ttp://www.theage.com.au/comment/one-size-education-no-longer-fits-all-20141002-10oh7y.html
The real test comes after graduation. Photo: Craig Abraham
The dangerous furphy that the Chinese system of education is
one to be admired and emulated, something teacher Christopher Bantick
clearly wants us to do judging by his opinion article on these pages
this week, was addressed at a recent Regional Conference of the Council
of International Schools held in Adelaide.
Here were gathered educators from all over the globe, from schools that were variously religious and non-denominational, government-run and those driven by profit. It represented a broad church. Our presenters were similarly eclectic. Their common theme was the nature of education in the globalised context of the 21st century.
Associate Professor Lucas Walsh, Associate Dean at Monash University, reminded us of the realities of the job market for young people. How, for instance, can you plan a life around casualised employment which is the growing prospect for our graduates? What are your thoughts about a system that pushes you towards the tertiary pathway and then reneges on the promise which a university education is meant to fulfil?
There is evidence that young people are losing faith with advanced economies and you only need to be paying cursory attention to recent events to know where that might lead. Legitimately, young people want to know what's in it for them. This is not narcissism but a realist response to a system (vide rampant tax avoidance) which shows few signs of social responsibility.
Bantick seems more than content to force-feed his students content, like so many pedagogical foie gras geese. It is all about ATAR and NAPLAN for him. The ATAR is the ne plus ultra, being the key to admission to "desirable universities". Which, please, are these?
And having gained entry into ATAR heaven, what happens then? The statistics are damning in the case of private schools for which parents have shelled out big time. Having gained entry to one of those "desirable" institutions, the kids drop out in droves. Why?
Very possibly because Bantick and his kind (it is the whole content-driven curriculum, really) have not equipped their students with those qualities of which Bantick is so contemptuous. Things like "leadership and personal development, confidence and resilience, wellness and a social conscience". God forbid that we equip our students with the latter. For might not our charges then turn bolshie and question the premise of rank materialism, the celebrity culture and democracies which are sometimes anything but.
I don't believe you can smugly dismiss such scepticism as "little more than New Age holistic pedagogic twaddle" as Bantick seems to want to do.
Another speaker at the CIS conference, Martin Westwell, Director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century, had some surprising things to say about PISA data. PISA is the OECD Program for International Student Testing and assesses 15-year-old students for their capabilities in mathematics, reading, science literacy and, latterly, general problem solving. That Australian kids do not do as well as those in Shanghai and Finland has our educational bureaucrats in something of a lather.
Westwell pointed out, however, that a high PISA score was in inverse proportion to student interest. Curious. Another alarming graphic which Professor Yong Zhao from the University of Oregon likes to present depicts the level of creativity in children at pre-school age and maps it into retirement age.
Basically creativity plummets the moment kids enter school, bottoms out during their working life and only recovers after retirement. Every one of the speakers at the conference emphasised creativity, along with adaptability and intercultural communication, as being essential tools for the 21st century graduate.
Bantick, by contrast, says that what "China does superbly well is focus on the main game". This, you have to surmise, is the game of scoring grades which are indicative of little else than the ability to ingest information and regurgitate it on command. Don't we have the internet for that?
Back at the CIS conference, we were left to consider the words of Pascale Quester, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Adelaide. We need, she said, to abandon the traditional one-size-fits-all model which is gender-biased and allocates a punitive role to assessment, for a new paradigm which is learner-focused, experience-based and flexible in delivery. In this way might young people be reconnected with a body politic in which they perceive themselves to have a clear investment.
Simon Hughes teaches English and History at McKinnon Secondary College in Melbourne.
The real test comes after graduation. Photo: Craig AbrahamHere were gathered educators from all over the globe, from schools that were variously religious and non-denominational, government-run and those driven by profit. It represented a broad church. Our presenters were similarly eclectic. Their common theme was the nature of education in the globalised context of the 21st century.
Associate Professor Lucas Walsh, Associate Dean at Monash University, reminded us of the realities of the job market for young people. How, for instance, can you plan a life around casualised employment which is the growing prospect for our graduates? What are your thoughts about a system that pushes you towards the tertiary pathway and then reneges on the promise which a university education is meant to fulfil?
There is evidence that young people are losing faith with advanced economies and you only need to be paying cursory attention to recent events to know where that might lead. Legitimately, young people want to know what's in it for them. This is not narcissism but a realist response to a system (vide rampant tax avoidance) which shows few signs of social responsibility.
Bantick seems more than content to force-feed his students content, like so many pedagogical foie gras geese. It is all about ATAR and NAPLAN for him. The ATAR is the ne plus ultra, being the key to admission to "desirable universities". Which, please, are these?
And having gained entry into ATAR heaven, what happens then? The statistics are damning in the case of private schools for which parents have shelled out big time. Having gained entry to one of those "desirable" institutions, the kids drop out in droves. Why?
Very possibly because Bantick and his kind (it is the whole content-driven curriculum, really) have not equipped their students with those qualities of which Bantick is so contemptuous. Things like "leadership and personal development, confidence and resilience, wellness and a social conscience". God forbid that we equip our students with the latter. For might not our charges then turn bolshie and question the premise of rank materialism, the celebrity culture and democracies which are sometimes anything but.
I don't believe you can smugly dismiss such scepticism as "little more than New Age holistic pedagogic twaddle" as Bantick seems to want to do.
Another speaker at the CIS conference, Martin Westwell, Director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century, had some surprising things to say about PISA data. PISA is the OECD Program for International Student Testing and assesses 15-year-old students for their capabilities in mathematics, reading, science literacy and, latterly, general problem solving. That Australian kids do not do as well as those in Shanghai and Finland has our educational bureaucrats in something of a lather.
Westwell pointed out, however, that a high PISA score was in inverse proportion to student interest. Curious. Another alarming graphic which Professor Yong Zhao from the University of Oregon likes to present depicts the level of creativity in children at pre-school age and maps it into retirement age.
Basically creativity plummets the moment kids enter school, bottoms out during their working life and only recovers after retirement. Every one of the speakers at the conference emphasised creativity, along with adaptability and intercultural communication, as being essential tools for the 21st century graduate.
Bantick, by contrast, says that what "China does superbly well is focus on the main game". This, you have to surmise, is the game of scoring grades which are indicative of little else than the ability to ingest information and regurgitate it on command. Don't we have the internet for that?
Back at the CIS conference, we were left to consider the words of Pascale Quester, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Adelaide. We need, she said, to abandon the traditional one-size-fits-all model which is gender-biased and allocates a punitive role to assessment, for a new paradigm which is learner-focused, experience-based and flexible in delivery. In this way might young people be reconnected with a body politic in which they perceive themselves to have a clear investment.
Simon Hughes teaches English and History at McKinnon Secondary College in Melbourne.
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