The Failure Of Schools To Educate - Article

It varies from state to state, RF.

In NSW compulsory schooling ends at the end of year 10 (16 years old, usually). They sit an external exam and get their School Certificate. Maths, English, Science and something that I can never remember the name of that encompasses history, geography and "civics and citizenship" are compulsory. They are starting to include a compulsory computing part of it now, but I don't know much about it beyond the maths part of things. They have verious electives which must be studied for a certain number of hours as well.

Year 11 and 12 are not compulsory, English is the only compulsory subject, but there are rules about how many subjects you can have from two separate key learning areas. The final Higher School Certificate exams are geared towards university entrance (you get your HSC and a UAI, if you've done the right number of units in the right areas). It's possible to do various VET courses at this point, which link in with TAFE studies, but it's not an area I know a lot about. It's possible to get your HSC without getting a UAI (universities admissions index).

The problem is that a lot of apprenticeships are now requiring students to have completed their HSC, when there's really nothing that is gained by it except a lot of frustration. The entire system of the final two years is focussed towards university entrance, and while there are some changes, there's not enough! The outside world is starting to demand the HSC more and more often, when there's nothing really to be gained by doing it for many careers and trades.

Clear as mud?

BW

I see a lot more value in poetry than just letting feelings out. Learning about poetry written by the great poets can also provide a rich history lesson, as can literature studies, and in this was poetry appreciation increases. Even humble Australian literature furnished me with a better understanding of our history as a country than the pathetic curriculum of Australian Studies and lower school history ever did at school.
But, you know, if these things are going to interest you, then they'll still be there after school! DP was labelled and canned at school as a 'failure', so his formal learning is not remembered with any fondness...until he went to a village school that let him learn what interested him! And he may not have learned about a lot of 'essential' things at school, yet it doesn't stop him from learning about it now. The village school taught him how to follow up his interests, even if it didn't introduce him to all his potential interests in those short years. He now has a great appreciation of ****ens, railway history, chemistry, horticulture, politics (you'd never know by looking at him on the street between Monday and Friday) and even art. Being pushed these things at school would have finished them off for him - he'd never have looked at them again. I even now have him appreciating the contribution of the Bronte sisters, and he's versed with Patrick White and Peter Carey. I think a solid foundation in learning HOW to learn is more important than cramming traditionally 'important' subjects into kids.
I do agree that communication teaching needs huge improvement. Kids these days have very little appreciation of proper sentence structure and this will affect how they learn other languages...and increasingly important reality in a globalised and intercultural world. Language is probably one of the most important things to teach in schools because that is the interface for learning.
Language conveys what it is we need kids to know. It strikes me that even spending more time fleshing out the lessons in literature could address a lot of what this guy is saying. Relationships and intimacy? Literature. Communication and people skills? Literature. You got a life lesson you want to teach a child? Someone, somewhere, has written about it!
I'm glad my DS has a pretty good balance of both worlds. DP lives by his hands and still has time for more abstract ideas, and I live by my head and can apply myself practically where applicable. He can model both of these. A lot of kids are not so lucky in this respect. Also, there are parents who do not WANT to take on responsibility and will expect schools to teach their kids things like life skills. What do we do with those kids? Leave them in limbo so that they can screw up their lives royally and pass their ill-education onto their kids? There is a place for this kind of teaching philosophy and it would be nice if it were accessible to kids who really need it. But we all know that the kids who really need things rarely get them without a lot of toil and tears on the behalf of enlightened individuals.
My nieces and nephews will get a second-rate education because their parents can't afford to pay for schooling (well, that's debateable, but they have decided that paying for education is not on their priority list), and they are brilliantly smart kids. They will have some street smarts because their parents have lived hard and fast at times. They have the aptitude for more than this, yet through no choice of their own, they will find it an uphill battle to access learning of the finer things that could furnish their minds in a formal education setting.
There are still two tiers to this world. Have and have not.

Cheers, BW. Quite different to the UK then!

IKWYM about normal jobs requiring further education - a lot of ours seem to and IMO there's little point in the A-levels if you don't want to go on to Uni. If you work in a shop then do you need English Lit A-level? Or do you need A-levels to pull pints? Sure it may have been fun but so much frustration with exams and learning things you never need (I can talk, degree in medical genetics and working as a typist... ah well).

People now need a degree - any degree - to manage a shop. How will a degree in History help you manage a shop? Anyway, just because the system is daft doesn't mean it's going to get sensible just because I say it should.

Sorry for that aside.

OK, so do we now drop science to teach more language? Or do we look at moving away from continual assessment to actually letting the children enjoy and explore their schooling, chat more about books than sit and write vacuous work-sheets on them (In act I scene ii of Henry IV pt 1, what does Hal's speech about "the sun from behind a cloud" indicate his plan is? Six marks.) and learn from it?

Then, having decided on the latter option, how do we bring it about? Do we give every 11-year-old a miniature library - maybe 15 books - so they can read at their own pace and learn about life more from that? I like that idea, more books is always good. But how do we encourage the children to read these books if the parents don't read themselves?

And there's nothing humble about Australian literature! I've read some fantastic stuff - recently Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career which was so amazing and yes, you do feel like you learn more from that than a history lesson! Sure, some of it is dross but some of all literature is rubbish and your nationality isn't going to change that.

RH - I meant that compared to a lot of other literature traditions, ours is short and in that sense, humble. Australian literature is also notoriously self-deprecating, so I've probably inherited that in my own writing style. Cultural context and all ;)
Yes, we drop all science and teach only literature. That's my master plan. That is how DS will live his life :rolleyes: I don't have the attention-span (boy related) to disseminate my ideal education system, nor (as I previously stated) do I have the pedagogical expertise to promote a delivery method for the things I think are important to learn. Just because I write that I believe something could be taught because I think it's important does not mean I'm opposed to other educational subjects and that I think they are redundant. It makes for a really tedious thread to participate in. Do we have to be rendered to polar opposites or denigrate someone's idea by extrapolating the ridiculous lengths to which an idea could be taken? Please don't do this; it's taking the fun out of it.
I really do believe there is more than one way to skin a cat (love this saying..what the hell does it actually mean??) - you can live a fulfilling life without going to uni and learning about Chaucer (I have a great love of English literature...Chaucer does not make the cut!), molecular biology or phycology. The biggest lesson I can teach my DS (well, one of many perhaps!) is to follow his heart. Yep, I'm a big, fat bleeding-heart!

I'm not advocating that we drop subjects at all, only I know schools have limited times. In the UK things like sports, modern languages, practical skills lessons (woodwork, electronics, cooking, sewing...), drama and music are all culled so we can learn to write CVs and do team building exercises... I mean, come on! More literature would be great but we have to ask at what cost? Why can't parents do more at home? Or more to the point, why don't parents do more at home? For me to teach Chaucer (not a big fan either tbh) would be hard, to teach DS how to eat with a knife and fork is normal, not something he'd be learning at senior school!

So I read the initial article and thought "what do I do as a parent then?" then thought "I bet lessons will be cut for this and the children will enjoy themselves even less than they do now."

While it's a great idea to teach children to respond to others and have feelings and stuff, we also need to teach them stuff that they may never use again but at least they know how to use parts of their brain otherwise never accessed. I just don't want to see people saying "well, the world speaks English, let's drop the languages because we'll never use them" because that's really bad. And I learnt a bit of Latin and ancient Greek to help me with my science - yup, dead languages were useful! (I also continued with a little bit of study - oh, so poor are my skills but at least I tried - because I love how our language has grown and evolved and that was fun to see from the older languages.)

Maybe I'm pulling needless holes. But maybe we, as parents, need to act on this lack of knowledge in our children and see how we can support schools in this without losing other essential skills. If we drop maths then we will feel the loss - not today or tomorrow but certainly in 20 years' time - of mathematicians. We'll soon discover what they actually do all day if we deem them worthless now!

Or we support alternative forms of education... I found an "independent" school for K-6. Its an alternative to home-school and has to pass accreditation as a school, as well as having home-school ideals. The children go to the shops on Monday with a budget to buy food for their "tuck shop day" at the school... with the money they earn from tuck shop, they buy food the next week. Their teacher goes through with them to help them learn how to do this. They are all in one class. So prep/kindy through to grade 6 with the one teacher. One parent from each family comes in once a week or fortnight to help in the class (with any toddlers etc with them). I have already signed up for my once a week helping. They have a vegetable garden, chickens will come when Matilda starts as I will be building the coop and getting them all set up as well as cleaning it out when I pick up Matilda.

Once a week they go to gym classes together in the morning, once a week they go shopping, and once a week they have a music teacher come in to help them learn keyboards.

Anyway... I know they learn life skills there, and I want to support them in their adaptation of education.

What a great school, Christy! How big is it? Can these ideals be maybe passed onto local schools somehow?

OK, I'm getting a bit too excitable about the things this article has made me think about because I'd love to see this happening but it's the actual doing of it that's making me a bit worried. Possibly because I'm re-learning old skills I learnt as a child from my mother and just think it's great to do this for children but HOW and WHEN and... yeah, busy head for me today.

I think its great...

BUT I think its disappointing that society has got to a point where these things need to be taught in school. I also wonder when we take on the responsibility ourselves (I did have to laugh at being taught that in a world where nearly everything is someone elses fault or someone elses litigation issue). I really don't see very many people in this world to be responsible, very few people I know know how to claim responsibility for their actions or even know how to apologise for them let alone learn from them so how can we teach our children? I just wonder if this is another buck being passed. Life skills are great, and I do think they should be taught but some of what is mentioned here really goes beyond that, and yes thats probably what I'm focusing on but I'm in that mood, ok? :P

And whilst I do agree that academics aren't everything, academics are what schools are built on. I am no academic, I don't have a degree and I do believe that life skills can be just as valid and in some areas more important. But I got these life skills through LIFE experience, I would hate to have learnt these things from a class. What baffles me is that we must (and I say we as in society) be failing somewhat if manners aren't even TAUGHT at home! I get sooo annoyed when I hear about kids that do not know how to use cutlery, don't get pulled up on saying please and thank you.

How are we supposed to "teach" our children these life skills when we as a society don't know how to do it ourselves?! We teach our children healthy eating in schools but then we binge on chocolate as a "treat". We teach our children manners yet when children don't use them on a daily basis I see parents let it go. Don't even get me started on the amount of adults who don't know how to say thank you. How is this consistant? We teach our children finance yet we have some of the largest debts that have ever existed. We teach our children responsibility yet we can't even teach our children life skills and therefore call on someone else to do it? Huh? Where do we draw the line?

That's an excellent point Cai - I think some of the most valuable teaching is done by example. Some of my best attributes I've learned through the examples of others.
Definitely a challenge for me in my parenting, I don't want my kids to be as lazy as me. :redface: I've got to lift my game there.

In no way am I saying that parents aren't the first port of call for teaching children these skills. It's OUR responsibility. But I think that supplementary education is important, because the reality is that some kids won't learn GOOD things by example. And the kids who do - well, hopefully school can reinforce that learning.

I very much agree, Cai, with a lot of your points. I have a very well educated friend who had a child before I did and he's two years older than DS. DS will consistently give a thank you, and sometimes even a please and we don't even enforce these things - he's modelled them from us because I've asked DP to be on board with the modelling theory. But my friend's child...he's 4 and he asks for things in a demand tone and I"ve only heard him say thank you a couple of times. I'm not there all the time, so I don't know if she's modelling the desired behaviour when I'm not there, but she seems to be courteous enough with him and her DH when we're there...and she's happy enough to let it go when we're there. If my DS doesn't say thanks, I'll tell him 'you're welcome' (spanish or english, interchangeably), so that at least he's aware that there's some sort of convention in that exchange. He's too young to enforce, it, IMO, so that's my way of teaching him i.e. by example.
I really think the problem is somewhere in the fact that kids' parents are becoming a bit clueless about the things this guy was talking about, and not that they can't be bothered teaching their own kids these same things. I think he's saying that schools may have to take on board what parents have lost, so that we break the cycle of cluelessness...dunno, that's just what I take away from it.
For DS, I want him to learn about his world and hope that he wants to get stuck into the theories about things later in school and uni. But, if not, whatever he ends up doing, I want him to be happy about who he is, what he stands for and that these things count for a lot more than degrees from uni, even in the eyes of a mummy who does have a couple of degrees and knows that they dont' define her as a person.

Great point Cailin! But having said that...

DS thinks fruit is called a something-please (like a grape-please or an apple-please) because that's what we say: Would you like a grape-please?

We don't give him chocolate, but then we don't have any treat food, only food. "You're hungry? OK, gingerbread-please or apple-please? An apple-please? OK, Mammy will chop it up for you. Thank you Mammy, good girl." (Why should DS be good boy and no-one else be good?)

I agree that this should be down to parents, but our generation and our children's generation don't always have the input they need from parents. We all know children from our own childhood, not to mention the ones we see nowadays, without manners. We need it reinforced at school, not taught. We need to know that you don't call names or push, be it at home or school. That you do say please and thank you, and that your teacher will call you back and expect it if you forget it!

I'm not perfect and have had to re-examine a lot of my own habits since having DS just so he gets the right ideas from the start. It amazes me that other parents don't want to advantage their children as much as it amazes me that being able to say thank you is an advantage. Something has to be done but certainly before senior school level.

DS is re-inforced at Nursery that he uses knives and forks to eat. But we started that at home, as expected! Nursery re-inforce gentle playing and words like thank you - but we started it, as expected! (Although I am really pleased that DS can pet animals gently now, and one of the local cats no longer runs from him!)

I still think we should be aiming higher for our children though. Don't AIM for saying thank you - expect it. Aim for asking the old woman over the road if she needs a hand with her shopping/rubbish/gardening. And lead by example. Don't AIM for a child reading a book for school - expect it. Aim for the child discussing it with you, learning from it and reading more at home for pleasure rather than as a chore.

I dunno. Maybe I'm expecting too much of today's parents, many of whom are too tired to fight with children after working 50-hour weeks. But if we start young then there won't be a fight. I just think someone has to raise the bar and that someone should be the parents, who after all should be parenting the children, not the secondary school.

It has gotten to a bad state if teachers are saying they need more work!

You are not expecting too much. I agree with you.

I think adults should be made to do these classes, they need it way more right now than the next generation.

I don't see this as an either/or situation - these are skills that should be taught both at home and at school.

The school's role is important, teachers will have the attention of the child in the midst of their peer group - if they are able to motivate the peer group to recognise and value a broad range of skills then the benefits to the individual child's education, and their enthusiasm for learning outside of the school environment increases exponentially.

I don't see these things are not a substitute for traditional academia, but more of a framework to maximise the value of academic learning.

This isn't really a debate about whether to teach old-school subjects like english lit, higher maths, science vs more practical subjects, electronics, computing, cookery, etc, it's more of a call for a broader education outside of a formal classroom.

Niliac you are right, these are not things that can be primarily taught in a classroom, but schools do have the capability to create all sorts of environments in which these skills can be learnt, but the narrowed focus on classroom teaching and a pre-set curriculum has made it more difficult.

Take school sports as one example, it could be an opportunity to teach the value of teamwork, focus/dedication, risk/reward, social inclusion, leadership and responsibility but increasingly it's being dumbed down to the bare minimum requirement of a period of physical activity, and in many schools dropped all together.

I feel fortunate to have had some truly inspirational teachers when I was at school in Australia and in the UK - whilst they stepped through the required syllabus in their respective subjects they also taught the value of free thinking, respect for others, the value of articulate presentation, personal responsibility and many of the other things on the articles list.

TheBear - that's what I reckon and what I thought I had said (but obviously failed to convey!). And I hadn't even thought of phys ed having the propensity for imparting these values...forest for trees and all!