NAPLAN and bullying

Why did we introduce mass child abuse as a major component of the taxonomy of Learning?

The schoolroom and the playground are the battlefields for defining status. ACARA ANALYTICA wants to emphasise intellectual superiority in literacy and numeracy from the beginning of life’s learning cycle; to gather data to list, forever, the superiority of the ‘smarties’ by measuring only a couple of syllabus items that children can be ‘good at’. It’s so easy to do. The teaching of Learnacy which involves an holistic curriculum and a recognition of the importance of other human abilities is ignored.

Some believe that the bullying is worth it because the black magic of NAPLAN tells the government which schools are better, which principals are better, which teachers are better….It opinionates beyond literacy and numeracy because it is magic. It even diagnoses the problems that Billy Smith, that freckled faced plodder sitting in the corner, has. It’s the greatest diagnostic instrument ever invented...the only one to use, according to some . 

As a systemic requirement, bullying has an entrenched place in the testucator’s school of today.

In truth, as a maverick, vexatious, inhumane, bizarre curriculator and pretend measure, it should never have started. It only does damage to the system and to young people, who don’t deserve to be treated in such fashion.

During 2018, some authorities, Queensland in particular, will ‘review’ NAPLAN. That could mean that they will modify some requirements of its administration, like giving parents a choice, maybe giving schools a choice but the testing will continue. It could also mean that thoughtful reviewers, God bless them, will gather the ‘feelings’ of children and teachers, examine its usefulness as an educative device, examine, in particular, the effects of test preparation on the level of bullying, think seriously about its aims and application, the effects on teaching strategies, recall its shameful history and drop it completely.

The easy way out is for testucators, now in charge of many authorities and maybe of the review process, is to make some recommendations and just carry on.

The alternative is to shut down the causes of bullying: NAPLAN testing; to give education back to the teachers and deliberately encourage a state wide SPIRIT OF LEARNING, that seriously helps individual schools to enhance the programs that they have developed and that focus on a LOVE for LEARNING through a respect for learners, forever.