A test was undertaken of grade 9 students in a state in Australia.

A question was : -

If someone had 24 green apples and 12 red apples, what was the fraction of red apples?

1/3 of the grade 9 students in the state did not get the right answer.

I really believe many teachers in Australia do not understand the full situation. Australian students are not just competing amongst themselves, they are also competing with students on an international basis, and their chances of being able to compete with students in other countries in future years is rather grim.

I have regular contact with some students in another country. They may know 2-3 speaking languages, but also 5-6 computer languages. They won’t import a piece of software, they will write the software.

Compare this to our education system that allows 1/3 of students to not know elementary mathematics, and an education system that imports everything.

If the question really was as Vanna says — "If someone had 24 green apples and 12 red apples, what was the fraction of red apples? — I'm with the two-thirds who didn't know the answer. I don't even know the question (though I can make good guess at what it was trying to ask).

It's badly worded.

Should've been in the English exam.

GlenC, Houellebecq

Perhaps you can understand this: -

"It’s important that we ensure that new national standards for teaching and school leadership address the inner person, and that standards aren’t reduced to standardisation, says David Loader."

http://research.acer.edu.au/teacher/vol2010/iss215/4/

A statement that can mean anything to anyone, but so typical of many statements now being produced in the world of Australian academia.

1/3 has more meaning.

Lucky kid he could and did absent himself from the torture chamber
Seems no one cared about his attending

What about the poor unfortunates who do attend and are bored out of their brains, frustrated beyond belief because there is no challenge, often little to inculcate the love of learning........... not even an SRA kit(available in the 70's) with which they can challenge themselves LOL

Frighteningly this state of affairs can lead to quite serious psychological conditions in intelligent children and they can be lost to the system

I have a feeling of deja vu reading this article and the respondents
We seem to talk about these things and never find the answer

Vanna
Did you read the whole article by David Loader
His thoughts were not expressed so that one could readily understand but there were some considerations that were worth reflection namely that principls and other leaders should inject input into that body and form it in a way that is useful and significant

My own thought is that philosophy be an essential component of every teachers learning. Until teachers have some comprehension of the multitude of perceptions about how the world works they wont understand their learners and will be unable to enter their world for teaching.

"It’s important that we ensure that new national standards for teaching and school leadership address the inner person, and that standards aren’t reduced to standardisation, says David Loader."

Touché!

The main object of institutionalised schooling is standardisation. It's a factory and it is designed to turn out the standardised article to fit a standardised occupation in a standardised society.
It is such an overarching edifice that in many cases, parents feel that they have nothing they can offer education-wise to their children. They feel "unqualified" and believe that education is something that only happens at school.
I'm a home educator, and this allows us an incredible amount of freedom - and an opportunity (with a bit of guidance) for my son to develop the ability to "think for himself".

Gaj,
How the world works is that if you continuously import everything, then eventually there is not enough money left to fund the education system, so that people such as David Loader can come up with their meaningless statements.

To actually produce something, the person would have to understand basic mathematics, something I think many teachers do not understand. Particulary when their pay packets are not directly attached to the trade deficit or student marks.

Perhaps if we told the kids the truth, that the tests were actually testing the teacher, & meant it, the kids may find the tests less ---well---testing.

Perhaps if we got rid of teachers who continually failed to teach their students anything, the kids may learn more.

Perhaps if we went back to starting trade training, in most trades at the end of junior high, [when the kids all ready have had enough of "schooling"] the kids may do better.

Perhaps if we had more in school apprenticeships, & technical courses many of these kids would do better. Oh, may be not, that would probably be considered disadvantaging girls.

Perhaps if guidance officers, & teachers stressed that you need the 3Rs if you want earn enough to have all the stuff, like plasmas, DVDs & nice cars etc, the kids would do better.

Perhaps if those like GAL realised that kids have to read, write, & add before you can change them with much more than pinching cars, the kids would do better.

Perhaps if we made it illegal to employ teachers in any policy positions in education departments, the kids would do better.

Perhaps if those policy positions were honorary positions reserved for successful business people, [like those who will be employing the graduates] the kids would do better.

This author has some very interesting and challenging things to say about what happens in schools.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/gandhdvd.htm

Didn't arithmatic go out the door when calculators came in.
I was taught logarithms and square roots, when i left school that was the end of that. Spent the last 38 years in the building trade. Still aint used a logarithm.
There needs to be teaching of life and Australian history, and that includes hoonism.
Who wants to know how many nights sat around a round table.
More realism in the class room is needed. Teach kids to be human beans.
The basics are missing in favour of things that do not relate to life.

I am in favour of the ant colony, you are asoldier, you are a worker, you are useless. and educate them accordingly.. Tee time.

Hasbeen,

I don't think the tests are testing the teacher. The third of grade 9 students in Victoria who did not know that 12/36 is 1/3 were somehow passed into grade 9.

They would also be passed into grade 10, and the teachers probably awarded a pay rise grabbed from the taxpayer.

How relavent is knowing that 12 is a third of 36...What are you going to do with it.
Check out operators don't need to know that, it's on the screen in front of them. Times have moved on. computers are not going to go away.
Those year 9 kids would be better off knowing how many calories there is in a big mac.
The kids are being taught by old school requirements. not up to date...

As an advocate of performance-based pay, vanna, I assume that you'll be pushing for a hefty Christmas bonus for Queensland teachers this December. After all, our kids recorded the greatest improvement in NAPLAN results this year. THAT takes a lot of effort and skill. It's easy to keep A-grade students at an A; it's a lot harder to pull the B- and C-grade students up to that level. As the closest thing we have to standardised national testing, NAPLAN affords our current batch of Queensland teachers quite a good rap.

Besides my frivolous comment to vanna, though, your article was very interesting. I agree with your sentiment about tests, tests and more tests. The most painful thing about it, as a teacher, is that we are being pushed to sacrifice real learning for the sake of these tests. I am lucky enough to work in a school (now) that uses the compulsory tests like NAPLAN as diagnostics. The idea is that they tell us a bit about the strengths and weaknesses of our curriculum, which we address. We don't teach test-taking skills, force countless practice tests on our students or push them to do better on these tests for the sake of their fellow students.

Sadly, I am aware of few other schools that behave in this way. So many focus on NAPLAN and QCS at the expense of other learning. I can understand that students are frustrated with school when the focus of their learning is, in so many cases, improving results on an arbitrary test that has no real impact on their post-schooling lives.

Otokonoko,
If the students marks are improving in all the major tests (for both girl and boy students) then the teachers should get some type of bonus.

However, it doesn’t take much to improve the marks of QLD primary school students.

Up until recently, about 5% of QLD primary school teacher’s time was being spent teaching science, and 78% of year 4 teachers did not use a science text book.

Queensland students' interest in science was below all 41 OECD countries, (or the lowest of all OECD countries), and the maths results for primary school students were below world average.

So it wouldn’t take much to improve on that absolutely abysmal record.

It is true that there are schools carrying out minimal analysis of student marks, with schools totally prepared to have the students repeat the same mistakes year after year.

These schools have had excuses (often supplied by the teachers union) that parents are to blame, or not enough taxpayer funding, or socio-economic circumstances, or too much money going to private schools blah, blah, blah.

I have seen areas of risk management in schools that were absolutely primitive, like stepping back 30 – 40 years.

One of the most insidious situations is the number of teachers I have heard saying that boy’s “do all right later on”.

This allowed these teachers to form a completely dismissive attitude towards boy students, and whenever marks were allowed out or made public, the boy’s marks were often in the lower half or lower quartile.

So it is increased marks for both boy and girl students in the major tests, and there can be an appropriate bonus.

If the marks decline or stay the same, there is no bonus or pay rise. This is no different to how many, (if not the majority), of companies now operate, and for many teachers, it is simply joining the real world.

 
Have a look at

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html
 

A million thanks to bobd35 and hoHum for supplying the provocative sites. I was not familiar with the work of Sugata Mitra, but his work is most interesting, isn't it? Must check him further. He alerts us to crucial elements of efficient teaching strategies...certainly at the maieutic end of a continuum of strategies. I liked his quote: "Education is a self-organising system where learning in an emerging phenomenon."
Alfie K is another kettle of fish, isn't he? Like him? He and Susan Ohanian are on the same wavelength. Susan is worth checking for her forthrightness. Try www.susanohanian.org. She provides a pile of quotations, as does Bruce Hammonds of NZ at www.leading-learning co.nz
They can all be provoking.
Might I add a comment for those who converse about the national curriculum? A group of 'experts' writes the various syllabuses. Success in achievement of their measureable bits is judged by Naplan tests constructed by ACER's test experts. The more notice we take of the results, the more we ensure that the national curriculum is really determined by the measurment experts at ACER. It sounds like that little pest that keep going around in ever decreasing circles.
So ! Who does what to whom and why?
Filip

I will also add my thanks for the link to Alfie Kohn. Navigating away from the linked advertisement to his homepage, I found a wide range of interesting and thought-provoking articles. The article "From Degrading to De-Grading" was particularly interesting. While it critiques practices that are substantially different from those that take place in Queensland (I can't speak with any authority about other states), his arguments are compelling if a little lopsided.

For Grades 6 and 7, I attended a primary school that had long done away with grades. All feedback was written, and constructive criticism was the order of the day. It wasn't all feelgood stuff, either - the purpose of each written comment was similar to the "appreciative inquiry" trend in educational leadership today: identify what is good and work out what can make it better. Sometimes, that is harder to swallow than simply being told that your work isn't up to scratch. It also opens the void of "beyond the A" - had I written like Shakespeare, painted like da Vinci and sang like ... well, a really good singer, they still would have suggested new directions for me. The message was that life is all about improving rather than "becoming really good and staying that way".

The downside was that the principal appeared to be motivated largely by a need to prove himself. While he spoke vehemently against competition within the school, he pushed students into inter-school competitions to show how brilliant they were and how brilliant the school was. The winners (and not just the sporting winners) were afforded great acclaim, while the "losers" hid in the shadows. I will say this, though. The school produced an extraordinary number of high-achievers both in high school and in the post-schooling world. The community continues to be suspicious of this school and its zany ways, but I suspect that they are slowly twigging onto the fact that something they are doing is right.

Flip
"Who does what to whom and why"

If NAPLAN is what society wants and needs, then use NAPLAN.

The alternative is something such as the QLD system where the teachers began to decide what society wanted and needed.

About 4 out of 5 primary school teachers were female, and maths and science were almost completely elliminated out of primary schools (too male).

It was a system that consumed 10% of the state's budget, to produce probably the worst education system in the western world (and that would be supported by international tests).

It is also a system that will take years to put right, and get back to where it once was.

Otokonoko,
Your comments are inspirational. Your quotable quote " Life is all about improving, rather than becoming really good and staying that way",suggests that trying to fit all Australian children into the one mould [as Susan O says is what national testing does] restricts progress.
Your brief description of your school also suggests that schools can be of many, many shapes, whose products are achievement-oriented, still looking for learning challenges and satisfied with what they are doing.
I checked Sudford Valley School which then led to A.S.Neill's Summerhill and so on, so-called 'way-out' schools....but still have a message for those who wish to lift their game. Worth a google.
Thank you, Otokonoko
Filip

Filip,

Talking of schools being many many shapes - did you ever see a film titled "To Be and To Have" (Etre et Avoir)? It is a documentary of a small rural one teacher school in France - a beautiful film and well worth a look. (Made in 2002 and nominated for a BAFTA)

Poirot,
Why don't you have an Australian film?

I have a story. I had a retired uncle who did maths tutoring of primary school students after hours at the school.

He had no training in teaching, but the students thought he was fantastic.

He did it for free, but did a better job of teaching the students then the teachers who were being paid.

Dear Vanna,

I'm a student of the world - and I found this film inspiring in its simplicity.
Your example demonstrates that children need to connect with the things they are learning and with the people who are guiding them.
I'm all for Australian examples, nevertheless, we all share a common humanity, so why should we not also look to the wider world for stories like yours?

Poirit,
I know, I know.

That is possibly why there is hardly a thing left in the classrooms that has been made in Australia.

The author doesn't like American influences in our classrooms. But here is a teacher enthralled with the iPad, an American device.

http://ozteacher.com.au/html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=743:ipad-review-jessica-harvey&catid=17:technology&Itemid=116

She likes the iPad, because she doesn't have to understand the file structure.

I know of students who do understand the file structure of iPad. In fact, they write application to go onto iPad. They do it in their spare time to earn money to further their studies.

They don't live in Australia, and that is now becoming a major difference between students in Australia and elsewhere.

vanna, we're never going to agree about the importation issue, simply because every school with which I have been involved makes considerable use of Australian resources. Textbooks in particular tend to be generated by local companies to address specific curriculum requirements set out in syllabus documents. The use of tailored software like maths games is on the way out as the push for Web 2.0 technologies (creating rather than passively using) grows stronger.

Where you are correct is that we make extensive use of American programs such as the Office package and the Adobe Creative Suite. I put it to you, though, that this is much more beneficial for students than developing a local alternative for use in schools that will never be used in the outside world. Students engage with the packages they will be required to use when they pursue careers in business and industry.

Where I think you ARE onto something, though, is your mention of kids creating apps for iPads. There is a spirit of innovation in that, and one that can be transferred across a wide range of subject areas. Present students with a problem, have them generate an app to solve the problem. It's not just IT we would be teaching there - it's IT, it's maths, it's science, it's literacy - it hass applications across the whole curriculum. It would be wonderfully rewarding and would engender in students the belief that they have the tools and the ability to use them to solve a wide range of problems. That is certainly more relevant to life as a whole than having the ability to reach Band 10 on NAPLAN or achieve a great mark on QCS.

Dear Vanna,

Interesting article - I'm a bit of a technological dinosaur (although I'm improving). I've only been using a computer and the internet since early 2009.
My young son, however, is reasonably computer savvy (better than me, not surprisingly).
If I had wanted him to learn to read "The Cat in the Hat", I would have suggested that he go and retrieve it. This would have necessitated him thinking where it was. He would have walked to his bedroom, then to his bookshelf, and then gone to shelf that contained the book.
There would have been structure to his thought processes in locating the book - as opposed to it magically appearing at the press of "one" button.

Otokonoko, Porit
If you investigate thoroughly enough, most of the publishing houses in Australia are actually owned by US parent companies, and they are choosing to use more of their own staff. Within a decade or so, there will probably be no textbook writers left in Australia.

But it is not just textbooks being imported into schools, it is everything else from the light switch to the lawnmower.

Back to the article published by the teacher of IT in a high school.

Her words were ”
These products are truly amazing and wonderful and students love them because - they don’t have to think.”

THEY DON”T HAVE TO THINK.

Hmmm.

There was the attempt to remove maths and science out of primary schools in QLD (too hard and too male). There also seems to be great opposition to NAPLAN and to exams in general, but NAPLAN and exams require thinking.

I wonder where teachers think applications on iPAD come from. Do they think these applications are developed by mythical creatures who live in a far away land, and then give these applications to Earth people in Australia as a gift.

No.

So many are being written by students in India. Many of Microsoft's programs are also being written in India, which was once thought of as being a third world country.

These students have learnt how to think. Their education system made them think.

How do we win, then, vanna? In the past, you have pointed an accusing finger at teachers for importing almost everything. Now you're telling us that even locally-produced textbooks from ostensibly Australian publishing houses aren't good enough because they have American parent companies. It seems that the problem is not, as you have previously suggested, a problem with teachers. If no textbooks are Australian enough for you, do you suggest that we should simply not use textbooks at all?

Interestingly, it works both ways. The online systems used in my diocese are generated by Editure, an Australian company that has bought a considerable market share in the USA. I suppose there is a chance that the software was developed elsewhere, though this is unlikely as their software division is based in Melbourne.

All of this, though, is barely related to the topic at hand. The statistics offered by the OECD places us near the top of the developed world in most indicators related to education. I would like to see us AT the top, not NEAR it. With the innovative overseas ideas described by you, vanna, and by others in this discussion, it is increasingly obvious that we need to pull our socks up if we are to retain our place, let alone improve it.

Otokonoko,
In regards to textbooks, in the past a textbook writer would write the actual words and quite often do the diagrams. They would also receive royalty payments.

Now a textbook usually comes with quite elaborate drawings or artwork, it may also have a software disk enclosed, and there maybe also be website attached to the book.

So the writer who writes the words is only a small part of the production team, and publishing houses are tending to pay these writer a once only fee with no royalty payments.

There are unlikely to be many Australian textbook writers in future years, and most of the intelligence for a textbook is being created elsewhere.

The continuous importation of just about everything into the education system, eventually means that there is a loss of intelligence from the country, because the intelligence is being discovered and created elsewhere (and iPad is another example). If you investigate it, nearly all copywrite or patent in a school has been developed outside of the country.

Australia normally features in world education results because most children attend a school. However there are few indicators to show that the education is of much quality, and with tests such as the TIMSS test, Australia is now very average or below world average.

I can assure you that there are students in other countries who are very advanced compared to Australian students, and these students are developing and producing a range of items. They are not sitting back and asking for government spending. Australia is very lucky to have a small population and a large amount of coal.

vanna, the indicators I was speaking of are drawn from the PISA testing. Thus the proportion of children who attend school is irrelevant. PISA tests are conducted at schools, so only the kids who attend are tested. While I am reluctant to use test results in a discussion of the problems with testing, they do suggest that the problem isn't as dramatic as you would have us believe. In a nutshell:

Science:
Boys: #7 out of 38
Girls: #6 out of 38
(Both have a score of 527, 26 points above the OECD mean for boys and 28 above the mean for girls)

Mathematics:
Boys: #7 out of 38 (24 above OECD mean)
Girls: #10 out of 38 (21 above mean)

Reading:
Boys: #6 out of 37 (22 above mean)
Girls: #6 out of 37 (21 above mean).

In most cases, a trend can be seen - the same countries are ahead of us, the same behind. Canada, New Zealand and Estonia tend to do better; interestingly, the USA and UK are both consistently behind us, as are most of the European nations. Surprisingly, Japan's boys are ahead of us in science and maths; otherwise, despite their cram schools and strong work ethic, they still lag behind.

Of course, this is drawn from arbitrary testing with no real basis in educational outcomes. No doubt the next set of results to be released (more recent tests HAVE been conducted) will show a different picture. Maybe no more or less accurate, but different nonetheless.

Otokonoko,

It has always seemed to me that our education system is based on a competitive ethic rather than one of genuine learning
It doesn't take children very long to discern which end of society's heap to which they are going to be assigned. It is all comparative - and that seems to be reflected in all the "testing" which takes place, either between the children themselves or between the various countries participating.
I chose not to "train my son to test" for the NAPLAN tests and he did not participate in them (which is my prerogative as a home educator). It seems to me that NAPLAN is not conducted for the benefit of the child's education, but instead to keep tabs on the education system.

Otokonoko,
It is interesting that so many in education point to the PISA tests, but not to the TIMSS tests, which show a vastly different result.

The results of the TIMSS tests begin to match the results of NAPLAN, and also a series of other international tests that can be undertaken.

Ultimately, when almost everything a teacher uses in the classroom is now imported, from textbooks to the overhead projector, it highlights an ultimate failure of the education system, because most of the productivity and intelligence in the classroom is now being imported from elsewhere.

vanna,

One could similarly question why you cling so desperately to TIMSS and ignore PISA. The reality is, they both test different things. TIMSS focuses on what students know, PISA focuses on what students can do with their knowledge. Given that you are concerned with teaching students to think, the latter is a closer match to your interests. How TIMSS can produce similar results to NAPLAN is beyond me, as they test very different things in very different contexts.

As for your importation argument, I have tried to understand but must come to the conclusion that your argument is simply unfounded. This afternoon, while at work, I had a look at the authors and publishers of all of the textbooks currently cluttering up my desk. All but one were published in Australia, and all but two authors are Australian. One of the foreigners, a Canadian, co-authored the book with an Australian. The only things shipped offshore are printing and, in some cases, corporate ownership. That you seem fit to blame teachers for the overseas manufacture of light switches, overhead projectors and other devices is quite absurd. It says more about your desire to blame teachers for all our nation's woes than it does about teachers' actual role in this apparent national catastrophe. Would you really have us forsake things such as iPads simply because they're not Australian designed or made? What sort of competitive edge would that give our kids on the global stage?

If you would like to continue this discussion, I'm happy to do so elsewhere. I shall not continue it here, though, out of respect for Filip's already-derailed thread. The actual topic of this discussion still has some way to go, and I'm not interested in continuing to hamper that progress.

Otokonoko,
As I have attempted to explain, there are likely to be few if any textbook writers left in Australia in future years, although I know of no teacher alarmed by it.

For example:
“The report's author, ASA director Jeremy Fisher, has warned that publishers are cutting costs by forcing authors to sign contracts that are unfair.

Textbook writers are being asked to sign contracts with minimal or no royalty payments and also to sign away copyright, allowing the publisher to reprint texts digitally.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/publishers-screwing-textbook-writers/story-e6frg6no-1111115916111

"TIMSS focuses on what students know"

Exactly, and so does NAPLAN, which is why so many students do so badly in those tests. The situation becomes critical in areas such as maths and science.

For example:
"THE state of maths and science at Australian schools and universities has deteriorated to a "dangerous level", the nation's top mathematicians have warned.

He told The Australian that what had become apparent was the outstanding quality of international students compared with local students."

The review said universities would be forced to respond to the dumbing down by introducing costly remedial programs. It found that many teacher trainees had dropped maths in school to maximise their tertiary entry rank, and among them "mathematics phobia" was widespread.

IN 2007, 40 per cent of senior maths teachers did not have three years of university study.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/mathematics-students-in-serious-decline/story-e6frg6nf-1225838901032

The reason why there has been a decline in maths and science nationally is because there has been minimal interest in maths and science amongst teachers, and the cost has been colossal, not only in lost opportunities in the export market, but also in the cost of importing so many immigrants to compensate for the skills shortage, while we have 600,000 unemployed.

The reason why there are so few things made in Australia in a school or university, is because there has been minimal interest amongst teachers, and the ongoing costs are also colossal, because so many students now think that nothing can be made inside the country.