As an environmental educator of 20 years and having personally been invited to collaborate and participate from Parks Victoria as an expert in protected areas management, I was blown away by the Kids Teaching Kids program. Especially with the extent to which students immersed themselves in the self discovery and learning, and the passion and creativity they demostrated sharing their learnings with their peers. Coincidentally, my own nephews particapted in several conferences over the years too, which allowed me to see how the skills and messages they learned, carried across into their ongoing behaviours outside of school. Congratulations on an amazing, life changing program :-)

I haven't seen Arron's programme in action, though the idea of children mentoring and teaching other children is decades old and has generally been effective in practice. I don't understand however why this programme cannot and should not exist besides standardised testing. Standardised tests usually measure achievement in literacy and numeracy. Properly used, they provide sound information for teachers, helping them to identify isues with which their students need help.

While I'm sympathetic to the need for leadership skills etc, few people can exercise these skills if they have poor literacy and numeracy skills. I'd also argue that parents have a right to know how their children's progres in these basic skills compares with the progress of other children of the same age. Standardised tests provide that sort of information to parents pretty accurately and enables parents teachers to ask probing questions of teachers about their children's learning needs.

Dear Aaron, I think what makes the “socialization” of education so dangerous is that you actually believe it.

This destructive narrative first achieved public prominence in the 1950’s through the CP Snow “Rede Lectures”.

It would seem they nailed your narrative before you were out of nappies?

More recently in a comprehensive series of essays called “The Corruption of the Curriculum” written during 2007 by authors such as Frank Furedi, Shirley Laws, Michele Ledda, Chris McGovern, Simon Patterson, Alex Standish, Robert Whelan and David Perks. The conclusion of these authors, all of whom are experienced teachers, is that the curriculum is being drained of intellectual content in favor of promoting political issues such racism, the environment and gender. Now where have we just heard about this Aaron? Oh yes, here.

Examples of the dumbing down process identified by the above authors include but are not limited to:

• Student centered educational approaches leading to constant attempts to make study more “relevant” to students immediate lives
• An underestimation of the capabilities of students and a desire to protect them from failure, leading to breaking down of subjects into ‘bite sized” chunks of digestible information at the expense of a deeper appreciation of the subjects as a whole
• The decline in practical work and laboratory experiments
• A disregard for the integrity of subject knowledge and an associated attempt to sideline teachers “knowledge intermediaries”
• Misplaced and exaggerated expectation about the role education can play in relation to wider social concerns
• Confusion about what science has to offer society

It must be remembered that these are only scientific study examples. Those of history, geography, literature, math’s and modern languages have also been subjected to equally drastic socialization or dumbing down.

I would love to hear more about your plans for trashing standardization or dumbing down our curriculums Aaron.

Oh dear, our one-size-fits-all system of education is indeed a disaster. I am currently tutoring a student who is a perceived failure. I’m sure he’s not a Rhodes’ scholar, but I’m also damned sure he has just got lost in the system. But, he sees himself as a failure.
Failure takes into account, environment, nurturing (both mental and physical) and academic systems. You see we have not moved along the continuum from the 19th century model of education. Sure we have put bells and whistles on how we do things, but that’s where it stands. We still have the same crappy mother duck and her ducklings in classrooms arrangement, and the current teaching standards demand that we all draw the same rose.
I wonder what would happen if we were to throw out all the photocopiers and the smart boards – for a time at least, open the doors, trust, and let the learning begin? Would behaviour be a problem?
Kids learn at point of need. They learn so well from each other. And…they learn in their own way. Did we all crawl, walk, utter our first words at the same time? That’s what we expect with standardized testing.
I was one of seven children and the teaching was left very much to the older siblings in the family. We all went to university (with hindsight I think that maybe we could have achieved 'greatness' had we not).
A friend of ours, a successful one at that, did not receive formal education in PNG until he was thirteen. And yet here in Australia, we cram them in, sometimes at 'nearly five'! The formal learning must begin so parents can get off to work!
And by the way Arron, I always liked the ‘little buggers’ in my classroom!
Maria

Excellent post, Rattie (Maria)...my sentiments precisely!

Rattie rocks. On ya!