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Assessments serve a valuable purpose: they give us a way to measure what students are learning. The problem is, they don’t seem to be learning. According to the Australian Council for Educational Research, recent results confirm that Australian 15 year-olds continue to show significant declines in math, reading and science when measured against their international counterparts. Australian students are learning less, and at the same time, never have we seen such an emphasis on assessments in schools.
The question being asked, however, is one that puts the cart before the horse. The question of ‘What do you want to see in the national curriculum?’ presupposes the answer to another question: What even is the purpose of schooling?
Despite criticism of past protests by Scott Morrison and Matt Canavan, the next School Strike for Climate is happening Friday 15 March. In the wake of the Covington Catholic High School controversy, how should schools take seriously the challenge of educating students to be engaged citizens responding to urgent issues?
For the past several years, education has been treated as solely a technical problem. One of the pitfalls of this is that political will becomes a function of money, which in turn rests on political expedience between federal and state governments, further complicated by external lobbying. Education gets ground to a grain.
Much has been made about how Republicans benefited from the 'birther' campaign and the Tea Party. It suited them to have proxies undermine the executive branch. In other words, the political right only has itself to blame for the nihilism which now engulfs it - and potentially, the nation. But the failures of the left also bear examination. While Clinton's current lead cannot be attributed entirely to her virtues, the polling gap between her and Trump should have been much wider, earlier.
Oliver Twist is still used to aid understanding of the trauma arising from poverty, and the suffering of children at the hands of individuals and within institutional settings. In broader Australian society we assume Dickensian attitudes to children have evolved. Aligned with the sentiments behind child protection, society's image of children and childhood is idyllic. Yet beneath this veneer lies a substratum of deeply ambivalent, even malevolent, attitudes towards children with a distinctly Dickensian flavour.
The school has been supportive, but in this data driven age even the finest teachers are compelled to teach to the vile Naplan tests. Dyslexic kids are put through unbelievable stress with these tests. If deaf kids were compelled to do listening examinations, there would be an outcry. I'm not sure if there's a difference. I'm also not sure if the ever narrowing scope of education can still accommodate students like my son, despite all the talk about diversity and differentiated learning.
In 2010, Kevin Rudd asked Fr Adolfo Nicolas SJ, the international leader of the Jesuits, what he believed to be the major challenges facing western society. Nicolas replied 'the globalisation of superficiality'. Educating for depth and discernment is one of the biggest challenges facing teachers today.
One in ten primary and secondary teachers will be entitled to extra pay as acknowledgement of their performance. While this is positive, the evaluation criteria seems biased against teachers in disadvantaged suburbs or those who voluntarily teach in remote regions.
The National Curriculum has sparked passionate debate. An enlightened society upholds that its young people are more than just future workers; they are human beings first. Unfortunately, it is easier to generate data for the knowledge and skills that we expect of future workers.
The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.
Julia Gillard has not truly engaged with concerns from teachers, principals, academics and parents regarding the overemphasis on NAPLAN-based school comparisons. For many teachers, the professional and only ethical thing is to oppose such moves.