Behind Goldie Hawn's opinions and the messages embedded in this piece by Phil is a question which really needs to be addressed--- " Does society really know how it learns?". I don't think it does, and like others have stated before me, I'm beginning to think that "education backed the wrong horse when it backed ( mainstream) psychology". Psychology has never been comfortable with learning and/or learning theory mainly because learning involves constructing meaning and meaning causes problems when one tries to measure it.As several of my psychology colleagues have told me when I've asked them why they equate learning with the memoristation and forgetting of nonsense syllables they tell me that " meaning would contaminate their findings"!
Cambo

If only Phil Cullen could replace Julia Gillard! We need an educator with Phil's experience, knowledge and common sense running education in our country. I wonder if Julia Gillard might at least appoint him as an advisor. I don't expect Julia, a lawyer, to understand teaching and learning. I do, however, expect her to listen to people like Phil Cullen.

Sorry Phil.

It's not you, it's me.

But when I saw the headline...

"Goldie Hawn could teach Julia Gillard a thing or two!"

...I suddenly had this mental flashback to the movie "Bird on a Wire", where Goldie Hawn... that thong... Julia Gillard...

...and I couldn't read any further.

I'm sure you understand.

Goldie's ideas would be really great, if we could all grow up to be film stars, [such as she may be].

On the other hand it would appear that Phil Cullen has had more than a little to do with the loss of standards in our current system. He had a chance & failed, miserably.

I am not normally a Julia fan, but fitting a bit of results driven work into the mess we have now, is the best thing she has done.

It seems to me,looking in very much from the outside,that the whole NAPLAN/My School fandango is very much a symptom of the credentialism which has infected our education system,from kindergarten to university.

Education is a life long process and I don't see how school league tables and all the other paraphernalia of the competitive education system will enhance the ability of students in this regard.

The only one who who could teach Julia Gillard anything was the Uni she went to. She was successfully indoctrinated for life to ignore reality.

Hasbeen, where have you been during your life? Apparently, wherever you have been, you never failed. You must be a superman and just like Julia Gillard, you must have reached your present position by a poll of flag-followers idiots.

Gillard's contribution to extending education into a useful activity is not so much negligable, as negative.

But I do not quite agree with Phil when he says she has conned principals.

They have willingly gone along with all this rubish, for years.

Maybe not all of them, indeed, our primary school boss certainly didn't, but most of them do.

My child(ren) 'suffer' within the Ed Qld system, and when I say that it is not a sleight aimed at his current six teachers, with only one child now left in the system, all of whom are doing a good job, but a comment on the institution they all work in.

Our school, and all those around us and across the state, are sausage factories of compliance and obedience.

Education is not the central purpose, but a side plate of serendipitous good fortune, and good luck.

Gillard has imposed yet another level of coercion, but has not introduced coercion, which has been the hallmark of schooling for years, if not forever.

But the coercion Gillard has brought takes schools even further from any hope of positive change.

One has to both read Phil Cullen's book, 'Back to Drastics', and understand the political situation in Qld, then and now, to understand how poorly served we are here by the entire edifice of EQ.

I suspect, but do not know from bitter experience, that each state and territory would be very similar, since none is organised differently.

We certainly need an 'education revolution', here in Qld (the smart state) and in all other states/territories, but it will never arrive via a vote seeking politician, or via a teacher union, or via any mob of current school principals, and certainly not via a university that trains students to become a teacher, or the academics who teach therein.

It will only come from angry parents prepared to organise and demolish the current system, instead of shrugging their shoulders and paying school fees to private schools.

So, we are lumbered with a farce, education, that our community knows is deficient, but prefers to pretend otherwise.