The return of the autodidact

Autodidact - a self-taught person. Australian Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley  was an example, another was steel magnate Andrew Carnegie

The second half of the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth has sometimes been called the age of the autodidact or self-taught man.

Educational opportunities were more limited, while our obsession with credentials still lay in the future.Outside certain of the professions or the church which required a basic degree, most training was craft based. The period was one of scientific advance, great curiosity and a belief in human advancement. There was a great thirst for knowledge:  Many read widely and took part in self-improvement activities through bodies such as mechanics institutes.

Both my grandfathers were autodidacts. Both left school at an early age. Both became actively involved in politics, if on different sides. Both were religious. One became a Primitive Methodist Home Missionary. Even in that church, you required a university degree to become a full minister. The second became a long standing Minister for Education in NSW and wrote quite extensively on historical, political and educational topics.

The rise of formal education and the increasing requirement for formal credentials over the second half of the twentieth century effectively stamped the breed out.  The dominance of formal ever cascading credentials introduced increasing increasing rigidities into every aspect of life. It meant that people had less time for thought, less time for reflection. less time for free choice in what to study, were reduced in what they could do without the obligatory ticks. Autodidacts still existed, but were marginalised, forced to the periphery..

There was a time in the 1980s when I believed that the rise of competency based approaches with their stated emphasis on the capacity to do regardless of how that capacity was acquired might free the system up, break the hold of the credentialers, encourage the return of the autodidact. By 1992 I knew that that was not going to happen as the professions, the officials and the education system asserted control over what had to be learned, how it was to be learned, how it was to be measured.  .

I had thought that the internet might break the cycle by giving people access to a broader range of knowledge, greater freedom. At first, things seemed promising.

The acronym MOOC for massive open online course was coined in 2008. MOOCs are online courses aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. They are generally provided for free, although fees may apply if you wish to get a formal tick for the course. By 2010,  MOOCs were seen as the wave of the future, something that would open further study to all of their own choice and at their own pace. By 2012 universities and other providers were rushing to role-out MOOCs.

August 2012. University of New England (UNE) Sydney alumni challenge then VC Jim Barber on his vision for the University's future. 

In August 2012 I attended a UNE alumni dinner. There I heard VC Jim Barber  start by talking about the university as a business, about the on-line revolution, about the need to deliver a low cost product. UNE, he seemed to be saying, had to survive by delivering a mass, cheap, on-line product.

There was not a single word in the first five minutes of business/CEO speak that explained to me why I or other alumni should continue to support UNE. Under persistent attack, Jim refined his position, setting out a broader view, but it was an example of the effects of managerial speak and of the obsession with new technology seen in terms of delivery platforms by existing institutions.

By 2016 MOOCs were past their peak. Jim Barber had resigned in 2014, replaced by Annabel Duncan. In 2016 as I completed the latest on-line work  place health and safety obligatory course I realised that I had become jaundiced here too. Don't get me wrong, I think workplace safety is important, but so much of this stuff is really teaching people to comply with the rules. Internet based systems have become the weapon of choice in delivering stuff within the bounds set by existing rules and approaches.

I began blogging in March 2006. By 2008, I saw blogging as a key platform for learning, for open conversation, for discourse outside the academy. Google blog search became a key search tool. It was, if you like, a good platform for the autodidact!

Facebook was founded in 2004 and then began to expand from 2006. Twitter was established in 2006. By 2009, many bloggers had migrated to these new platforms, replacing analysis with short form repeats and comments. The echo chamber had been born.

Apart from missing their previous contributions, I found much of the new material boring and repetitive. I already knew their views and really didn't take well to constant re-tweets limited to stuff that I knew that they supported. There was another problem, for I found myself experimenting with the platforms themselves. So if I wrote a post, I would then FB it and tweet it as well, adding to the time involved. I also found myself pulled by a key question: to what degree should I become involved with the new platforms that kept emerging? How many new platforms could or should I add? How did I balance all this?

By 2018 I found myself weary. I was trying to do my own original writing. I was trying to use my various platforms to educate and discuss, but I seemed to be getting no where. Or, at least, not making much progress. Then I realised that I was missing the point.

Outside the bounds of the increasingly complex education and training system with its multiple layers of credentials, outside the still increasing requirements for mandated ticks, a quiet revolution has been underway.

We have, in fact, seen the return of the autodidact. I am proud to be one in the sense that I pursue my curiosity, seek to learn and to share. Here we have more opportunities open to us than at any time in human history. I am not talking about "self-directed learning" with its connotations that one is studying for a career purpose, but the seeking of education, knowledge and understanding for our own purposes including sheer curiosity.

I am sure that this will not come as a surprise to you. It's just that my own sense of weariness has stood in the way, has blinded me to the scale of the revolution of which I am a small part. I talk about myself as a public historian, I have tried to articulate my role there, but I'm not sure that I have really come to grips with what that means. Part of the problem is that I am still too locked into formal structures, into requirements mandated by others.

In history, for example, for every person studying or teaching history at school or university, there are probably 50 interested for their own purposes.The number could be far higher. I haven't worked out how to calculate it properly. More broadly, I haven't worked out a framework to help me analyse the ever-growing informal sector.

The existing education and training sector itself is starting to crumble under its own weight. You can only mandate so many qualifications, impose so many costs, extend study time horizons so far, before people stop playing, start looking for alternatives.

I think that this is already happening, in part because of the constant repetition about multiple careers, about the need for flexible education, about the need for constant re-education.. Why commit to a long course of study to get a particular ticket for career purposes when faced with a constant shortening half-life for that course of study? Surely better to do the absolute minimum now and then top up as required?

Again, I haven't thought this through properly. I think that it has quite profound implications for the structure of education. In some limited areas such as medical specialties where you have rigid mandated requirements, significant income advantages and a continuing expectation of life-long careers the status quo may survive. Elsewhere I think that the first part of a revolution may be well underway.  

Problems with Gonski 2.0

I have been reading, more precisely trying to read, the Australian Gonski 2.0 report into school education. It is so full of jargon that I am finding it almost impenetrable. Since I'm not prepared to devote hours of my life to getting through the jargon, I thought that I would stand back and make a few general observations roughly linked to the report.

Education for what?

I think that one of the problems with Gonski et al is that they fail to look at the purpose of education. One aim is to give people certain basis skills. This is what tends to be measured in the basic tests so beloved by educational administrators. However, education also provide knowledge of particular domains and teaches people to think critically. It teaches social skills. It also provides a smorgasbord from which students can accept or reject things in terms of interests and later choices.

Children vary enormously in interest and learning speeds. They slow and accelerate. Often, the things that they most value later are not seen at the time but come to be valued in retrospect. Often they have little to do with formal courses but are linked to particular events or teachers. Sometimes, rejection or rebellion are the main things remembered from school days.

The purpose of education is not national economic efficiency, a concept popularised by the German Empire at a time of fierce competition between empires.. Rather, education has multiple purposes which can conflict and whose results at individual level may not be measurable for years.

Child focused

We are told that schooling should be child focused. The way that this is phrased is, to my mind, a nonsense. By child focused, we mean that education needs to focus on the child as the best way of getting them to perform in ways that we want, to get them to do what we want them to do, to allow them to measure up as determined by the externally imposed measures that we have set. This has little to do with the individual needs of the child. The child becomes an input into a process.

Measurement and national  performance

We are told that Australia is falling behind international educational performance. If that's true, it's a devastating criticism of two decades of education performance focused on improved performance. But is is true? The performance comparison are based on specific measure such as the PISA tests, tests that measure a small number of dimensions. Singapore is cited as a performance example.I wonder how many Australian parents would actually want thier children to go through that system.

Continuous improvement

The report makes much play with the idea that the school system must seek to improve performance: teachers must become more professional and constantly seek to improve their performance; coasting schools (those comfortable to sit in the middle of the pack) must be encouraged to improve; school "leaders" must be encouraged to improve their performance; pupils must be pushed to improve performance and improve their individual performance.

The concept of continuous improvement is a slippery one.It's a concept that I have supported as a management consultant in advising particular organisations, in part because it is a useful corrective to the alternative idea that an organisation can suddenly make a quantum performance leap.To a degree, Gonski 2.0 wants both continuous improvement and a quantum leap.

In looking at performance improvement, I have always been conscious of the need to take into account individual variation. A teacher may be doing a good job within limits set by their own aspirations, time availability,  needs and alternative priorities. A student may be coasting in certain ways because they neither need or want to do better. They prefer to do other things, seek other paths.

If you try to push either group beyond the limits they have set, you create tensions, pressure and stress. Performance drops as a consequence.

To my mind, we have an increasingly stressed school system measured by teacher and pupil stress. I did the old NSW leaving certificate. This was a relatively stress-free environment. My children did the NSW Higher School Certificate. Stress levels were far higher to the point the school had to have programs to help kids manage it. Today I have friends whose children are doing the Higher School Certificate. Stress levels are higher again.

I think it absurd that a year 11 or 12 student is so stressed out that they need medical support and may make their parents' life a misery..And for what purpose? In most cases, the variation in their marks will have no impact on their longer term career or options. Ironically, the lower performing students who perhaps should be worried are likely to be those who worry least because they don't care. It is the conscientious kid who suffers.

Evidence based approaches

There is the usual focus on evidence based approaches and teachers as professionals. My concern in both cases lies in the lack of definition applied to these terms.

Conclusion

Mr Gonski and his panel members may well argue and with some justice that in standing back the way I have ignored some of their arguments and key principles. For example, the idea that advancement should be based upon progress independent of formal year structures, that the school curriculum should include more generic skills to equip students for a rapidly changing world.

My problem apart from the jargon involved is that Gonski 2.0 remains a centralised command and control measurement based approach that will do little to increase the flexibility of the schooling system or give teachers more freedom to diverge from mandated approaches.
 
This post is also the Monday Forum post.
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Australian education: the leaning tower of PISA

“Today’s PISA report goes further than last week’s Trends in Maths and Science report, this year’s NAPLAN results and the OECD Education at a Glance report in terms of not just showing a plateauing of results in Australia but that it shows a clear decline from year to year in Australia’s education performance,”  Australian Federal Education Simon Birmingham.

The Minister was commenting on the release of the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report. You will find details of the Australian country report here. The Minister's remarks were illustrated with this graphic.

Australian performance is also recorded by school system., broken up into independent schools, Catholic schools and the Government sector. Here the independent schools released a very helpful summary of the differences between the sectors. In summary:

• In reading literacy where Australia ranked equal sixteenth, Australian independent schools ranked first, Australian Catholic schools ranked equal seventh, while the Australian public school system was below the OECD average
•  In scientific literacy where Australia ranked fourteenth, Australian independent schools ranked second, the Australian Catholic system tenth, while the Australian public school system had fallen below the OECD average
• In mathematical literacy where Australia seems to have ranked  21st, Australian independent schools ranked equal fifth, Australian Catholic schools equal 17th, while public schools were well below the OECD average. . 

Note the use of the word seemed in the last point. There was a conflict in the data presented that I didn't have time to resolve. In any event, the overall point - relative performance - is not affected. 

The release of the TIMSS 2015 report attracted much media and political attention .... because of the way it suggested that Australia is falling behind in maths and science performance at school. ... Looking at the results, I had real difficulty in understanding just what TIMSS told us and what we might do about it. 

I wrote this on 1 December. A key reason for my difficulty lay in the existence of correlation among the variables measured. The results suggested that there was a positive correlation between academic performance and the social economic status of the families measured by books at home, the educational attainment of parents and access to learning supports. No surprise there.

The results suggested, too, that kids in metropolitan areas were likely to do better than kids in regional areas who in turn do better than kids in remote and very remote areas. Indigenous kids performed less well than non-indigenous kids. No surprises in either case,

Now consider this pattern. Regional areas have fewer higher income families and a smaller proportion of higher educated people. That feeds into lower academic performance. Indigenous people have lower incomes and academic attainments too and are also more likely to live in regional areas. So the measures are interrelated.

The graphic on the right shows the PISA 2015 performance gap for Australia by various measures. The thing that is quite startling is the performance by economic status. The gap between the highest and lowest performance measure in this area is three years, noticeably larger than the performance gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, recognising that these students have a weighting towards lower socioeconomic status. The gap is so large that it suggests that socioeconomic status has become the dominant determinant in determining relative performance.   

On average, students going to private schools come from significantly higher socioeconomic backgrounds, those going to Catholic schools somewhat higher. Increasingly, those going to public schools come from the lowest socioeconomic groups outside those going to selective schools. 

The partially implemented Gonski reforms were intended in part to address the socioeconmic gap by equalising the resources available to schools, increasing the resources available to poorer schools. However, that was never going to be a complete answer. The problem in the debate actually is answer to what?  

“While our school systems remain above average among developed economies we must acknowledge the reality that our performance is slipping. Given the wealth of our nation and scale of our investment, we should expect to be a clear education leader, not risk becoming a laggard. We must leave the politicking at the door and have a genuine conversation that is based on evidence about what we do from here.  

“Commonwealth funding for schools has increased by 50 per cent since 2003 while our results are going backwards. I’m not suggesting that adequate funding is not important, of course it is vital, but as the OECD notes Australia ranks as spending the fifth highest amount on education in the OECD and once you get to that level there is little value in just increasing spending, the harder task is to invest in the areas that the evidence says makes a difference." Minister Birmingham

This is actually slightly slippery stuff. To begin with, how do we know that our performance is slipping? What do we mean when we say that Australia should expect to be a clear education leader? What, indeed, is the purpose of education?  If we are going to use evidence based approaches, what evidence and for what purposes? There is a real risk that our approaches to education have now become so mechanistic, so based on a narrow range of indicators, 

"While the overall decline in the achievement of Australian students is of concern, there is evidence of a drop in performance across the OECD." Independent Schools PISA summary

"Success in PISA rankings and other global league tables are an important part of the Singapore “brand”. Singaporean academic Christopher Gee calls this the “educational arms race”. Highly competitive schooling is the norm." Professor Amanda Wise, The Conversation 

Australia is not alone in struggling to maintain, let alone improve, PISA rankings. The global competition based around the PISA scores is quite close to a zero sum game in the sense that competition requires more and more effort with limited result. Every dollar spent to achieve better test results is a dollar that could have been spent on something else. There is in fact no evidence that I know of  that shows a clear connection between PISA rankings and economic performance, a central Government concern. 

"Public discussion in Australia around why we are not doing as well as the Singaporeans is largely focused on what goes on in that country’s schools. 

Yet there is one thing missing from the reporting on Singapore’s success: the role of private tuition (private tutors and coaching colleges) and the part it plays in the overall success of students in the tiny city-state." Professor Wise

We have to be very careful in comparing school systems. Professor Wise quotes these school numbers from Singapore::

• 60% of high school, and 80% of primary school age students receive private tuition.
• 40% of pre-schoolers receive private tuition.
• Pre-schoolers, on average, attend two hours private tuition per week, while primary school aged children are attending, on average, at least three hours per week.

As Professor Wise notes, these are remarkable numbers. You will find the same type of pattern in Australia for families competing for entry into selective schools. Do we want to adopt it generally in order to compete in the PISA arms race?  

The Strauss piece is the simplest description of the Finnish system that I have found. If I had to draw a single lesson from it, it's the relative simplicity of the Finnish system, the absence of controls, the grant of autonomy to schools and teachers, the apparent absence of prescriptive measurement, that goes to the heart of performance. 

Finland is another country often used for comparison purposes, something that I explored in Monday Forum - what lessons does the Finnish education system offer? The piece contains a link to the Strauss piece referred to above. Again, Finland is very different from Australia. I should note that Finland has dropped behind a little in the latest PISA scores if still scoring better than Australia.  

Three themes in Australian education: national efficiency, citizenship and social advancement

Looking at the history of education in Australia, three themes have dominated although the weighting has shifted over time. .

The first is education for national efficiency. This became popular in the lead up to the First World War especially in technical education because of the competition between the British and German empires. 

The second is education for citizenship, the idea that a functioning society required an educated population. 

The third is education for social advancement. Education provided a path for an individuals to improve their social position, to advance. 

For much of Australia's history, practical considerations have greatly influence weighting. The challenge was providing primary education for all, then secondary education, then tertiary education. While quality was always important, the real issues lay in ensuring mass delivery. 

Today, national efficiency dominates. The other two themes are there, but are subsumed in the focus on education for  the purposes of economic development, for maximising the country's global competitive position. It is, if you don't mind me saying so, just so 1914!  

I didn't send my daughters to school to achieve a standard

Today we live in a standards based world dominated by education's role as an economic contributor. I didn't send my daughters to school to achieve a standard or help the country achieve a standard. I didn't give a damn about PISA rankings. NAPLAN results were interesting as a rough measure of their comparative academic performance, but were largely irrelevant in a practical sense.

I sent my daughters to school to get an education that I hoped would be as good as the opportunities offered to me, recognising that I was unusually privileged. I wanted an education that would make them rounded, that would allow them to compete in an increasingly competitive environment but, most of all, I wanted an education that would help them to think, to be interested in new things, to enjoy life. 

Did I get that? I think that I did. So don't expect me to be sympathetic to much of the current "education" debate. I am modern enough to be aware of all the current issues, to know how my daughters fared, to know the opportunities offered. I am old fashioned enough to believe in the value of education in its own right. I am both modern and old fashioned enough to believe that equality in educational opportunities, however unachievable, should be central.

Postscript

This Sydney Morning Herald piece (Falling school standards are taking a toll on Australia's wellbeing) rather captured everything I was complaining about with the misuse of PISA. I quote from the introduction:

The deterioration in the performance of school students has slashed billions from Australia's economic wellbeing. 

The release of data this week showing Australian teenagers are falling behind many of their international peers has cut the value of the Fairfax-Lateral Economics wellbeing index, which puts a dollar figure on our collective welfare. The index uses reading scores from the international Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure Australia's human capital, or collective knowhow. 

The latest PISA result, released on Tuesday, showed Australia's reading score dropped from 512 to 503 between 2012 and 2015. 

"This worsening of the PISA reading scores has negatively impacted the level of economic wellbeing," the index report said. 

That deterioration has sliced $15.2 billion from Australia's wellbeing since 2012.

This is quite simply absurd. Australia's collective wellbeing has not declined by $15.2 million as a consequence.

In an ABC piece cross posted from The Conversation, Stewart Liddle and Bob Lingard argue in part::
 It is unhelpful to use the single country ranking to determine how we are going as there are significant variances between states/territories and school sectors (government, independent, Catholic).

Instead, we need to carefully disaggregate the data and consider the social and economic factors that influence performance across states, between schools, as well as the correlations between gender, Indigeneity, class, race, geographical location, and so on. 

Australia has one of the widest ranges of student achievement, with what can be described as a long tail of underachievement...... 

There are competing tensions in the agenda of social efficiency and social equity, which is evident in how PISA results inform global and local education policy-making. This includes the emphasis on competing within a global knowledge economy. 

It is worth noting how the economic rationalisation for greater educational equity plays out in the global policy field, particularly through testing regimes such as NAPLAN and PISA. 

The challenge for policymakers, schools and teachers is how to respond to increasing pressure to lift test results on PISA, TIMSS and NAPLAN, while also addressing systemic inequality in order to ensure that every Australian student is given access to a meaningful education.

While there are parts of their analysis I would agree with, there is still the same focus on the importance of certain shifts in PISA and other test results, the thing that I am challenging. 

TIMSS 2015: what does it mean?

The release of the TIMSS 2015 report attracted much media and political attention (examples here, here) because of the way it suggested that Australia is falling behind in maths and science performance at school. The report describes TIMSS in this way:

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is an international comparative study of student achievement directed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). TIMSS 2015 represents the sixth such study since TIMSS was first conducted in 1995.  Forty-nine education systems tested at Year 4 level and 39 tested at Year 8 level. In Australia, TIMSS is managed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and is jointly funded by the Australian Government and the state and territory governments.

The goal of TIMSS is to provide comparative information about educational achievement across countries to improve teaching and learning in mathematics and science. It is designed, broadly, to align with the  mathematics and science curricula in the participating education systems and countries, and focuses on assessment at Year 4 and Year 8. It also provides comparative perspectives on trends in achievement in the context of different education systems, school organisational approaches and instructional practices; and to enable this, TIMSS collects a rich array of background data from students, schools and teachers, and also collects data about the education systems themselves.

This report is a first look at the results from TIMSS 2015. Focusing on the achievement results in mathematics and science at Year 4 and Year 8, this report will be followed early in 2017 by the full Australian National Report, which will examine achievement more fully and incorporate descriptive and analytical findings using the background and demographic data.

Looking at the results, I had real difficulty in understanding just what TIMSS told us and what we might do about it. A key reason lies in the existence of correlation among the variables measured

The results suggest that there is a positive correlation between academic performance and the social economic status of the families measured by books at home, the educational attainment of parents and access to learning supports. No surprise there.

The results suggest that kids in metropolitan areas are likely to do better than kids in regional areas who in turn do better than kids in remote and very remote areas. Indigenous kids perform less well than non-indigenous kids. No surprises in either case,

Now consider this pattern. Regional areas have fewer higher income families and a smaller proportion of higher educated people. That feeds into lower academic performance. Indigenous people have lower incomes and academic attainments too and are also more likely to live in regional areas. So the measures are interrelated.

This simple point goes to the way the statistics are used and the conclusions drawn from them. Much commentary has really dealt with the aggregate results. Here I quote Stefanie Balogh in The Australian (link above):

The alarming results from the four-yearly Trends in Internat­ional Mathematics and Science Study last night sparked calls for Australia to “wake up’’, reject short-term fixes, raise the effectiveness of teaching, and improve retention and training of qualified maths and science teachers.

I suppose that we could call this an education focused response. Here are a few more examples from the same story:

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said despite increased funding Australia was not achieving sufficient improvements. “The fascination of some policymakers and special interest groups with how much money is being spent on schools has been to the detriment of the real questions we should have been asking that would turn around these declining trends — ‘how should the money be best distributed?’ and ‘what are the initiatives in schools that are proven to lift results that we should be backing?’ ’’ 

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said high-­quality maths and science education was a “key part of making Victoria the education state’’ and the state had set a target to increase the numbers of students excelling in scientific literacy by 33 per cent and maths by 25 per cent over the next 10 years. 

Federal Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said the results underlined why needs-based funding was vital and “poor kids in poor schools need extra help to get better results’’. “Only around 7 per cent of the six years of Gonski needs-based funding had flowed in 2014,’’ she said, insisting it would be “completely wrong’’ to draw links between the results and funding. The ACT outperformed other states and territories, except for Victoria, on a state-by-state breakdown in Year 4 maths. The ACT and Victoria again performed well in Year 8 maths, while the ACT was ahead in Year 4 science and Year 8 science. Results in NSW for both science and maths declined.

I go back to what I said. I'm not sure what the statistics mean, what conclusions to draw from them.

Starting with some very general points. What is the purpose of education? How much weight should be placed on one set of measures in one area? Does a focus on simple specific measures actively disadvantage students whose strengths lie elsewhere? Are so called STEM courses in fact the be all and end all?

Continuing. To what degree do the results simply reflect social and economic change, including the hollowing out of the middle class especially in regional Australia and the rise of socially disadvantaged communities? To what degree can we expect education to solve problems that are not educational at their base? How do we tailor education to meet local needs instead of statistical aggregates?

Focusing on the last question. In writing my biography of my grandfather, a long serving NSW Minister for Education, I had to research the history of education. especially but not only in NSW, over one hundred years.

Oh dear, I am feeling jaundiced. The modern debate on education has become so boring, so standardised, so based on universal standards, that's it's hard to identify a single new idea. Please correct me. Surely I'm not right? In responding, it would help if you could identify ideas and initiatives that link actions to the needs of local or regional communities.          

Saturday Morning Musings - selectivity, ethnicity and universality in Australian schools

Interesting piece in the Guardian by Christina Ho headlined Hothoused and hyper-racialised: the ethnic imbalance in our selective schools. I will just quote the first part of the article:

Growing up in multicultural Australia, I first really understood multiculturalism by going to school. Not via textbooks, but through my lived experience of making friends with kids from a dozen different cultural backgrounds, and being exposed to the range of different ethnic groups with whom I shared my suburb. I learned to get along with people very different from myself, or at the very least, I accepted their right to share my school community.

For young people, schools are unique in their ability to foster these cross-cultural communication skills, and for orienting kids to the realities of our globalising world. British geographer Ash Amin describes schools as “micropublics”, places where people from different backgrounds are thrown together on a daily basis to work together. In the process, they learn acceptance and cross-cultural understanding.

However, not all schools are equally well-placed to achieve this. As families increasingly turn away from the local public school in favour of private schools that are often restricted to particular religious groups, and of course, restricted to those who can afford the fees, Australian children are less and less likely to encounter the full range of our diverse society within their school communities.

The same can be said for selective schools, the focus of my latest research. As education policy increasingly emphasises competition, school choice and elite programs for the “gifted and talented”, a growing number of schools have become demographically unbalanced, so that they can no longer operate as “micropublics” or microcosms of the wider community.

I found myself nodding at certain places. Then, thinking about it, I concluded that I had problems with Ms Ho's analysis because of the way she mixed things together. Take the selective school example. These are government schools which base entrance on competitive merit measured in particular ways. By its nature, a selective school is unrepresentative. It should therefore not be surprising that particular groups with a particular ethos should come to be over-represented. Since Chinese parents, for example, are driven - the stories here are legion - by a desire for their children's success combined with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud, it is not surprising that their children are disproportionately represented in the selective school intakes.

I saw this at first hand while working with a Chinese parent. The planning, the coaching, even consideration of moving to make it easier to access the school in question, was deeply thought through. As a child, I would not have wanted to go through this, I had enough problems with expectations as it was, but I could understand and even sympathise with what she was trying to do.

That says a lot about selective schools, a lot about the cultures and ethos of particular groups, but not necessarily a lot beyond that. To extend an argument based on the experience in selective state schools to the broader school sector is a stretch. That does not mean that it's wrong, rather that the argument is about the importance of the universality of the school system using the selective school system to provide an example.

Sidetracking

At this point, I sidetracked. I was curious first about Ms Ho. She is a University of Technology Sydney Senior Lecturer & Discipline Coordinator, Social and Political Sciences, within the Communications program, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Christina researches migration, cultural diversity, citizenship and identity, and has focused particularly on Chinese migration, Muslim diasporas and migrant youth and belonging. She is currently working on projects investigating ethnicity and education and community building in urban areas.

She was also a Green's Senate candidate. Here we learn:

I migrated to Australia from Hong Kong with my family as a young child, and grew up in the northern suburbs of Sydney, surrounded by a rich mix of other migrants and longer-term residents. I’m now a resident of Sydney's inner-west, a colourful, multicultural part of the city. I’m inspired by the community around me, by the people who care about their local area and work hard to make it a vibrant, friendly place to live. I know that there are active local communities like mine all around the country and I believe they need to be strengthened and supported. .......

My older daughter started kindergarten this year at our local public school, and I couldn't be more impressed with the wonderful school community we have joined. My area is lucky enough to have some fantastic public schools, full of passionate staff and the resources students need to get a good start to their education. I’m a big supporter of public education and I believe that all kids should have access to quality education, like my daughter is lucky enough to have. .....

I’m a Senior Lecturer teaching social sciences and my work focuses on issues around migration, gender and cultural diversity, issues I have a personal passion for.

 I must say that she sounds a thoroughly nice, interesting and involved person. I also think that the excerpts provide the frame within which her opinion piece is written.

My next sidetrack took me to James Ruse Agricultural High School (and here), one of the selective schools Ms Ho mentioned. The school consistently out-performs every other school in NSW in the Higher School Certificate results.

The competition to enter is intense. According to the My School website, 86% of the school's students are in the top 25% academic student quartile (none are in the bottom half), 97% come from a non-English language background, while the school's ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage) score is 1262. To put this last in context, the equivalent ICSEA scores for two of Sydney's most prestigious and high fee schools are The Kings School 1163 and Scots College 1166.James Ruse has no indigenous students.

James Ruse is clearly not your representative school! Interestingly, though, agriculture is still an important subject at the school, being compulsory to year 10. I have to say, though, that the art result in the photo is a strange amalgam. Given that so few modern Australians know anything about the country, less about agriculture, it is nice to think that newer groups are receiving some exposure!

The other thing I noted in my investigation is just how modern Australian the school felt. This is a point that I will come back to later, but the school teaches a common curriculum within a common framework. So the description of activities and ethos would fit most schools.To illustrate, this is a shot of part of the cadet corp on ANZAC Day.        

My next excursion was to a 2014 blog post, Will Girls And Asians Dominate HSC Results This Year? Probably. The post is written to entertain, it may annoy some, but it actually shows how HSC results are now dominated by relatively narrow number of schools and indeed of ethnic backgrounds.

My final excursion came after I had posted the first part of this post via a comment from Neil Whitfield pointing to an earlier posts of his, 07 — a controversy — For the record: the great SBHS race debate of 2002. Sydney Boys High School is both a member of the GPS (Greater Public Schools NSW) sporting competition and a selective school. The apparent genesis of the 2002 imbroglio was a feeling among some SBHS Old Boys that the selective school test had become unfair, preventing Old Boys sending their children to the school, thus breaking the nexus between the school and its past. The discussion that followed introduced many of the same themes that we have been talking about.

There is one really big difference between the two discussions, however. The 2002 SBHS discussion was set within a frame of then debates about multiculturalism. The discussion quickly shifted from a question of sport to one of ethnicity. Some of the same elements are there now, but Ms Ho (a committed multi-culturalist) has a very different focus. In a way, she has turned the argument on its head. Selective schools are, she suggests, in fact monocultural, suffering from lack of connection to the broader community.

Discussion

I accept that I have wandered all over the place, so perhaps time to pull this together.

I am sympathetic to the idea of schools as micropublics in the sense of meeting and mixing with a broad cross-section of people with different views and backgrounds. I know that with my girls when we came to Sydney that I was worried about the relatively narrow slice of the Australian population they were mixing with. I think that it's still true that they know a narrower slice than I did at their age. Mind you, eldest working at HO for a global multinational means that she has a detailed exposure to a very different and especially European slice.

I think the most important learning experience in mixing with different groups is learning when you have to shut up to maintain harmony. This doesn't mean that you have to change your views, but you do learn to deflect, to argue gently, to see the strong points in others even when you detest some of their views.

Perhaps the idea of the Australian public school as a micropublic was always something of an illusion, Australia was always more diverse than people realise, but in any event I think that it's gone beyond recall. I would still support moves to reduce Government funding of non-government schools beyond a certain minimum point with redirection of savings to the public sector, but I don't expect it to recreate a micropublic school system.

My general thinking has also changed here in two important respects. I am less supportive of diversity in education. More precisely, the more the school system moves away from the micropublic model, the more important is is that there is an imposed common core across schools to create a base uniformity.

The second and perhaps more important thing is a formed view that Australian popular culture is, for bad as well as good, far stronger than I once thought. That actually imposes a common world view on people regardless of variations in schooling and indeed parental influence. This was a point I hinted at in the context of James Ruse.

And on selective schools in general? Yes, I think that they should be more representative. SBHS would have been better of if there had been more recognition of Old Boys and the School's past. That view was shared by a James Ruse old boy (boy?) mentioned in Neil's 2002 post. However, in the end I don't think that it matters. A selective school is a selective school; by its nature its unrepresentative. If a small number of groups dominate because of their ethic, that's fine. It will also pass because the world changes.

Mind you, looking at the high socio-economic status now attached to those schools, I would charge fees and then use that money for scholarships to help poorer bright kids attend.

Monday Forum - what lessons does the Finnish education system offer?

A few weeks back, there was a story about the reshaping of the Finnish education system, the replacement of subject based education with topic based. According to the story, the Finns believed that this would make education more relevant, that students would still be able to pick up required subject knowledge via the topic approach. My heart sank, My instinctive reaction was to wonder why replace a system that appears to be working well?

As we shall see in a moment, not all was as it seems. For the moment, I just note that the Finnish school system has attracted world wide attention, in part because its students score so well on the international PISA rankings.

There has been much debate about the reasons for this apparently good performance. Finland spends around the OECD average on education. Its teachers receive around the same pay as teachers in other European countries. Class sizes are similar to those in other Nordic countries, Why, then do Finnish schools perform better?

Various explanations have been advanced. One is the difference between high context and low context countries. In Finland with its homogeneous society and intense shared values, many things can be taken for granted, are understood. They do not need to be taught or explained. By contrast, in lower context countries such as Australia or the UK, more time has to be spent in class establishing a common base, in explaining things.

Another explanation often given lies in teacher training. Since 1970, all Finnish teachers require a masters degree. Of more significance, I suspect, is that a quarter of Finnish graduates see teaching as an attractive options, creating a larger talent pool. Then, too, the structure of the Finnish school system is very different from that holding in Australia. There is no private school system, schools have greater freedom, while the disparities between schools in standards and resources appear relatively low regardless of location. The now very large discrepancies that have appeared in Australia between private and public, between city and country schools, do not exist in Finland.

I said that not all was what it seemed with that story. It came via a current feed. It was only when I checked the story properly to write this piece that I realised that it dated from March 2015, so just over a year old. Whoops! I have been caught that way before. So then I did a search around looking for follow up stories. Thus I found this piece by Valerie Strauss - No, Finland isn’t ditching traditional school subjects. Here’s what’s really happening. It appears from this and other stories that I saw from around the same time that the original Independent story really grabbed world wide attention because of the interest in the Finnish school system but that its presentation was a bit over the top..

The Strauss piece is the simplest description of the Finnish system that I have found. If I had to draw a single lesson from it, its the relative simplicity of the Finnish system, the absence of controls, the grant of autonomy to schools and teachers, the apparent absence of prescriptive measurement, that goes to the heart of performance.

This brings me to the topic of this Monday Forum. What do you think makes for a good education system? How would you restructure the Australian system or your own for those outside Australia to improve performance? As always, feel free to wander.

Postscript

In a comment, Rod pointed to three Quadrant pieces:

• Kevin Donnelly's Education Spending: More Equals Less
• Ken Gannicott's Why School Children Are Falling Behind
• Another piece by Donnelly, Western Civilization’s Wan Defenders

2 tanners was not impressed."The Quadrant articles", he wrote,"seem to be based largely on comparisons which might or might not hold true over time. It seems to me that school is more academically demanding than it was in my day.

It will probably also be a cold day in hell when I acknowledge Quadrant itself as a defender of Western civilisation."

Clearly, 2t has a problem with Quadrant. I have only skimmed the pieces, but add the links now as a contribution to discussion.


`

School fees, incomes, VR and the next employment boom

Interesting piece by Tim Dodd in the Australian Financial Review, End to 40 year flight from public schools.I think that its based on the detailed tables attached to this ABS release. In simplest terms, the number in the public education system have stabilised, the rise in primary enrollments offsetting a continued decline in public high school enrollments.

Tim concludes, correctly in my view, that rising private school fees mean that more parents are choosing public primary education, shifting to the private sector in secondary. I suspect that it's only a matter of time before public secondary school enrollments start rising, giving the rising real costs of private education at a time when so many Australians have stagnant or declining incomes.

A related story, Young people are heavily underrepresented in the public service, latest figures show, suggests that the number of Commonwealth public servants under 25 has now dropped to 2.5% of the total number of Commonwealth public servants. Not unexpectedly, it's is also taking longer to be promoted. Conversely, the number (and pay) of contractors appears to be rising.

Workforce aging has been a feature  of the public sector for some time, as has the rise of the contractor. A contractor can be fired more easily, while cut backs create gaps that need to filled since work must get out the door.

The aging of the workforce is more complicated. Its partly a feature of the end of mandatory retirement rules, together with the end or substantial reduction of entry level recruitment. The difficult is that at some point in the future, perhaps five to ten years, the public sector workforce is going to start walking over a lemming style cliff. Then where will the new workers come from?

VR or voluntary redundancy creates a further problem. Rules have been introduced to stop VR recycling (I have a friend who has has taken no less than three NSW VR packages!), but that actually doesn't stop it, just defers it until the end of the mandatory rules. Then the loss of knowledge and skills kicks in. Managers have to grab people to do their jobs.

Is the private sector different? No, although the effects are perhaps less pronounced. I say perhaps, for I am not sure.

I and my economist friends talk about externalities. Externalities are costs of benefits that extend beyond the individual organisation. I could wish that more attention were paid to externalities in a labour market context

I am not worried about my daughters in all this, although I am worried about younger graduates who are struggling just to get a job. Both my girls are able and in work. To my mind, they are sitting pretty. They will be there with experience when the next explosion in recruitment comes.    .      

   
   

The Pyne curriculum review - results

Back in January in The Pyne curriculum review - Dr Donnelly's challenge I wrote of the establishment of the Australian national curriculum review. It attracted quite a strong comment stream.

The results of the review have now been released. These are two reactions: National curriculum review: experts respond; Education review reveals what we already knew. 

I suppose that my reaction is a little along the lines of the second story. I admit my biases. I thought the the curriculum had become too crowded; I disliked the way the unifying themes were used; I did feel that there was a tendency to cut us off from our past.

All that said, the review actually struck me as a moderately useful discussion to future directions in Australian education. I wondered what people think of it now?  

Rear Vision - The Market for Higher Education

ABC Radio National’s Rear Vision series has just run a useful documentary on the market for education  especially in the US. You can listen to the program here. I do not know if is available to people outside Australia.

I mention it because of the recent discussion threads here linked to Minister Pyne’s proposals, the economics of education, the structuring of Government funding (if any) that should be provided to support education and especially higher education and, if so, how.

If you can access it, I think that it’s worth a listen. 

Postscript

Another story from this morning that I wanted simply to record at this  time: Working age Australians have become far less reliant on welfare payments, new figures show.

Postscript 2

kvd found this piece by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker: THE DISRUPTION MACHINE. It makes for depressing reading, at least for me. Over thirty years in senior management or as an adviser to management, I have seen so many management fashions. Some I have supported, others made me cautious because they seemed just too simplistic, too partial. I find it ironic now that a fair bit of my professional or semi-professional writing attempts to address the continuing dead hand of things I once supported!

Postscript 3

Evan pointed me to this response by Professor Clayton Christensen to the Lepore piece: Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'’

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Education is more than economics or national efficiency

I had a part completed post yesterday on the international scene. I put it aside in part because I have a tooth abscess and find concentration difficult, more because I found the scene depressing, requiring too much research to say something sensible.

Today instead, a brief continuation of the discussion that began on Sunday Essay – John Roskam and the value of an Arts degree. There Thomas wrote in a comment:

When studying my Arts degree (part of the double B.Education/B.Arts), there was quite a high number of mature age students. Not something ridiculous, like 50%. But certainly something around the 30% range.

Of this, I'd say half were people looking for a 'sea change' so to speak.

The other half were people WELL outside of the working age and were engaging in pure learning. Not for any other purpose than to learn more about the world.

This has to be the noblest form of education aside from learning to help others.

I agree with previous commenters that the Arts degree is largely misunderstood (and, to a degree, mismanaged by universities). It's obviously not reverse welfare. For the majority of people, it's a way to achieve an end - whether it's a teaching focus (as with me), a chance for existing workers to up-skill so to speak, or a chance just to learn. And that's to say nothing of the students who enter Arts degrees from high school (quite a number of students do it every year) because they just want to get into uni and don't know what they want to do and/or genuinely want to learn.

I'll finish with this: I believe it's quite short-sighted to wholesale criticise a degree, graduates, or the like without actually even ATTEMPTING to understand them (the degrees and the graduates) - and this is what comes through from Roskam's piece.

I thought that Thomas’s comments drew out a number of issues, including the variety in students and student needs. Arguably, the co-related concepts of educational for national efficiency, education for personal and national economic return, education for job purposes are swamping all other considerations. The idea that a key purpose of education is to help individuals live richer and more fulfilling lives, to pursue their own intellectual interests, to just enjoy doing or making things, to use their education for public purposes that may not provide an immediate cash return, has been lost sight of.

I think that’s a pity. It risks impoverishing our society, possibly leaving us with more economic wealth but with a diminished sprit.      

Mr Pyne's review of teacher training

I read Commonwealth Education Minister Mr Pyne's announcement on a national review of teacher training with a degree of befuddlement. The core of the review seems clear enough:

Reporting later this year, the group will undertake extensive public and stakeholder consultation while focusing on three key areas:

· Pedagogical approaches: the ways teachers teach their students, and the different ways teaching and learning can occur.
· Subject content: how well teachers understand the content of subjects they are teaching, and
· Professional experience: opportunities for pre-service teachers to put theory into practice through quality in-school learning experiences.

My primary confusion in this case lies in my own lack of knowledge as to just what is included now in teacher education. I had a look at the course outline at one university with major involvement in this area, and in the end wasn't all that much clearer beyond noting some of the current bureaucratic flavour to the English used. I think that reflects the primary destination marketplace, in this case the NSW school system.

I know that some of my readers have far more expertise in this area than I do. I can analyse the English involved and link it to its different contexts, but I don't really know what its like to be taught this material. Now putting Mr Pyne aside for the moment. I wondered if someone could give me a simple explanation of what is actually taught or not taught; how it helps or hinders if and when you get to the classroom; and, given that many who do these courses don't teach in the end, how useful the course as a broader education?

This last is quite important. In law, for example, there are so many Australian graduates now that a significant proportion will never practice. Law is having to sell itself on the broader attributes attached to such studies as an entry to other careers.

Problems with science education

Rod Holland writes one of my favourite blogs, Northern Rivers Geology. In a recent post, Our Clarence-Moreton Basin and Middle-Earth, he reports that a researcher from the University of Bristol has released a paper comparing the climate of Earth with that of Middle-Earth (As in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit).

There was one quote that I really liked. Reporting on one aspect of the study, the researcher concluded that "Mordor would have had an inhospitable climate, even ignoring the effects of Sauron".

In terms of the continuing discussion on the review of the Australian curriculum, Rod wrote a comment on Monday forum - how would you introduce Gaia worship into schools?. Subsequently he apologised for letting his anger get the better of him. Still, I think that the comment is worth running in full because it does illustrate process problems. Comments follow the quote;

Rod wrote:

Step 1 - introduce education of the using "popular science"... e.g. Environmentalism and String Theory.

Step 2 - make the "hard sciences" unpopular by creating a "geek" stereotype.

Step 3 - Since so few people study the "hard sciences" stop teaching these because they are now uneconomical or;

Step 4 - replace "hard sciences" with "popular sciences" to keep the number of science students (and teachers artificially higher).

Step 5 - Find that "science" teachers now can't understand "hard science" and therefore dumb down maths, physics, chemistry etc to home finance, welding, and pollution studies respectively.

Step 6 - come to the realisation that we are no longer teaching science but philosophy and therefore include concepts such as Gaia as integral to the learning experience

Step 7 - Science is now destroyed since "science" is now dominated by un-disprovable philosophical hypotheses.

Science education is bit of a sore spot.

I do not know to what degree this is an accurate reflection of the process that has happened. Still, I suspect that Rod has a point re the dynamics of the process. This holds independent of the current debate about the Australian national curriculum.

Part of the problem lies in the crowded nature of the curriculum, including the focus on process. There is less and less time to study content in depth, making it harder to achieve higher knowledge levels in particular areas.

I suspect, too, that part of the problem lies in misplaced expectations. Some subjects are simply harder, especially at a higher level. You can't dumb down a subject without penalising those capable of achieving at a higher level. With much higher participation rates at higher school and university levels, you have to set subjects studied at levels that best suit the majority of students. The inevitable result is a dumbing down process.

Maybe with some subjects you just have to set a high bar independent of demand, then let the results flow regardless.

The Pyne curriculum review - Dr Donnelly's challenge

I should say at the outset of this post that I am not an automatic supporter of an Australian national curriculum nor, indeed, of national uniformity in a general sense. I do support uniform national approaches where a case can be made, but broadly I like diversity because it allows experimentation. Let the states do their own thing, and then focus on the best. National schemes with their attempts at uniform benchmarks do not allow that.

The announcement by Australian Education Minister Pyne that Professor Ken Wiltshire AO and Dr Kevin Donnelly had been appointed to review the Australian national curricula and the associated curricula setting processes has been greeted with a degree of outrage. This is one example of reporting. here a second, while my old blogging friend Neil Whitfield provides a blog example. As an aside, isn't it interesting how the Guardian in Australia has become the voice of the Australian left? It seems that we don't have a local newspaper to fulfil that role.

Putting aside my general reservations about national curriculum, I have no especial problem with the Minister's announcement. For background, this is the official ministerial announcement, Here are the terms of reference, here the bios for Professor Wiltshire and Dr Donnelly, while this is the transcript from the press conference launching the review. Note from the terms of reference that there are two aspects to the review. I quote:

The reviewers will consider the robustness, independence and balance of the Australian Curriculum, including:

• the process of curriculum shaping, development, monitoring, evaluation and review.
• the curriculum content from Foundation to Year 12 for subjects developed to date, with a particular focus on the curriculum for English, mathematics, science, history and geography.

There has been little response in the commentary to the first terms of reference. I don't think that anybody would actually argue that we shouldn't look at the process of curriculum setting and review. It is slow and cumbersome. To a degree, it has to be. If we are going to have national curricula where the states and territories are responsible for delivery with the Federal Government attempting to provide command and control, then the process will always be slow. However, we can always improve. Both men and especially Professor Wiltshire would appear to be well qualified to address this aspect.

The angst comes from the second bullet, content.

In answer to a question at his media release, Minister Pyne made this revealing comment:

Well I’m very hopeful the states and territories will want to work with us to have the best curriculum possible. And this is a very objective process. We have a national review, it’s for people that are outside the current system, and I think having fresh eyes is always a good approach.

Leave aside the "very objective process" comment, it's the last sentence that is revealing. The review is "for people that are outside the current system." That is why I have no especial problem with it.

To my mind, the present approach to curriculum setting is confused at a number of levels. To illustrate this, let's take Minister Pyne's own views, for he seems to be as confused as everyone else. To begin with, he seems to conflate two very different things.

The first is the effectiveness of the education system in delivering measurable results. Here the Minister attempts to link the review to questions of national economic performance. The Australian education system is falling behind measured by global standards. We must improve if we are to be internationally competitive. The second is the general content of what is taught, much of which has little to do with measurable performance narrowly defined. It is in this area that we come to in part to values and world views, areas that have little to do with either economic performance or educational performance as measured by current tests. 

Mr Pyne puts all this together. On top of this, he seems to suggest that the current curriculum setting system actually precludes alternative views. This is the justification for a review that is "for people who are outside the current system". I believe that Mr Pyne is correct on this point, if not quite for the same reasons. As I have argued in other contexts, our current systems of public administration and of policy setting have become rigid and sclerotic. They only allow things that fit within current frames and can be expressed in appropriate ways. Everything else is excluded. There is actually very little scope for new thought. That is why I am comfortable with this review, for there is a chance to challenge prevailing orthodoxy.

Can Messrs Wiltshire and  Donnelly do this? I wonder. Dr Donnelly faces the biggest challenge. In arguing against what he perceives to be ideological bias, I suspect he has become locked in to particular positions. Now he has to put his own positions aside and work first as an analyst, clearly defining the issues. In doing so, he also has to put Minister Pyne's positions aside.  That's a hard ask, since Minister Pyne seems clearly attracted by Dr Donnelly's previous positions. I do wonder whether he can manage it. To add to his difficulties, both he and Professor Wiltshire are relying for resources on an Education Department that is itself locked into current systems. Who, there, might provide new ideas or even the rigorous and challenging analysis required as compared to simple summaries of submissions received?

We will see.

Update

Interesting to watch this one evolve. David Crowe in Friday's Australian had no doubt about Minister Pyne's motivation: Christopher Pyne tackles leftist 'bias' in classrooms. This view is shared by regular commenter here, DG: The educational system is now becoming an avenue for infiltrating a Green / Left agenda as a proxy for teaching essential skills that pupils need to learn before they can start to make discriminating choices for themselves.

Interestingly, from a short survey of right/right leaning blogs, the issue has so far been dealt with by deathly silence. All the commentary is from the left or centre left, and all has focused on the cultural war issue. I find myself in the slightly unusual position, at least on the surface, of being the only source outside the Australian's normal partisan position to attempt to mount a counter view on the whole thing.

Over at his place, Neil Whitfield's More pieces on the perturbing Pyne Probe, provides a useful perspective written from the present dominant position in the commentariat. He includes links, including to Darcy Moore's The 21st Century Education ‘Debate’ in Australia. Neil also quotes the Sydney Morning Herald editorial on the matter.

In my post, I quoted the Minister's comment that this review was "for people that are outside the current system." I also said that that was why I had no especial problem with it, noting the way current systems locked out alternative views. Now if you look at Neil's piece, at the SMH editorial, at Darcy's piece, at the links they quote, you can see the process at work, at the defence of both current process and indeed content.

This doesn't mean that I actually disagree with them on all points. Far from it, although I have expressed my own views about the failures in the current system. I just don't like imposed, rigid, uniformity.

To illustrate this, I agree with Scott (and Neil) on the dangers of education by mechanical measurement. As one anon noted, I certainly agree that education and current schooling are not the same thing and am opposed to the entrenchment of privilege in schooling. Perhaps, too, the "soi-distant" experts should spend time in some inner city or rural schools, although in fairness to our polllies many do. I would also agree with some of Darcy's stated priorities.

All that said, I strongly support the admission of alternative views as a way of breaking the mind-lock imposed by current systems. I am also far less concerned about the risks and dangers that appear to concern others. After all, at the end of the day, what can Minister Pyne actually do?

He can simplify to some degree, he may shift focus at the margin, but to bring about change in an area like the national curriculum he has to deal with the states and all the other stakeholders. This requires judgement and tact. Australia is not the UK with its central systems, nor is Mr Pyne (or Mr Abbott for that matter) a Maggie Thatcher. At worst, the next Australian Government and it will come, will simply roll elements back.

The old rule as laid down by Yes Minister is never start an inquiry if you don't know the results and what you might do about them. I am not sure about Mr Pyne's wisdom here. If the views of critics of Messrs Donnelly and Wiltshire are correct, then he will face a mess that might derail the national curriculum movement. I wouldn't mind that too much. Alternatively, he might find himself facing recommendations that actually reduce his already limited power to dictate. I wouldn't mind that too much either.

As I said in my post, we will see. 

Update two

I see all this has finally dragged Catallaxy into a response:

• The old guard 
• An unenlightened education
• No Packaging Day (peripheral, but linked).

I don't feel like analysing the posts or the 300+ comments garnered so far, although there are some points on which I agree.

I think that the most useful thing that I can do now is to let the matter rest until there is more on which I might make a useful comment.

Update three

In today's Financial Review, (Wednesday 15 January 2014) Jennifer Hewett had a piece entitled "Education Minister Pyne has a point on schools."  I have given the link, although it is behind the firewalls. Ms Hewett rights from the right of politics on economic matters and usually reflects the views of the business community at the bigger end of town. While I hadn't intended to comment any further at this point, I thought it worthwhile summarising her views since they are representative of one stream of thought. I am paraphrasing.

The starting point is that our education system has failed, constantly falling behind in areas like literacy, numeracy and science and this despite all the money spent on it. The education establishment that has been in power for the last 30 years has failed. It's time for a fresh look.

It is easy to parody arguments such as why the current curriculum underplays the importance of Western civilisation, but the underlying criticism is valid. As a parent, Jennifer has suffered through frustrating years of her kids essays on topics like "imaginative journeys" using the required "key words". This provides a segue into criticism of of the central themes that are meant to integrate all aspects of the national curriculum - Asia, indigenous culture and sustainability. For the record, this is the description of these from the science curriculum: 

"Cross-curriculum priorities

The Australian Curriculum is designed to meet the needs of students by delivering a relevant, contemporary and engaging curriculum that builds on the educational goals of the Melbourne Declaration. The Melbourne Declaration identified three key areas that need to be addressed for the benefit of both individuals and Australia as a whole. In the Australian Curriculum these have become priorities that provide students with the tools and language to engage with and better understand their world at a range of levels. The priorities provide dimensions which will enrich the curriculum through development of considered and focused content that fits naturally within learning areas. They enable the delivery of learning area content at the same time as developing knowledge, understanding and skills relating to:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
• Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
• sustainability.

Cross-curriculum priorities are addressed through learning areas and are identified wherever they are developed or applied in content descriptions. They are also identified where they offer opportunities to add depth and richness to student learning in content elaborations. They will have a strong but varying presence depending on their relevance to the learning area.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

Across the Australian Curriculum, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures priority provides opportunities for all learners to deepen their knowledge of Australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. Students will understand that contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities are strong, resilient, rich and diverse. The knowledge and understanding gained through this priority will enhance the ability of all young people to participate positively in the ongoing development of Australia.

The Australian Curriculum: Science values Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have longstanding scientific knowledge traditions.

Students will have opportunities to learn that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have developed knowledge about the world through observation, using all the senses; through prediction and hypothesis; through testing (trial and error); and through making generalisations within specific contexts. These scientific methods have been practised and transmitted from one generation to the next. Students will develop an understanding that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have particular ways of knowing the world and continue to be innovative in providing significant contributions to development in science. They will investigate examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander science and the ways traditional knowledge and western scientific knowledge can be complementary.

Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

Across the Australian curriculum, this priority will ensure that students learn about and recognise the diversity within and between the countries of the Asia region. They will develop knowledge and understanding of Asian societies, cultures, beliefs and environments, and the connections between the peoples of Asia, Australia, and the rest of the world. Asia literacy provides students with the skills to communicate and engage with the peoples of Asia so they can effectively live, work and learn in the region.

In the Australian Curriculum: Science, the priority of Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia provides rich and engaging contexts for developing students’ science knowledge, understanding and skills.

The Australian Curriculum: Science provides opportunities for students to recognise that people from the Asia region have made and continue to make significant contributions to the development of science understandings and their applications. It enables students to recognise that the Asia region includes diverse environments and to appreciate that interaction between human activity and these environments continues to influence the region, including Australia, and has significance for the rest of the world.

In this learning area, students appreciate that the Asia region plays an important role in scientific research and development. These can include research and development in areas such as medicine, natural resource management, nanotechnologies, communication technologies and natural disaster prediction and management.

Sustainability

Across the Australian Curriculum, sustainability will allow all young Australians to develop the knowledge, skills, values and world views necessary for them to act in ways that contribute to more sustainable patterns of living. It will enable individuals and communities to reflect on ways of interpreting and engaging with the world. The Sustainability priority is futures-oriented, focusing on protecting environments and creating a more ecologically and socially just world through informed action. Actions that support more sustainable patterns of living require consideration of environmental, social, cultural and economic systems and their interdependence.

In the Australian Curriculum: Science the priority of sustainability provides authentic contexts for exploring, investigating and understanding chemical, biological, physical and Earth and space systems.

The Australian Curriculum: Science explores a wide range of systems that operate at different time and spatial scales. By investigating the relationships between systems and system components and how systems respond to change, students develop an appreciation for the interconnectedness of Earth’s biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Relationships including cycles and cause and effect are explored, and students develop observation and analysis skills to examine these relationships in the world around them.

In this learning area, students appreciate that science provides the basis for decision making in many areas of society and that these decisions can impact on the Earth system. They understand the importance of using science to predict possible effects of human and other activity and to develop management plans or alternative technologies that minimise these effects." 

To Ms Hewett's mind, this type of approach  has little to do with and detracts from fundamental issues such as teaching science. She is highly critical of outcomes based jargon (she suffered as a parent because no one could understand this stuff, teachers included) and believes that the system is failing to teach in the best ways.

So far as Minister Pyne is concerned, she obviously feels that some of his key concerns are correct. However, she doubts that he is sufficiently adept to bring about real change.

A Monday round-up - loss at Lone Pyne, MIKITA, dispute over territory, Graincorp and Mr Hockey's two bob each way

It's been a busy period. Today's post focuses on things that I have noticed or that have been swirling around in that stew that counts as my brain. It's actually a sort of note to myself to jot things down before I forget them.

Retreat from Lone Pyne

It's been quite funny really, if a bit sad also. First we had Gonski, then retreat from Gonski and now its Gonski reborn. Or is it? I don't feel able yo comment on the education policy issues involved for I don't yet actually know what the policy is. 

Foreign Policy

I tend not to write on foreign policy because of my own lack of knowledge of the immediate context, but its been an interesting period. We have the continuing standoff between Australia and Indonesia triggered in part by the spy row. Then there was the imbroglio over the Chinese declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea where the Australian position resulted in a Chinese rebuke. Then there was something that I hadn't actually heard of, the first meeting a month back of MIKTA.

Ever heard of MIKTA? I hadn't. Alex Oliver on the Lowy Institute Blog speaks of it this way.

A month or so ago, with little fanfare, Australia participated in the first meeting of MIKTA, an informal grouping of five nations — Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia — described in press releases by Turkey and South Korea as an informal and non-exclusive group of 'middle powers', cooperating to address some of the diverse challenges of an increasingly complex international environment.

Leave aside the question of whether Australia is a middle power or a pivotal power, I find both terms misleading, the meeting was an interesting response to the complexity faced by countries who are big enough to have some importance, but not big enough to be real players.

Names, Language and Territory in Modern Aboriginal Society

Turning to my traditional country, a story in the Armidale Express begins:    

ABORIGINAL tribes have gone to war over a planned Welcome to Country sign at Armidale’s gateways.

The Anaiwan tribe want to be solely recognised in the sign.

But members of the Gumbaynggirr tribe claim the city is also part of their traditional land.

They want wording on the sign to  reflect all Aboriginal tribes in the area.

Leaving aside the use of the word "tribes", there were no such things, the story is an example of disputes running across Northern NSW and beyond over boundaries inspired by the European obsession with hard lines on a map. Europe wasn't like that for nearly all its history, nor was Aboriginal Australia.

Armidale Express editor Lydia Roberts has given me the okay to write on this in my next History revisited column, and also suggested that I put forward my suggested solutions in a letter to the editor. I will do so, having consulted some of my Aboriginal friends.

It's interesting and also important to me that feedback informs. Two example,

The first was a comment from a work friend that many of the big New England Aboriginal ceremonial sites appear to lie at the junctions of multiple traditional Aboriginal languages. They were gathering points for the nations, to use a modern phrase that would not have been recognised by traditional Aborigines. While i more or less knew it, I hadn't focused on it at local level. 

The second is the concept of the elders. Like many modern Australians I have equated this with age. That's not true. It equates to knowledge and respect, so that a younger person might be an elder, an older person not. Here we have a problem that I might write about later. 

South Grafton

Staying briefly with New England, Ursh Tunks is focusing on the history of South Grafton (Facebook page). One of the joys of my writing, including my writing as a regional historian, is the way it leads me to connections that then feed my thoughts. This is an example. Because of Ursh's interest, I have focused on South Grafton as an example. It's a fascinating place, at least to me.  

Economic Outlook

The economic outlook and the associated policy discussions continue to fascinate me. Writing in a long piece on the outlook for 2014 prepared a month ago for another publication, I commented:

Doubts linger, casting a continuing cloud as we move towards 2014. Uncertainty over the ending of quantitative easing and the impact that this might have on markets adds to doubt, as do continuing uncertainties over the Chinese economy. Despite these doubts, I think that 2014 is likely to be a better year in economic terms, far better than some analysts allow.

That remains my view, although pessimism continues to abound. Here the discussion on the budget deficit continues to exercise a distorting effect, pushing policy discussion towards mechanical solutions. Now Canberra based economics consultants Macroeconomics have released a new report arguing for drastic cuts budget cuts to restore fiscal balance. Now in the arguments they put forward was one point that genuinely puzzled me. If we cut spending, they apparently suggested, the value of the Australian dollar will fall. Huh?

For the life of me, I cannot understand just how this might happen. Perhaps someone can explain to me the arguments involved,

Graincorp and the FIRB

The Treasurer's decision to block the proposed acquisition by Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) of 100 per cent of the shareholding in GrainCorp Limited (GrainCorp) has been greeted with outrage in many quarters, as has the role of the National Party in arguing for rejection. This is, it is argued, a case of special pleading, of the National's sectional interests over-riding the national good.

This argument misses a key feature. Wheat growers are concerned about the impact on their international sales activities, nor do they have any special trust for corporate promises. The National Party is reflecting those concerns. Leaving aside emotional arguments about foreign ownership of Australian land, arguments that I do not support, the grower arguments about the impact are at least arguable. Further, they are the ones that will suffer if their concerns are correct, while any benefits will go elsewhere.

Interestingly, Treasurer Hockey appears to be having a two way bet on this one. At the end of his statement he says:

ADM has advised me that it wishes to be involved in the Australian market place for the long term.

ADM currently owns 19.85 per cent of GrainCorp. It was open to me, under the Act, to continue to cap ADM’s shareholding in GrainCorp at its current level. I have decided not to do so.

In fact, to encourage ADM to demonstrate its commitment to the Australian grains industry through its continued investment in GrainCorp, I am inclined, based on current circumstances, to approve any proposals from ADM to increase its shareholding in GrainCorp up to an interest of 24.9 per cent. This would also provide a platform for ADM to build stakeholder support for potentially greater participation in the Australian industry as it develops.

The Australian Government recognises that our nation needs foreign investment so that we continue to grow and prosper.

That's very definitely two bob each way! Now come on chaps, he appears to be telling ADM, increase your share. That will give you greater influence, a chance to refine your proposals and gather support. Do this, and we will have a further chat.