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Breaking
News: Week of 12 June 2006
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Monday 12 June 2006
Tuesday 13 June
Wednesday 14 June
Thursday 15 June
Friday 16 June
Saturday - Sunday 17 - 18 June
- Channel 7 Evening News, 6 pm: "OBE Forum"
- An interesting 3-minute segment, with more to follow over the next few days.
A synopsis is available by clicking here.
The Forum will conclude tomorrow evening.
- ABC News Online
- Teachers stand firm over OBE dispute
"A Western Australia Government meeting with education groups has failed to allay fears that teachers may boycott the new outcomes-based education (OBE) courses next year."However, some progress has been made, with the State Government being forced to compromise on OBE courses after extended opposition from teachers.
"It is understood the compromises include phasing in new material and changes to the way students are assessed.
"WA Premier Alan Carpenter says he now expects to reach an agreement with teachers by the end of the week.
"We believe that we are now very close to having the Teachers Union and the sectors supportive of the change," he said.
"State School Teachers Union spokesman Mike Keely says it appears the Government is finally listening.
"He says the meeting was a major step forward.
"I'd say the Government recognises that some of what's been put on the table is over the top. It must be modified," he said.
"He says a directive previously issued to teachers not to move to the new courses of study, unless they are properly prepared, remains in place.
"The directive's in place, [the] executive took that decision and I must say that I think that decision has made Government listen," he said.
"It is very clear that this is either going to go ahead sensibly, so that teachers can manage it, or it's not going to go ahead."
"Greg Williams from the group, People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, says teaching one course for all students is a positive change to the proposed system.
"At the pointy end of study, so when you're in year 12, you're a serious academic student, and you are competing for a place in medicine, dentistry, engineering law, the sciences, the serious literature courses, all those sorts of things, then you've got to be assessed on the same playing field, you have to be," he said.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier says even with the Western Australian Government's concessions there is not enough time to overhaul the system.
"I feel that there is insufficient time to rectify the endemic problems that continue to exist and making changes virtually on a daily basis will not resolve the issue," he said." [emphasis added]
Full story at ABC News Online http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1660599.htm
- Today's West Australian includes two articles, a box of quotations, Alston's cartoon, another Inside Cover "Waffle Watch" and two letters to the editor
- Teachers win OBE concessions after Government backdown (front page)
by Bethany Hiatt
"Alan Carpenter emerged from a crisis meeting with education chiefs and union leaders yesterday claiming to have given significant concessions in the battle over outcomes-based education."The Premier said the Government had put forward a string of compromises to help simplify next year's major overhaul of WA's high school curriculum. Proposed changes included adding more content to courses and simplified assessment.
"Mr Carpenter believed the concessions would help win over teachers' unions, but union leaders said they would need to examine the detail before lifting bans on the introduction of 17 OBE courses in 2007.
"The Government's last-ditch attempt to resolve the stalemate between the Curriculum Council and the unions came after the scheme almost veered out of control under the stewardship of Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich. Yesterday, Ms Ravlich conceded she could have handled OBE implementation differently.
"We've recognised that the direction we were moving towards was seen to be purist," she said.
"Whereas what we needed to do was pull it back and reintroduce the syllabus and reintroduce the content and be very strong on assessment and moderation."
"State School Teachers Union president Mike Keely said the union ban on OBE courses had forced the Government to finally listen to teachers."
Full story in The West Australian at http://www.thewest.com.au/20060612/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto134397.html
- Teachers' council holds fate of OBE
by Bethany Hiatt (page 8)
"State school teachers will decide whether to accept the State Government's compromise package on outcomes-based education at their biggest meeting of the year next weekend.
"State School Teachers Union president Mike Keely said while he was buoyed by Alan Carpenter's attempts to appease teachers, the union would not consider lifting its ban on teaching 17 new OBE courses next year until after the proposals were put to SSTU members at its State council meeting on Saturday and Sunday.
"Private school teachers' group the Independent Education Union said it would wait to see more detail on the proposed changes, but it is likely to fall into line with what State school teachers decide.
"Mr Keely was optimistic that teachers would accept measures proposed by the Premier and Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich. [emphasis added]
"The changes will enable teachers to work from where they've been in the past and move forward incrementally," he said.
"This is a transition process. Instead of just dropping people over the edge into a new system we have to move slowly forward."
"Mr Carpenter said he was "very confident" of getting teacher union support..."
"Asked how the changes could take place in time for teachers to begin delivering the new courses in February next year, Mr Carpenter responded: "There's time." [emphasis added]
"But shadow education minister Peter Collier said while the concessions had merit, six months was not enough time to completely restructure courses and change assessment procedures.
"To assume this window dressing is going to solve all the issues is naive," he said. "The most logical thing is just to delay..."
"Ms Ravlich said she was looking at the OBE model used in NSW, a model the Curriculum Council rejected several years ago.
"There will be a syllabus for each of the 17 courses of study, there will be content clearly specified," she said..."
Full story in The West Australian
- Quotations (page 8)
Alston (page 18)
- Inside Cover's "Waffle Watch" (page 2)
"The chalkie who sent this in has been teaching English for 25 years.
"It's from a Year 7 report from a Catholic primary school and is an "indicator" (OBE speak) of progress in the area of spelling:"The student demonstrates an awareness of the social obligations of a speller."
"This one had me baffled," she said.
"You're not alone."
- Letters to the editor (pages 20-21)
- Please explain
"All right, let's all say it together: "The emperor has no clothes." Outcomes-based education for senior students is indeed a dead issue. It's dead in the water.
"Here is some homework for the OBE think tank: rewrite all your material in simple, short, understandable sentences. Read the material out to people in the street. If they can't understand it, throw it out. There is no place for gobbledegook in education.
"Actually, it is very hard to write meaningful descriptions of outcomes at various levels. Years ago, when this material was shown to senior teachers, the almost universal response was, we don't understand it, our colleagues won't understand it, and nor will the students or parents. Their response was, we are not asking for your approval. You have to help us do it. And by the way, you won't have any time or money to do the work.
"OBE has been forced upon many unwilling teachers and administrators. Now that it is blowing up, it gives them little satisfaction."
Merv Daw, Melville
- "What a magnificent letter you published by Kim Treffone (8/6 [OBE and the Eagles]). I am going to have it framed. I also think a copy should be sent to both the Premier and his Education Minister. Hopefully they will be able to understand it. Thanks again to Kim Treffone."
Kenneth M Gray, Rockingham
- Today's The Australian includes a feature article, a Kevin Donnelly OPINION piece and two letters to the editor
- Carpenter drops new-age curriculum
by Ean Higgins
"The West Australian Government abandoned its new gradeless schools curriculum yesterday, bowing to pressure from teachers and parents and promising to maintain real course content in place of ideological bent."In an embarrassing about-face, Premier Alan Carpenter announced the changes to the state's new-age "outcomes-based" education system after a morning crisis meeting with education leaders in his office.
"Mr Carpenter, flanked by his controversial Education Minister, Ljiljanna Ravlich, announced after the meeting that the new system would now maintain percentage marking of students.
"His Government will give up its plan for an evaluation system based exclusively on eight "levels", in favour of the NSW system, which combines similar streaming of students but with traditional marking based on a percentage.
"It will introduce compulsory content in each of the 17 new courses to be introduced next year for Years 11 and 12, reviewing each one over the next few weeks.
"Teachers will be able to prepare examinations in the traditional fashion, rather than being forced to use those prepared by curriculum developers that require students to provide "values oriented" answers on ideological interpretations of their subjects. [emphasis added]
"Ms Ravlich told journalists that "about 85 to 90 per cent of content will be exactly the same" as current courses, and conceded that the outcomes-based plan was too ideologically driven.
"Perhaps the direction we were moving in was a bit purist," Ms Ravlich said. She and Mr Carpenter insisted outcomes-based education would still be introduced next year, but conceded there would be adjustments.
"We have listened to the teachers. We are responding to their concerns. We are simplifying the process of change and making it clearer to all concerned," the Premier said.
"The Australian has exposed many of the deficiencies in the outcomes-based courses and the West Australian curriculum, including a move to allow Year 12 English students to analyse the squiggly lines used to draw Mr Messy in the Mr Men children's book series.
"The secretary of the Western Australian Independent Education Union, Theresa Howe, said the newspaper played an important role in forcing the Government to correct the problems. "It has had an impact," she said. "It has informed a wider audience. The Australian has a high degree of credibility."
"The changes announced yesterday amount to a significant reversal. The current courses will be used as a template and only changed according to what teachers, educationalists and unions will accept.
"Education Department director-general Paul Albert told The Australian that the new curriculum would be introduced in a "transitional" fashion.
"The executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of Western Australia, Audrey Jackson, said she felt more confident after yesterday's meeting with the Premier and Ms Ravlich that courses would maintain a solid base.
"Ms Jackson, a chemistry teacher, said: "The emphasis will swing back towards the traditional form of chemistry, a mix of calculations, a display of knowledge of chemical processes."
"Yesterday's backflip followed the intervention of Mr Carpenter to deal with a crisis that threatened to unhinge his Government, after Ms Ravlich failed to address the problem for months and refused to engage with teachers, unions, the media or the public.
"A weekend poll found 79 per cent of West Australians wanted the new curriculum delayed, and most respondents, by more than two to one, felt it risked "dumbing down" standards.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said Mr Carpenter should have acted months ago to take the matter out of the hands of Ms Ravlich, who he said was "not up to the job"..."
"The president of the State School Teachers Union, Mike Keely, said the Government was finally listening.
"But he said the union directive not to teach the new courses unless teachers were comfortable with them would remain at least until the union's state council meets this weekend."
Full article in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19441497-2702,00.html
- Right answer, but real test to come
COMMENT by Kevin Donnelly
"Premier Alan Carpenter, whose other job is standing up for his Education Minister, should be thanked for backing down on the new West Australian senior school certificate."Providing teachers with a clear map on what is taught, as opposed to vague outcomes, ridding courses of political correctness in favour of essential academic content, and allowing teachers to mark out of 100 instead of grading on eight levels, represents positive change.
"But any praise should be muted. The Government has only acted out of self-interest -- after being in denial about the groundswell of public opposition to the certificate.
"Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich as recently as two weeks ago said there was no place for compromise.
"Ravlich argued that the certificate was world's best practice.
"She said the Government would not back down on the basis that, to quote Hansard, "the responsibility of government is to put its policy position on the line and, basically, make sure that the policy is implemented".
"Concerns about the Government's about-face are compounded by the fact schools that have been forced to implement the new courses this year -- for example, English at Year 11 and Aviation at Year 12 -- are now being told the curriculum approach is flawed.
"The Government has refused to budge from its position that the certificate be implemented next year, triggering doubts over whether there is enough time to review all courses and ensure that teachers are ready to teach the certificate at the start of next year.
"Critics of outcomes-based education may have won the battle, but not the war. Teachers in primary and lower secondary schools are still being forced to implement an outcomes-based approach.
"If outcomes-based education has failed at Years 11 and 12, why is it being forced on younger students?"
- Kevin Donnelly is director of Education Strategies
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19441550-13881,00.html
- Letters to the editor
"I am an experienced English teacher in Western Australia and I have been watching with fascination the debate about our new English course. There is one concern of many that I would like to raise. Repeatedly your paper has made the assertion that a student will not be penalised for spelling and grammatical mistakes in an exam. While it is true that the draft paper had such a disclaimer, a little investigation would have revealed that this disclaimer was a mistake at the printing stage and certainly will not appear on the final version. That is what drafts are for, to find such errors and correct them."The truth is that the conventions of English (spelling and so on) make up one quarter of all assessment from kindergarten to Year 10, and one third of assessment in years 11 and 12. It is impossible to graduate or gain tertiary entrance without competence in these areas."
Lynette Virgona, Head of English, Swan View Senior High School, WA
"Cultural studies emerged in the 1950s as an antidote to the insufferable dullness of mass culture and the shameless destruction of communities and traditions by consumerism ("Cultural cringe", 9/6). As long as newspaper editors in search of a scapegoat permit it to be associated with the ailments of the moment, important work remains to be done by cultural studies at all levels of education."
Dr Gary Genosko, Newtown, NSW
The Australian Newspaper at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19441997-21223,00.html
- Channel 7 Evening News, 6 pm: "OBE Forum"
- Another interesting segment, clearly showing hoe the Curriculum COuncil / DET "sticked" the audience
... more to follow -- We think !) over the next few days.
A synopsis is available by clicking here.
- Today's West Australian includes a major article, a short Editorial, Alston's cartoon and a letter to the editor
- More calls to delay OBE despise changes
by Bethany Hiatt, Jessica Strutt and Rhianna King (page 7)
"Three of the most ardent opponents of the outcomes-based education plan were last night warming to the State Government's compromise solution to the furore - but then insisted there was no way the 11th-hour changes could be introduced in time for the controversial scheme to be implemented next year.
"Greg Williams, who leads People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes (PLATO), St Hilda's principal Joy Shepherd and Wesley College principal David Gee said the crucial changes to OBE being mooted by the Government could amount to a significant backdown and were likely to be seen by teachers and parents as an acceptable compromise.
"But they warned there was no prospect of the OBE system and the latest changes being ready to enforce on Year 11 students in 2007 and the implementation timetable needed to be delayed a year.
"Mrs Shepherd said while she welcomed the belated compromise offer, teachers would need time to reorganise their courses and assessment around the changes.
"There needs to be a delay because teachers will have to rewrite what they have already tried to plan," she said. "The problem was never teachers weren't prepared, it was the courses weren't prepared and the thing is that everything that they've prepared to date will now have to be changed. [emphasis added]
"We welcome this and await the detail of the changes. However, we will need time then to reorganise around whatever these new details are."
"Mr Gee, a member of the Curriculum Council's principals' forum, said the State Government could not make such significant changes at this point in the year and still roll out the new courses in 2007.
"He said the changes would have to be in place within six weeks to be workable. "I just think they are so compromised now," he said. "I don't understand what's the new system, what's the old system and how on earth they can be married."
"Despite the concessions, private and public school teachers will go ahead with a rally at Parliament tomorrow which will call on the Government to delay OBE.
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday the Government's change of heart was political expediency and would not ease the concerns of teachers and parents.
"Ms Bishop said the concessions were inadequate and called for OBE to be delayed until a comparative study into high school curriculum across Australia was completed at the end of the year. Ms Bishop said there was no way plans to copy NSW's OBE model could be in place in WA by the start of next year.
"The NSW Government took two years of professional development before introducing it," she said. "If the WA Labor Government is now going to follow this model they need to follow the resourcing and the timing."
"Six months does not give them enough time to fix the problems inherent in the system. Why has it taken them 18 months to admit their own incompetence? This decision was not made to support students and teachers, it was made for political expediency." [emphasis added]
"The comments came as the Curriculum Council met to decide whether it would agree to demands by teachers and parents that the way students are assessed - under a system known as levelling - be abandoned.
"Under the plan being considered by the council, teachers would be allowed to mark students' work conventionally rather than assign them a level as required by OBE. The levels would be applied later by bureaucrats within the OBE system.
"The Government's proposed backdown would also see defined syllabuses introduced for the new courses."
Full story in The West Australian at http://www.thewest.com.au/20060613/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto134409.html
- Editorial
Assurances needed on OBE changes (page 20)
"This newspaper said at the beginning of this month that it would not be surprising if the State Government discovered the value of compromise on OBE fairly soon.
"It now has done so.
"But the OBE problems are far from over.
"For example, there is an overwhelming need for firm assurances about the effects on courses of the compromises reached and about whether there is enough time to make the necessary changes."
- Alston (page 20)
- Letter to the Editor (page 23)
- I Want OBE Moratorium
The Premier and the Minister for Education have finally admitted what most teachers and parents have known for more than a year -- the new courses of study are unworkable and need drastic changes. Their idea of a compromise is to agree that changes are necessary but still insist on the introduction next year.
"As the parent of a Year 10 pupil, who is destined to be one of the victims of this ill-conceived and poorly executed "innovation", I want nothing less than a total moratorium on the introduction until all the problems are resolved. I want to see all these promised changes in writing and that everything has been carefully scrutinised by all of the important stakeholders.
"My daughter, and every other Year 10 student in the State, deserves far better than an education system that is cobbled together on the run by politicians."
B A Lee, Ardross
- Today's The Australian includes a great Editorial and two articles and
- Editorial: A great outcome
Reversal of WA curriculum a win for common sense"Mr Messy has been expelled from Western Australia's high schools. Year 11 and 12 students in that state will no longer be asked to analyse the children's book character's squiggles or perform a variety of other dumbed-down tasks to complete their education. On Sunday, the state Government announced it was dropping its attempts to force a politicised and intellectually dubious outcomes-based education (OBE) curriculum on upper school students. In its place will be a system that allows traditional teaching and grades students using a percentage-based marking system similar to that used in NSW. The devil may still lurk in the detail, but the decision appears to be a positive step forward and a victory for parents, teachers and students.
"Sunday's decision was the result of co-ordinated action by those with the most to lose from OBE. The West Australian teachers unions are to be congratulated for putting the welfare of their charges and their profession above narrow self-interest. They continued to resist the new curriculum even after the Government offered a hefty pay rise. Parents were also instrumental in leading the charge against a system that would have given them precious little idea of how their children were performing. Citizens' group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes became a model of grassroots political organisation. And Premier Alan Carpenter is to be congratulated for apparently putting a stop to this nonsense once and for all. The only loser in the whole affair is state Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich. Ms Ravlich, who saw much of her portfolio yanked from under her after spending much of the past fortnight ducking questions about the curriculum, conceded her department went too far, but still insists outcomes-based education is the wave of the future. This ignores the failed OBE experiences not just of Victoria but in the US, where the system has fallen out of favour. [emphasis added]
"As The Australian has repeatedly pointed out, it is dangerous for children and the country to overthrow tried-and-true teaching methods in favour of the trendy. As the prime mover of Australia's economy and the state with some of the country's worst skills shortages, Western Australia cannot afford to have its science students spend their class-time debating the ethics of airbags or attitudes and values as they pertain to the cosmetic industry, as they would have under the proposed curriculum. Similarly, teaching kids to analyse junk mail or movie posters instead of giving them a love and understanding of real books does no one any favours. Ditching the new-age gradeless curriculum for Years 11 and 12 is a great step forward for the state. But Ms Ravlich and Mr Carpenter should be on notice: the people of Western Australia will not stand for any back-door attempts to reintroduce the new curriculum. And now outcomes-based education has suffered such a blow in the state's high school classrooms, the question becomes: why is it still being used in kindergarten through to Year 10?" [emphasis added]
Full Editorial in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19450175-7583,00.html [scroll down a bit]
- Training confusion on new curriculum
by Paige Taylor and Ean Higgins
"The architects of Western Australia's new-age curriculum yesterday postponed teacher training essential for its implementation next year, signalling confusion over the raft of changes imposed by Premier Alan Carpenter."The move came as the Government raced to strike a deal with the State School Teachers Union this week for rolling back the ideological fervour and increasing the substantial content in 17 new courses in time for a critical union meeting at the weekend.
"The Curriculum Council postponed training sessions for 300 teachers due to instruct their colleagues at a professional development day on July 24 in how to write syllabuses for the new courses.
"An email to the presenters, obtained by The Australian, said their training, due to start yesterday and continue until Thursday, had been postponed indefinitely.
"Due to the ongoing negotiations between the state government, Curriculum Council, sector systems, unions and other stakeholders regarding the new courses of study in 2007, the training sessions for presenters ... have been postponed until further notice," the email stated.
"The state Government has made significant concessions in the courses, promising to remove ideological bent and inject compulsory content, as it tries to salvage at least a skeleton of its plan to introduce the new courses into Year 11 next year.
"The Carpenter Government has so far refused to alter the timetable for implementation, despite growing criticism and the threat of a teacher revolt from the unions representing government and independent schools.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said he had encountered mass confusion in the teaching profession, saying a teachers' forum he attended yesterday on implementing the new curriculum found participants had no clear idea how to proceed.
"He expressed doubt the curriculum could be revised in time to be introduced next year and repeated the Opposition's call for it to be delayed a year.
"It's almost got to the point where it's too late," he said.
"But Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich insisted yesterday that the new curriculum was set in stone for next year. "There will be no delay," she said.
"Curriculum Council head David Axworthy said the course changes would "require some reorganisation and reallocation" of resources".
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19453163-13881,00.html
- 'Tolerance' slant is damaging education
by Jeremy Roberts
"An obsession with teaching "tolerance" is preventing students from making their own moral choices and, in turn, confusing the Howard Government's attempts to instil "Australian values" in schools."A leading trainer of teachers believes the teaching of nine common Australian values - a policy introduced by former education minister Brendan Nelson - is failing..."
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19453514-13881,00.html
- Anti-OBE Protest Rally at Parliament House
Covered by all 4 TV networks on Evening News (lead item on Channel 9 -- ran for 2 minutes +), The West Australian and The Australian
Click here to see a 5 minute video from all four networks [beware, it's a huge file: suggest you "pause" it and give it time to load -- will take a couple minutes even with ADSL]
- Today's West Australian includes two articles on page 7
- Teachers' rally will insist Carpenter delays OBE
by Jessica Strutt
"Hundreds of private and public school teachers are expected to attend a rally at Parliament House today to demand the Carpenter Government delay controversial outcomes-based education courses due to start next year.
"Iona Presentation College principal Margaret Herley yesterday backed others who claim the Government's late concessions to appease teachers do not prevent the need for a delay. She said teachers were still ironing out problems and coming to terms with assessment on the new OBE English course which started this year.
"Her major concern still related to levelling but even if that was scrapped there was not enough time to be prepared for a 2007 implementation. "The devil's in the detail so until we've seen what the concessions are we don't know if they do address all the things we're concerned about.
"I'd have to agree with some of the opinions in this morning's paper (Tuesday's) that we are in June already and these are courses that are meant to begin in February next year. Well you know teachers should already have a fair handle on what it is and how it's going to be assessed."
"I would be suggesting that at this point we are still recommending at least a one-year delay. I have seen nothing yet to suggest we are ready."
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier and Greg Williams, president of teachers' lobby group PLATO, will address the crowd to argue the case for delay.
"Jan Bishop, chief examiner and marker of the current TEE history course, said she was delighted with the concessions but the strong feeling among teachers she had spoken to was that a delay was still needed.
"In May, The West Australian revealed that Mrs Bishop had serious concerns about aspects of the new OBE history course.
"I don't think this is going to be an easy process because once you start making changes in one area it upsets something else," she said."
- Premier broke house rules: Libs
by Jessica Strutt and Robert Taylor
"The State Opposition last night claimed Alan Carpenter and Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich had broken parliamentary rules by meeting three Government members of a parliamentary committee investigating outcomes-based education just weeks before it was due to hand down its final report...
"One committee member at the meeting, Bassendean MLA Martin Whitely, said the Government members called the meeting because they were concerned he was not taking the OBE issue seriously enough. Mr Whitely said he and another Government member of the committee, Wanneroo's Dianne Guise, had been critical throughout the OBE implementation period.
"We didn't think the Government was taking it seriously enough so we went to the Premier and in no uncertain terms we made that message clear to the Premier," he said..."
"... [We] went and said 'take this issue seriously'... and we said it in colourful language and we said it forcefully and the Premier heard it." [emphasis added]
"Only days later the Premier took control of the issue from Ms Ravlich and began chairing meetings with teacher groups..."
Full story in The West Australian
- ABC Radio News
The ABC also covered the meeting between dissatisfied Labor members of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Post-Compulsory Education and the Premier.
There was also a piece about the Geography teachers objecting to the planned OBE implementation, asking why they weren't consulted on the weekend, and demanding a delay.
- The Australian includes two letters to the editor
- Letters to the Editor
- Couldn't identify an adverb
"After reading your article "Big Brother ads and squiggles on the syllabus" (10-11/6) I must sadly inform your readers that this phenomenon is not confined to Western Australia."Having recently finished my Senior Certificate in Queensland, I have little faith in the content of the English curriculum I was taught. The focus has been shifted away from classic literary texts and the basic structure and grammar of the English language and redirected towards "contemporary" texts.
"While it's important that school leavers understand how contemporary texts and media operate, it is impossible to do this without knowing how our language works. I believe most of my classmates would have understood how to read a novel and then discuss the gender issues involved but would not have been able to identify an adverb in a sentence."
Marisa Camastral, The Gap, Qld- "Surely, to enhance the perception of Australia as a smart country, it's about time a national curriculum was introduced to override the wacky, idealogy-driven curricula in the states."
Tony Fellows, Carina, Qld
Full details in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19462959-21223,00.html
- 'Tolerance' slant is damaging education
by Jeremy Roberts
"An obsession with teaching "tolerance" is preventing students from making their own moral choices and, in turn, confusing the Howard Government's attempts to instil "Australian values" in schools."A leading trainer of teachers believes the teaching of nine common Australian values - a policy introduced by former education minister Brendan Nelson - is failing..."
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19453514-13881,00.htm
- Page 5 photo
Caption: On report: Teachers rally at Parliament House yesterday to call for a delay in the introduction of outcomes-based education courses.
- Teachers rally for OBE delay
by Jessica Strutt (page 5)
"About 200 frustrated teachers attended a rally at Parliament House yesterday to demand the State Government delay its outcomes-based education plan rather than attempt to patch it up at the 11th hour.
"A year to the day the teachers' lobby group PLATO was formed to oppose the controversial changes, its president Greg Williams told protesters the Carpenter Government's concessions were welcome but the 17 courses due to start in 2007 should not go ahead.
"He revealed he had dined with Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich at Parliament House on Tuesday night to discuss OBE but said there were still "sticking points" and called on Ms Ravlich to be true to her word and delay the courses.
"We have to keep sending a message to the Government that we were told that if the courses of study were not ready by April 13 then they would not go ahead," Mr Williams said. "By definition the courses are not ready if we are changing them at this point in time. If we take the time to get things right then I think we can deliver the best courses in Australia and our kids deserve at least that."
"Ms Ravlich was invited to attend the rally but was a no-show.
"Alan Carpenter and Ms Ravlich met unions last Sunday to offer concessions in a bid to appease widespread teacher and community concerns about the upper school educational changes.
"PLATO's Steve Kessell, who also addressed the protesters, called for an urgent review of the Curriculum Council. "The problems have finally caught up with the Government," he said. "The Curriculum Council is saying we are just going to unaccredit the tried and true TEE courses and we're going to accredit this bulls***."
"The rally came as geography teachers became the latest group to claim the Government's concessions to appease teachers did not end the need for a delay. Geographical Association of WA president Mike Fazio said Mr Carpenter called him yesterday to discuss geography teachers' concerns but did not give anything away about concessions.
"In Parliament, the Opposition moved a motion condemning Ms Ravlich for her mismanagement of the OBE implementation.
"The Premier, who has previously dismissed teacher concerns and blamed PLATO for orchestrating growing dissent against OBE, stood up in Parliament and thanked its members, Mr Williams and teachers for raising concerns because it meant the State would get a better result. [emphasis added]
"But he did not thank The West Australian for revealing teachers and parents' concerns in this area.
"Labor MLA Martin Whitely, a member of a parliamentary committee investigating OBE, conceded the changes the Government had offered came later than they should have.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said the concessions were an attempt by the Government to take the heat out of the debate while time was quickly ticking away.
"The Government don't understand that the problems that they've got are endemic, they are massive and a bandaid won't fix it."
- Editorial: Teachers have lesson for big business (page 18)
"Big business has shown a lack of moral fibre by refusing to voice opposition to Federal Labor's plan to abolish Australian Workplace Agreements.
"Instead of speaking out, most businesses choose to hide behind representative bodies.
"Their silence is in stark contrast to the courage shown by schoolteachers and others who have criticised outcomes-based education.
"Some of our biggest companies have a lot to learn from their example."
Inside Cover: "Stir-fry and chat with Lil" (page 2)
"Greg Williams, president of teachers' lobby group PLATO, got the red carpet treatment when he dropped in for dinner at Parliament House on Tuesday with Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich.
"Shortly after he strolled through the doors he bumped into a heavyweight greeting party that included Alan Carpenter, Deputy Dawg Eric, Greg's old uni mate John Kobelke, his Fremantle neighbour Bassendean MLA Martin Whitely and Wild West Lil.
"The dinner for two, on the eve of yesterday's OBE rally, was arranged by the Bassendean backbencher who said he felt like a chaperone as Greg and Lil grazed and chatted about outcomes-based education.
"But if the pollies were hoping to schmooze the PLATO boss and hose down the lobby group's attack on the OBE they were out of luck -- he's a vegetarian and doesn't drink alcohol.
"I don't think it was a bribe, more of an opening of the communication channels," Greg said of his dinner which included rice, stir-fry veggies and noodle dishes washed down with a chilled fresh local orange juice.
"In the endless months the OBE row has been raging the two had never sat down face-to-face to thrash out their differences. "I think they probably regarded me as the spawn of Satan and maybe now they don't," Greg said. [emphasis added]
"The PLATO chief and the Minister even had time for a social chitchat about friends and relatives with common links.
"We didn't make any groundbreaking agreements but the reality is that our differences aren't that great," Greg said. "If we'd had this chat 18 months ago.. I'd say we'd be a lot farther down the track than we are at present."
"He probably would have also saved himself a lot of stress and money after running PLATO for so long."
- Letter to the Editor (page 22)
- "Any working adult who feels that OBE is no longer their problem is going to be in for a rude shock when these students begin leaving school and signing up for the dole in their thousands -- after, of course, they're told they actually have to fill in the dole application form and not just 'appreciate its social significance'."
Jason Posavec, Ellenbrook
Full details in The West Australian
- Today's The Australian includes two relevant stories (and an Editorial on one of them) and a great letter / cartoon
- Geography exam's 'dim view of industry'
by Paige Taylor
"Business leaders have criticised Western Australia's new high school geography course, which requires learning about "social action" and the dangers of capitalist development."It includes a draft exam question reference to "the problems of economic development due to the powerful position of large companies that produce fossil fuels and motor vehicles".
"Geographical Association of Western Australia president Mike Fazio yesterday said the consultation draft exam for the Year 12 geography course "doesn't have much geography in it".
"Premier Alan Carpenter stepped in to roll back ideological fervour and introduce compulsory content in the 17 new courses due to be implemented into Year 11 next year.
"But he has not yet heard from geography teachers, whose president was not invited to a crisis meeting last Sunday.
"A copy of the geography courses' draft consultation exam, obtained by The Australian, shows photographs of the heavily industrialised area of the controversial Kwinana alumina plant. It shows Kwinana's smokestacks south of Perth and asks students to identify emerging development pressures and comment on differing points of view.
"Students in the new course will obtain 25 per cent of their marks for a component called "Care of Places". The consultation draft exam asks students to consider a 1987 statement by the World Commission on Environment and Development on heavy reliance on fossil fuels, the powerful position of car-makers, population growth that is greater than the capacity of natural systems to support humans and the lack of a strong framework for economic decision-making that includes environmental issues.
"Western Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry spokesman Bob Pride said the exam offered a jaundiced view of industry. "We do note a passage where it is asking students to analyse the Kwinana development in the context of information which leaves something to be desired," Mr Pride said. "We don't have an argument with the definition of sustainable development (in the draft exam) because that comes from a landmark UN report. But the balance of the information that is provided is unreferenced and gives a jaundiced view of industry's record and role in sustainable development."
"Mr Fazio was among hundreds of teachers and students who marched on parliament yesterday to call for a delay to the new courses. At the rally, 15-year-old Santa Maria College student Ainthe Dell likened the courses to a high-jump competition with the bar removed.
"Ainthe, whose English teacher mother Bernadette Dell ran yesterday's rally, said students would be assessed on their run-up, take-off and "capacity for displaying positive interpersonal skills by talking to others in the line".
"It's ridiculous, but that is high jump OBE-style," she said. "Everyone feels like they achieved something and no one knows who did the best job." [emphasis added]
"But geography professor Roy Jones, of Curtin University, said he approved of the social values taught in the new course and said he felt that a student could do well in the exam regardless of their political bent."
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19476010-13881,00.html
- Schoolkids plan own courses
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Primary school students as young as five can determine what and how they will learn under a model promoted by the South Australian Government."At one of the state Education Department's flagship schools, Bridgewater Primary School in the Adelaide Hills, students design "personal learning plans" to suit their individual interests.
"It is a waste of time if you are learning something for which you have no use and in which you are disinterested," the school says in a report on the project. "You don't have to learn about all of it; you only need some of it. When you want to know and learn more, you will, and it will be useful to you."
"Bridgewater was one of the case studies funded by the department to show schools how to implement the South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework, which was introduced about five years ago and underpins the state's education system from birth to Year 12..."
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19476288-13881,00.html
- EDITORIAL on above story
Suffer the children
Teachers, not students, must be in charge of learning"Children have enough to worry about without having to design the learning programs that will shape them for life. Yet that is what children in South Australia are being asked to do under the guise of something called "constructivist learning". Starting from the perfectly sensible position that learning is an active process unique to each individual, this educational fad is now being implemented in South Australia such that children, not their teachers, decide what should be taught. As The Australian reports today, one primary school held up as a model by South Australia's education bureaucrats explicitly tells students, "it's a waste of time if you are learning something for which you have no use and in which you are disinterested". Presumably South Australia's education boffins meant to say "uninterested", rather than unaffected by self-interest – the traditional meaning of disinterested. Or perhaps they need to go back to English class themselves. Meanwhile, South Australia's marks-based system for high school graduates is being replaced with a 200-point system that is more about ticking boxes than demonstrating skills.
"Either way, this ethic that seeks to toss out anything tainted by Western tradition is being pushed on schools across the state. South Australian science courses teach that Western science "is only one form among the sciences". Across Australia, a fuzzy focus on "values", taken to its logical conclusion, leads to moral relativism. Seen in this context, it was only natural that teachers would eventually give up and hand the wheel over to students. But any adult knows that what seemed worthwhile at age seven or 17 is a far cry from what became useful in life and in the job market. One cannot know what to study without learning what is out there first. How can someone not taught their multiplication tables some day discover their talent for calculus? The authors of learning frameworks abdicate their responsibility when they essentially leave teaching to students and let the chips fall where they may..."
Full Editorial in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19472043-7583,00.html [scroll down a bit]
Letter to the Editor
- Pity the poor apostrophe
"I'm not qualified to discuss "outcomes-based" education or "post-modern reductionism" or the like. But the other day I walked into my supermarket and was surrounded by signs reading "carrot's" and "tomato's" and "orange's." Then I passed a chemist selling "hat's". To cap off my day, I came home behind a truck with a printed sign reading, "If you cant see my mirrors I cant see you.""It makes you wonder what schoolteachers have been doing for the past few decades, apart from demanding higher pay to teach less to fewer children."
Peter Bonar, Findon, SA
Full letter and accompanying cartoon in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19472430-21223,00.html
- Stirling Times Community News [June 13 - 19]
- "OBE; WORKFORCE ILLITERATES AHEAD?"
by Sarah Vladich, Tuart Hill
"Parents should be aware that the introduction of outcomes-based education in WA will further erode their children's potential and jeopardise future prosperity in Western Australia because of an illiterate and uninformed workforce.
"OBE is educational ideology based on a business principle that measures productivity in terms of recognised outcomes or tasks. The aim is to assess student performance between levels 1 to 8 on a variety of tasks in each subject.
"As a secondary English teacher, my "outcome" is to produce students able to think, analyse and express themselves in written and oral English.
"How do I assess how much students have assimilated and developed in their thinking from the texts we have seen when the content is dominated by themes of sex race and gender through years 8 to 12, and the texts are mainly contemporary works to be relevant to the students?
"Their world view is not adequately broadened and the content is becoming so easy, and levelling so difficult , that no student will fail.
"Why must I use children's picture books and comics as texts for year 10 students to analyse?
"OBE will produce students who are literate enough to use a computer to access information, use software packages, produce PowerPoint presentations and such, but who will be unable to write a thoughtful piece of prose about the impact of the computer on our society and relationships to day.
"It's time for a return to a core curriculum that transmits the best of Australia's cultural values and traditions with a recognisable grading system that rewards both the hardworking and the gifted.
"Education is about substance and excellence, not equality and mere tasks."
- ABC's "Radio National's Life Matters"
"Any change to the education system is guaranteed to stir debate but few changes have been debated so passionately as the proposals for Years 11 and 12 in Western Australia.
"The proposal is to extend the current curriculum framework for primary and lower secondary into the senior school."Outcomes based education or OBE has been the template for primary education, around the country, for almost a decade.
"Why, then, has the extension of OBE to the Senior School caused such an outcry?
Guests included:
"Is outcomes based education fundamentally flawed, as its critics claim, or is this an over-reaction ...a fear that students will be disadvantaged as they chase that important tertiary entrance score?"Barry Kissane, Dean of the School of Education at Murdoch University.
Richard Berlach, Associate Dean of the School of Education at Notre Dame University.
Robert Fry, President of the WA Council for State School Organisation[On the PLATOWA Forum, "frustrated science teacher" comments: "After this pile of horse sh**, people could well be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about - after all, teachers are so supportive that: "only 200 teachers out of 38,000 bothered to turn up to yesterday's rally"! Webmaster]
You can listen to the full program (streaming audio or download, but beware 25 MB file) at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2006/1663114.htm
Note: On the same PLATOWA Forum, "Peter" adds:"Firstly, hopefully to ease your anger, I am currently listening to ABC FM, Margaret Throsby interviewing Richard Gill,(Director of the Victorian Opera (inter alia)) who is systematically and ruthlessly TEARING STRIPS off outcome based music education in Australia, especially WA where he found what should have been a syllabus absolutely "INDESCRIBABLE, in that it contains no reference to what music is or differences between types of music, why we should teach music, how we should teach music, or what we should teach".
"He became so angry in his detailed denunciation of OBE's dumbing down of music education and the complete absence of thought that "underpins" it that he virtually choked up!"
You can listen to the Richard Gill interview at http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/default.htm#listen
"The outcomes-based education (OBE) lobby group Plato is calling on the Western Australian Government to commission an independent review into the implementation of OBE in primary schools.
"The group has been a vocal opponent of Government plans to introduce 17 new year 11 and year 12 courses next year.
"Plato spokesman Steve Kessell says Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich talks about how well OBE has been working in kindergarten to year 10.
"But Mr Kessell says anecdotal evidence from some parents and teachers is not as encouraging.
"I think there are enough parents and enough primary teachers that are concerned that if the Government doesn't face up to it now it's going to bite them just like the year 11 and 12 problem has bitten them," he said.
"It'd
be nice if they were proactive."
ABC News Online at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1665114.htm
- Axworthy slams PLATO as "irresponsible", withdraws from Kevin Donnelly Forum
Curriculum Council Acting CEO David Axworthy told ABC's Morning Program presenter Geraldine Mellet that PLATO was irresponsible for not moderating its message Forum properly.
He cited a post where a teacher, in his view, intends to disrupt / is encouraging others to disrupt / PD days 4 and 5. He thinks PLATO should be “more responsible” and delete such postings, and suggests this shows that PLATO is "irresponsible". [see below for the "offending" post]
Axworthy did not get a lot of sympathy from Mellet, who noted that it was "one post among thousands".
Axworthy also used PLATO's so-called irresponsibility as an excuse to withdraw from the presentation by Dr Kevin Donnelly next week, which he described as a "biased political platform".
“I’ve apologised to the organisers for late notice of my withdrawal from Tuesday’s forum, however, it is vital everyone understands that the interests of trainers working for the Curriculum Council and other WA teachers come before any involvement I might have with the Institute of Public Affairs’ event,” Mr Axworthy said. He also launched a personal attack on Dr Donnelly [see press release below]
Steve Kessell was interviewed just before the 9 am news, and Greg Williams was interviewed on that news broadcast. Both said that the discussion Forum was open, and that while abusive comments were deleted, open debate was encouraged. Steve also said that he'd seen the post in question and that, while he didn't necessarily agree with it, he certainly didn't expect the moderator to delete it.
During the following hour, two or three teachers sent SMS messages to the program, describing major problems with the OBE implementary in primary schools.
- David Axworthy's Press Release
Curriculum Council Media Release [16 June 2006]
Website threats to disrupt teacher training raise serious concerns
Curriculum Council CEO David Axworthy yesterday advised organisers he would not be taking part in a showcase event for a discredited Eastern States-based education spokesman and the Western Australian group PLATO. [emphasis added]
Mr Axworthy’s decision to withdraw from the debate follows calls through PLATO to disrupt upcoming teacher training, arranged by the Curriculum Council.
“I’ve apologised to the organisers for late notice of my withdrawal from Tuesday’s forum, however, it is vital everyone understands that the interests of trainers working for the Curriculum Council and other WA teachers come before any involvement I might have with the Institute of Public Affairs’ event,” Mr Axworthy said.
“I am seriously concerned about the tactics of PLATO and the group’s unacceptable website activity this week has precipitated my decision.
Mr Axworthy said new postings on PLATO’s website had called for teachers attending next month’s professional development sessions to disrupt the training and ‘join each other in mocking the presenters’.
“This kind of personal attack on people, who are doing an important job of informing teachers, is not the way professionals should be acting,” he said.
“Any teachers who might resort to the tactics canvassed on the website would not allow such behaviour in their own classrooms and would be disrespectful to teaching colleagues prepared to implement the courses, now that they have been modified to take account of valuable feedback from teachers and deal with their concerns.
“While I am aware there may only be a small group of troublemakers, I don’t want the other teachers’ professional development to be disrupted or trainers to face ridicule.
“By allowing postings like this to remain, PLATO is complicit in the incitement of offensive behaviour in a professional forum and it is unacceptable for PD presenters to be treated as targets by desperate radicals.
“As such, I don’t wish to share the stage next week with any PLATO representatives and be seen to give any level of credibility to their undisciplined cause.
“Instead I will be spending time working on agreed modifications, to help our upper secondary school teachers feel comfortable delivering next year’s new courses, rather than hearing Mr Donnelly’s ill-informed assessment of WA education.”
The Curriculum Council chief said refinements, to ease concerns of WA teachers and assist in implementation of the phase two outcomes and standards-based courses, had also left Kevin Donnelly struggling for relevance in the so-called OBE debate.
“He’s out of touch and I’m not interested in hearing him repeat myths about our outcomes-focused courses that he’s been peddling in newspapers and on radio.
“By creating and perpetuating falsehoods, he’s only served to upset, confuse and play on fears of parents concerned about the education of their children.”
Mr Axworthy said he was more interested in ensuring WA’s Year 11 and Year 12 students were getting the best education they could from enthusiastic teachers, who would be well supported in presenting the phase two courses from next year.
“We have listened to their advice about the implementation process and moved to eliminate their concerns.
"WA teachers are supportive of outcomes and standards-focused courses that will provide more opportunities for all upper secondary students, so Mr Donnelly’s ‘unashamedly elitist’ (his words) philosophy would be unacceptable to most.
“I believe the debate has moved on from his narrow view of education, which has only served to lock students out or lock them in to a university pathway too early, when the option to choose should be there for all of them right up to Year 12.
“I also don’t wish to be part of Mr Donnelly’s politically-driven grandstanding; like many other people I question his motives in trying to muscle in on the community debate in this State.”
Kevin Donnelly has been criticised by experienced curriculum experts in Australia for his benchmarking report, comparing primary school curricula with other countries.
For example, in the Independent Weekly, Professor Alan Reid from the School of Education at the University of SA said Mr Donnelly’s national report was fatally flawed, did not stand up to critical analysis and confused key concepts.
He also criticised Mr Donnelly’s work for “failing to meet basic research standards” and that many of the reports recommendations bore “no relationship to the analysis of the documents under review”
The experienced South Australian educator also slammed Mr Donnelly for his sloppy work, pointing out that for a report about falling standards there was “hardly one of its 107 pages that did not contain a spelling, grammatical or formatting mistake”.
Mr Axworthy said Mr Donnelly had applied the same level of woolly-headed thinking and selective research, in his analysis of Western Australia’s education system.
“He’s also been playing the man, not the ball – he’s driven by his political desires – he’s part of the problem not the solution,” the Curriculum Council CEO said.
“I’ve advised the Institute of Public Affairs that I no longer wish to take part in next week’s event, because I would much rather get on with the job of delivering better education to WA students by working constructively with those who care about it as much as I do.”
Media Contact: Ashley Malone
Principal Media & Communications Adviser
Tel: (08) 9273 6710 or Mob: 0403 310 583
maloa@curriculum.wa.edu.auABC didn't use much of his long-winded diatribe, did they? [Webmaster]
Please feel free to email your comments to Principal Media & Communications Adviser Ashley Malone.
We regret to advise that PLATO doesn't have a "Principal Media & Communications Adviser" -- just principles.
- Steve Kessell's somewhat shorter "Media Release"
PLATO Media Release
PLATO calls for review of OBE in Primary Schools
Retired Associate Professor and PLATO member Steve Kessell has called on the State Government to initiate a comprehensive independent review of the OBE implementation in WA’s primary schools.
He told ABC News: “The Minister waxes lyrical about how wonderful OBE has been in Kindergarten through Year 10. But where is the evidence; where are the objective, independent evaluations?”
He said anecdotal evidence from parents and teachers is discouraging.
Kessell argues that: “The government urgently needs to commission a thorough and transparent evaluation of OBE from K to 10, completely independent of the government bureaucracies. The lack of such an independent evaluation is a major reason why WA education is in such a mess now: the same people that write the courses also evaluate and accredit them.”
He said: “The Curriculum Council’s power of self-accreditation is dangerous. Look at how they have "un-accredited" the tried and tested TEE courses, and have accredited new courses that are still undergoing major changes as we speak.”
Here is the “offensive post” on the PLATO Forum to which David Axworthy had strong objections "I'm personally looking forward to going so that we teachers who spoke so strongly against the COS can join each other in mocking the presenters. I am already preparing a booklet ready to photocopy for the big day to present, compendium of press clippings for the presenters and my fellow educators which I will entitle the "2006 Course of Study Backflip - Souvenier edition"
This is the most anticipated PD ever!"
- ABC-FM
Excerpts from Richard Gill's interview with Margaret Throsby on ABC-FM this morning.
[For those of you who don't know, Richard is currently the director of Opera Victoria, is considered a GIANT of Music Education in Australia, and is especially respected here in WA, as the former Dean of the Conservatorium (when it rocked!)]You can access the RealPlayer file yourself and listen to the entire program at:
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/default.htm#listenI'm sure those of you who know Richard would love to hear the words from his own mouth - he's VERY PASSIONATE.
The excerpts have timing cues on them if you just want to hear those bits.
I think there are a couple of good quotes here that might be useful...Introduction:
Margaret Throsby on ABC Classic FM radio Australia and online.When I said at the beginning of the week that Richard Gill was joining us today, it began...a trickle, and then a flow of emails, from people wanting to say that they were looking forward to hearing the interview, especially to say how Richard has had an influence on their lives or their children’s lives.
Richard Gill is one of Australia’s most inspired and inspiring musician educators, I think it’s as simple as that. He’s known internationally for his work with young musicians, and as a lecturer in opera, musical theatre and choral training. I think he loves working with singers best, and that’s just fine and dandy in his current role as director of Victoria’s Opera Company.
Excerpts on music education: (from 24’10”)
MT: What riles you about the music scene in this country?
RG: Music Education is a huge worry to me at the moment, nationally.
MT: Why?
RG: Because we’re dumbing down in the most extraordinary way, the most recent example would be the situation in Western Australia...
MT: Which generated a lot of letters to the press, can we just talk about that for the moment?
RG: Sure can! I was sent a copy of the syllabus, I guess it was a draft syllabus, or a working document, and it was indescribable. Reading the syllabus was...there was nothing clear about it. At no stage was music ever defined, and at no stage was it written in clear and simple English why you would teach it, let alone how, or the what....
....you’ll recall that in the national daily the syllabus writer was photographed with some students, and there was a comment about “...a turntable is a musical instrument, like a violin or a trumpet or a what-have-you"
Now, forgetting the lunacy of that sort of statement, would you rush to the literature that says “A Tune-A-Day for Turntable”? What music is specifically written for a turntable? And then someone wrote in and said “Of course a turntable is a musical instrument, it plays music”.
That sort of thinking, that sort of fuzzy, woolly thinking is permeating education.
MT: Although it could be said, and I’m not going to defend turntables, but it could be said they are used in rap music, aren’t they?
RG: Absolutely! It’s not though, in itself a musical instrument, right? Looking at a..how do you make a turntable play, just what do you do?
You have to generate something on the turntable, and that sort of thinking is a general failure in music education, and the idea that everything is exactly the same, so that a Beethoven Symphony or a Stravinsky piece or a John Cage piece is exactly the same as a piece of rap is...rubbish.Now, the sad thing is that it forces kids into choices, and it’s dumb. There’s nothing wrong with rap, for crying out loud, there’s nothing wrong with popular music. Just because it’s popular doesn’t make it good, and just because it’s Classical doesn’t make it bad. People seem to think that new is good, and old is bad - DUMB! Wrong thinking!
Kids should have everything - they should have access a wide choice, a wide range of music, so they can make decisions about how the music works. What worries me is that they start talking about things like “occupational health and safety” in music lessons. I mean, how insane have we gone? Political correctness gone mad!
Later (28’55”)
RG: (Regardless of their ability,)...very well taught children, taught by really capable teachers, could knock over a Higher School Certificate in Music at the age of 11. 11 or 12, they really could!
MT: Really?
RG: Absolutely.
MT: Is that because the High School Certificate..
RG: ...is not very difficult!
MT: It’s too easy?
RG: It’s not too easy, it’s pitched at a...you know we have this lovely thing called “Outcomes Based Education”now, as if education has never been outcomes based? But now it means something quite different.
MT: What does it mean now?
RG: Well, wouldn’t we all love to know? Basically, I think it means you find an outcome that everyone can arrive at. That means what is good for the lowest common denominator. What will have to happen, so that everybody can achieve something? We mustn’t say that “this child is a 10, and this child is a 9”, this outcome is arrived at a different way, and everyone feels good, and it’s like Lewis Carroll said in Alice in Wonderland - “everyone shall have a prize”.
Which is a real pity, because when you were watching the soccer: there were winners! There were 3 goals, and there was 1 goal, and there was a winner.
MT: That’s the way it should be, do you think?
RG: Well it should be - Why shouldn’t clever children be encouraged to be clever and rewarded appropriately, and why shouldn’t not-so-clever children have access to great teaching? It’s not about making everybody the same, it’s about finding where you are, and helping every child over the hurdles.
MT: Maybe the thinking behind it is that we don’t want the children who aren’t so clever to feel you know, that they’re losers, and they’re not going to get anywhere.
RG: I love your expression: “the thinking behind it”, and I’d love to think there was some thinking behind it. The kids know who’s clever in a class. The kids know who’s good at reading and writing and spelling and maths, I mean, for heaven’s sake, I went to school in the Palaeolithic Era, and I knew...
MT: I always thought I went to school in the Bronze age, but I think Palaeolithic Era’s even better!
RG: I knew which kids could do maths
MT: Were you one of them?
RG: Are you kidding? I am arithmetically challenged! But I had great respect for those kids, and there kids that could run quickly...
MT: But you had confidence in your own...
RG: I could spell, I was a very good speller. I adored poetry, I was a good reader, I could do History, and I was good at language.
MT: What about children who aren’t good at anything?
RG: You can always find..I’ve taught enough children who people said ‘weren’t good at anything’, and you can find good for them - it’s just a question of finding the right level.
MT: But you need enough teachers for that...
RG: Tell me about it, but look, we’ve got to teaching seriously!
MT: Yeah, all right, I get your message.
- Also from the ABC in Hobart
"Literacy, Chapter and Verse"
by Anne Warburton, ABC Journalist, Tasmania (10-6-06)
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was spelt correctly, because in those days wise men knew that children should be taught each word according to its letters and sounds, and the teachers and the employers and the editors and the publishers and the reading public saw that it was good."And the children too grew to see that it was good, even if the knowing of the rules did not guarantee that each one would be able to write like unto Ernest Hemmingway or Virginia Woolf, but grieved they not over this, nor grieved they that they would not become journalists, because in those days journalists were not celebrities, and there were many other useful occupations such as carpentry and farming and motor mechanics, and thereby could they earn more shekels and they were glad.
"And it came to pass that there was a great social revolution throughout the land and everything that was done of the fathers was shunned, and there came thereto prophets and teachers from other lands who asked of them: is it not boring and tedious to learn by rote and rules as our fathers did before us ?
"And is it not written that the little ones shall learn to read all manner of marvels and their minds shall be set free simply by looking at words and guessing the meaning thereof ? And this was called Word Whole, and the teachers saw, or thought they saw, that it was good.
"And the teachers prospered and thrived and their numbers swelled throughout the land, so that the schools would not employ them all, nor wished they any longer to carry out the simple duties of a teacher.
"And pride began to fill their hearts, and they began to dream of curriculum development and career paths, and they built an enormous bureaucracy and now said they one unto the other: we need theories that are proper and fitting for this edifice, and they must be manifold and complex and clothed in a language only we can understand.
"And now darkness descended upon the land, and the newspapers, books and magazines were full of poor spelling and grammar and incomprehensible jargon, yea, even unto the electronic media and online, and a voice cried out in the wilderness: who will deliver us from this plague ? But the teachers heeded it not, for in truth they had forgotten how to spell, nor could they punctuate or parse, nor could they make a verb agree with its subject, nor indeed could they tell a pronoun from an adjective.
"But loath were they to admit this, and they decreed that all who protested were guilty of the sin of Elitism. And the politicians who had been taught by the teachers and knew no better, came into them in unholy alliance, and they begat a doctrine that all children were equal at everything and none should ever be allowed to experience “failure”, and verily, this became known as Outcomes Based Education.
"Here endeth the lesson."
- Today's West Australian includes an article, a letter to the editor, and Steve Kessell scores an Alston cartoon in "Inside Cover"
- Science teachers join call to delay OBE
by Jessica Strutt (page 5)
"WA's top science teachers' body has added to the pressure on the State Government over the introduction of outcomes-based education by calling for five OBE-based science courses due to start next year to be delayed.
"The call comes on the eve of a crucial meeting of the State School Teachers Union which will consider whether to lift its ban on teaching 17 new OBE courses next year.
"Science Teachers Association of WA president Julie Weber said yesterday that science teachers wanted more time to prepare course and assessment materials. [emphasis added]
"Courses including physics, chemistry and a new human biology course should be delayed.
"A survey in May found 90 percent of science teachers wanted a one-year delay. The survey was held before Alan Carpenter's crisis meeting with education chiefs after which he claimed significant concessions had been made.
"But Mrs Weber said science teachers still had concerns. "Because so much time has passed and course and assessment changes are still being made, we should delay the implementation by a year," she said.
"Science teachers had still not received details of the Government's concessions.
"Mrs Weber said that further teacher professional development needed to be delayed until issues relating to assessment were resolved.
"The science teachers' survey found the general feeling of teachers was that the massive changes needed to be brought in gradually and tested to find strengths and weaknesses.
"The teachers union will consider lifting its ban on OBE at its State council meeting this weekend.
"On Wednesday, geography teachers said the Government's concessions to appease teachers did not end the need for a delay.
"Shadow education minister Peter Collier said the Government was holding off on announcing its concessions because it knew Year 10 students were choosing their OBE courses for 2007 and wanted them locked into these courses so it could say a delay had become impossible. [emphasis added]
"In Parliament this week, Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich gave her strongest hint yet about what some of the Government's concessions to teachers might be, saying they would look at the issue of historical context within the new History: Ancient and Modern course and also the performance element for music.
"She refused to give a date when teachers could expect to receive electronic copies of the courses of study and support materials.
"She revealed the Curriculum Council was yet a make a decision on whether schools would have to submit student results twice a year or just at the end of the year under the new OBE system."
- Inside Cover (page 2)
[Steve admits that he emailed Inside Cover congratulating them for exposing
Channel 10 yesterday. He said he might also have mentioned to them that he often
leaves little "Is your handicap being unable to read?" notes on the windscreens
of able-bodied drivers' vehicles when they pinch ACROD parking spaces.]
- Letter to the Editor (page 20)
- What is society doing to our children?
"Today's children are already running riot at school, and at home some are out of control and bossing parents around because, according to the law, you cannot discipline your own children.
"By bringing in outcomes-based education and the disgusting suggestion of teaching sex education to Year 1 pupils we are going to create generations of dimwitted, sexually active children who know little except how to reproduce and then go on to raise their own offspring with "their knowledge" on life -- yet again, very little.
"What is wrong with how we, our parents and grandparents were taught? The dumbed-down children will end up having to do mature-age entry to tertiary institutions and re-learn what they should have been made to learn while in primary and secondary school..."
"If this is how it is going to be, my husband and I will school our children at home. Society is already screwing children up without introducing rubbish like this. Every child has potential, don't be so bloody cruel. This makes no sense."
C. A. Manning, South Perth
- Today's The Australian includes three articles
- Kevin Donnelly: Gobbledygook a poor swap for old school ways
On how outcomes-based education has infected the curriculum
"During the past 12 months in The Australian, numerous examples have been cited proving that outcomes-based education enforces a dumbed down and politically correct approach to curriculum. The West Australian Government has been especially embarrassed by the more weird and wacky examples of education fads associated with its new OBE-inspired years 11 and 12 senior school certificate."Students not penalised for faulty spelling and grammar, music students not learning notation or playing instruments, and geography students taught to be anti-mining and anti-exploration: not bad for a state that is leading the country's mineral export boom.
"Western Australia is not alone in its adoption of OBE. The reality is that all Australian states and territories have adopted various versions of outcomes-based education. Primary school students in South Australia are allowed to take charge of their learning on the basis that teachers must facilitate instead of teach and 10-year-olds can intuit what constitutes worthwhile learning.
"Tasmania's new-age curriculum, instead of focusing on the established disciplines, is defined in terms of essential learnings such as thinking, communicating, personal futures, social responsibility and world futures; and, as author Don Watson argues, teachers and parents are drowning in postmodern gobbledygook.... " [more examples]
"How has this been allowed to happen? The first thing to realise is that Australia's adoption of OBE began with the Keating government's national curriculum statements and profiles developed during the early to mid-1990s. Such were the flaws in the national curriculum that the 1993 Perth meeting of Australian education ministers refused to endorse the proposed curriculum and, subsequently, states and territories have developed their own approaches.
"Australia's adoption of OBE has also occurred as a result of the work of an American academic, William Spady. Spady toured Australia in 1992, is widely referred to in educational journals and has been invited to talk at the Australian Primary Principals Association annual conference next month.
"To understand the parlous state of Australian education, one only needs to read Spady's defence of OBE and his attacks on more conservative approaches to curriculum.
"Spady is opposed to competitive examinations, the academic curriculum and classrooms characterised by more formal teaching and direct instruction. His view of what he terms transformational outcomes-based education, compared with a syllabus approach, is new age and politically correct.
"Spady argues that transformational OBE "is focused more on broad role performance capabilities of young people and their ability to do complex tasks in real settings, in real situations, relating more directly to life. Transformational OBE is not focused on curriculum outcomes; that is, outcomes about conventional subject areas."
"Instead of learning for its own sake, the purpose of education, in the jargon much loved by advocates of OBE, is to develop "lifelong adaptive capacities" and "broad role performance capabilities".
"While much of education normally centres on what happens in the classroom and the school, Spady says the strength of OBE is that it is about "real settings, in real situations, relating more to life" and that it is "concerned solely with students' success after they leave school".
"It is strange that although competition, success and failure are part of the real world, Spady argues failure must be banned and students should not be streamed in terms of ability because, supposedly, given enough resources and time, all students are capable of success.
"Spady is also opposed to ranking students one against the other on the basis that, as a result of implementing OBE, "education systems will custom-design criterion-based assessment measures that directly operationalise the outcomes they define as most significant".
"Reading Spady and looking at the influence of OBE on Australian education, it is easy to understand why only a handful of countries have experimented with OBE and to appreciate why stronger performing countries have continued with the more rigorous and academically based syllabus approach."
Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies. Next Tuesday he will be involved in a public meeting organised in Perth by the Institute of Public Affairs to discuss outcomes-based education.
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,19480037-7583,00.html
- Science exam offers crash course in cosmology
by Paige Taylor and David Settelmaier
"The draft of a West Australian science exam uses a "cut and paste" quote from an offbeat Californian cosmologist telling Year 12 students that humans are causing the "greatest mass extinction" on Earth."The use of the quote from the amateur website of philosopher David Ulansey, who specialises in ancient mystery religions and cosmology, has raised further concern in educational circles about the state's new-age "outcomes-based" curriculum.
"A passage from Dr Ulansey's website - the first general result when the phrase "mass extinction" is typed into Google - is included in the draft consultation tertiary entrance exam, obtained by The Australian, for the subject Earth and Environmental Science. [emphasis added]
"Students are told to discuss the current biodiversity crisis after reading the passage written by Dr Ulansey: "Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of dinosaurs 65million years ago. If present trends continue, one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct within 100 years."
"University of NSW dean of science Mike Archer said Dr Ulansey's concerns about extinction were valid but said his comments should not be used in a tertiary entrance exam. "My view is that they chose the wrong person but they got the right quote," he said. "There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a professor of philosophy saying such things but there are, of course, more authoritative sources in the field of biology."
"Earth and Environment is among 17 gradeless courses due to be rolled out for Year 11 next year. But the threat of a boycott from the unions representing government and independent schools, and mounting criticism, has forced significant changes to content.
"Pressure group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes has criticised the courses as heavy on ideology and lacking in traditional instruction.
"Premier Alan Carpenter's Government was yesterday understood to have been finalising a peace deal, possibly involving hybrid versions of new and old courses next year, to offer the State School Teachers Union's state executive this weekend." [emphasis added]
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484510-13881,00.html
- Where kids plan their own learning, and love it
Michelle Wiese Bockmann
"An Adelaide Hills school at the national forefront of student-centred learning has defended its unconventional teaching methods, which place children in charge of what they learn and how they are taught."Bridgewater Primary School principal Rosslyn Shepherd said research showed personal interest was important in determining how much children absorbed.
"Because a student has ownership, they are far more engaged in the learning - it connects with prior knowledge and learning can be deeper," she said.
"In a typical day, the school's 160 students spend 25 per cent of their time researching their chosen subjects through their own personal learning plan. She said children as young as five could prepare a plan as long as they demonstrated the skills to do so.
"Drugs, diabetes, fungi and genetic modification are among the subjects studied by the school's upper primary children as part of "layered learning", which combines a number of subjects.
"The younger ones have chosen areas such as dolphins, whales and fossils to explore.
"Explicit learning of core subjects is taught through "adults meeting with small groups for short periods of time", Ms Shepherd said.
"We are moving teaching into the 21st century. These students ... will be in the position of changing jobs several times in their career lifetime and they'll be citizens of the world.
"Yes, they'll need explicit maths and English skills, but they will also need to know how tolearn and have the desire tolearn."
"Up to 300 visitors a year from interstate and overseas trek through the age-based red, yellow and blue learning areas - not classrooms - to see the concept working in action. Ms Shepherd said the "authoritarian approach" of one adult standing at the front of the classroom "cannot be the best way we can work with kids".
"At Bridgewater Primary, children aged from five to 12 design their own school timetables, which include sessions such as "developmental play", "personal maths investigations" and "widening horizons".
"Maths and spelling tests are replaced by "quick-think maths" and "quick-think spelling".
"Students also choose how mathematics tables are taught..."
Full story in The Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484519-13881,00.html
The Daily News, Durban, South Africa
South African OBE failure
"A critic of the current education system is Paul Colditz, the chairman of the Federation of Associations of Governing Bodies of South African Schools, which claims to have a membership of 1 000 schools.
"Colditz says the country has seen progress in terms of access to education and that there are more learners in the system now than during apartheid, but the quality of that education leaves much to be desired."He believes "a not too well planned" introduction of Outcomes Based Education has seen a drop in the standard and quality of education and points out that at university level there is a 40 percent drop-out rate amongst first year learners who are not adequately prepared for higher education..."
Full story in at http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=105&art_id=vn20060616092445276C557567
Saturday - Sunday, 17 - 18 June
- From The Australian (on Sunday! -- from their "news.com.au" network)
- Union agrees to curriculum changes
"Western Australia's state teachers union was to ask its members tomorrow to accept the state Government's new curriculum for years 11 and 12 students."The decision comes after months of political wrangling over the implementation of the program, between the media, teachers and the Government.
"The State School Teachers Union's executive council, which represents 66 per cent of government school teachers, yesterday endorsed a compromise position after the Government said it was prepared to be more flexible.
"It's a transition arrangement which means that people will not be rushed into new programs with which they're unfamiliar ... until they've been revised," said union president Mike Keely today.
"That process I have to say has not been well run and that's why we're in this position," said Mr Keely.
"It has to be a slow transition if the teachers' programs and courses are changed significantly," Mr Keely said.
"The so called "outcomes-based education" policy has been in place at primary and lower secondary school level for the past nine years.
"Currently at years 11 and 12 only four subjects are being taught under the new system, but as of next year another 17 more will be introduced.
"Education Minister Liliana Ravlich has been regularly criticised by the West Australian newspaper over her handling of the new curriculum.
"The paper has taken a strong view against the Government, at one point printing a small version of a "Wanted" poster of the minister on its front page.
"The Curriculum Council of Western Australia admits things could have been handled better but said it's pleased with the outcome.
"I'm delighted," council chief executive officer David Axworthy said today.
"We're moving forward."
"He said the new system means that subjects such as nano-technology and biotechnology can now be taught in schools in a standardised way.
"The teachers' union members will be informed of the executive's decision tomorrow."
Available online at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19509757-1702,00.html
- ABC TV Evening News, 7 pm Sunday
- 17 new courses will go ahead in 2007 but will all be based on "the TEE format"
[paraphrased]
Newsreader: The Curriculum Council is moving to ease confusion and anxiety among teachers, parents and students... The Government has "watered-down" the OBE system...
Curriculum Council Acting CEO David Axworthy: We will be adding the new information to our website, and working with the DET, Independent Schools' Association and the Catholic system... There will be a new brochure for students and parents.
Newsreader: The 17 new courses will go ahead in 2007 but will all be based on "the TEE format".
And here is the latest "Media Release" from the Curriculum Council
Another Axworthy "Media Release" ! 18 June 2006
Schools to get details of Outcomes refinements this week
Details of modifications and refinements to implementation of new outcomes and standards-focused courses next year will be sent to schools this week.
Acting Curriculum Council CEO David Axworthy said feedback from teachers, which had led to a simplification of the process, should now give all senior high school teachers confidence to move forward.
“Many teachers agree students should not have to be making choices about whether they want to go to university, or TAFEWA, or another pathway in Year 10 as they have been in the past,” Mr Axworthy said.
“The student-focus of the existing Outcomes courses and the 17 new courses to be introduced next year, will make it possible for all of the new courses to count towards the WA Certificate of Education.
“In listening to the concerns of teachers, we have been able to modify or clarify courses, content, assessment, standards and examinations, to confirm that the best aspects of our current system are being retained.
“I would also like to acknowledge the years of hard work by the teachers of new courses, already in place (English, Media, Engineering and Aviation), for proving it is possible to introduce new courses and make valuable changes.
Mr Axworthy said in moving to reduce the workload for teachers all new courses would be based on the current TEE syllabus format.
“For each course new and existing content will be signalled clearly and the language of those documents will be well understood by teachers,” he said, “teachers will be able to use their existing teaching programs or lesson plans and will also receive additional support in the implementation process.
“It is also important to note that in those courses, which are replacing existing TEE courses, new content will not be included in exams until 2009.”
The Council’s chief said assessment guidelines would be simplified and the nature and weighting of outcomes would be clarified on a course by course basis. The Curriculum Council website and teacher support materials would be updated as soon as possible, to reflect the modifications and refinements.
Media Contact: Ashley Malone
Principal Media & Communications Adviser
Tel: (08) 9273 6710 or Mob: 0403 310 583
maloa@curriculum.wa.edu.au
- Channel 7 Evening News, 6 pm Sunday
Full-blown OBE is two years away
[paraphrased]
Newsreader: An OBE "deal was done"
Greg Williams: The waters have been muddied further... We are sailing into a sea of confusion.
Ravlich: It's a "watered-down" version of OBE
Keely: [it's a great compromise]
Greg Williams: Parents of Year 10 students should be worried...
Axworthy: It's a level playing field...
Newsreader: Full -blown OBE with the new assessments will now be introduced in two years. [emphasis added]
- ABC Radio News / News Online, Sunday morning
- Greg Williams on ABC radio news, Sunday 11 am
[paraphrased]
I am beginning to think now that what we are being asked to do is not even Outcomes Based Education. It is a lot of bits and pieces cobbled together to deal with problems as they appear on the political agenda. The cobbling continues to patch it up when we would be much better off with a new pair of shoes.
- Union welcomes Govt truce with teachers over OBE system
"The Western Australia State School Teachers Union says a truce with the State Government over the implementation of the new Outcomes Based Education (OBE) system means teachers can decide for themselves what is best.
"Next year, teachers will have a range of assessment options available after the State Government agreed to a watered down version of OBE.
"Yesterday, the decision making body of the Teachers Union met to decide on whether to move forward with this new version.
"It was agreed that teachers can now decide on whether to use existing programs, a mix of old and new, or OBE.
"Union president Mike Keely says teachers can now take their time in familiarising themselves with the new system.
"So I think in some areas where the courses are simply really not viable, I think most teachers will remain with their existing programs," he said.
"In other areas you'll find teachers experimenting a little, and in some areas you may find some teachers moving ahead."
"Meanwhile, WA Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier says the changes are a backdown for the Government and the State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich.
"It has certainly been watered down and as I've said it's an acknowledgment by the Minister that something had to happen, something had to give," he said."
Full story at ABC News Online at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1665598.htm
State School Teachers' Union voted NO on OBE bans -- Year 11 courses to go ahead under a compromise plan with a "confusing set of compromises that have been worked through in the last week between the Union Executive, the CC and DET. It includes references to outcomes, bands and levels..."
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW COURSES OF STUDY IN YEARS 11 AND 12MAIN AREAS OF CONCERN
The main issues surrounding implementation concern:
• Syllabus and content;
• Assessment and reporting;
• External examination;
• Outcomes and weighting of outcomes; and
• Teacher preparationTHE KEY ELEMENTS OF THE PROPOSED ARRAIGNMENTS
Syllabus and Content
There will be a syllabus for each course of study. The existing TEE syllabus format will be used for all courses.
• For existing TEE subjects incorporated in the New Courses of Study:
- Teachers will be able to use their existing teaching programs and/or lesson plans;
- The content of the existing courses will form the basis of the new courses. Some adjustments will be required because of semesterisation and updating of content;
- Only content from the existing TEE subjects will be examined in the first year of year 12.
• For New Courses of Study content will be made more explicit and clear for teachers.Assessment and reporting for all Courses of Study
An assessment structure (Syllabus content, learning outcomes and types of assessment) will be provided for each course in language that is specific to the discipline;
• For existing TEE subjects incorporated in the New Courses of Study the assessment structure (Syllabus content, learning outcomes and types of assessment) in the current TEE subjects will continue for Year 11 students in 2007 and Year 12 students in 2008;
• At the end of each unit teachers will provide a mark out of 100 and a Level and Band for each student. In providing this information teachers can choose to:(a) Determine a percentage that will map to a Level and Band using a table that will be provided by the Curriculum Council. Both the percentage and Level and Band will be provided to the Curriculum Council; or
(b) Determine a Level and Band that will generate a numerical score using a table that will be provided by the Curriculum Council. Both the Level and Band and numerical score out of 100 will be provided to the Curriculum Council;
• The following will not be required:
External Examination
- Two judgements per outcome
- Recording of judgements for each aspect of an outcome
- Courses of Study Evidence Plans.
• For existing TEE subjects incorporated in the New Courses of Study, only content from the existing TEE subjects will be examined in the first year of Year 12;
• As exists under the TEE, the same standardisation, statistical moderation and scaling processes will apply to produce a TER.Outcomes and weighting of outcomes
• The outcomes and the weighting of outcomes will be refined on a course by course basis in consultation with teachers and other stakeholders.Teacher preparation
• Two full professional development days to go (Days 4 and 5) with further time being made available Term 4 to enable teachers to prepare programs for next year;
• For public schools Teacher Development Centres for the 17 course of study, comprising of expert teachers freed up to assist teachers, will be in place at the beginning of Term 3 2006;
• The Catholic and Independent sectors will be provided with additional resources to assist their teachers.Ministerial Reference Group
• A Reference Group, chaired by the Minister of Education and Training, has been established to oversee the ongoing implementation of the new Course of Study;
• The Reference Group includes the Director General of the Department of Education and Training, A/CEO of the Curriculum Council, Director of Catholic Education, Executive Director of the Association of Independent Schools WA, President of the State Schools Teachers Union and the Secretary of the Independent Education Union.
Click here for a Word .doc version of this documents (easier to print).
- ABC Television Evening News, 7 pm, Saturday 17 June
- "OBE watered-down as teachers claim victory" (lead story)
Teachers are claiming victory... Teachers and the State Government agreed to a watered-down version of OBE...
After 3 hours discussion, a truce was reached. SSTUWA President Mike Keely described it as "a good compromise for teachers"... In 2007, Year 11 courses will use the same syllabi and assessment as at present... in 2008, Year 12 courses will also use the same syllabi and assessment as at present...
The Education Minister says it is not a backdown by the Government.
PLATO's Marko Vojkovic said: "I fear for what is happening..."
The Education Minister said she hasn't given up hope of introducing a "purer form of OBE" down the track..." [emphasis added]
[sorry, full text not available online, and I forgot to tape it: Web]
- Earlier in the day on ABC News:
Minister unapologetic over pressuring teachers
"Western Australian Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich says she has no qualms about trying to put pressure on teachers to implement 17 new outcomes based education (OBE) courses from next year.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier has accused the Minister of trying to blackmail teachers by linking a 9 per cent pay rise offer to a condition they drop industrial action against OBE.
"Ms Ravlich admits she sought advice about the condition and says that is her job.
"I'm not an industrial relations expert, I sought advice from the department over whether there could be a clause put into the EBA which might strengthen the Government's position in terms of the implementation timetable and I was provided with that advice," she said.
"The advice was it's probably not worth going down that path."
Details at ABC online at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1665421.htm
- Varied and conflicting radio / TV coverage, Saturday
The Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich was on radio, defending her attempt to manipulate pay negotiations, to blackmail teachers away from OBE-related industrial action. She said words very much to the effect that "in the process of doing her job, which is to force the implementation of policies that 'she'd been told' were good, she'd sought 'loigal advoice' as to whether she had any chance of getting away with this little blackmail scheme, but she'd been told to it was 'not on' / 'no way' / illegal / 'you've got to be kidding' / ..."
There were apparent contradictions amongst the TV Evening News reports from Channels 7, 9 and 10. See the ABC story above.
- The Sunday Times
Rally against a 'failed experiment'
by Louise Pemble [Edition 2 - Country (page 27)]"WA is going down the same ruinous OBE path that has been a proven failure in Victoria, a public rally will be told in Perth this week.
"Kevin Donnelly, director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies, will be a key speaker at the rally planned for the steps of Parliament House on Wednesday. [WRONG: It's at UWA Social Science Lecture Theatre, Tuesday 20 June, 6 pm]
"It has been organised by the lobby group Parents Against Outcomes Based Education.
"But the WA Government has accused Dr Donnelly of undermining OBE for political ends.
"One of the country's most outspoken critics of OBE, Dr Donnelly is also a former chief-of-staff to the Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Kevin Andrews.
"Last week, Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said opposition to OBE was being orchestrated from Canberra and backed up by supporters of the Federal Government, including Dr Donnelly.
``You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know where it's coming from,'' she said.
"In his many newspaper columns and media interviews, including with this newspaper, Dr Donnelly has asserted that WA children are being used as guinea pigs in an experiment that has failed elsewhere.
"In a column written for The Australian newspaper this week, he said many countries, including the US, that had tried OBE in the 1990s had since reverted to more clearly defined and academically based syllabuses."
Full story in The Sunday TImes, country edition
Teachers Say Yes
by Paul Lampathakis"A watered-down form of outcomes-based education will go ahead next year: after months of wrangling and contrary to predictions, both teachers and the State Government have reached an agreement that will allow 17 new courses to proceed in 2007.
"After three hours of debate yesterday, about 80 per cent of a Perth meeting of the State School Teachers Union voted to accept the Government's last-ditch compromise package.
"Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich concedes that the courses will be taught under a "watered-down" form of OBE, not "pure outcomes-based education" as previously planned.
"This would give teachers more old-fashioned structure in what they taught, while still focusing more on student outcomes than before.
"Under the deal, teachers will be able to use existing teaching programs, courses will use more traditional syllabus formats, assessment will be cut back, and therefore the masses of paperwork that teachers had feared.
"The content of new courses will also be clarified for teachers.
"Ms Ravlich said the content of most new courses was about 85 per cent the same as many of the old ones.
"But students would not be tested on the 15 per cent new content in courses during a transition period next year.
"SSTU president Mike Keely said teachers had voted for a plan that would enable most teachers of new Year 11 courses next year to run with their existing teaching and assessment programs.
"This is the space that I believe that teachers need to gain breath," he said.
"And it is the space that is needed to enable the Curriculum Council to do a proper consultation and review with real classroom teachers on what courses of study mean for them in the classroom.
"(New) courses will continue in name but teachers will be able to teach from existing programs and use their existing assessment programs."
"As part of the agreement, which was voted on yesterday, teachers also won more professional development sessions to help them prepare for next year.
Public schools will have teacher development centres for the 17 courses of study, comprising expert teachers who will help classroom teachers.
"Catholic and independent schools will get additional resources to help their teachers.
"Ms Ravlich described the deal as a victory for education and said she believed the concerns that some teachers previously had would be eased.
"What we have already started doing is putting courses in a format that teachers have worked with for many, many years, so that will give them a degree of comfort," she said.
"They will also they (sic) able to use existing teaching programs and lesson plans.
"And the new courses, we will make more explicit in terms of what the syllabus and content actually is (sic).
"What teachers have already received was a fairly thick course guide and the syllabus and content was (sic) really embedded in there, but took a bit of work to get to.
"We are now working to put syllabus and content into a simplified form for them."
Full story available online at http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21498,19505163-948,00.html
- Saturday's West Australian includes the front page lead story It's OBE D-day: and still it's 'no' (including details of the so-called "pay bribe"), the main Editorial, a new WestPoll and accompanying story, a Letter to the Editor, and an interesting Paul Murray Op Ed piece on "values in schools"
- It's OBE D-day: and still it's 'no' (front page lead story)
by Bethany Hiatt and Jessica Strutt
"Teachers will today insist the State Government delays its outcomes-based education plan despite 11th-hour changes aimed at overcoming fierce opposition to the controversial scheme."They are expected to tell a summit of the State School Teachers Union their plans to boycott OBE next year should remain because there was not enough time to implement the latest changes proposed by the Government.
"News of the teachers' continued opposition to the OBE plan came as it was revealed that Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich wanted to quash teachers' dissent over the scheme by making their latest pay deal conditional on them dropping their industrial action.
"In what the Opposition described as a clear attempt at blackmail, leaked documents show that on May 15 Ms Ravlich requested urgent advice on how to link the teachers' enterprise bargaining agreement with the union ban on the implementation of 17 new OBE courses due to start in 2007. The Government denied the blackmail claim. [emphasis added]
"A failure by the Government to convince teachers today to lift their bans will further damage Alan Carpenter's bid to start the new courses in Year 11 from 2007.
"Ms Ravlich was locked in a meeting with union president Mike Keely all day yesterday in a last-ditch bid to resolve the OBE impasse.
"But in a sign that rank and file members do not see eye to eye with union leaders, delegates say they plan to call for the courses to be delayed regardless of whether they accept the Government's package.
"Union delegate Marko Vojkovic, also a co-founder of teachers' group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes (PLATO), said members did not necessarily want to debate the Government's proposals at all.
"We just believe the fact they are still making drastic changes at this late stage means the courses cannot go ahead next year," he said. "It's a simple case of logistics. It's not about OBE, it's not about courses of study.
"It's about the fact that teachers simply do not have enough time because everything they've prepared up to this date is now null and void."
"Mr Vojkovic had requested that delegates be allowed to see the proposed changes before the meeting rather than being presented with a recommendation, but Mr Keely would give nothing away yesterday.
"Here we have an executive that gives the impression they are presenting major changes to our education system as a fait accompli in a deal that was hatched in secret talks with the Curriculum Council and the Education Minister," Mr Vojkovic said. [emphasis added]
"Another delegate, who did not wish to be named, said a vote in favour of a delay could depend on whether primary school and TAFE teachers backed high school teachers.
"Yesterday, the Government denied its attempt to link teachers' pay rises to OBE amounted to a bribe, saying that at the time of Ms Ravlich's legal request the EBA offer was already on the table and being considered by the union. The leaked memo from Ms Ravlich's office to the Education Department asks what clauses could be put into the teachers' new enterprise bargaining agreement to restrict industrial action being taken by the union over OBE and what existing clauses could be used to curtail industrial action. It also asks what performance indicators could be applied to the agreement in relation to OBE implementa tion and how a restriction on industrial action would affect the EBA negotiations with teachers.
"Shadow education minister Peter Collier said it was clear Ms Ravlich had not only attempted to bribe the union, but wanted to force them to comply with her dogged determination to bulldoze ahead with the courses.
"Mr Keely last night denied any deal had been done with the Government, saying he was never asked by the Government to include clauses in the EBA which would restrict industrial action over OBE.
"In May, the State Government offered teachers pay rises of up to 13.5 per cent over two years, just hours before their union was due to decide whether to block the controversial outcomes-based education plan."
Full story in The West Australian at http://www.thewest.com.au/20060617/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto134450.html
- Main Editorial
Labor's dodgy politics taints school systems (page 18)
"If the State Government had set out deliberately to destroy public confidence in upper-high-school education, it could not have done a more effective job. Where there is a need for certainty and understanding, it has delivered an incomprehensible mess.
"It is doubtful that anyone now knows precisely where matters stand with the 17 new outcomes-based education courses the Government insists on forcing on Year 11 classes next year in mad defiance of reason and the principles of good governance. Certainly, parents and students have no way of knowing what to expect, with the supposed introduction of the new courses just half a school year away.
"Even if all the changes proposed for compromise deals were to be finalised immediately, there is hardly any chance that there would be widespread community understanding – let alone acceptance – of the new courses and assessment measures by next year. Indeed, there is room for serious doubt that the people in the bureaucratic backrooms who are responsible for the preparation of materials could deliver them in good time.
"The need to incorporate changes in the courses is bound to generate even more uncertainty about precisely what is intended among the people who need to be familiar with the new system. And who can say whether what emerges from all this confusion is OBE or some undefined hybrid with no cohesion or integrity, cobbled together at the last minute with little thought by officials for practical consequences in classrooms? [emphasis added]
"It is arrogant and impertinent of the Government to expect the education community to cop this shabby treatment. There is no reason for State schoolteachers to do so. This weekend their union will consider whether to life its ban on teaching the courses in question.
"The flurry of last-minute politicking by the Government does not amount to a case for the union to change its view that teachers who not not been adequately prepared for the new courses should not have to teach them. Indeed, the Government and its bureaucrats contributed massively to the problems that now confront them by paying little or no heed or respect for a long time to the views of the people it wants to put the courses intro practice.
"Teachers owe the Government nothing. And the mood of the weekend meeting is hardly likely to be improved by the emergence of evidence that the Government was looking to use a pay offer to try to stitch up the union by stifling industrial action.
"The source of the problems is the Government's willingness to put its political self-interest ahead of the educational needs of students. It is to its everlasting dishonour that it has burdened and tainted the education system with its dodgy political machinations." [emphasis added]
Full editorials in The West Australian
An unconfirmed email from the Minister's office:
Westpoll (page 10)
Are the Government's late changes enough to make OBE courses acceptable? Do the changes make the introduction of OBE for Years 11 and 12 acceptable for 2007, 2008 or not at all?
Westpoll conducted June 14-15 through phone interviews
with 415 voters across WA by Patterson Market Research
- Last-ditch OBE changes fail to win majority view (page 10)
by Jessica Strutt
"The State Government's 11th-hour concessions aimed at appeasing angry teachers have failed to sway most West Australians, with almost 60 per cent of respondents to the latest Westpoll saying the concessions failed to make the outcomes-based education plan acceptable.
"Only 13 percent of those polled accepted that the last-minute changes justified the OBE scheme's introduction next year.
"A total of 35 percent believed the changes should make it acceptable to start the 17 OBE courses in 2008, but not next year as intended by the Carpenter Government.
"The phone poll of 415 voters was run over two nights this week and since Premier Alan Carpenter and Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich met both teachers' unions last Sunday to offer the concessions.
"The poll also found that 25 per cent of West Australians did not think the changes would ever make the introduction of the OBE courses into Year 11 and 12 acceptable.
"More than 50 percent of those polled believed those pushing the OBE education model were motivated by a desire to create a more "politically correct" system of education rather than what was in the best interests of children. Only 29 percent of respondents believed those promoting OBE had the best interests of children's education in their minds. [emphasis added]
"Pollster Keith Patterson said the general sentiment seemed to be a grudging acceptance of the introduction of OBE, but that is should not be rushed into Years 11 and 12 next year.
"At the very least, it would appear that there is room for further debate and discussion about the merits or otherwise of the OBE program, with informed debate being presented to the community rather than political posturing for one point of view or the other," he said..."
Full story in The West Australian
- Letters to the Editor
First of all, top marks to the editorial staff and members of the public, who have worked at stopping or slowing the introduction of OBE. I am appalled at the arrogance of our State Government in bulldozing ahead with this education concept against the advice and wishes of so many informed and knowledgable people..."
"Finally, I have obviously been labouring under the misapprehension that our elected representatives were elected by the people, of the people, for the people. Since when has any politician had the right to tell us what we need or don't need? I am shocked by the arrogance of the Premier."
Neil Tonkin, Moora
Full Letters to the Editor in The West Australian
- Op Ed piece: An educated approach to core values? Fair go...
OBE resonance in academics' claim the Howard Government's set of values is vague to the point of emptiness
by Paul Murray (page 19)
"People seeking to express something uniquely Australian often rely on our notion of a "fair go". We seem to take it for granted that the concept is well understood and that it embodies something very definitive about being Australian.
"In fact, in 2002, when the Federal Government came up with a set of Australian common values to be taught in our schools, a fair go came in third out of nine.
"A recent study of these values has not only called the list into question, but raises concerns about whether we do have common views about these core issues..."
Full story in The West Australian
- Today's The Weekend Australian includes two articles and the editorial, offering divergent views on plain-English report cards. A second Opinion piece and two Letters to the Editor round up a great selection.
- Editorial: Educational goals
It is time for the truth to be told in all Australian schools"Imagine the World Cup if the education establishment ran it. Details of goals scored and penalties awarded would be censored lest the publicity upset poor players. And we would never know match results, because details of defeat would depress losing nations and turn them into failed soccer states. But these silly statements describe what has long occurred in our schools. Around Australia the education establishment of academics, teacher unions and politicised parents has long opposed explaining to parents how children compare in class. And they are even more adamant in their opposition to meaningfully ranking schools by academic performance. So, generations of kids have received report cards designed to disguise pupils' progress. And the performance of schools has not been ranked from best to worse, in case parents question the fiction that all schools – and teachers – are equally excellent. [emphasis added]
"If state education ministers had their way, things would stay the same – they live in fear of teacher unions ordering industrial action. But, largely thanks to former federal education minister Brendan Nelson, in recent years things started to improve. Dr Nelson pushed the states for report cards that clearly explain whether students can read, write and count. And he advocated more information on the comparable performance of all schools. The states saw the electoral appeal of his arguments, some now providing improved plain-English report cards. And more information is available on how schools compare on external exams and literacy and numeracy tests. Good, but not good enough, because state governments are still not game to take on their education establishments. This week, a rank-and-file teacher revolt forced Western Australia's Premier, Alan Carpenter, to move against a new curriculum that was heavy on social analysis and light on skills and facts. But Mr Carpenter acted only when Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich dared not disobey the authors of the new curriculum. [emphasis added] And in NSW, while Premier Morris Iemma has called for comparisons between schools, he does not want to publicly rank every school in his state. Far from it, individual schools will be compared against a cluster of supposedly similar, but anonymous, institutions. This is an educational own-goal. Any idea that poor-performing schools will become educational ghettos ignores the way accountability is the first step to improved standards.
"Mr Iemma does not dare face the fact that knowledge is power and parents have a right to know how their children – and their teachers – are doing. The only way to do this is to report school performance on a range of objective measures, such as externally assessed literacy and numeracy results and exit exams, and to rank all schools from top to bottom. Doing this would offend ideologues who think an excellent educational outcome is for everybody to have similar results, especially if nobody knows exactly what they mean. Good. Kids are at school to learn, not to be kicked around by people with foolish theories."
Full editorial in The Weekend Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19490154-7583,00.html [scroll down a bit]
- Parents urged to boycott reports
by Justine Ferrari and Elizabeth Gosch
"Parents are being urged to reject a system that grades their children from A to E as part ofacampaign to sabotage the national push for plain-English report cards."The national bodies representing the parents of government-school students and teachers will encourage parents to refuse to accept the new model.
"The states are being forced to introduce the new plain-English reports, which rank students' performance over five levels, to maintain their federal funding under reforms sparked by complaints that existing assessment models are vague and confusing.
"Announcing the move during the 2004 election campaign, then federal education minister Brendan Nelson said: "Parents want to know that their children are meeting national literacy and numeracy standards. They want to receive plain-English reports of their child's progress."
"But Jenny Branch, president of the Australian Council of State School Organisations, the peak body representing public school parents, yesterday attacked the push for A-to-E gradings on report cards..."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19495661-601,00.html
- Student ratings don't make grade
Kevin Donnelly assesses the new method of evaluating and reporting each school pupil's performance in the classroom and finds it unsatisfactory and open to criticism
"Beginning this year, as a result of an initiative from Brendan Nelson when he was federal education minister, all states and territories are being made to introduce plain-English report cards and to assess students using a five-point scale: A to E. At first appearance, such changes are commendable and, especially in relation to making reports jargon-free, long overdue."Unfortunately, as often with education, closer scrutiny shows that what begins as a worthy policy initiative can be less than attractive when implemented.
"A result of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education is the jargon and edubabble in reports, which parents complain make it impossible to know whether students have passed or failed or how they have performed when ranked against others in the school or class.
"As noted in a national survey, Reporting on Student and School Achievement: "Parents consider there is a tendency, more common in primary schools, to avoid facing or telling hard truths. Parents understand how difficult it may be for teachers to convey bad news, but nevertheless they indicate that they want a fair and honest assessment, in plain language, of the progress of their children. There is a lack of objective standards that parents can use to determine their children's attainment and rate of progress. Many parents specifically asked for information that would enable them to compare their children's progress with other students or with state (or) territory-wide or national standards."
"There are many reasons Australian schools gave up easy-to-read report cards and grading students one against the other. First, the Australian Education Union is against assessment that is competitive and norm-referenced, used to rank students and based on set year-level standards of achievement.
"The Australian Association for the Teachers of English, the Australian Curriculum Studies Association and the Australian Council of Deans of Education are also opposed to more traditional forms of assessment. As argued by ACSA, "assessment should be a co-operative venture between student and assessor" and "assessment should not be premised on success for some and failure for others".
"The opposition to competition and norm-referenced assessment - in which students are ranked one against the other along a bell curve, with some performing well, most are average and a few performing poorly - is a result of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education.
"The US academic many consider most influential in Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, William Spady, argues that failing is bad for students' self-esteem and, given enough resources and time, all students are capable of success. As a result, instead of grading students on a 10-point scale or A to E, where E means fail, student progress is measured by terms such as beginning, consolidating or established.
"Closely linked to removing the idea of failure and norm-referenced assessment is outcomes-based education's adoption of criterion-based assessment or, in Australia, what is generally termed standards-based assessment.
"Instead of ranking students, for example, in terms of test results from the best performing to the least successful, in standards-based assessment student performance is measured in terms of how well they complete a particular task or master a learning outcome..."
"The two approaches to how student performance is assessed and rewarded can best be illustrated with a sporting example. Judging a marathon race in the more traditional norm-referenced way involves winners and losers and it is possible, if there are 100 competitors, to rank them from first to last. The assumption is that not all competitors have the same ability or are equally as fit or motivated and that competition is a good thing.
"Standards-based assessment is not concerned with placing runners from first to last. Instead, all are judged according to how well they meet a particular objective or standard. If the objective is that all a competitor has to do is to complete the course, no matter how long it takes, then all are guaranteed a prize.
"To comply with the federal demand to assess students using an A to E scale, the Victorian approach is to rate them against "the expected statewide standard" in the different learning areas, with standards defined as "outcomes against which student achievement will be assessed and reported on".
"The NSW Education Department has also agreed to ask teachers to report to parents using an A to E scale that measures student achievement against statewide standards in the different learning areas. Both states have a similar approach to defining what the A to E scale represents. A and B ratings signify that the student is above the standard expected at that year level, a C rating means the student has achieved at the expected standard, and D and E ratings represent achievement below the required standard for that yearlevel.
"There are many flaws in how the A to E grading system is being implemented. The way the five-point scale is equated with year-level standards appear arbitrary, and teachers are being asked to grade students according to their professional judgment with little, if any, objective guidance. What guarantee is there that the grades a teacher gives in one school will be comparable with the grades teachers in other schools give their students? Assigning grades at particular year levels is also difficult given that standards in curriculum documents are not year-level specific..."
"Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based consultants Education Strategies."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19488936-601,00.html
- OPINION: Cultures are not all equal
by Christopher Pearson
"On Tuesday The Australian carried an interesting critique of Brendan Nelson's campaign to instil "Australian values" in the classroom. Sue Knight, a researcher at the University of South Australia, used a Hawke Institute seminar to declare the exercise "doomed and dangerous"."Articulating civic values in the bland language deemed fitting in the national curriculum is a tricky business at the best of times. Linking them to notions of national identity compounds the problem. The notion of Australian values - as opposed to common human values, say, or Judeo-Christian civilisation's values - strikes me as hokey, chauvinistic and self-congratulatory. Contemplating the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools, the only crumb of comfort I could find was that there's no mention of mateship.
"All the other apple-pie banalities were crammed in, though.
"The common Australian values are: care and compassion; doing your best; a fair go; freedom; honesty and trustworthiness; integrity; respect; responsibility; understanding, tolerance and inclusion."
"Knight's host forum, the Hawke Institute, was set up to perpetuate the ideological legacy of the former prime minister. Despite that fact, she chose to attack this politically correct wish list in her speech for its vacuity and to mock the $29 million program to propagate those virtues.
"She also questioned the value of teaching tolerance as an unchallengeable good.
"The emphasis within current educational policy and curriculum is on being aware of others and their cultures and accepting, even respecting, diversity and others' point of view. We are wary of saying that some moral judgments are better than others."
"I remember the mid-1970s, when multiculturalism was first beginning to entrench itself as the official religion in state schools. Celebrating diversity suddenly became the only possible response to that often-confronting phenomenon.
"In the same way, overnight it seemed that all cultures became equal and demanded uncritical acceptance, except for the Anglo-Saxon kind, about which we were encouraged to feel ashamed and apologetic.
"It became less and less possible to make critical, cross-cultural comparisons. If, for example, you wanted to talk about the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, there were all sorts of shibboleths getting in the way of plain speaking. Even the most remotely negative reflection on priests cutting out the still-beating hearts of their victims with obsidian knives had to be prefaced with mea culpas about the victims of Anglo imperialism. The verdict of Mircea Eliade, the previous century's most distinguished historian of comparative religion, that the Aztec rites were "a perversion of the religious impulse" had become almost literally unspeakable.
"It was the same with other, less spectacular examples of barbarism. The clitoridectomies of African tribes and the genital mutilation of Aboriginal boys in initiation were subjects hedged around with taboos. The same was true of cannibalism, on the rare occasions when anthropologists and historians could bring themselves to acknowledge the existence of the problem among some Australian and New Guinean hunter-gathers. Who, after all, were we white Westerners to criticise the customs of other cultures, especially those so much closer to nature?
"Where all other cultures are notionally equal, all sorts of crucial differences are annihilated and categorical distinctions swamped. For example, basic issues such as comparative levels of cultural development are set at naught. Primitive nomads, villagers and the inhabitants of cities become all much of a muchness because they all have a culture of some sort, and comparisons are odious or at least ill-mannered.
"Even if they paid lip-service to those pieties, you may well be thinking, surely the school-teaching classes never really believed all that claptrap? The fact of the matter is that the calibre of people attracted into teaching has been falling steadily since at least the '50s and it's a long time since the profession encouraged independent-mindedness in its members. The chances are that most of the people entrusted with values education swallowed their multicultural pieties whole and cling to them in much the same way as they would to articles of religious faith.
"It is as Allan Bloom warned in The Closing of the American Mind. Barbarism has largely triumphed in the classroom. Judeo-Christian civilisation has been trivialised and marginalised by those entrusted with the task of transmitting it. As he put it: "Cultural relativism succeeds in destroying the West's universal or intellectually imperialistic claims, leaving it as just another culture."
"Mandating tolerance as a civic virtue leads not only to cultural relativism but to a more general moral relativism. Knight alluded to the problem in her speech and returned to the theme in an opinion piece she wrote with a colleague, Carol Collins, which appeared in The Australian on Friday.
"We must be wary, though, of moral relativism," they argued. "A society of individuals who believe that all beliefs, all values, have equal legitimacy, for whom anything goes, is neither tolerant nor just."
"If anything, this understates the problem. If such a society were conceivable, it would be profoundly anomic and anarchic. Its citizens would lack any moral compass in their dealings with one another.
"There would be no internalising on the part of individuals of the constraints imposed for the common good by the criminal code. If people were law-abiding, it would be a matter of personal preference or convenience rather than considered obligation.
"As Knight and Collins maintain, it is a matter of vital importance to any society that it not only inculcates ethical values in the classroom but that it teaches the young how to make complex moral assessments. It's a process that, in the days before the word acquired a negative connotation, used to be called discrimination. To be reckoned a person of discriminating judgment was once high praise.
"Knight and Collins say: "Surely a focus on social mores sanctioning racism, bullying or the abuse of women and children show us what is wrong with relativism. Think of Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers, and the complex issues of tribal law and the treatment of women and children in indigenous communities. These are examples of situations in which tolerance is dangerous..."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19490928-7583,00.html
- Letters to the Editor
- Give teachers some credit
"Recent letters and opinion pieces in this newspaper seem to hold teachers responsible for every perceived ill of society, from moral relativism to the greengrocer's misuse of the apostrophe."But when it comes to achievements and Australian success stories, where is the teachers' share of the praise? When our children develop into mature men and women, captains of industry and leaders of society, or simply decent individuals holding down a job and raising a family, who is responsible for that?
"Of course, teachers couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it."
M. Mercurius, Ashfield, NSW
"The more I read of Kevin Donnelly's article ("Gobbledygook a poor swap for old school ways", Opinion, l6/6) the more anxious I became. I have read copiously about OBE so that I might be able to fathom the reason for such a huge change in the school curriculum. Donnelly's last quote of William Spady's, beginning "education systems will custom-design criterion-based assessment measures" left me speechless (a thing my husband would never have believed possible). I've done secretarial work for more than 60 years and I can't understand what Spady is trying to say. Why can't he speak in plain English or, for that matter, call a spade a spade?"
Sylvia Becker, Kallaroo, WA
All Letters to the Editor in The Weekend Australian available at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/index/0,,21223,00.html
All Alston cartoons are © The West Australian Newspaper
All media quotations and photographs © their respective publishers
This page last updated 25 April, 2009 11:29 PM
