Trite, Tattered and Tardy

This week saw the release of a range of test figures from The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 

The Minister was quick to send a media release deploring the ‘poor’ performance and spinning that the present government’s reforms under National Partnerships, and the My School Website are only now biting and would make a significant difference. Just how is not articulated.

The usual candidates from every lobby group in the country took to their bunkers and rolled out the same old arguments: we need better teachers; schools need more funding; teachers need higher pay; we need to attract high performers in to teaching; extend school hours; principals need more autonomy; concentrate on teaching literacy and numeracy; get rid of poor teachers; scrap the union; provide more professional development;  improve the retention rate; set more targets; the National Curriculum will fix it; test, test , test, test…….. blah blah blah. 

We’ve heard it all before - the attempt to compress a complex set of reasons for individual student performance into a grab bag of the top ten ways to fix a perceived problem. It’s trite, it’s tattered and it’s tardy of the protagonists to give us the same old, same old. 

We are still with the basic assumption that the tests are right, the methodology is right, and that you can actually treat children and young people like scientific experimental subjects- if you control the variables you can get a constant result. Human beings just don’t work like that. They are each individual and the combination of factors which lead to the person before the teacher is as unique and variable as the number of people we are as a whole. 

It might be useful to look to a time when we valued a well rounded education that trusted the skill and dedication of the teacher and  that championed the full range of human knowledge as critical learning for a civilised society. 

A hard call in an economic rationalist world where the belief is that counting the beans in the jar over and over again will improve the quality of the beans. 

One of my favourite things about Christmas is that parliament stands down and we have a slight reprieve from the shooting gallery, the gaping clowns, the ducks in a row, the spin, spin, spin.

For a little while we will have no pseudo-Amazonian battles between  Bland Barbie and Juggling Julia, with their slings and arrows that are just a step up from a schoolyard cat fight with its hoes and moles. On Radio National yesterday morning one guest described the Australian parliament as an ‘infantile shout fest’. 

Revolutionaries have always known that words are one’s greatest weapon– the winning of the hearts and minds. Look at David’s Marat, dead in his bath like an alabaster Greek statue still writing rousing rebel rhetoric as his life blood leeches away. Never mind that he was in reality pox marked and delivered ignominiously by a spurned lover- so the story goes. 

The linguistics and ideologies of our representatives are piddling about in the mire of mendacity. It’s personal attacks, attempted broadsides, niggly skirmishes and nuisance hand grenades. 

Entertainment for the masses in the 24/7 sound bite and news grab - bread and circuses. 

But it leads us nowhere.

There’s a novel idea – Politician as leader. I wonder if it could catch on?

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Art Work of the Week

Here's a new way of looking at an old problem.

No testing was used in the creation of this art work.

Jester cuppa