Jayb,

If you had a said in the first place that you were talking about business and computer studies only, I wouldn’t have even commented, but you said “most of what is learnt at school has no real use in the real world”. Even when you said that the course content bears “no relationship to Business methods being used in the Business word” (why the capitals?), it sounded like you expected every subject to be concerned with the business world.

Well ok, sorry for the miss understanding.

As a part of my Business studies I had to do a Course on Surds. I had never heard of them & neither had anyone else I spoke to. The teacher had an obsession with them. He didn't even know where or what they were used for. We had to do them anyway because it was a part of the course. I still don't know what they are used for. There were a few other Modules in this Course that were of the same ilk. These Courses just went up to make a score for the Diploma. I believe that there are many instances of material like that being taught in schools.

With my Trade Course. I was a late Tradie. I did Engineering (Tradesperson Mechanical) I was also required to do several Modules of Electrical & several modules of Wood Working. By the way. I set the original Course for Apprentices going onto a Building site for the first time. I did the research for the Railway & submitted the Modules & they passed them on to the TAFE for approval. TAFE didn't have a similar Course for Apprentices so they rung me & asked if they could have permission to use my Modules for Apprentices. I was somewhat chuffed. I worked in the Railways Workshops in Townsville for 26 year & formed the first Semi-autonomous Work Group of 46 Tradesmen in 1995. No Manager.

I must say that there is not one thing on my Trade Course that I have not used constantly. Even now that I am retired. It’s handy down at the “Men’s Shed” as well. There was virtually nothing on the Business Course that I found useful in Co-Managing the Stuart Wagon Maintenance Workshop.

If you haven’t heard of it “The Mens Shed” is an organization set up to keep us ‘Old Farts' out of our wives hair. Google it.

I would be interested in hearing what you think of my ideas the types of classes i’ve mentioned in my previous posts..

Plant3.1,

Seeing you have a sense of humour I shall call you Geranium3.1.

Howzat?

Labor has failed every time it has thrown money at problems. From home insulation to solar energy. NBN too: Australia's problem is sustainable energy. Self reliance in near Capital City GEOTHERMAL wells, plus modular turbine & generator industries is ALL important. NBN is like icing a cake when you have no cake!

Thus its no surprise that teacher performance funding is doomed. Naplan tests are a way to hide the inevitable waste by massaging test results to show government improvements where none exist. Lies and statistics oh yeah!

The root problem is disrespct for teaches as losers and government payouts to teachers while mum and dad motgage the house to pay electricity bills will worsen that.

I reiterate 90% of classrooms are adversarial and the 40:1 'teacher loses' scenario is robbing kids of an education and teachers of their sanity.

The solution is 2 teachers:80 students or with restructure of the proposed extra funding 2:60 perhaps. That way one set of eyes is on discipline, talent, weakness and opportunity while the other is on the blackboard.

I KNOW classrooms. You seem to be in an administrative education cloud.

To summarise: You can build a ramp of plastic money under kids and slide them to the river of knowledge but you CANT MAKE THEM THINK. Unless you gang up on 'em and pack-hunt-down their 'bassic fundamendal' talents.

You may quote me 'cause I'm a Cath-a-holic.

Jayb,

I can’t see the relevance of surds in a business course either. In fact, while I remember the word, I had to look it up to find out what it meant.

My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my mother all worked for the railways. They were a very significant institution in Victoria.

I have heard of men’s sheds – a good idea from what I understand.

Teaching is a complicated process. Some of it involves the teacher doing old-fashioned stuff like presenting information; some of it involves students going in their own directions; some of it involves the teacher setting a range of different tasks for different students; some of it involves students working together. There are 500,000 studies that show students learn more when they are actually taught, but the current revival of the failed 1970s open classroom fad is stopping teachers from actually teaching. No doubt, it will be abandoned again, as it was last time. It’s a pity that so many students will be subject to it before its failure is accepted.

This is a useful to very useful piece, not least because of the information about Shanghai-China. Some of the commentary in other domains, especially in the US, has not been careful enough in reacting to the PISA 2009 results concerning Shanghai.

Many of the points made merit attention of course. However, the Productivity Commission is reported explicitly as recommending performance pay for teachers in the workforce report issued last month.

Having read a very substantial part of the recent literature on performance pay - all of which shows especially for people such as teachers that it is a waste of money, I scanned the Productivity Commission Report ready to pounce on any statement which ignored the evidence.

The Commission's Report does not endorse or recommend performance pay! It specifically points out "Efforts to improve teacher performance should not focus on the payment of performance bonuses. The long history of mixed results from overseas experiments with teacher bonuses suggests that an effective and widely-applicable system is unlikely to emerge in the foreseeable future."

It goes on to say, "The Australian Government should reformulate its proposed Reward Payments for Great Teachers initiative as a temporary program that aims to facilitate future consideration of a performance-based career structure for teachers. The initiative should:
• only provide reward payments to high-performing teachers — this will ... require the development of effective assessment methods to certify teachers ...
• not entrench an expectation that higher certification automatically entitles teachers to higher pay .. "

This is hardly an endorsement of merit pay!

One other comment. Why is it that every article of this kind brings forth personal opinion about teachers and teaching – usually the same old shibboliths - and recommendations based on personal experience instead of a response to the article? Australia is becoming known as a country that will not change. That concerns education as much as climate change, water use planning, infrastructure development and a whole suite of other issues. We need to get back on task!

To Jayb et al,

You've really hit on something here - what are parents thinking sending their kids to these otherworld institutions called schools? And these teachers, how dare they have the gall to think they might be able to teach kids how to learn after spending all that time in some parallel universe!

Newsflash, schools exist in the real world. Walk around your local community and you might even see a real one for yourself, full of real kids, being dropped off by real parents in real cars.

I shudder to think what our kids would learn about the world if it was left to the private sector to school them.

Education is about a whole lot more than training someone to be a servant of capital.