The latest dumb suggestion from Australia’s favourite prefect, Julie Bishop, is for university graduates to start teaching in schools without any educational qualifications.
I have no idea which particular educational problem or moral panic this is meant to be a solution to.
It couldn’t be the shortage of trained maths/science teachers, because doing a two year postgrad qual in education isn’t the deterrent, it’s the crummy salaries. And there’s also the fact that there aren’t enough students studying these subjects at uni to begin with.
Bishop’s previously decried, if I’m not mistaken (or perhaps it was Kevin Donnelly – spot the difference), the amount of time Education Faculties spend on imparting literacy teaching skills. I guess in right wing postmodern Australia, no time at all is better than a little bit of Maoist indoctrination by America-hating whole language cultists masquerading as academics.
Seriously, what’s with this? Some universities, such as USQ, allow graduates wanting to retrain as teachers to do an accelerated education diploma with more classroom based prac than those who are going straight from school to undergrad degrees to postgrad teaching. You could make a case for this, though you could probably make a case against it too. When I was at High School, we still had teachers who didn’t have a degree teaching us. When my mum graduated with Honours in Latin in 1964, she got a gig at a private girls school teaching. A decade and a half later, she went back and did a DipEd, and it still didn’t prepare her adequately for what teaching kids is actually like. As university teachers, we have to learn on the job, with formal qualifications in higher ed the exception rather than the rule. It’s very confronting to start teaching with no knowledge of basic pedagogy, curriculum design or anything else other than your subject matter. As it happens, some academics take to it like ducks to water, but others are just horrible. With the best will in the world, it takes a few years at least before you start feeling comfortable picking it up on the job. I’ve won a few teaching awards in the last few years, but I know when I started out in 1997, I was woefully underprepared to actually be a teacher – honours degree notwithstanding.
This seems to me to be just another way to demean teaching as a profession. I mean if anyone can do it, it can’t be that worthwhile can it?
Friends of mine who are teachers – in schools with kids whose parents are on welfare and have stacks of behavioural problems, and where there is minimal support for teachers in or out of the classroom – wish they’d had more on behaviour management in their Ed degrees. Because they estimate – on a good day – you might actually manage to teach for about a third of the class time while spending two thirds on behaviour management.
Labor’s Stephen Smith has dismissed Bishop’s musings as “thought bubbles” and a “pre-election stunt”. (But Labor is still looking to pick a fight with the teachers’ unions – on different issues. I blame Bill Clinton).
Bishop might be trying to conjure up some sort of nutsoid cinematic image of the newly minted and idealistic graduate walking into the Methodist Young Ladies’ College to be met with the adoring gaze of perfectly groomed kiddies eager for learnin. Whatever. It might be nice if the Government occasionally bothered to base some policy ideas on some vague approximation to reality, rather than culture war fantasies and cheap shot electioneering.
Update: Here’s the full text of the Minister’s speech.
I listened to her press conference, and I must say I couldn’t put my finger on anything significant she had to say. There was nothing visionary.
I was put off by her slimy smile which she maintained the whole time.
Perhaps the surprising omission from her speech was her plan to force a national history curriculum on the states. All told her performance was pretty lame. She’s not really the cultural warrior that Howard is looking for in an election year.
This is the highlight of her speech:
Shorter Bishop – when at school, I was good at games.
Mark
If an applicant to a special needs school is deemed by the principal not to have the appropriate formal training, s/he can simply choose not to hire him/her. See, it’s not that hard. Life away from the sheltered workshop of state bureucracies needn’t be so scary.
The AEU is a pox on Australian society almost as vile as Arthur Scargill and his sheltered workshop of decrepit inefficient lazy miners that nearly bankrupted England. The sooner some Australian is brave enough to do a Margaret Thatcher on these luvvie-bums the better!
Australian comprehensive schools are a disgrace and the main reason is the fricking teachers union. I think giving the princpials the right to fire their sorry Maoist multiculti asses would be just the ticket!
Oh, and dude…Culture war fantasies? cheap shot electioneering? moral panic? right wing postmodern Australia?
I have two words for you: Pot. Kettle.
So you’d do away happily with any teacher registration standards, John? The all seeing and wise principal will be able to weed out your Maoist troublemakers?
Seriously, do you know any teachers? Have you been within cooee of a school in recent years?
Thanks, John, for reminding me. She called for principals to have the power to hire and fire teachers. That was an exceptional lowlight. Labor’s Education shadow minister (whoever that is) should pick up this stick and use it to bash her with.
John, you’re in top form with that statement. But “luvvie-bums”? You’ve let down the side with that one.
Labor’s shadow, Stephen Smith, agrees with her on that.
A few points in defence of Bishop:
1. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think she can do anything about the “crummy salaries” in teaching. Isn’t that the responsibility of the State governments? Blame the ALP if you will (but of course you won’t).
2. A two-year course might actually be a significant disincentive for Maths/Sci grads if there are alternative options in industry which could start bringing in the $$ immediately.
3. In secondary ed, there is probably more support in curriculum design and other areas than in tertiary ed. So your experiences may not be that relevant. And incidentally, are you arguing that every newly-minted PhD who hopes to teach at uni should do a two-year education course on top of the PhD? That’d be popular!
On a more general level, Mark, I think you are an astute analyst and an excellent writer, but when it comes to writing about the Coalition, why do you always have to impute base motives to them? The Coalition may make a lot of ill-conceived proposals (like any party) and it’s fine to point them out, but to use nasty and emotional rhetoric like “teacher bashing” is the sort of thing I’d expect from leftwrites, not from an objective commentator.
Mark, I’m not sure that you are entirely right about the impact on areas of teacher shortage such as Maths. Poor salary is one deterrent. But for people who have been working for a few years or even many years and want to change professions to become a teacher, the need to give up an income for a year while ytou do a GradDipEd full time (or for a shorter period of time to fulfill the prac requirements if you do the GradDipEd part time) seems to be a deterrent to me. Allowing these teachers to a GradDipEd part time while actually working as a teacher would significantly reduce this deterrent. Furthermore, if the stories you read are true, then it appears that schools are currently using teachers who are not trained in mathematics to teach mathematics. I do not see any reason why it would be any harder a person trained in mathematics to pick up teaching skills while they are working (especially iof they are simultaneously do a GradDipEd) than it is for a trained teacher to pick up mathematics skill.
Let me just observe, Paulus, that I’m also accusing Labor of teacher bashing.
As to your points:
1. The Federal government makes large grants to school education – it’s tied grants that enable them to exercise leverage over things like a national curriculum. There’d be nothing stopping them from earmarking more money to increase teacher salaries.
2. I’m not sure about this. Don’t the alternative options attract anyway? Under your scenario, they’d be foregoing the $$$ anyway if they moved straight into teaching.
3. No
At the moment you can do a grad cert in higher ed and most unis will pay the fees for you and work it into your PhD coursework. But it’s optional, and most people only do a one day “tutor training” workshop. I did start one but I wasn’t happy with the quality! It’s probably not so much curriculum design but what actually works in the classroom and how people learn that you need specialised training in. It’s really a very complex area, and I’d rather people learn those skills formally than learn by doing because if they don’t “do” very effectively, it’s their students who suffer.
Damien, I was writing my response to Paulus while you were writing your comment but I think point 3 applies. From talking to mates of mine who teach in schools, the skills you don’t pick up (and which you struggle with when you first stand in front of a class doing prac) are the ones that relate directly to actually imparting knowledge and challenging and interesting students rather than writing on a blackboard or delivering a lesson plan and also managing kids’ behaviour. That’s increasingly problematic in many primary schools now, and very problematic indeed in many high schools. Yes, it would be beneficial to have people who have the knowledge but conveying that knowledge and creating an atmosphere where people can learn are difficult – and they’re separate skillsets.
A lot of the worst teachers I had in high school were maths teachers – in one instance an old bloke who’d had no formal tertiary ed. He coped via a combination of rote learning, strictly sticking to the text and yelling at us. I learnt nothing.
The research I’ve seen referred to in terms of the debates over maths/science suggests that involving and interesting students is something that doesn’t happen often enough. A rare person can communicate their own passion, and teach well without formal training, if in a relatively well behaved classroom, but honestly, I think anyone who’s done any teaching, tutoring, lecturing or training and thought seriously about their practice in facilitating learning outcomes will tell you you need a lot more than enthusiasm and subject knowledge to do it well.
Also, Damien, please note:
If you read Bishop’s speech, she just says university grads without teaching quals.
That’s why I think this is just tosh pulled out of her hat. If she was at all well advised, she’d be aware of the options that exist and proposed changes to teacher registration in some states. I’m still doubtful this is the way to go, for the reasons I’ve given, but the jury is out. The idea is a new one and I don’t think any evaluation work has been done yet. But I think the speech gives every sign of having been written by a political speechwriter, with little thought put into it from a policy perspective. That’s my response to Paulus, too. I’ve got no problem with the government floating ideas (they’re not all bad) but they should be well thought out ideas not just rhetorical jousting with Labor and the states. I really think there’s too much of that.
I am a little bit of the belief that teachers are born, not made, and that no amount of formal qualifications are likely to make some people into a teacher, (many current teachers included).
There is plenty the teacher’s union has to answer for, & when I gain the rank of Caeser they are on my list of groups to be punished for what they have done to this country, (along with banks, landlords, big law firms and the tax office et al)
Teacher “bashing” could only advance Australia, provided it is the union which is being bashed, not teachers as such.
Anybody ever given any thought to the possibility that teaching conditions may be partly responsible for any slow uptake on teaching as a career?
The pay is fine, compares reasonably well with lots of other career choices. Despite union driven propaganda, the hours need not be a shocker.
But the sort of rot teachers have to put up with, & the total lack of support when in strife, mean I would never recommend it.
Some are, I think, but we need a lot more because they’re rare and there are a lot of kids who need teaching. I have no problem whatever with discussion of teacher education and what should be the best techniques and practices, and indeed the state of Education Faculties. That’s all for the good if it’s done to turn out better trained teachers. But I don’t think we get anywhere by dismissing the importance of teacher education.
Since what teaching is about (among other things) is learning, it seems to me that a mystical view that things can just be imbibed or granted by God and an anti-intellectual stance is taking the exactly wrong viewpoint.
I think you’ll find teacher unions and teachers have given some thought to the conditions! The hours are actually worse than they should be for two reasons – the first which you rightly identify is the lack of support – and the intrusive requirements – over specific curricula among them. The second reason is the increasing belief – driven in part by technology but in part by a loss of respect for teachers’ professionalism – that they have to be both available at all hours and having to constantly be second guessed and justify what they’re doing (to principals as well as parents, mind you).
The pay isn’t horrendous, but it’s pretty low given the amount of education required and the skills needed to do a good job and the importance of the job.
I don’t think teachers’ unions are beyond criticism, but it seems to me that they (and often teachers) are just an easy target for a political cheap shot. That’s deeply disappointing to anyone in the education trade, and should be to everyone in society more generally.
I should also say that the lack of support also goes to the expectations on teachers to be responsible for a lot more than learning – viz. behaviour, values, socialisation, moral development, counselling etc, etc.
It is risible that Bishop has lamented the poor standard of teacher training, yet now proposes that some don’t need any training at all! Nothing like having a coherent and consistent education policy.
This contradiction gives support to the widely held perception that teacher bashing is a distracting sideshow for the Howard government’s appalling neglect of public education over the last decade in the slow process of privatising education by stealth.
Andrew Leigh has demonstrated that over the last 20 years, beginning teacher aptitude has declined, as has the relative salary conditions of teachers compared to their non-teaching contemporaries.
I do teach in a high school. I have spent the last year enjoying the hilarious spectacle of a teacher, who had a G Dip Ed in adult ed but not in high school ed, trying to function in the school.
Schools are tough places. You need the union to look out for your conditions, because it is hard to survive there, particularly if the boss is indifferent or antagonistic (mine is great and backs his teachers every time). You are constantly on guard against spurious complaints by naughty kids and have to spend all day being told you suck, even by kids you like (then some tell you they love you and you feel better). It’s not an easy life, though the pay is OK and the holidays are nice (and you need them). The kids are ace, and they keep you going.
My points are:
1. schools should have more say in their teaching staff, but that it’s not the principal who should do that – schools work better if the principal doesn’t employ a load of mini-mes;
2. discouragement stems from the fact that a beginning teacher can take years to get a steady job in the system, whereas bad teachers are very hard to dispose of, and a retiring teacher does not have to relinquish their job when they leave. The resulting uncertainty, and difficulties for school planning, are one problem with teacher recruitment and retention, as is being stuck in a staff office with a nuts member that the principal is working on removing but will take at least 18 months to achieve his goal;
3. A Dip Ed is absolutely essential because at least half of it trains you in surviving the school environment, collaborating with staff, planning curriculum, reporting it, understanding policy, procedure, law and teacher responsibilities (like how not to sexually harass or engage in corrupt conduct and how to protect yourself from the year 8 girls who will allege it whether you’ve done it or not);
4. You can’t possibly understand how kids learn just by picking it up, particularly in complex school environments. Adults you’ve got some chance with, though my Dip Ed helped me enormously as an academic.
5. Julie Bishop does not know the first thing about teacher training or she wouldn’t realise that there are countless entry schemes that require minimal input from the aspirant teacher and most high school teaching comes from the degree dip ed model.
6. You can’t argue for a rise in professional standards by removing professional qualifications. A national accreditation system, which she also proposes, would have to recognise qualifications, as the one in NSW does.
wouldn’t realise? she would realise … sorry
Maths teachers are vastly overrepresented in those who ‘fail’. Teaching as you correctly point out involves much more than subject ‘knowledge’ and includes:
Perhaps the most interesting proposal is her insistence on ‘performance’ pay. She ought to do some ‘history’ and see what happened to Advanced Skills Teachers (ASTs) which was an attempt to reward teachers differentially.
I don’t know why she is limiting ‘performance’ pay to school teachers and not extending the concept to include university lecturers, doctors, lawyers, police officers etc.
Oh I do know that certain legal firms do operate on the basis of ‘performance’. The difference is such firms get to choose their clients. And if you bring in performance pay for teachers, then surely teachers will have the opportunity to choose their students.
Her performace at the National Press Club and in dealing with the questions (limp as they were) was less than impressive.
I’m not a teacher, but as a parent, of course this is interesting to me. I heard a great talk by Frank McCourt on RN the other day – I’ll chase it up to see if there’s a MP3 download, but here’s an excerpt. It’s on that very subject, featuring the story of McCourt’s first day in front of a class, when the class clown threw a Baloney sandwich at him.
http://www.bell.k12.ca.us/slcs/fame/McCourtExcerpt.pdf
As a mathematician who has considered going into teaching I can say that the extra study can be a deterrent. After finishing my PhD the idea of another year of study was not attractive after already being a student for many years (for financial reasons but also because I’d had enough of studying). However, I agree with your comments on the need for a DipEd. It may be a deterrent but I think it’s there for good reason. Now I have quite a lot of tertiary teaching experience in addition to my maths degrees, but I can see that this wouldn’t prepare me for walking into a school classroom.
“Bishop might be trying to conjure up some sort of nutsoid cinematic image of the newly minted and idealistic graduate walking into the Methodist Young Ladies’ College to be met with the adoring gaze of perfectly groomed kiddies eager for learnin.”
What Bishop thinks of about when she thinks about school, based on on her own idealised recollections of her own time at school, is probably exactly this. If the class room is full of well behaved young ladies from a supportive middle class home with two well educated parents, then the teacher may not need any qualifications in teaching. The kids practically teach themselves.
The situation in real life schools (including private schools. where drug addled or otherwise difficult kids with divorced parents or where the drunken father routinely beats the shit out of the mother are not uncommon) is completely different.
Teachers need to know how to teach; and they are also need to be social workers and child psychologists. It’s a difficult job. It’s no wonder that a lot of teachers are not up to it.
Incidentally, in Victoria, principals in government schools already have the power to hire and fire.
Saw this loathsome Liberal on National Press Club (07 Feb 07). Several times she used the word “sack” … and she spat the word out with obvious relish. Easy to tell where these Liberals come from: don’t like someone, get rid of them.
Funny that, an election is coming up…
My local primary school had a truly awful principal who alienated all the staff, undermined them and made their lives hell. The ones who copped it particularly badly got alot of assistance from the union.
In this case the staff in question would have been in an awful situation without the help of the union. Equally if the head had hire/fire abilities the school would have been decimated.
Luckily she has moved on, and we haven’t lost all of our better teachers. After witnessing what effect a bad/incompatible principal can have I don’t think I would be in favour of giving Principals even more control, unless the school board had the ability to fire the principal .. and I’m not sure principals would be happy with that situation.
I’m sure it doesn’t help, too, that the teaching profession is continually slagged off publicly by politicians and the media. You’d need some serious perks to choose a career in a profession that gets no love and is an easy target for governments running for re-election.
Picking up on a side issue in the post, IME the level of teaching skills in the unis is pathetic. This causes a massive waste of resources as students graduate with fewer skills and less knowledge than they should. This is entirely predictable while people are neither trained in nor promoted by these skills.
I reckon that DipEd incorporated into the PhD should be de rigeur for anyone hoping to pursue an academic career. And academic appointment commitees should put more emphasis on the applicant’s teaching, rather than publishing, record.
The school curriculum is straining at the seams.
Pedagogy — constant battles over what should be taught, when, and how.
Pastoral care — a favourite dogwhistle of the Right.
Socialisation — a favourite motherhood issue of the dirigiste Left.
Welfare monitor — evermore onerous expectations on duty of care.
Social engineer — evermore prescriptive dikats on what students should think about hotbutton issues, not how they should think.
The Howard Government has presided over imposing larger burdens on schools. Howard’s control-freakery is a surprise to no one. Some of it is motivated by a genuine sense of unease about cultural directions in Australia. Some of it is motivated by the need to sure up wavering constituencies.
State governments are also in this game.
Some hypotheses may be derived:
1. Australian society is growing sicker and is in actual need of more remediation via the education system.
2. Policymakers are suffering from moral panic. They see social sickness where there isn’t any.
3. Politicians of the Right have discovered in teachers a convenient whipping-boy. Schools are supposed by them to be great engines of indoctrination in favour of the Left. Hotbeds of insubordination and even treason.
Whatever the motivations, parents and taxpayers ought to educate themselves to the fact that the expectations imposed upon schools and school teachers have increased remarkably. Those teachers who thought that the bulk of their working life would involve teaching skills and aptitudes have discovered that those elements have receded in importance and in status.
Some parents might be very happy that schools have taken on ever more of the in loco parentis role.
Other parents may be irritated by the time spent off-task from what they regard as the core pedagogical function.
However, in the spate of the flag-waving nanny-statism of the Howard era, this debate is barely audible.
As a result, many teachers who have found their jobs redefined without their imput and consent are demotivated and are leaving the profession.
The CIS have just released a paper packed full of wingnut talking points. In fact, John Greenfield’s rant quotes it almost word for word.
The author of course lays all the ills of the world at the feet of the teachers union – and uses the example of the union’s call for smaller class to demonstrate that the union only cares about Teachers – ’cause the kids don’t benefit at all from smaller class sizes, do they?
Actually, Australia’s educational outcomes are some of the best in the world, as the ACER’s Geoff Masters explained to a rather bemused, Michael Duffy the other day.
Hi,
My comment got spaminated
Poor Julie Bishop is all over the place in her portfolio, and clearly floundering with the complexity of the system-wide issues in education.
Adding to her woes is that the Federal cabinet rolled most if not all of her policy proposals in Jan â07. So she starts the year not with a clean slate but with a blank slate.
She has literally nothing to do â except talk and cut ribbons. This is why so little of what she says now has any real substance â it has no support from her own partyroom colleagues, let alone anyone outside.
I must say this is not due to any particular flaws on Julieâs part. A seasoned education professional would struggle with the portfolio â let alone somebody who has had no meaningful prior contact with the education system beyond âI went to school onceâ?. She has tried mighty hard and the effort is commendable â that it will come to nothing is not a reflection of her abilities or intent.
However, for her own good, and the good of the education system, I hope she gets moved to a portfolio more complementary to her skills. Julie Bishop is a managerialist politican and a technocrat. Education is a human services portfolio that simply doesnât suit her philosophical outlook on what politics is for. A misallocation of human resources if ever I saw one.
Julie Bishop is on the record as saying sheâs in the education portfolio to âraise standardsâ? and âimprove qualityâ? or words to that effect. These are content-free statements that could be applied to literally any portfolio or aspect of public life you care to mention. So she has no particular interest in or passion for education â she simply wants to execute a technocratic solution to whatever bones her political masters throw her. Itâs the great deception of modern management theory â that management is a science you can apply to any endeavour. Well, just like management guru Fred Hilmerâs undistinguished efforts at Fairfax, we see in Julie Bishop the failure of management theory to deal with the real world.
One minute she wants to decrease schoolsâ autonomy over the curriculum, but increase schoolsâ autonomy in HR, but decrease schoolsâ autonomy over where they put their flagpoles, but increase autonomy over how they chase private funding, but she doesnât actually run any schools and canât implement anythingâ¦
â¦As a Minister for Education, Julie Bishop makes a great politican.
What ‘see me after class’ said so well. We are seeing the rhetorical flourishes of MBA ‘speak’ applied to education-techniques of the market brought to bear on the fraught subject of ‘who will teach the teachers’. It seems that no-one needs to teach the teachers. So long as the (Right) government can tell them what to teach, the ‘how’ will take care of itself. Get ready for round #zillion of the ‘unaccoutable/lefties/union /maoists in charge of the ALP stopping your kids from being able to earn as much as the CEO of BHP Billiton’. yawn. I need a smoke.
As Susan Maushart said in the Oz last weekend: “those that can’t, teach and those that can’t teach become Education Minister.”
Bloody classic line.
Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, lecture.
Bishop’s campaign resembles that of dangerous drivers – rather than addressing their own failures as drivers, they seek someone to blame. Bash, bash, bash.
I heard Bishop talk on science education recently, and it was clear she didn’t know anything about science, and probably throught it boring as well. She really gives the impression of not being able to engage with her subjects.
From my memory of my expensive secondary school education I remember that our teachers were not immune from wasting time dealing with behaviour problems. I spent many hours in maths and music watching our teachers trying to control a young lady who has gone on to be an emminent child psychiatrist. I am sure my classmates would agree with me that she is well qualified for her role. My father’s war time stories include tales of tormenting his religion teacher.
Most teachers undergoing refresher courses are very keen to get more behavioural management skills and these skills seem to be primarily learnt by observing other teachers in action and adapting their techniques to suit your size, sex, ethnicity, personality and philosophy.
I thought it was difficult for incompetent teachers to survive in Victoria without the principals support. Most graduates find it difficult to get a permanent position.
Teacher bashing is a worthwhile ploy for governments to participate in because teachers’ salaries make up a large chunk of state budgets. The nurses salary expense has been trimmed from the state budget and which state government wants to tackle the police unions.
All of Bishop’s utterances are just more ominous signs that the Libs are going to step up their attempts to enforce a conservative spin on education, particularly on content. They think postmodernism is Leftist and even though it ain’t, they want to banish it from schools. I’ve been following the critical literacy debate, and the campaign The Australian newspaper has been running on the Howard Govt’s behalf, for over a year (post to come soon). I had to laugh at Malcolm Turnbull last night when he said (on the 7:30 Report, in the context of climate change):
MALCOLM TURNBULL: They are not prepared to accept any questions, any doubt and so hence we have the new heresy, as I said yesterday, the new heresy of scepticism. Don’t bear, you cannot have a doubt, you cannot question anything, you cannot doubt anything. You have to be a total believer, complete belief. It’s as though, what are we returning to, the Spanish Inquisition?
If he’d been following the Howard, News Limited, Donnelly and Wiltshire campaign, he’d realise that it’s his side’s idea that the critical mind is a bad thing.
amused
So you would prefer principles of rational fund allocation and competent departmental management were lacking in a Minister? Perhaps the position should be preserved for lesbian Social Workers?
In reference to unqualified teachers teaching in our schools – I have been working in NYC for the past 5 years and they have a fellows program where people already holding a degree can be in front of a class after a crash course of 4 weeks over Summer and then have their Masters paid for as they study part time. It is a disaster! True, many of these fellows become exceptional teachers and I would encourage support for people to change careers say with reduced HECs, as they usually are choosing to teach for the right reasons not just to fall into a job. However, when they are put in a class with little training it is unjust to them and most importantly to the students. These fellows usually go to the most disadvantaged schools and have some of the most challenging teaching assignments, but we all know that it takes much more than knowledge of a subject to be a good teacher. They must have sound understanding of learning and teaching pedagogy not just a knowledge of a particular subject or curriculum. They must know HOW to teach afterall!
Apparently we’re “robbing children of their cultural heritage”! What tosh.
And for all the ‘postmodernism is evil!’-ness that keeps being mentioned, I must say I’d never even heard the term until I got a third of the way through my arts degree. And I only graduated high school in 1999, so its not that long ago.
damn.
lost the link.
here ’tis.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21191986-2,00.html
So you would prefer principles of rational fund allocation and competent departmental management were lacking in a Minister? Perhaps the position should be preserved for lesbian Social Workers?
Oh dear oh dear, ‘lesbian social worker’ is it now. Your abuse is so refreshingly predictable. Just like your counterparts in the US, time (and the yuk factor about lesbians, whether social workers or not), has moved on, and you need to as well, if only to avoid being an even bigger prat that you clearly are. That one about the lesbian social worker must have been a real hit around 1975-1984.
What I would prefer Mr Greenfield, is a little less intellectual dishonesty from a government that knows nothing of rational fund allocation (tax Benefit ‘B’ anyone? $10billion for what exactly? Did anyone tell Treasury?) absolutely nothing about the intellectual currents it pretends to excoriate, but everything it seems, about how to wage phony campaigns against any minority it selects, as a substitute for what it ought to be doing, which is to govern-properly. Minister Bishop is nothing more than a silly and ambitious wannabe, who hopes her excursions into the phony culture wars will earn her brownie points with her boss, next time there is a reshuffle.
Unfortunately, there won’t be a ‘next time’, for her that is.
As a parent I’m over the politics on all sides of the education debate.
Nobody ever mentions the impact of class sizes on teaching efficiency. Would national control of education mean standard class sizes? In WA it’s 32 max, in NSW I understand it’s 25 – that’s a big difference in workload. What would Julie Bishop aim for? Does Kevin Donnelly mention class sizes in the huge amount of material he writes about literacy teaching? I have not seen him mention it once.
If the principal can hire and fire – I wouldn’t want to be a teacher in that situation in our local high school – who hires and fires the principal?
Regarding the dearth of maths and science students in higher education, it might help if schools let more year 11 and 12 students attempt maths and science courses in the first place.
But Leigh,
You misunderstand Mr Donelly’s campaign It has nothing to do with how to actually improve education, and everything to do with ensuring that its strutures permit him and the reactionaries he fronts for, to get their hands on the levers of curriculum. That is the point, the whole point-there is no other point. Human Resource management of teachers is just another ‘front’ in the campaign.
First, it should be possible to sack teachers who are leches, drunks, lazy or otherwise incompetent. There is a lot of low-hanging and rotten fruit that could be plucked from the teaching tree – people who are just not happy teaching and who may find release in doing something else, rather than facing the prospect of only twelve more years until retirement seething with hatred at bloody kids.
I had teachers like this Mark and I’d be stunned if you didn’t.
The teaching profession is not merely estimable but held together by those who are willing to carry the lazy and burnt out. Those are the teachers who should be insulated from this “Maoism” crap. One of the failures of unionism is that these people are equal to those who are poor, if not failed, teachers; and that sacking a failed teacher is a crime on the same level as sacking a dedicated and effective teacher.
In NSW the Teachers’ Federation has accepted regular payrises in return for vague general promises to remove teachers who sexually abuse students, don’t turn up to work without good reason, or are otherwise useless – then, when confronted with particular examples, they fight.
What should happen is that they should be forced onto the defensive: trot out some egregious example of a failed teacher and say, are you really going into bat for this creature? These are not teachers who ‘fail’, they FAIL utterly. A smart government wouldn’t target some touch-and-go case, a good teacher who’s stumbled into a bit of a purple patch, but I’ll bet there are examples of people employed as teachers who no sensible person would want within a hundred miles of a school. Get rid of them before the tabloids target them, because if the tabloids have to do it the pollies will roll over straight away.
I realise in the above paragraph that teachers cannot neatly be divided, that an individual who may be disenchanted may become a useful teacher, and vice versa; but an individual going through a phase where they don’t want to teach shouldn’t have to.
Having dumped the obvious failures, you can then jack up salaries to mollify those who’ve escaped the axe (particularly those teachers one would hope to retain), and to attract those who would make good teachers.
I’m not convinced that principals are all-wise. Non-government school systems have mechanisms for overriding any principal who may come to see their office as a fiefdom.
It is not a rational allocation of funds to pay unqualified teachers. Teaching standards relies on qualified entrants. A person can be both a qualified teacher and a lesbian, though only the former ought be compulsory.
There’s incompetence in every profession. If doctors and lawyers can be deregistered for committing offenses against their professions that are not crimes as such, then the same thing should happen to teachers. It’d be better for the profession (and yes, for the kiddies, and the future of the nation etc.) if they cut their dead losses and took a chance on the future.
On teachers unions, You’d be nuts as a teacher if you didn’t join one. Fancy fighting a spurious sexual abuse complaint on your own?
Beyond that the teachers union serves a vital function in the state system of providing another channel for the dissemination of state policy. As policy filters down through the hierarchy it is subject to obfuscation and spin. The union is actually a more direct and reliable channel.
Then they are handy for working conditions. My wife is currently looks as though she will be giving up her lunch hours in situation that is quite unusual and I don’t want to go into. But she might have to call in the union so that she can get to have a pee if it turns out her bladder won’t last the distance.
Performance pay and league tables of schools are particularly nutsoid ideas. There are too many principals who are just not up to assessing teacher performance. And who and on what basis are these league tables going to established?
I think the manpower problems of schools are virtually impossible to solve. Brilliant teachers and dud teachers are easy to pick. But in the broad mass in the middle there is a lot of subjectivity in assessing differences in quality. In truth the kids know best but there is no way of using them to give you the information.
From the Whitlam years and into the 80s masses of money was thrown at teacher development. A lot of good work was done, but in all schemes to improve education that I encountered there is diminishing returns. Same with class sizes. If you reduce classes from 30 to 25 the kids will not learn a sixth more as a result. But the teacher may escape descending into a shuddering mass.
Barry McGaw on Life Matters the other day said the aspect of schooling we are really bad at is equity. By that he meant that in Australia we have a much stronger link between socio-economic status and educational performance than elsewhere.
There’s a problem Bishop might like to tackle. While she’s at it she might find out and shout from the roof-tops why the graduates of government schools going on to university do better than their private school counterparts.
Any male teacher who is not in the union has rocks in his head. The union is his only hope in the event of one of the spurious child sex abuse cases Brian mentions above.
However when it comes to violence and abuse against teachers the record of the union is abysmal. No, it is worse than that.
I don’t know why a teacher hasn’t brought a lawsuit against the education department (for millions) in the aftermath of an assault or intimidation by a parent or teenage group of students.
The complete abscence of disciplinary sanctions available to teachers may be the root of the classroom/playground intimidation of teachers.
“One hit is worth a thousand words”
As if I’d come to this site and rant against unionism per se.
If you can accept that a company can be led well or badly, if you can accept that a government can be led well or badly, then you’ll have to accept that union leaders are not always paragons of virtue and good sense.
The leadership of teachers unions have slipped up in treating duds as no better than those who put in the extra effort. Lowering the proportion of duds and increasing that of better teachers makes it more likely that kids will get the education they need to transcend their background.
no surprises here: the impressario reveals himself, and guess who the librettist is?
Kevin Donnelly, curriculum expert, is described in Gummo’s link as an education consultant. Who are his clients? Presumably none of the state education departments.
This is priceless:
So that’s at least three people who think Donnelly knows what he’s on about: Donnelly, John Howard and (presumably) Julie Bishop. Nothing self-proclaimed about Donnelly’s expertise then.
âthinking manâs Andrew Boltâ?.
It’s like being the eating man’s shit sandwich.
Spiros, he did a review of the Queensland Education Department some years ago for the Liberal Minister of the day, Bob Quinn. Trouble was the Education Department is not responsible for curriculum development which is the only string to his bow. His report was based on what was happening in Victoria at the time – devolve everything.
He charged $50 000 for about a week’s work. You can bet that there are some nice fat consultancies on the way. It’s a very profitable business ranting against the Maoists. Someone should keep count
Donnelly reminds me of the Parrot rather than the Bolta. But he certainly is full of himself.
He once owned a fish and chip shop but doesn’t seem to mention that these days.
Hi Voc,
$50,000 for a week’s work – I’d like to see that! Back then, I never charged anything more than about $500 a day. Let’s say $500 by 5 days = $2,500.
Get a reality check, I know that Western science is only a socio-cultural construct and that there is no such thing as the real-world, but Im not sure what planet you are living on.
Best wishes,
Dr D
Kevin, like most consultants, you probably want to boast about your client list.
Who is getting the benefit these days of your expertise in curriculum design?
Hi Spiros,
For what it is worth, I have not worked for the federal government since 2005 – for some reason, the state ALP governments’ have never made me an offer. Writing for the OZ is good and I did a curriculum benchmarking project in NZ last year. Writing the second book also kept me busy.
Who do you work for?
Kevin
Dr KD sounds more like the thinking man’s Erich von Deniken
Hi Katz,
I was being ironic.
If you want to hear Donnelly on Dumbing Down and outcomes based education then listen to his interview with Michael Duffy.
If you want to know how we are tracking in education you might have a look at Professor Geoff Masters.
But then you should also listen to Professor Barry McGaw. He’s been everywhere, has done it all and knows everything (almost).
According to Masters our kids are pretty good at applying what they’ve learned in maths and science to everyday problems, less good at remembering the facts. Both those esteemed gentlemen give the impression that we have much to be pleased about, but of course both would have ideas about how we could do better.
Dr Donnelly, is that really you? If it is, then I have to say that your three posts here have brought me right over to your side. A comma splice, a missing apostrophe, a misplaced apostrophe, a case misidentification and a sentence ending with a preposition, all within fifteen short lines, has got to be some sort of record. I’m convinced: education is indeed in crisis.
Whether you’re an expert on what ought to be on the various English curricula is something about which I am less sure.
Dr Donnelly’s an old hand in the blogosphere, Dr Cat. Google up his guest post on Troppo a few years ago.
Hi Pavlov’s cat,
You say:
“Dr Donnelly, is that really you? If it is, then I have to say that your three posts here have brought me right over to your side. A comma splice, a missing apostrophe, a misplaced apostrophe, a case misidentification and a sentence ending with a preposition, all within fifteen short lines, has got to be some sort of record. I’m convinced: education is indeed in crisis.”
For what it is worth, two things: “governments’ “is plural, the apostrophe is in the correct spot. If you read Fowler’s Modern Usage, he argues, based on Latin, that there is an argument that you should not end a sentence with a preposition – he goes on to say that there are times when it is OK and that only pedants would think otherwise.
Yes, there are a few mistakes and I am glad that you uphold standards!
Hi yourself Dr KD.
No, you were attempting irony, but you managed to achieve sarcasm.
Better luck next time!
You did. Or are you denying that?
Watch out for the tar-baby. FOI is will reveal all.
Hi Voc,
Bring it on, as they say. If you can prove that I received $50,000 for working for 5 days in relation to the Queenland job, I’ll send you a free copy of the recent book, Dumbing Down.
Hi Dr D,
And apologies to those who are not interested in these matters — move along, nothing to see here — but those of us who do indeed think dumbing down is a bad thing would like to get this right.
1) That the governments in your post are indeed plural — more than one ALP state government (heh) — is not in contention. The point is that the word does not need any apostrophe.
2) Fowler says, from memory, ‘Break any of these rules rather than say anything downright barbarous.’
3) I am going on about these things for one reason only, viz the irony of your ongoing and vocal indignation at the nasty evil lefty way our children are (not) learning. Surely you must be able to see this point.
4) Let me get this straight: it’s okay to huff and puff loudly about the curriculum and how it hasn’t got the right things in it, especially the English curriculum — but somebody who likes to see the language used skilfully (especially by people who write for a living) is just a pedant.
Whatevs, Kev.
Orwell, in fact. Bottom of the page.
Another view of teachers and schools from someone who is clearly “objectively pro-Maoist”.
Dr Donnelly
How good of you to join us.
That was a nice speech you wrote for the PM to deliver the other day for your book launch.
I notice that you did not drink a glass of water while he was speaking, and that your lips can sometimes be seen moving whenever Julie Bishop opens her mouth.
What a shame you went into education and your skills were lost to the PR profession. You could’ve made money good from tobacco companies. Oh wait, you already did.
Dr Goldsworthy says:
“Fowler says, from memory, ‘Break any of these rules rather than say anything downright barbarous.’”
No. That was George Orwell.
“Who do you work for?”
Kevin, did you mean to ask, “for whom do you work”?
I am tempted to reply, “I teach elementary English grammar, and you are welcome to join my class”.
But I won’t, because it’s not true.
Since you asked, albeit ungrammatically, I am a dentist.
Good thing I said ‘from memory’, n’est-ce pas? Clearly I should have stuck to high scholarly standards and Googled it like everyone else.
I am not really interested in ‘booby prizes’; free or otherwise. I really have ‘standards’.
Stop being ‘pomo’ and tell the ‘truth’. Did you or didn’t you work for the Queensland Department of Education and bill that Department for $50 000; albeit indirectly through an associated entity. And BTW it wasn’t ‘Education Strategies’ as I recall?
BTW, Dr Cat, congratulations, you just ruined his day, week, year, or whatever. No understandings of plurals and the use of apostrophes.
Dr Cat, I think you are a legend; as the modern youth would say.
Quick question for one of the LP admins: is ‘Kevin Donnelly’ the, er, actual Kevin Donnelly? Or do we have a sock? Just curious, that’s all.
Yeah, like I said, SL, Dr Donnelly’s been visiting the blogosphere for some years. Check out his guest post on Troppo a few years ago. He usually pops up when he’s mentioned.
I’ve got a science degree majoring in physics, so I’d be much in demand as a teacher. And for me the qualifications are a deterrent. I work part time, and would be reluctant to give that up to study, so that means quite a long period of part-time study, quite possibly to find I’d hate the job at the end of it.
When I hear about the four week program in the US part of me thinks, “That sounds good, I could give it a try and if it doesn’t work out I haven’t lost much”. Then another part thinks, “Yeah right. I’d really be willing to walk in and face 25 year nines with four whole weeks of training behind me.”
I think it’s pretty clear which is the smarter part. I’m sure with no training requirements you could recruit more maths graduates. But I doubt you’d want to.
As a recent Science grad, I avoided teaching mainly because I don’t like teenagers. I didn’t even like them when I was one.
Plus the Money would a big issue too. I was working as a Car Park Attendent for $33k for a little while after finishing Uni and the starting salary for a teacher is ~ $35k. The extra two grand was unlikely to attract me to the teaching profession even if I was somewhat underemployed at the time.
I also like how Science is talked about as being the one entity as Biologist is going to able to teach Physics start off the bat (and vice versa).
That’s a bit disturbing, then. He can’t write.
SL — there’s a summary of his writing non-skills further up the thread, here.
SL the pomos who have taken over the schools will forgive him as long as he can think!
“He usually pops up when he’s mentioned.”
And then shoots through when he finds his interlocuters to be of rather a more robust and skeptical frame of mind than whom he normally engages with in the nicely watered and carefully mown op-ed pages and inner city dinner parties where he is generally wont to take his views for a stately canter. He certainly got his head shaved and his arse painted blue at Troppo.
Online, as in real life, he’s an opportunist lurker without true bottom. Regardless of its colour.
Back on topic. You can’t possibly send a teacher into a classroom without at least some basic training in survival skills specific to their profession. I know. In my time at school, I’ve driven at least three substitute/student teachers screaming and gibbering out the door. On the other hand I will always treasure the memory of the primary school english teacher who chucked away the set text to introduce us all instead to TH White’s “The Once and Future King.” I still have his copy.
Or our secondary school physics teacher, a rather louche ex-RAF pilot and former Welsh A-grade rugby player, who had to be bailed out of jail one night by his students after getting drunk and disorderly on an overnight school excursion and then not only made a point of paying us all back in full but also made sure everyone involved got at least a passing grade no matter how boneheaded they were about the electromagnetic spectrum and thermodynamics. I learnt an awful lot from him which has stood me in good stead over the years and none of it had anything to do with physics beyond Newton’s Third Law.
Since we’re all being pedantic, and Lawd how it’s fun…
Dr. Cat: “Good thing I said ‘from memory’, n’est-ce pas?”
While this is technically perfectly acceptable, from a style point of view it’s simply not the best choice. In the sentence, “It is” is understood (viz., “[It's a] Good thing I said…”), but in the parallel contruction at the end, “n’est-ce pas”, (literally, “is it not?”) “it’s” is technically literally present, rather than understood. This creates a cognitive dissonance in the reader’s mind; the parallel is not a proper mirror image, and therefore just a trifle ill-turned. Importantly, it’s not literally “wrong”; but, as when playing the Sicilian Defence, there are choices, and then there are just better choices. The sentence created a momentary blip of confusion in the reader’s mind, and so failed one of many tests, both as a sentence and as a wry twist. The proof is simply that the expected laugh did not materialize at the stop, as the reader would have wanted; the sitting judge in these cases is Dorothy Parker rather than Strunk and White. Writers can sometimes forget the simple truism that sometimes the best way to correct an error is not to fix it, but simply to do the whole thing a different way.
/ends pedantry, slurps remainder of mimosa, returns to a very late brunch.
Is that you, Fyodor?
It’s not Fyodor, unless he’s in a different timezone (‘late brunch’ at 9.37am?) which is possible of course.
Fyds would also know that the name of that hallowed publication is actually The Chicago Manual of Style.
Strunk and White have a lot to answer for.
Well, I reckon I should be flattered to be mistaken for the redoubtable Herr Fyodor.
And whoops, got the Chicago manual all dyslexically confused. F U NC DR HTS, U YM B SDXLC. Oh well. Wunk and Strite do indeed have much to answer for.
– j_p_z, giving Edward the Confessor a run for his money…
Of course. I should have known. Besides, that Sideshow Bob gravatar follows Fyodor around everywhere.
I’m an MLA Handbook girl myself. Old habits die hard.
Och, the diabolical MLA, the ten-headed Beast of Revelations itself!
meantime, though, far graver sins have lately issued from me own sloppy pen…
“Dorothy Parker… Strunk and White…” followed in a later remark by “Wunk and Strite…”
Can you imagine?! I gave myself the rarely-seen opportunity to make the pun Poorothy Darker, and I missed it on the first pass. There are writers who can actually be sued for failure of due diligence over such a misstep.
Oh well. I plead the goodness of the french toast. (I have an evil secret in my recipe, but I’m afraid if I revealed it, anthony would come up with something a million times better in 12 seconds and make me look like an utter doofus.)
meanwhile, silly and gratuitous excerpt from what’s sitting on the desk here beside the computer, that I found while flipping around, waiting for this page to load…
PAINE’S REPUTATION: The world cracks open. Wake up!
PAINE: Oh, Christ, let me be. I want to sleep.
ALL: He wants a mistress.
REPUTATION: The Revolution is your mistress.
– Paul Foster, “Tom Paine, a Play in Two Parts”
Huh. Hunter’s luck…
Two words comrades – The Little Red Book!
j-p-z
Double cream and a light dusting of heroin?
Hi Voc,
For what it is worth. The job for the education department involved two companies, my own, and another called the Collins Hill Group. The budget was about $50,000 and I received about $25,000 for airfares and related costs. I worked for about 10 days on the project and never, never received more than $25,000. Put in an FOI if you don’t believe me. The ‘great’ thing about blogs is that comments like yours go on record without any proof or evidence (irony).
Dr Donnelly nice to see that you acknowledge the truth of my assertions. Your belatedly admittance is somewhat at odds to your original claim:
Your airfares and ‘related expenses’ are interesting to say the least. But I suppose that ‘truth’ is all relative. It seems to me that you are a post-modernist when it’s convenient. Sort of ‘dumbing down’ I suppose.
Just thought I would make the ‘truth’ part of the historical record.
Hi VOC,
You originally argued that I made $50,000 related to one week’s work reviewing the Queensland Education Department – the fact is that I only billed about $25,000 for the work I did. While some argue that Western science is simply a socio-cultural construct, there are some truths – one of which is that $25,000 does not equal $50,000. Can you add and subtract?
Hmm
while I make no pretense of having studied this matter, ( of KC’s billing) there seems a certain amount of “weasel wordiness” at play :
KC
KC again
Now, I may be obtuse, but
plus
looks awfully like $50,000 dollars IN TOTAL to me ?
VOC, Kevin & Pterosaur
Your little stoush is looking increasingly pointless. I’m closing this thread for now.
Kevin
You just said you got $25000 for 10 days work which included airfaires. Let’s say you made two trips to Queensland at a cost of $1000 each that means your fees were around $2300 per day, which sounds about right for a consultant like yourself.
That being the case, why did you say earlier your charged only $500 per day, a figure that is ludicrously and incredibly low?
I don’t see why you should be embarassed about being able to charge $2K per day for your services, if you can find someone who is willing to pay it. That is less than a junior to mid person at one of the big accounting firms. Top QCs make 5 times as much. Tim Flannery gets $50K for giving a talk on climatre change. Bill Clinton gets hundreds of thousands per talk, as did Margaret Thatcher before bad health stopped her.
Of course, if you got the Queensland work through political connections rather than a transparent tender that might be considered problematic, but for the Queensland government, not you.