabrications, and that is all they are.
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Can the Libs please send in the next contestant?
“This gun is loaded. I’m a social engineer, NOT a teacher. Stop tryin’ to work out what I’m sayin’ fonetikally, or ya kid gets it.”
I’m heartened by Brendan’s luminous analysis. It demonstrates that the Libs are still so lost in the culture wars that obsess Miranda Devine and maybe 1% of the rest of the population that the chances of them doing any serious damage to Labor’s mildly progressive first term agenda are negligible.
No tax on alcopops or luxury cars and peer-reviewed salaries for teachers. What a winning policy platform for 2010.
I though Marcia and Dicko were on Idol.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1447202.htm
Well I guess we should be grateful for small mercies, at least Nelson isn’t following up on the teaching of intelligent design.
OTOH, plenty of mediocrity when it comes to those who aspire to high office through the Liberal party. Not so perversely, that’s something that is so easily tolerated.
Poor Dr Nelson, “God King and Country” has been subverted in Liberal party mythology into modernism, queens and lefties, and it’s those dirty rotten scoundrel teachers who caused it all. No idea at all about phucking phonetics and the eternal wisdum of the librul parti who will learn those rottun hunion teacha bullis a trik or too.
Given that Brendan is a doctor (bet you didn’t know THAT) I’m going to apply his principles to medicine and completely revolutionise the health system as we know it.
Firstly, I would estimate (based on my own experience, but who cares about actual quantifiable evidence nowadays?) that in 90% of cases I know exactly what’s wrong with me (’the patient knows best’) and usually what I need (generally bed rest, a few G & Ts, and a medical certificate).
So let’s get rid of 90% of doctors and replace them with a computer in the waiting room. I can walk in, type in my symptoms and my requested treatment, the computer can check that my symptoms and the treatment match and then spew out the requisite medical certificate/prescription.
There can be a couple of nurses hovering around in case I need an injection or something and, if I need to see a ‘real’ doctor because I’m unable to work out what’s wrong with me by myself, I can then make an appointment.
The doctors made redundant by this self help system could retrain (why not? everyone else is expected to) as specialists, thus wiping out waiting lists within the next couple of years.
Everyone’s happy: most doctors would become specialists, on much higher incomes; I get to display the kind of rugged individualism beloved by Liberal rhetoric; Medicare costs will be drastically reduced; and ‘doctor shortages’ will vanish overnight.
You know it makes sense.
As a teacher for 16 years and now an education bureaucrat there are some concerns I have with the standard of many pre-service teachers coming through the education faculties. There are mediocre institutions. Many of the students are from the lower performing sections of their school cohorts, many have literacy and numeracy difficulties and many are passed by universities eager to keep their funds. Increasingly schools are passing prac students because the university doesn’t want to know about problems. Eventually if we are lucky the final school decides to tell the truth but that isn’t fair on the student who should have been supported earlier.
In terms of relevant course content I imagine Nelson was referring to the time spent on Sociology etc. Nearly every recent graduate who I have spoken to says that they wish they had spent more time on learning behaviour management strategies and how to differentiate the curriculum rather than on the problems in the system and how to alleviate poverty. They are worthy issues but not what students feel they need at that point.
If Nelson wants to make sure that the best and brightest are the ones becoming teachers there are other ways to go about it than directly cutting the lower-performing high school students out. How about, for a start, we pay teachers a decent wage rather than having them subsist on the table scraps wage which characterises their profession. If someone’s got the option of being an economics teacher or an economist, a little bit of extra pay wouldn’t go astray. At the primary school level, we’re entrusting teachers with the development of our children into functioning human beings who can read, write and analyse a text. Surely this is a worthwhile investment.
A higher teacher wage will lead to those who were considering teaching, but wanting to dine on something more elaborate than rice and lentils, enrolling in the course. Higher levels of enrolment from the top of end of the achievement scale will increase the quality of the cohort without actively pushing out the “dumb” students. If there aren’t enough places in the education degrees, it will be the ones at the lower end who don’t become teachers rather than the ones at the upper end for whom teaching represents a major pay cut.
Nelson’s railing against means-testing the baby bonus because every baby ought to be valued equally yet is willing to introduce merit based pay. Clearly, Nelson values babies more than the people whose job it is to help them become functioning members of society.
Fab! I was associated with a dude who was going to be a teacher. He had a half-baked education and his head was stuffed with all sorts of total bullshit. He was skeptical about things which were demonstrably true and had a total lack of skepticism about things that were bogus. A sloppy mind unfortunately attended by a huge ego born of a conviction that he was some kind of class A intellectual.
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This is an anecdote of course, not representative. But if this guy gets to be a teacher I don’t see him doing anything worthwhile.
How to alleviate poverty? Mmmm. Well how ’bout learning to read and write ey? There’s quite a few academics out there complaining that they’re getting undergrads who can’t do this competently. Now if you’re not literate or numerate and you’re at university what does that say?
Eet is only da skanky hoes in da Liberal house dat diss da Critical Literacy. Yo! Da honkeys dey scared o da relovituon when da main man Paulo Freeo Peg da doggie of da Ossprepsed comes to da skool near youse. We need don’t edjumakation, no fought control.
Da Sidni Uni Cultural Critical Education Studies tort by dat fine bitch Sara Maree will mean youse honkeys and da Queen of Eglnnd will need ta speek like us homeys and subalterns in Brazil and da favelas and Sowetos in Mutijulu and Everlee Street.
Wen we keep it reel wit da digital literacy and get some prints of the bitches sflashing some skin and gash den we will take back da means of reproduction. We bee been listenin’ to da AEU skanks get down wit da Deritta man. he d bomb.
Our HSC 4 Unit street graffiti for Vodafone and Pepsi be da weigh o da fewtcha.
“Well how ’bout learning to read and write ey? There’s quite a few academics out there complaining that they’re getting undergrads who can’t do this competently.”
Hehe yes I remember Harry Messel making headlines complaining about that very thing. I can’t recall if it was the 1950s or the 1960s … anyway I guess a decline in education standards under the Chifley Government would have been to blame. Bloody Labor … hopeless.
Actually Ken the decline in the clear language delivery is a marked feature of the past 200 years or so. Orwell addressed this in “Politics and the English Language”.
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Yo Che! N’uk, n’uk, n’uk.
marlin, Adrien, I’m afraid that unattributed, unspecified anecdotes like yours only serve to undermine the reputation of all the good teachers. How? Because unless you are prepared to blow the whistle and identify individuals, then all teachers are held in suspicion as a result of such nebulous comments.
I guess you’re suggesting one of two scenarios:
a) There are specific failures in specific institutes. In which case, name them and shame them. Blow the whistle. Put up or shut up. Which schools are you talking about? Which teachers? Which departments? If you can’t produce specific evidence against specific individuals, all you succeed in doing is tarring all teachers with the same brush, and insinuate systemic failure. I’m sorry, but that’s how public perception works.
Since nobody can tell which schools you’re talking about, the mud sticks to everybody. Most unfair and most undeserved.
b) There are system-wide failures that are undermining the quality of all teaching. In which case, like our man Nelson, you’re going to have to do a whole lot better than a few unspecified anecdotes.
And I’ll see your evidence and raise it a whole lot more that shows the system is robust. Did you know that as I write this, there are over 300 Australian teachers working as literacy consultants - that’s right - literacy - in more than 800 American schools? Heaven forfend, the Yanks are looking to us to ensure that No Child is Left Behind! Australian-trained teachers are in demand from the UK to Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Japan and the USA. If you want to hop on the teacher-bashing bandwagon with Nelson, be my guest. But a whole lot of other countries and administrations are quite happy to hire the teachers Brendan Nelson rejects.
What does that even mean? That black (?) people are to blame for poor literacy standards? Among teachers? Or that Derrida discouraged reading? Or that black people (in Australia) read Derrida too much? That too much Spivak is taught at a high school level? Or just that presenting an overtly racist, totally nonsensical “satirical” performance is much easier than any kind of argument?
Mercurius
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It is not my role in life to prosecute incompetent teachers. My comment was anecdotal as you say. I believe I acknowledged this when I said: “This is an anecdote of course, not representative.” I have neither the time, the resources nor the inclination to perform some survey of teachers who aren’t up to scratch. And in any event this is a general trend we’re talking about. I’m not saying every teacher is a fool, I’m saying there seems to be a problem. One of the exacerbating manifestations of the Left is that one is simply not even permitted to discuss such problems one is always met by NO NO NO. DO NOT CRITICIZE TEACHERS.
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Why the fuck not? Really?
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Sorry. It’s called free speech.
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But in answer to your request. Which schools? Let’s start with mine, science department: I had - 1. A chemistry teacher that actually dissolved his own roof by putting a sealant on it that reacted with the roof to, in his words, ‘put it into solution’. Not only was he enough of a moron to dissolve the roof of his house he actually told his chemistry class about it. 2. Another such teacher set fire to the laboratory on three separate occasions due to the neglect of rudimentary safety precautions. 3. And let’s not mention the parade of Creationist Biology teachers that never heard of Gould’s punctuated equilibrium thesis.
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But that’s anecdotal.
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On the other hand Marlin’s comment isn’t. It’s the perspective of a professional expressing serious concerns. I’ve heard many other teaching professionals expressing similar concerns. If there are problem with the basic literacy skills of teachers that is a problem. Sorry but it is.
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But feel free to stick your head back in the sand. I don’t tell people what to do. And I’d appreciate it if you lent me the same courtesy. I don’t really know whether our education system’s FUBAR. But I do know that in certain circles to even suggest such a thing is heresy. And that is FUBAR.
Black people do read too much Derrida. Particularly Indians. I really wish they’d lighten up on the Derrida and try some Iriguay. The speed of light is sexist doncha know.
OK, so Adrien. I invite you to blow the whistle, I practically demand it, and you say I’m sticking my head in the sand and avoiding criticism? Whatevs.
At any rate, you squibbed the question. You claim there’s a “general trend” that’s a problem, yet you haughtily disclaim from any intention of backing that up with anything but random anecdotes and hearsay.
So the question is important enough for you, by dint of a “general trend”, to impugn the reputation of thousands of teachers, but not important enough to get, you know, evidence for that?
I think I can safely put you in the hit-and-run column of free speechifiers.
You’re gloriously free to say anything at all, and utterly disinterested in taking any responsibility for contributing to the ceaseless denigration and undermining of their professional reputation that good teachers have to put up with every day and which only makes their job, and mine, more difficult. So how much courtesy do you expect me to lend you, exactly?
But you’re right about marlin. He is a professional in this area, which makes his unattributed, unspecified remarks all the more reckless.
Criticise away people, but for heaven’s sake make valid, substantiated criticisms, backed up with evidence. Remember; your speech is free, and worth every penny.
“I’m afraid that unattributed, unspecified anecdotes like yours only serve to undermine the reputation of all the good teachers. How? Because unless you are prepared to blow the whistle and identify individuals, then all teachers are held in suspicion as a result of such nebulous comments”
So unless I name every single individual teacher who struggles with literacy or numeracy I can’t suggest that there is a problem? That means any issue that has the potential to besmirch a profession is off-limits?
Your evidence of there being no problem with new graduates is that 300 Australian Literacy consultants are working in America? Some of my friends are among that 300 and they are very experienced and effective teachers. They aren’t 300 new graduates. I would suggest that isn’t evidence of there being no problem in our education faculties, rather the dire straits of the American education system.
“Many of the students are from the lower performing sections of their school cohorts, many have literacy and numeracy difficulties”
This is my unattributed,unspecified reckless remark?
I would have thought it was quite unremarkable. What evidence would satisfy you Mercurius? How many schools, staffrooms, prac students and recent grauduates do you deal with each day? Obviously they aren’t the same teachers attending my workshops to seek more expertise with their literacy and numeracy.
I should say workshops presented by consultants rather than “my” workshops.I should also spell graduates without an extra a when I am banging on about literacy and numeracy difficulties experienced by new teachers.I hope a typo won’t detract from the worth or otherwise of my unsubstantiated and reckless comments.
Marlin, this is a misreading of Mercurius’s position. As I understand it, Mercurius is stating that if you’re going to say that the system’s stuffed, or at least in need of significant change, you need to quote actual evidence. This seems quite reasonable to me. To date, I’ve seen no-one who’s engaging in teacher-bashing actually present evidence that can be used to argue that the education system is declining in quality. This is quite different from your suggestion that naming every individual teacher “who struggles with literacy or numeracy” is required.
Your desire for evidence is fair enough Alister.I’m not sure what evidence you would require. Given that no-one wants to give potential teaching students official literacy and numeracy tests prior to entry I’m not sure what evidence would be sufficient.
I don’t think that saying that many new teachers who are from the lower achievement rankings for university entry struggle with literacy and numeracy is teacher bashing.I am in fact arguing for them to be supported rather than automatically passed.
I am also not arguing that the education system is declining in quality. I’ve been specific in my points to refer to beginning teachers.
Is Mercurius or yourself arguing that everyone accepted into a teaching course is highly literate and numerate? If you think they are what evidence are you using to support that assertion other than pointing to the overall average health of the system which is mainly made up of experienced teachers?
This argument lacks data on both sides because we have no effective way of measuring teacher quality and the value they add. As a result we rely on our own experiences, as wide and as narrow as they are.I don’t think I have presented less evidence for my assertions than Mercurius has done for his assertion that “Nelson’s assertions about teacher education are malicious fabrications, and that is all they are.”
I can agree with the assessment of lack of data - as far as I am aware - but I am not sure that all added value can be satisfactorily measured (and this from an economist-in-training). I’d tend to assume that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, teachers are doing at least as good a job as they always have.
Personally, I’d not argue that “everyone accepted into a teaching course is highly literate and numerate” as this is an absolute statement. I’ve no idea what entry scores for teaching are, and can’t tell you what they mean. They would seem to be the starting point for making an assessment of literacy and numeracy of people enrolling in a course that, on graduation, allows primary or secondary school teaching. So there’s the potential for evidence, at least.
I see that a big part of the problem is that it’s seemingly difficult to attract people into teaching. This isn’t helped by Nelson’s reflexive non-factual critique of teaching training standards, and this, I think, is what Mercurius was going after. If it’s a problem, demonstrate how (which Nelson did not) and then demonstrate how you’ve got a solution (which Nelson does not).
Surely, Mercurius, the test of an education systems is outcomes - and the outcomes for Australian students, compared with the rest of the world, are consistently good. (Could be better, certainly, and I’m all for throwing money at it).
Teacher standards of literacy and numeracy are actually not good guides to their effectiveness as teachers. My sister is a chronically bad speller (she wants a reverse thesaurus; she goes to write a word on the board, realises she can’t spell it, so then uses an easier option). She uses her own spelling problems to explain to her students the various strategies they can put in place to tackle their own learning difficulties. The important thing, she tells them, is to recognise that noone is perfect, we all have weaknesses; acknowledge them and deal with them. To me, that’s brilliant teaching.
Another colleague, one of the best teachers I ever knew, was a poor performing student. She used her experience as a student to connect with kids who were struggling, and her classes were some of the most engaging I’ve ever experienced. I still use a lot of her techniques in the class today.
My entry scores beat hers hands down; she probably wouldn’t be allowed in if BN had his way - but she’s a far better teacher than I am.
Anyway, as I said to start with, the education system should be judged on outcomes, rather than component parts. Australians are highly sought after all over the world, in all sorts of occupations. Australian students consistently rank very highly internationally. Certainly the system could be better - any system could be - but it’s obviously very good.
Mercurius
As I said I’m not inclined to ‘blow the whistle’ on bad teachers. In fact I haven’t even said there are bad teachers. I’ve suggested that there might be a problem and drew on an anecdote from personal experience of someone who probably would be a bad teacher and would also probably qualify as a teacher.
Is that what you mean by ‘put up or shut up’? And also what does this:
Mean exactly?
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But anyway. You say that I am:
But I haven’t actually said anywhere that teachers are doing a bad job. I inferred they might be substandard and that I’ve heard there is a problem. This problem has been expressed, hah hah hah, by teachers. Your hysteria does nothing to dispell the notion that teachers are substandard.
I’m talking of a general trend of erosion in basic intellectual skills. The decline in literacy standards for example as I commented somewhere above has been noted by such as George Orwell. There could be many reasons for this such as television, declining funding, attention deficiency a general trend away from empirical standards. All of the above. None of it.
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Where I’m talking about teachers at all I’m talking of two things. 1. The possibility that in general they’re not up to scratch. I’m perfectly entitled to speculate about this and as Marlin has stated you yourself haven’t provided much by way of empirical demonstration in favour of your case. 2. The automatic attack that is visited upon one when they make a suggestion that perhaps the Right has a fucking point. Um-ah. If you can’t do better than provide hysteria that in no way addresses my points then you’re making my case for me.
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Also has it occured to you that I may not actually agree with Dr Nelson? Most of the ‘debate’ around education is rooted in the ‘Culture Wars’ which I find spurious, dopey and totalitarian on both sides. A war between competing advocates of differing propagandas. I think it pertinent to point out (again) that I’m not a Tory. Just because I find one political orthodoxy questionable doesn’t mean I subscribe to an other.
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Hint: in this life you are not required to subscribe to any orthodoxy.
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You really are taking this the wrong way. I’m not even saying there is a problem (altho’ considering the functional illiteracy of younger colleagues I very much doubt this) I’m simply asking the question. I have no wish to demonize teachers but as an essential service they’re liable to criticism. Actually everyone is. Your defensiveness does not serve you.
I don’t know that there is declining standards in literacy. Evidence please?
George Orwell died in 1950. I didn’t realise he’d done any work on contemporary standards of Australian literacy. Being a person of rigorous intelligence he’d be laughing in his grave at this invocation of his work.
I was talking about the decline in standards in the English speaking world. In Orwell’s case he was talking of a specific aspect of it - the use of language to convey meaning clearly, concisely, with brevity. There is a plethora of commentary on the ever increasing uses of spin and obfuscation in our world. Go to a bookstore.
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Decline in general capacities with language since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has been the subject of some research I was privy to as a post-grad. There are many reasons for this. One in partiuclar is that the education of a citizen of the developed world must now include a whole lot more than the use of rhetoric and the delivery of oratory (ie the purpose of the classical courtier’s education) hence a simplification.
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But I reckon this might make it interesting so I’ll try to dig it up.
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Y’know I reckon the Left’ll improve a whole lot when it learns the stratgeic disadvantages of sticking its fingers in its ears and singing ‘la la la I can’t hear you’.
I’ve always loved the way that, for Kulturkriegers, teachers are unable to instil basic spelling, grammar, other aspects of literacy, or arithmetic - yet they are devestatingly successful at getting across the finer points of Maoist dialectics and death-of-the-author nihilism.
I would love to see a teacher sacked for just being sit at their job - and for the union to say: yeah, fair cop, we don’t want to have losers like that in our profession. The absence of such means a) all teachers everywhere are as good as any other or b) it’s too damn hard to get the stats. I really loved the first half of Bonnor & Caro’s The Stupid Country, but when it came down to brass tacks about teacher performance metrics and/or how education funding works, it went all wobbly.
McKenzie said
“Anyway, as I said to start with, the education system should be judged on outcomes, rather than component parts. Australians are highly sought after all over the world, in all sorts of occupations. Australian students consistently rank very highly internationally. Certainly the system could be better - any system could be - but it’s obviously very good.”
McKenzie, I think your comment was in response to mine. I agree with everything you’ve said about the quality of the outcomes of the education system.
I think that a lot of the time the students results are in spite of some ineffective teachers rather than because of them. My comment was to provoke thought that one area of the system that had room for improvement was the area of teacher training.
Given that we should judge the quality of the system on its outcomes should any responsibility for good results be given to Nelson or Bishop or should it all be given to the teachers or the students or the parents? As we are falling behind some of our trading competitors in the latest PISA testing should any fall in quality also be the responsibility of the teachers? I don’t think we can have the credit but not the blame.
Alister said “Nelson’s…non-factual critique of teaching training standards”. What facts would you consider appropriate for a critique? I only have what people tell me and my own experience supervising pre-service students on prac and what those same students tell me about the many deficiences they feel about their training.
Nelson offered no evidence at all, just assertions.
It seems to me that Mercurius could make his argument while admitting that teaching training standards aren’t universally excellent, but still rebutting Nelson’s claims and also the ludicrous nature of his “solutions”. It might be helpful if Mercurius were to provide the evidence he was talking about in terms of the survey he conducted.
The standard of public school teaching is just outrageous these days…we need to lift our game…Western civilisation as we know it is collapsing into an illiterate
heap…fed on by nabobs & other scurrilous types…it is indeed the winter of our discontent, such risky flirtations with mediocre educators will only bring further shame to our good nation & hasten its inglorious end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMlOePl0aY
(Goodbye, Mr.Chips)
I bet it brings a tear to Brendan’s eye on a regular basis. Grrmph.
Mercurius said:
Maybe I’m being a nitpick, but I don’t think you can assume that because you you had an entrance score of 80% that you were in the top quintile of the population. For example, you don’t have half of the population scoring less than 50%. Even with moderation it may well be that 30% of the population scores more than 80%, or it may be 10%. I suspect its probably higher rather than lower though.
What may be a more appropriate measure is to compare the cut-off marks with other degrees (though this is tricky as well).
I don’t think the assertion is the parents know how to teach better than teachers, but they are better able to measure the effect of the teaching (ok this is disputable as well). But they often care more and perhaps should have the capability to do something about it (eg move schools, have input to the system as to what they think of the teacher capabilities).
To take your analogy with doctors - its not that patients are allowed or its though wise to self prescribe/medicate, but if they don’t like their GP they are able to go to a different one. Taking out private schools from the equation perhaps if zoning restrictions were removed from public schools and instead have a first come, first serve basis or lottery basis this would make things more equitable.
Is peer review as part of the input (not the only input) to performance such a radical idea still?
As education - and particularly, the employment of teachers - is a state responsibility, I’m happy to give credit to the States.
More seriously, though, I give credit to the teachers.
Most of the teachers I know have been employed for around thirty years. They’ve been through a lot of different types of government, both at a State and Federal level, but the job they’ve been doing has remained pretty much the same.
It has various window dressings and fads, and new technologies to master, but basically the same teachers have been sitting in front of the classrooms over that period. (My sister, who I’ve already referred to, recently returned to teach at the school we went to for our secondary education. She took over from the teacher who taught her the subject in HSC).
Unfortunately, what remains almost exactly the same is the infrastructure; they’re largely teaching in the same classrooms, bar a lick of paint, that they started in.
Apart from sticking posters on Australian values on the walls, making students sit a few extra tests and putting flagpoles on the lawn, the Fed government under Howard had little other contribution - other than trashing the good name of public schools, of course.
Kim - I’ve currently got 4 co-authored articles out for referral to journals on these matters - they’re reviews of teacher ed. courses, surveys of graduate teachers at various stages of the career, and similar. Better if I wait ’til publication.
marlin - some graduates complaining about some aspects of their course - has there ever been a time when this was not the case - about every university course? Squeaky wheels get the grease, but that doesn’t automatically mean their critiques have merit.
I too have heard quite a few graduates complain that, in effect, their course didn’t provide them with the answers from the book of “101 Effective Ways To Teach”. So what? You and I both know that book doesn’t exist. What’s more, if there were such a book, we wouldn’t need teacher education courses at all. They could read it over a weekend and hit the classroom.
I’ve actually sat in final year tutes where students, having been told for what must be the hundredth time over a four year period that “there is no magic book on 101 effective ways to teach”, reply with “yeah, but you still haven’t told me what to do in my classroom!” If those intellectually lazy students are coming to you and complaining that they’re struggling as teachers, then I’m really not surprised. Anybody that thick really shouldn’t be teaching!
Come now Brendan, there’s been great progress on the 3 R’s since you vacated office: republic, reconciliation and refugees. All tickety boo.
The entrance ranking thing is a complicated one. My profession, Accounting, is currently having the same debate, but in the opposite direction.
Australian accountants are world-class, but there are not enough of them, so the industry is contemplating lowering the entrance scores for Commerce degrees. It will mean more accountants, but they will be poorly apt.
Teaching is the same, you raise the entrance scores you’ll get better teachers, but then everyone will whinge that schools are too crowded and it is adversely affecting education standards, so we need to lower the scores to get more teachers, lol.
I don’t beleive the 80 to 90% entrance score claim you make though. I know quite a few teachers and none of them got anything like 80 to 90%.
Nelson also lamented the demise of the Coalition’s $1 billion “Investing in our Schools” grants programme. It’s true that over 2005-8, this programme bought a lot of shade cloths, playground equipment and flagpoles for schools. And if $1 billion for school capital works was good, then the new $11 billion schools fund announced in the Budget must be 11 times worse.
Thank you for that coffee through the nostrils moment, Mercurius!
The other major theme Brendan explored is to improve the standard of teacher training. Great idea! How much money will they provide to do this? Can you guess? Starts with “z”, ends with “ero”. That’s right, the Coalition are such superb economic managers that they can improve teacher education from Cairns to Perth, without any money! Brilliant!
Tsk tsk. Have you forgotten that funding anything besides fossil fuel research, woodchippers, Howard’s bro, ones’ porsche or private schools constitutes “throwing money at the problem”?
Did you hear Turnbull with Laurie Oakes this morning? HA! Bascially saying” we arent in government, so we dont need to cost anything, and can’t anyway”.
Nice to see that particular fetish of Howardite political culture coming back to haunt them.
marlin - I don’t dispute the truth of your account of your day-to-day dealings with graduates - but it’s in the nature of your job that you’ll be dealing every day with the struggling ones. I’d contend that this may negatively affect your view of the situation.
And Stephen Lloyd:
Well that settles that, then. The figures I quote are only based on surveys from 3 cohorts involving hundreds of teachers trained from 2004-2007, the results of which are being referred to international journals for review - whereas - some of your friends are teachers. I can’t beat that!
It’s like in the original post where I quote from the review of 42 teacher education courses on their extensive curriculum links. Or the fact the my own course contained dozens of literacy-building techniques, including, yes, bloody phonics. Oh no, Adrien knows better because he heard from someone that there’s big, unspecified, unsubstantiated, “problems” in teacher education. Rumours that he has a very important right of free speech to repeat.
I’d love to have access to the same fountain of knowledge where I just automatically knew more about the education system than the people who actually live, work and study in it.
It would be so much easier and quicker than doing research and finding evidence. I could just base everything on what I’d heard, or what my friends say, or what I reckon. Then like Dr Nelson I could make speeches in Parliament based on nothing at all, and lower the reputation of thousands of teachers to the level of my own standards!
In response to your demands for evidence Mercurius, please accept the following:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb353/is_200509/ai_n18828607
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Also in response to your assertion that selection standards for teachers are high here’s an article from Qld that says the opposite:
http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/jan/24/should-drop-outs-be-teaching-our-kids/?print
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Just an article in a regional rag to be sure but here’s a submission from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute which says that:
What say you?
From The Australian:
Masters says:
So it appears that there are people who feel that there is a problem. Contrary to what someone said above there most definitely is a correlation between the literacy standards of teachers and their success rate (why I even have to advocate this most glaring of common sense axioms is beyond me).
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That said I’m not sure teachers deserve the blame. There could be a range of factors. I’d even put forward an hypothesis that there’s a possible negative feedback loop at play where lower competence produces lower standards of students entering University, lower standards of graduates and hence lower standards amongst teachers which in turn produce even lower competence in the following generation of school students etc.
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But that’s only an hypothesis. There could be any number of factors. However I’ve been able to find at a glance reference to many studies that show decreased literacy and numeracy skills and not one that shows a trend in the opposite direction. Given that such fundamental skills are vital to the success of people in economic life and to the life of the economy this will have to be addressed somehow.
Mercurius said:
Do you happen to have stats on what the average cut-off score for teaching are handy? Would also be interesting to see what the distribution curve for entrance scores are as well (this sort of information doesn’t appear to be made easily publicly available)
Systems also do need to be built to handle the bottom 10% rather than just the average even if it seems annoying and awkward to the other 90%. Otherwise as wee see you end up with people like the butcher of Bega - the medical equivalent of what can happen when there is insufficient peer review…
All jokes aside, of course there’s a problem. You only need to have taught yrs 8 & 9 for a few hours to recognise that their meta-cognition skills & ability to problem solve is lacking. but having said that, many parents are obviously not doing their bit. They seem to think their contribution to their kid’s learning stops the moment they first drop them at the school gates. It also has a great deal to do with the focus on TV & computer games as a babysitting tool & educator. This is why introducing complex, less infotainment-based children’s shows & games is so vital. (think ABC).
From what I’ve heard some of the pre-service teachers coming through have admitted that they haven’t got a good grasp on spelling and looking back, they wish they had been taught differently. Interestingly, the middle school students coming through now, generally, are quite confident spellers…more so than the students a few years ago…at least in some QLD schools. However, there is a long way to go.
Let’s face it, English is a living language & it will be taught & spoken/written by individuals from different cultures & experiences and pretending that there is ONE dominant form is putting your head in the sand. That does not mean however that we shouldn’t have certain expectations that children can speak to one another & their bosses/parents w/out their being constant confusion.
I think one issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that teachers in primary schools are not specialists. There has been a move towards teaching the student and not the subject. However, this can lead to educators focusing on THEIR strengths & the topics they feel confident to teach…but if there is a weakness in how they understand that topic/concept then that will be transferred to the students who pick it up.
Consequently, if teachers don’t have good grounding in a key learning area/subject we have students turning out “bitsy” on knowledge & skills. I personally believe that having primary school teachers try to “cover all bases” & HOPE they are getting across the fundamentals of knowledge acquisition, problem solving & flexible thinking is gambling w/ these children’s future. There seems to be a bit of a mishmash of pedagogy. Probably has a lot to do w/ the mindset of older HODS competing for dominance & the political battles involved…and of course technological shifts.
Teachers in primary schools may have an interest in one particular subject but are then expected to focus on mathematical investigation, for instance. I think that primary teachers should be more specialized (I know this goes against the grain of much contemporary thinking) - they should teach either humanities, maths/science (there is a natural marriage), technology. This happens with HPE, music and languages in the primary schools so why not with the other subjects? That way, primary teachers don’t feel overwhelmed & compelled to fit in all the key learning areas. It can be exhausting…particularly w/ all the excursions, sports days & other hidden curricula (health & welfare).
I found that rote learning can be handy once you’ve got across a concept but there seems to be a problem w/ the use of this learning tool by way of relying on students to complete work sheets, even for H/W, where context is lacking. They need to change this ‘passive’ learning into a more ‘active’ pursuit. For instance, is it better to have a student learn the definition of a “hectare” by doing a worksheet…or going out on the oval and measuring it first and then bringing that back into the classroom?
Furthermore, this probably says a great deal about the time pressures educators are under…& lack of financing for one on one teaching/tutoring….not to mention, homework centres.
Our societies have become so inter-connected & generally sophisticated when it comes to REAL WORLD technological applications (think computer programming, engineering related to infrastructure, the Human Genome project) so the idea that a primary teacher can possibly construct a foundation for all these areas is unrealistic. Certainly teaching basic skills is fine…but obviously something is getting lost in the mix. Introducing more computer modules might help.
I haven’t had time to read the other comments. Intend to later.
Perhaps introduce a National Assessment based on the computer-based modules.
Adrien, USQ is hardly the most reputable university around. They’re a rural uni who specialise in distance education for students who don’t have access to the major unis (UQ, QUT and Griffith). USQ are cutting their maths department, for heaven’s sake; they are nothing more than a glorified TAFE.
To clarify, this isn’t an urban tier 1 university and what they do with their adjustments to their education degree enrolments is only going to affect a small number of enrolments. If the trainee teachers are useless, they probably won’t pass their classes let alone their pracs.
*snorts at QUT being a major uni*
I’m sorry. I find it hard to buy calling USQ a glorified TAFE and holding QUT on the opposite side.
Not that I have any knowledge to refute your claims about USQ, but I’m still bitter about my Arts degree.
[/tangent]
“Well that settles that, then. The figures I quote are only based on surveys from 3 cohorts involving hundreds of teachers trained from 2004-2007″
It’s easy to settle this argument rather than trade nasty anecdotes with each other — you can just look at the enter scores from here:
http://www.vtac.edu.au/common/entry_req.html#tertiary
Given how low the the enter scores are at many (most) places (and the fact that heaps of people are getting in under even the scores offered — something that happens in most courses — which means that the real enter scores are far lower), my bet is that nothing like half of all teachers had an enter score over 90 and far less than 90% had a score of over 80 (this I imagine is an observation from a top university, not most universities). In fact, its more than likely many people are failing year 12 and still becoming primary school teachers (of course no-one advertizes that anymore — but they did until the mid 90s if I remember correctly). Thus there probably are a lot of dull teachers out there (including those didn’t just recently graduate), but just saying that doesn’t really help anyone.
Hi Adrien, in response to the three studies you cited, I guess I’d add:
1) The ACER report doesn’t seem to be about the quality of teacher training, so I’m not sure what point you were trying to make. Regarding comparisons of literacy levels from the 1970s and 1990s, something about apples and oranges comes to mind.
Most education metrics geeks would know that, depending on which state you’re talking about there have been as many as four system-wide changes in the standards of literacy measurement during that time, and that the cohort of 15 years olds in schools today comes from a far wider swathe of the population bell-curve than the cohort of 15 year olds in schools in the 1970s. The methodological challenges in making comparisons across these changes are formidable.
Even though in theory 15 years is still a compulsory education age, I think you’ll also find that in the 1970s plenty from the bottom of the curve were not being included in such measurements, for various reasons to do with selection methods, alternative colleges, or just being basically forgotten about. Schools have gone out of their way since then to be inclusive of everybody, which is sometimes reflected in the numbers (especially when it comes to post-compulsory schooling results!)
Besides which, over the same period our international ranking haven’t changed all that much - we’re still bloody near the top of the world, still in the top tier, decade after decade…
2) Regarding the USQ course, I’m not familiar with Queensland’s university entrance ranking system - is 19 out of 25 a low mark? In percentage terms it’s only just outside the 80 entrance rank equivalent in NSW, which was the figure I cited as where 90% of the students in my course were above.
3) Regarding the final article, I’d say that “it’s just an article in a regional rag.” But seriously, and with all due respect to the Mathematical Sciences Institute, ‘they would say that, wouldn’t they’? I’m a languages teacher, want to try and guess my assessment of the amount of languages content in teacher training courses?
Sam said”If the trainee teachers are useless, they probably won’t pass their classes let alone their pracs.”
My belief is that they will pass their classes and most of the schools will pass them on their prac because the unis make it so easy to pass the classes and don’t want to know about problems on prac. I have taught in schools that had a reputation for passing all prac students and in schools that gained a reputation for rightly failing poor prac students. Guess which schools unis stopped sending prac students to?
“In fact, its more than likely many people are failing year 12 and still becoming primary school teachers”
I sincerely doubt this, conrad, but just to be sure I haven’t got you wrong, can you define ‘failing’?
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet, but I don’t think you had to have a degree to be a teacher back in the day, did you?
“I sincerely doubt this, conrad, but just to be sure I haven’t got you wrong, can you define ‘failing’?”
Yes, less than 50% overall. If you can find them, the entry score for RMIT primary school teaching in 1989 was less than 200 (Year 12 in Victoria was out of essentially 400 then). I remember this, because I was wondering what course to do and that was the lowest (along with physics and chemistry if I remember), which surprised me. If you dig through the VTAC list that you can get from the above link, the courses with the really low entry scores are sure to be still doing that, since the numbers published are not necessarily reflective of the real scores and there are lots of “special” entries in most courses where “experience” is taken into account. These account for a fair chunk of the students in many courses, especially those that people don’t want to do to the extent that they used to (like teaching I imagine) where essentially everywhere is offered a place — no department wants to lose staff members.
“My belief is that they will pass their classes”
My belief is that this is correct, although I’m not in an education faculty (but its true of almost everywhere else, so I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be in education). At my university, we _must_ pass a certain amount amount of students in every course, and if we fail more (perhaps because they deserve it), then we have to go through a process explaining why we did. The other problem is that most universities now have student appraisals. If you failed 20% of your course (for example), that would drag your mean way down (no students give good marks to people who don’t grade them well), and no one wants that either, as again, it causes you a lot of problems.
(Sorry - this is probably only of interest to those durn Southerners
)
There’s an on line conference coming up organised by Parents Victoria.
http://www.cybertext.net.au/pv08.htm
Participation is free.
Here’s a chance for people to really ENGAGE and perhaps ask some of the questions, or make suggestions, that have come up. I do hope many of the people who are supportive of teachers participate and not just the “Oh Noes teachers are all illiterate!” commenters.
comment no. 23 mckenzie
May 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Insightful comments. It’s important to relate to, and empathise w/, students. And understand your own limitations as an educator. Recommending tools to students that help(ed) you to solve problems & overcome hurdles can be effective. I agree w/ your sister’s approach.
All teacher’s need paid sabbatical… time to research & catch up on the latest developments in pedagogy…track down useful resources and materials…improve tech-based skills. Oh that’s right, they have longer holidays than most & long service leave…making up for the long nights marking/extra-curricula activities/laptopping to find work units & latest info.
But for some reason there is a drive to reduce these valuable sabbaticals. In a world where “tight-arsedness” & “emulate the Japanese work ethic” dominate there is little TIME for common-sense.
It’s better to burn out than make it thru the day…& the next day…& the next year…& next decade.
And whilst the teacher falls in the Auusie concrete jungle or bushland USA…& noone hears it…Brendan gets all the attention by yelling “back to basics!!!”…& acts like a WEEPING WILLOW as he fear-mongers over Unis that teach you how to care & teach higher-cognitive thinking STUFF…instead of just SHOW ME THE MONEY lessons…& “if you know this KEY HISTORY, SIGNS & WORDS you’ll get the keys to the KINGDOM provided you get down &…”
Still, compromise helps to appease the poll driven. Can your students spell
MARALINGA…?
I can’t really interpret those entry scores, as it’s outside of the Uni admissions framework that I understand (being before my time, and in another state). I’ll have to take your word for it.
In the context I’m familiar with - ie NSW, now - it is pretty much impossible to get below 50 marks in any of your HSC classes (to ‘fail’) and still get a UAI of 80+ (needed for most education degrees), unless we’re talking about some of the competitive extension courses - and in that case I’d dispute the definition of ‘failing’. Alternative admissions processes - like ‘mature age’ admission - may be different, but if those students go into degrees where they are competing against school-leavers from the top 1/5th, and consistently do as well as them, then we can assume the unis are usually making the right decisions on this front.