The Failure Of Schools To Educate - Article

:

---

The head of The King's School, Tim Hawkes, throws down a challenge to educators.

Despite being a headmaster for nearly 20 years, I am just developing a conviction that I have been manifestly unfaithful as an educator because I have been teaching an inadequate curriculum. The fact that this inadequacy in curriculum is probably to be found in most Western schools brings me no comfort at all.

When the philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene was asked, 400 years BC, what students should be taught, he replied: "Those things which they will use when adults."

What, then, are the things our students will use as adults? The only certainties are well known - death and taxes. Do we teach death in our schools? Do we teach financial literacy?

Both my parents died a few years ago. Apart from the grief, I found I had to cope with the ignorance. What sort of funeral service? What is probate? Whom do I have to notify? What are the duties of an executor? My experience is hardly unique. We all have to deal with death, even if it is just our own.

Then there are taxes - a topic I have expanded to include financial literacy. I look at the young today and see far too many victims in the use of credit cards, in understanding the relative benefits of lending schemes, in deciding which telephone plan to use, and in being able to save.

Too many schools have lost sight of those things that will be used by our students when they become adults. The relevance of contemporary school education is compromised by many things, not least by exam systems designed not so much to prepare students for life, as to help them get into tertiary education or improve the resume.

What are the things students will use when they are grown up? Any serious answer is unlikely to omit things such as the ability to:

* live in community and forge good relationships;

* communicate well;

* know yourself and what you believe;

* handle intimacy and sex;

* control emotions and impulses;

* manage financial matters;

* do practical things, to clean, cook, make and mend;

* be good mannered and know etiquette;

* accept responsibility;

* be resilient and deal with grief and loss.

Doubtless more topics should be added, but a list even of this length begins to illustrate a chasm between what a student will use when an adult, and what a student is usually taught at school. There are glorious exceptions, of course, and most schools would be doing some things in some of the above areas, but I believe Western education is generally failing to offer its students relevant material.

It is easy to go rather too far with this thesis and advocate that students become like Byron's Don Juan. He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery.

And how to scale a fortress - or a nunnery.

Schools should do more than train for a vocation of scaling nunnery walls. Schools must train the heart and mind, and do so through a variety of academic disciplines. However, schools must ensure they remain relevant to their students' future life, and there is rather too much evidence that they are failing in this regard.

I suggest schools should consider teaching the following skills:

1. Community Too often the contemporary child is the isolated doughy blob entertained by a range of expensive electronic equipment which limits their interaction to "e-relationships". These relationships are often transient and disposable, and lack authenticity. Social skills are under-exercised in some families. This can lead to children becoming self-centred and unable to take the needs of others into the orbit of their thinking. In short, they become a social liability in a group larger than one.

What some children need is a compulsory experience of living in community, not just for six hours a day within the choreographed setting of a school, but for 24 hours a day within the chaos of a bickering and restless community. They need to learn to live with people who are different, so that they can operate in a world where annoying people stubbornly remain and there is no "delete" button to remove them.

2. Communicate Students, particularly boys, urgently need help to communicate better. The Neanderthal grunt may work well at the football ground, but not at work or at home. They need to be articulate, and to communicate well in writing. In fairness to schools, this challenge is being met reasonably faithfully.

However, schools must recognise that content governs only about 7 per cent of the impact of speech. The remainder is controlled by the appearance of the speaker (57 per cent) and the sound of the speaker (36 per cent). The science of voice projection, articulation, accent, modulation, pitch and pace needs to be taught, together with the most appropriate posture, grooming and appearance.

All students need to be taught to read body language, to sense mood, to interpret the unspoken feelings of another. They need to improve their ability to send and receive unspoken messages, other than the raised middle finger.

3. Know yourself An essential requirement for all students is that they eventually take "ownership" of what they believe in. They may mimic a political opinion from friends, a faith from parents and a cause from a teacher, but somewhere the student needs to stop the copying and find his or her own voice.

Martin Luther once stood before his critics and said: "Here I stand, I can do no other." Too many young people do not know where they stand or what they believe. An alarming number appear happy to progress through life without a cause, without a creed and without a conviction. Even worse, some do not even know themselves. They have no understanding of their unique gifts or abilities.

4. Intimacy The Western world does a poor job in preparing its students to be intimate. There are always exceptions, but in general students are required to navigate their way through the sexual swamp with minimal direction. Signposts can be vague and contradictory. The parents say this, and the school says that, but the porn site says something completely different. Where adult direction falters, peer direction takes over. The "leader of the pack" can, in strident and boastful voice, suggest the way forward to the forbidden fruit and encourage all to eat thereof. The proper people to educate students about sex are parents.

Some parents are wonderful at giving their children guidelines on sex, but others are delinquent. The latter can be because of the sin of omission. The lexicon of excuses is extensive: "It's not my job - the school will deal with it"; "I'm too busy"; "It's the sort of thing you have to learn yourself"; "They probably know more about it than I do"; "I'm not quite sure what to tell them." There are plenty of excuses to choose from. For other parents, it is the sin of commission. They teach their children an attitude towards sex that is unworthy of them. They model abusive and angry relationships, unfaithful relationships, degrading relationships. The child watches it all, memorises it all and repeats it all.

Schools can also fail their students. Classes will do pencilled drawings of reproductive organs, and become experts on how "tadpoles" swim upstream and how babies grow in the womb. They will be introduced to the horrors of sexually transmitted diseases in that theoretical, antiseptic way. Some of the luckier ones may get to roll a condom onto a banana and giggle their way through a lecture on dating. The mind is fed but not the heart.

The questions students want to ask, they are not allowed to, as it is not in the syllabus. So answers must be sought on the net, in magazines and on the back of toilet doors - they are certainly not in text books. We must do a better job of teaching our children about sex and intimacy. They have little need to hear more about the biology of sex, for this is generally done well in schools. Nor do they need to hear about the morality of sex from adults with dehydrated loins who have no connection with the virility of a teenager.

They want to know what they can, where they can, why they can, when they can, how they can, if they can. They no longer need to know how they measure up in an environment of unconditional love, but how they measure up outside, in the swamp of life where love, like and lust churn dangerously. It is not just smut and titillation that students want, for they can get these quite easily these days. What they want is something more elusive, something rare, and that is wholesome advice on how to be a man, how to be a woman.

5. Emotional control Prisons are typically full of men, and in particular men who would not be there if they had mastered the art of counting to 10 before acting. Acting impulsively usually means that only the reptilian part of the brain is exercised. Other parts of the brain need to be if students, particularly boys, are to avoid making poor decisions and enlarging our prison population. Fight or flight behaviours may be genetically useful for hunting mammoths or defending a cave from intruders, but are less useful in contemporary suburbia or in seeking acceptance as a mature and measured member of modern society.

6. Finance The level of ignorance in students about financial matters can be frightening. This is revealed in the number of young adults and students who get into financial trouble through an inability to budget, a failure to understand the traps associated with credit cards and incapacity to retire debt. Persistently living beyond their means, relying too much on parental help and making unwise choices on hire-purchase, telephone plans and leasing arrangements are just some of the problems resulting from students not being taught about financial matters. In a society increasingly riven with debt, wealth generation and wealth management need to be taught. The rudiments of saving, and the traps to avoid when borrowing or getting involved in get-rich-quick schemes, need to be shared with our students if we expect them to manage financial affairs appropriately.

7. Practical things Discussions about the absence of life-skills in the young are often laced with horrified tales of fungal growth in bathrooms, kitchen benches piled high with unwashed dishes, ovens blackened by neglect and bedroom carpets disappearing under a rising tide of discarded clothes. Some students have never been taught to cook. If they have, they have probably not been taught to clean up afterwards. A range of home maintenance skills is frequently missing in our students, including how to maintain a lawn mower, change a tap washer, turn off the water if there is a leak, recycle waste, conserve water and reduce the power bill.

8. Manners It is probably all right for a child to eat like a pig, but they must know they are eating like a pig and be able to stop when the situation demands it. Failing to learn many other social behaviours can result in students being disadvantaged. The simple act of sending a thank-you message for a present, shaking hands appropriately, knowing what cutlery to use, addressing a letter correctly, understanding what "formal" means and knowing the art of good conversation are just some of the skills at risk of extinction in the lives of too many of our young.

9. Responsibility Many students live voyeuristic lives. They like to watch. Watching is safe. You bear no responsibility, accept no accountability. "Spectatoritis" is rife. Many of today's teenagers are screenagers. They look, comment and criticise from the comfort of the couch. The child then becomes an adult who finds it difficult to do much other than to watch and excuse themselves from accepting responsibility. Students need to be taught how to take ownership of their own behaviour, how to be leaders, how to make appropriate decisions, and how to serve others well.

10. Resilience Life cannot be expected to provide a constant stream of undiluted fun, praise and success. If students crumple because they do not get an hourly fix of praise, they may not last long. Self-esteem needs to be built up, but never to a stage that ordinary performance is exalted as extraordinary. "Warm fuzzies" are good, but so too are words of correction if they are shared with wisdom and understanding. Students should not depend on a constant diet of praise. Disappointment happens, so do discouragement and distress, and thus some inner courage is required.

It might be as well to remind some that if the world didn't "suck", they would fall off and that some resilience is needed. The gods play with us all and cause us to laugh and cry. Emotional and physical courage is required. As it is said, we are all born naked, wet and hungry, and things then get worse. Fortunately, things also get better.

This is an edited version of a plenary address Dr Hawkes gave to an international boys' schools coalition conference in Canada and a paper to the Federal Government's review of national curriculum.
The failure of schools to educate - National - smh.com.au

---

I reckon that is a great article and pretty true.
When I moved out of home I had no idea about living by myself, how to pay bills, how to get car insurance, or anything about tax!! And I didn't know how to cook (I think mum should have taught me that tho). DH doesn't really know much about fixing stuff. Not like my Dad or older men I know who could just fix anything, the younger generation seems to have lost that. DH and my brothers have no idea really. Hmm...maybe that's a bit to do with feminism and everything too imagine if a school was teaching all the girls to cook and sew etc and all the guys about cars and building etc, outrage!

I've only really had a cursory read through at this stage, but don't really have the time or energy to do more at the moment. I'm posting this to remind myself to come back when I have more energy to read through properly!

As an educator of teenagers, I am prepared to hang my head in shame at what the syllabus is forcing me to teach children. And yet, we've just finished a topic on consumer arithmetic and one of the things we focussed on was reading a credit card statement. Perhaps it is strange that my class enjoyed factorising quadratic equations far more than they did wading through the intricacies of credit card statements. Or perhaps it is just an indication of the level of enthusiasm I showed for teaching those two different concepts.

However, it has encouraged me to stick to my guns on some things and not cave when students repeatedly come to me complaining about trivial matters. The "life's hard and you can't always get what you want" approach seems to be something that they need to encounter sooner or later, and sooner is probably far better than later in the light of some of the things I have read.

But there's also the thought of how the system is in such a state that it is going to be hard to recover from the state we are in. I have a remarkable lack of domestic skills and dread to think what state we would be living in if it weren't for my husband's amazing levels of domestication. He's the one who cooks and cleans and fixes things. Admittedly, some of the problems we are dealing with are due to chronic health conditions, but without him... it's a scary thought. If I as a teacher lack the domestic skills and general life skills that kids are meant to be taught, then what hope do we have?

BW

BW Don't hang your head in shame, this is something that is "out of the ordinary".

I love the ideals he puts forth. I also think that those are important that we teach the children around us. We teach our kids that we live in community with others, by spending time with the same friends weekly. We teach our kids that if one of our friends wants us to do something, than we do it. Whether or not it "puts us out". We teach or have a plan to teach responsibility with finances. Life skills, such as cleaning a house, mowing the lawns or looking after the animals...

See to me, education at school should be scholastic... education at home should be life skills. I believe that the educations children get at school needs to be only %50 of their education and as they grow up, their education at home has to grow as well.

Ooooh. I don't fully agree.

What are the parents doing? I certainly don't expect a school to teach DS about manners, dealing with people, practical skills, money... he'll have learnt them BEFORE he starts secondary schooling! He loves helping me cook already and can clean up things. He is ALWAYS told about money and when we're shopping "this is too expensive, but this tastes nicer and is cheaper so we can buy that and enjoy it" especially in the supermarket. My teenager will NOT think eating "like a pig" is acceptable. Sure, he may well do it, but he'll know it's not right.

What are the parents doing that means the children are turning out like this? We can't dump all the problems on schools - we have to accept responsibility, maybe that will teach our children how to!

Both DH and I can do basic car maintainance (OK DH goes above and beyond but that's him, I can at least pump tyres and check oil), we can both cook, clean, even knit. We both learnt this from our parents. We learnt that we fail because WE fail - although coming from a culture where you are expected to fail isn't healthy, but taking responsibility for it is.

(FWIW, the ultimate in dodging responsibility from my mother: "He didn't get the job because they sent him the wrong letter, some silly girl stuffing the envelopes sent him a rejection letter instead of an acceptance one" - about a man who has evaded responsibility, sound financial planning, looking after himself and learning practical skills all his life.)

I guess you have a point, Christy... and it could be argued that this is a reflection of the case that so many parents (and I see a lot of these in a private school) wish to completely abdicate themselves from all responsibilities regarding the education and discipline of their child. They send them to a private school so that we can "fix" the child. Sadly, by the time they get to us, the damage has been done and it's too late.

I think that some people (myself included) can easily lose sight of the fact that schools are not the only places responsible for education - kids are going to learn a lot (and should be!) learning a lot at home, at church, with different sporting organisations, etc.

One thing is for sure... I'll be making sure my son knows how to cook and clean as well as fix a car and a toaster and all other assorted random skills. Even if it's his father that does the majority of the teaching!

Perhaps it's also a sign of the readiness to place all blame on teachers, rather than point at parents for their failures. I'm not entirely sure I'm using the right words... must be time to go off and have a nap and see if I can get my thoughts more in order on this.

And there's one fact. No school can adequately prepare a student to join the workforce as a plumber or carpenter while also adequately preparing someone to go onto further studies to become a doctor or lawyer. A school can not be all things to all people - Would we not be better off teaching students the skills they need to help them find out for themselves what they will need to know.

BW

I love what he has to say. I would like to see a nice fusion of scholastic/real life, so teaching maths, music, art, language and literature, vocational stuff all with continual reference to real life contexts.
And I would really love to see the gag on sex lifted. Sex and intimacy need to be treated as normal, not illicit...I mean, it's how we all get here and it's become a real elephant in the room!!
These are just my initial thoughts, I have no pedagogical expertise and I'm just thinking of the education I'd like DS to get...and that's a while off, for now.
I love the article and it gets the thinking ball rolling, no?

I think that there is definitely more room within schools for practical, real life education. I think things like budgeting, sewing/mending, cooking, music/singing, resume writing, relationships...are all good things to be covered - NOT because it is the school's sole responsibility to teach those things, but because a fact of life is that not all parents are good at ALL those things. I'm quite good at music, but it wasn't my parents who taught me that, I nurtured that at school. In the same way, some parents can't budget, some have poor communication skills, others can't read a map to save their lives.

I believe that education is the parent's responsibility. I send my child to school, and which school I send them to depends on what I want them to learn there. I then teach them at home what they don't learn at school, and communicate with them to find out what they're learning at school.

Good thought provoking article though.

What would be lost to teach this? Budgetting instead of geometry (instead of caculus and I'd approve more LOL)? Love and intimacy instead of particle physics? Cooking at schools now is graded on your assessment of how well you cooked a meal - tbh, it's a cake, it riz, it didn't poison anyone. A+. Not a written assessment. That puts people off (or did me; how DO you evaluate a sandwich?). I wouldn't want to be graded on "love and intimacy"! (I really don't like failure LOL.)

If we decide that which fork to use when is more important at a school than modern languages then that's not right either. I just don't see why schools should do more and parents less.

Yes, OK, so I think that some things are important and will be getting DS speech and drama lessons at junior school because that has maybe been THE most helpful thing in my adult life. But we'll be doing the exercises together. Just like I'll be teaching him the piano initially - a good skill to have. I'll teach him to sew and knit and about music, DH will teach him to saw and weld and fish, we'll both teach him cooking and cleaning. We both will encourage a love of reading, thinking, exploring, counting, budgetting, talking, feeling, loving... that's our job! I don't WANT a school to take it away! Let me do SOMETHING for my son! Something that doesn't HAVE to be noted and graded - even now, at Nursery, he is monitored and graded and has targets. Just let him be, please, and let him enjoy life. He'll enjoy it more.

Maybe I'm too much of a hands-on Mammy, maybe I need to realise that other children don't have the advantages I can give my son, but I want him to learn cerebral things at school, not basics all the time. Maybe extra lessons in what it means to be human (as listed above)? But does that mean no sport, drama, religious studies, languages...? Because that's what's sacrificed first. Do we want children who don't run around all day but know how which glass is for white and which for red? A child who has no idea what other people believe but is great at articulating that openly and not grunting about it? School is for schooling, life is for living and the two do intertwine, but lessons for living happen more at home and in the playground. I will never be able to teach my son (quick, something I'm not good at...) about the geography and geology, not to mention the flora and fauna, of the Far East, but school can. Let them do their job and let me do mine.

:

---

Let them do their job and let me do mine.

---

But that's just what I think Ryn, that's how it should be, but I think that practical, real-life skills need to be taught at school as a safety net for those students whose parents don't feel the same way, who don't have the time, skills,resources or inclination to teach their children those things.

So I believe that it's very important that schools include that practical teaching as part of a student's experience. Or find ways to make other teaching relevant...fitting English skills into letter and resume writing, going to an international restaurant to use language skills, bringing an actual torn item of clothing into textiles, doing a budget in maths. So many students don't see the relevance in the things that they're learning, I know I certainly struggled to see how I would use teddy bear making and American history in my life.

I'm not going to get het up about what this guy is talking about. It's never going to be implemented, let alone strictly so that our kids never learn about other things we have come to deem as important at school.
I am one who does think schooling places far too much emphasis on passing/failing, and that can erode the importance of imparting understanding of those principles being taught. Students learn to 'work' the system to pass and even to pass well, to get into uni to courses that others have placed high value on because they attract prestige.
Now I'm being cynical ;) The most important thing I want DS to take away from school is that learning can be enjoyable, especially when pursuing things of interest. I couldn't give a stuff if he 'fails' geometry at school, if in the process he found it interesting, just not relevant to his primary interests.
Not surprisingly, I'm exploring various educational options for DS outside of mainstream school, because I have a feeling he may not 'fit in' to mainstream methods. Maybe he will, and we have a few years yet to see what would suit him.
I like what this dissertation makes me think about, though, so thanks, Chloe :)
ETA:
I also believe that there are parents who are woefully inadequately equipped to teach the things this guy talks about...of COURSE there are. So, what do we do? Leave those kids to learn physics and art history and keep the cycle of real life ignorance going? Like this guy says, these kinds of kids model from parents who modelled off their parents and the loss of our 'village' means that it will continue to happen unless the artificial village takes measures to compensate. And it's not just isolated cases...I know there are plenty of families in my area alone that have no idea how to teach real life things like sex and intimacy to their kids (for example). It's a collective cop out to place all responsibility back onto the parents when those same parents have no idea how to impart these important life skills.

This may be different in other schools in other areas... but it's hard to interest kids in forming a budget when they have no need for one (huge amounts of pocket money and parents fork out for pretty much anything and everything). By the time most people actually have a NEED for a budget and develop the interest in actually creating one, they are far from the influence of an educator!

Finishing schools, perhaps? A return to vocational colleges and academic colleges?

Regardless of what ever is done, no education system can be everything to everyone.

BW

Hehe BW, don't get me started on our need for tech schools.

:

---

So I believe that it's very important that schools include that practical teaching as part of a student's experience. Or find ways to make other teaching relevant...fitting English skills into letter and resume writing, going to an international restaurant to use language skills, bringing an actual torn item of clothing into textiles, doing a budget in maths. So many students don't see the relevance in the things that they're learning, I know I certainly struggled to see how I would use teddy bear making and American history in my life.

---

You couldn't see how teddy-bear making was important? Pillow-making was daft, I agree, but I enjoyed making a bear (that was for extra marks though). American history was not important but at least it was taught by someone interesting so it wasn't a chore. I mean, I'm English, we have enough history without importing it! But I still like learning history and so does DH, so we often take DS to historical castles and museums, which he seems to enjoy.

OK, so you learn how to write a CV at school - what does it replace? And I was graded on a CV at Uni - how do you do that? I mean, each CV is individual for each job, you can't do a bog-standard one and have it graded! I'd big-up different skills on a CV for a shop job than I would for a laborartory job than I would for an admin job. Would it replace... the Shakespeare module? The poetry appreciation module? Would the Chaucer study be cut short, or would the book not be read aloud in the class? I cannot teach or advise on the ins and outs of The Merchant of Venice nor can I talk through Of Mice and Men, but I can look through a CV. OK, others cannot. So why not have a school careers officer (remember them?) who will look through it?

Everyone should be able to write a letter and write one well before leaving primary school. They may not want to but they can.

I just want to know what's being dropped for this. I don't want my son learning things he knows from home all the time and missing out on his actual education. (Although I'd love to home-school just so I could do the whole lot and not focus on just passing exams, although I will every night ask him what he learned at school and make sure he learnt it, not just how to regurgitate it in an exam if I don't teach it myself.)

:

---

Hehe BW, don't get me started on our need for tech schools.

---

I'm a FIRM believer in them myself! I can't prepare a student for life in a university setting and the skills they will need to cope there at the same time as I prepare a student for an apprenticeship or the like.

What's the point in forcing someone who's bound for TAFE or a trade to sit through the HSC exams and write essays on history or Shakespeare, play with trig identities or deal with chemical equilibrium equations? How does poetry help the student who aims to be a mechanic? How does poetry help the student wanting to become a doctor for that matter?!

One of my biggest frustrations is that so many students are forced into doing the final two years of academic schooling when it is really just putting them in a holding pattern and putting them, us and the other students through misery!

Yes, it was a frustrating day with my senior students.

BW

I do agree that people who wish to learn a trade should be able to opt out earlier.

But the need for poetry shouldn't be underestimated! It's not about rhyme and meter (although that is a part of it) - it's about the joy of words. About communication. About being heard and understood. About getting your feelings out. About enjoying and feeling and just being. You can't write a good poem if you aren't there, if you don't REALLY feel it.

About half of what the initial article was about LOL. Maybe we should bring in more poetry, and earlier, and that would solve all our problems. Oh yes, and learning and reciting poetry can help defend the brain against aging diseases and dementias, just as being able to do crosswords, play chess and do maths can. Chemical equations may not feature in your adult life, but having the mental power to do them will mean a LOT because you've started to use your brain a bit. Altogether now: 'Twas brillig...

:

---

I'm a FIRM believer in them myself! I can't prepare a student for life in a university setting and the skills they will need to cope there at the same time as I prepare a student for an apprenticeship or the like.

What's the point in forcing someone who's bound for TAFE or a trade to sit through the HSC exams and write essays on history or Shakespeare, play with trig identities or deal with chemical equilibrium equations? How does poetry help the student who aims to be a mechanic? How does poetry help the student wanting to become a doctor for that matter?!

One of my biggest frustrations is that so many students are forced into doing the final two years of academic schooling when it is really just putting them in a holding pattern and putting them, us and the other students through misery!

Yes, it was a frustrating day with my senior students.

BW

---

That is what I liked about the Tassie system when I went through it. Years 11 and 12 in the public system were seperate from high school. At the end of year 10 you decided whether to do your HSC at college, go to Tafe, find an apprentiship or just drop out in the hope of finding a job. Not sure if it is still like that, but I hope it is.

Got to get back to this, Miss 3 is calling.

Can I just ask a REALLY stupid question?

In the UK we leave school at 16, having taken as many GCSEs as the school deems we will pass. We can then go on and do A-levels (or whatever they are becoming now) until 18 and then go to uni or get a job. We can do NVQs and GNVQs from the age of 14 (I think, but 14-16 is still in school alongside GCSEs - this is not a bad thing IMO) and learn trades that way. If you are doing a childcare or business GNVQ then you don't do various other topics such as technology or languages (WHY? Child carers NEED to know how to cook and speak IMO) but you do more practical-based learning with no exams, just coursework. Our year 11 is age 15-16 and compulsary education ends there. Years 12 and 13 are still called sixth form, thankfully, and that's a student's choice (or a student's parents' choice as is becoming more frequently the case).

So what happens in Australia? Do you stay on for all the sixth form (age 18 when you leave) or do you stop at 16? And if you have to stay on, when are your exams? Do you do your basic exams at 16 then specialise until 18 or is it a prescribed curriculum until 18 with a mix of subjects?

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!