Championing education

The simple policy line that is promoted by more than a few education ministers - and party leaders - is that there is a crisis in our schools; that today’s children don’t do the same things that their parents (and grandparents!) did when they were in school.

And this observation is generally taken as a convincing argument that schools have (suddenly) become so bad that students are (suddenly) leaving in droves, without basic literacy and numeracy.

The media is full of complaints from “mature” adults only too keen to outdo each other in their claims of what’s wrong with schools. Headlines which insist that “Schools have swapped Shakespeare for studying pop songs”, and that today’s students “don’t do mental arithmetic, and can’t spell”, help to add to public anxiety and parental concern. (And they don’t do much for the self-concepts of the children.)

There are newspaper journalists, TV commentators and talk-back radio hosts who are more than happy to invite politicians to take aim at this educational sitting target. Because in one way the critics are stating the bleeding obvious.

A good education today - and a responsible education - would have to include the study of pop lyrics and the role they play in shaping attitudes and values. And it is the case that children don’t do mental arithmetic like they used to. Nor do they spend hours memorising spelling lists.

But what the critics of today’s schools don’t recognise is that what the kids don’t do is only the beginning of the debate on 21st century education. It’s what the kids can do that all the education discussion should be about.

Not that the Australian public gets to know this: Australians get a raw deal because almost all the media coverage in the country is devoted to the so-called decline in standards in the classroom.

Take The Australian for example, where you can routinely find articles by Kevin Donnelly, (the author of Dumbing Down) who still suffers from the cultural shock of the 1960s. He blames everything from flower power to feminism for what he believes is the terrible state of our schools. They have become places where truancy soars, academic standards plummet, students are left morally adrift - and where kids just don’t know anything any more.

Kevin Donnelly (and his allies, including the Prime Minister) is entitled to his conspiracy view of state school teachers supposedly plotting the ruin of today’s youth. But his position does have a few flaws. His running accusation that the education system has become dumbed down and politically correct is open to a number of challenges.

And the Australian public is entitled to know about them.

But parents, policy makers, and even politicians, who are worried by Kevin Donnelly’s denunciation of schools and teachers, will have to look long and hard if they want to find any criticisms of his claims in the newspaper.

There is no promotion of contrary voices: no attempt to provide a balance. There are no recognised “champions” of the new and creative education that is required for the 21st century.

Other countries have had debates about the new forms of education that are needed in an information economy (President Clinton in the USA and Tony Blair in the UK for example). But Australia has had no such debate.

Instead there are some very backward looking politicians, commentators and editors who, for their own reasons, are engaged in a furious struggle to put the genie back in the bottle.

Instead of looking at the attitudes and skills that are needed for life, leisure and work in the digital age, these influential people are obsessed with keeping classrooms just as they were - in the good old days of their own schooling (before flower power and feminism)!

It is so easy for these oldies to state smugly that schools aren’t what they used to be. But what does this prove? That they expect today’s students to participate in the 21st century world equipped with the same life and work skills that were the starting point for “a job for life” in the 1950s?

What these nostalgics haven’t actually noticed is that the world has changed dramatically - and that there has been an information revolution. Their “denial” demonstrates there were many limitations in their own schooling because it hasn’t equipped them to cope with change, or to deal with the demands of the digital age.

Yet the Australian public is not informed of the faults and limitations of these educational shockers. It gets only one very skewed view of the state of education. And without any other, or any different, views there can be no debate.

In what has become something of a mantra, Kevin Donnelly slams an English syllabus that has abandoned Shakespeare for popular culture. But maybe he would change his tune if he were to read just one item in the popular press that pointed out that in his day - Shakespeare was popular culture.

All those Shakespearean speeches that we were required to learn (off by heart) when we were in school, were the pop lyrics of the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare’s words were performed, not studied. (Most of his poems and plays were created before 1612 and he died in 1616: his works weren’t even published until 1623!)

The “masses” attended Shakespeare’s performances in much the same way as they would attend a pop concert today - and for many of the same reasons and with much the same results.

This is not an argument for getting rid of Shakespeare: although it would be infinitely better if students today were to take advantage of the new technologies and become engaged with the performance instead of being confined to the dreary chore of studying a text.

But it most certainly is an argument for including another voice, and for bringing the syllabus into the 21st century. Today’s students should be looking at the similarities between Shakespeare and Australian Idol, and analysing the differences. It is an argument for the 21st century educational policy of assessing the many changes that have taken place, and for defining and developing the creative skills that can be put to good use in the contemporary world.

Someone who knew their Shakespeare could even teach us something about spelling. The bard is reported to have spelled his name in 16 different ways - but there are no records of him failing the standardised national literacy tests, or of being branded as illiterate. (Though he would probably not score very well on literacy or numeracy tests today!)

It’s the printing press that is to blame. It made the publication of his plays possible and so countless students have had to study the Shakespearean printed word (an exercise he would not have understood!)

And it was the printing press that standardised spelling: it was the printers who decided there would be only one way to spell a word.

Is there sufficient computing power to calculate how many students have had to spend how many hours memorising how many spelling lists over the centuries? Not that the system really worked; we still all had to have dictionaries to check it out.

And now we have the spell check.

It is time for the case to be heard in favour of spell check and calculators, and Ipods and Google - and the extraordinary range of today’s students’ digital skills.

All the accusations about the parlous state of education, the treachery of teachers, and the poor performances of students, are not only false, they are damaging. They cast doubt on Australia’s educational provision, dismay parents and demoralise teachers - and for no useful purpose! But worst of all they define today’s talented students as failures. Just because they don’t do what their parents did in the old days - when they didn’t have computers.

So jobs are going for educational champions who can counter the critics and come up with the many success stories that education can provide. Australia is in desperate need of educational leaders who have a policy for the 21st century - based on the digital literacies and the world view that the kids already have, and that the rest of us desperately need.

Whether these champions will be embraced by the media - is another matter.