Matters educational and grammatical

Some items from today's media:

# Geography teaching is to be restored, or elevated in importance in secondary schools, at least until year 10, reports The Australian . Federal Education Minister Bishop's media release, announcing a " new study into [shouldn't that be "study of"?] the teaching of geography in schools" is here.

An extract:

The Institute of Australian Geographers and the Australian Geography Teachers Association have raised concerns with me that too little geography is being taught in schools, and that in some cases, environmental and political studies are masquerading as geography. Parents have also raised concerns about the lack of rigour in the teaching of geography...The teaching of geography is vital to link students with society, culture and the physical environment at the local, national and global level.

Among other things the study will "investigate the fundamentals that every Australian student should know in the subject before they complete Year 10. " I've previously posted about similar developments (or proposed developments) in history teaching, so will be interested to see what the study identifies these fundamentals to be. I'd also like to know why, if geography (like history) is so important, it will cease to be compulsory after Year 10.

#The Australian also reports that Sharyn O'Neill , sister of writer Tim Winton has just been appointed director general of education in Western Australia.Whatever other talents she may possess she is not in her brother's league as a writer of English prose if this is any guide:

"We've over-cooked some things, we've made some things overly complex, but the line in the sand is that we are listening, we are keen to restore confidence and the very clear focus is on standards," she said.


# Minister Bishop also appeared on today's ABC RN Life Matters talking about performance based pay for teachers and how to encourage greater business involvement in schools.

More on dumbing down curriculum

In today's Australian John Hirst has a good opinion piece "A chance to instil a sense of civic duty". He laments that subjects such as history, which the Prime Minister and his various Education Ministers have insisted be given more prominence in secondary school education, effectively cut out at the end of year 10:

Last year's history summit was invited to say what students should know of Australian history by the end of Year 10. Compulsory education ends at Year10, so education policy-makers think that if there is a subject that all students should know, then it has to be offered in that year or before. But the proportion of students who go on to Year 12 has risen rapidly and these last two years of schooling immediately precede the assumption of the right to vote. No one has been considering how schooling should be used to help in the transition to this adult responsibility.

I estimate that 80 per cent of children in the last years of school study nothing that links them to their country: no Australian history, no Australian literature, no Australian art, no Australian politics, no Australian geography. An overseas visitor to most of our years 11 and 12 classrooms would not know they were in Australia.

In these years students are left free to choose their subjects except for the compulsion to study English language. Some need to take certain subjects in preparation for tertiary studies. But many choose their subjects not because they relate to the course they want to take at university but because they hope to get a high score in the subject and so improve the chances of getting into the university course they want. So a would-be student of law may take physics or psychology instead of history or politics.

In these vital years we have abdicated the responsibility to prepare students to be citizens of this country.

Of course this point has been made many times before. It's also easy to identify the problem than to enunciate a solution. Mr Howard and Ms Bishop seem to have a view of history where certain facts, opinions and dates are set in stone: these are relatively easy to put across to year 10 students and to assess. As a longstanding professional historian of good repute Hirst is to a degree protecting his own patch by asking for more higher level teaching of humanities subjects, but he has a good point. Whether he can persuade other influential people to support him on this will be interesting to see, but I'd like to see it happen, ideally as a result of frank and open debate rather than resorting to the likes of Brian Burke.

Wrestling with ideologues #2

The Australian is not letting up on its criticism of the deficiencies which it perceives in our public secondary schools, about which I've posted previously . Last weekend it published an editorial "Little Red Curriculum" which raised the spectre of Maoist ideologues corrupting the minds of our youth.

It has produced a variety of responses including these . A very good one was published today with the headline "Mao and maths don't mix". The writer begins "I'm a teacher, a maths and physics one for that matter and, try as I might, I have been unable to teach Maoism and physics/ maths in harmony with each other". After making some other points, including that he's met "left-wing, fruit-loop teachers" but "they represent a bizarre anomaly and are not in significant numbers", he concludes "There are many serious issues in education that require the attention of serious people. This 'lefty, commie' political diversion is not one of them". Hear, hear.