January 31, 2008
Two stomach turning surprises in one day.
The first one happened when the dog returned from an illicit exploration of the neighbourhood smelling like Essence of Death. She was coated in some hellish, grey, greasy substance. Washing it off was an exercise that brought tears to the eyes and breakfast back to the just-swallowed stage.
The second one happened when I found myself agreeing with Kevin Donnelly and Tony Smith on education. I'm still not sure which surprise was the nastier.
Donnelly objects to the appointment of Barry McGaw as head of the National Curriculum Board on the grounds that he's part of the "establishment" (showing your age there Kev) and doesn't qualify as a curriculum expert. But Donnelly was always going to criticise anyone who got the job who wasn't him.
Moving along, Donnelly argues that past attempts at national curriculum implementation have fallen over because they failed to involve input from practicing educators, and they haven't allowed schools the flexibility to take local community needs into account.
The failure to consult with people practicing in the classroom during the initial stages is a pretty basic error, although consultation comes with its own problems. Freeing up active teachers means finding and paying for temporary replacements, which isn't easy or cheap and students bear the brunt of disruption. Good teachers, who are presumably the ones you'd want to contribute, work much longer hours than commonly thought, and it's unreasonable to expect them to continue teaching and contribute during non-existent spare time.
Tony Smith points out that teacher shortages are already a problem, though he conveniently neglects to mention his own side's role in that shortage, instead indulging in a fit of state bashing. By now we're all aware that we face shortages in plenty of skills, largely thanks to the previous government's attitude towards education generally. If it didn't involve a flag and a helpful instruction manual on social conservatism it didn't count as education. But that's another story, and hopefully one which can safely be filed in the Golden Age of Howard archives.
Teachers generally get involved in curriculum development at the pilot stage, when plans and materials have already been developed at enormous cost. Their feedback can, and sometimes does, lead to improvements, but the process creates other problems along the way. Inadequate training, lack of time for record keeping, lack of both technical and collegial support, and the fact that they and their students are lab rats for someone else's experiment are just some of the problems faced in the past.
Donnelly's second reason, that "schools had little, if any, flexibility to fashion what was taught to their local needs", and that they need the "freedom to shape a curriculum that best suits their unique communities" is also a good point, thought I doubt Donnelly would agree with me on why.
Donnelly spends a great deal of time trying to ensure that disadvantage of various kinds is no barrier to every Australian child rote learning the complete works of Shakespeare. The idea that a school curriculum should support student engagement with communities, histories and vernacular stuff like local linguistic practices amounts to pomo postcode relativism in Donnelly World.
However, in the context of this single article I find I agree with Donnelly. A reversal of the experience of my dog turning my stomach, but similarly disconcerting.
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Lyn,
I've never understood the resistance to a national educational curriculum for schools. Why the resistance for so long?