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The Forum > Article Comments > Are standards slipping? > Comments

Are standards slipping? : Comments

By Ross Farrelly, published 20/2/2006

It’s virtually impossible to define an excellent education system and equally hard to agree on what is a dismal education system.

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Opinionated2

I should just add:
9: Allow children who do not speak even a single word of English into classes with only 40 minutes of ESL help each week.
10. Place inexperienced teachers into the most difficult schools then wonder why they leave and the children fail.
Posted by sajo, Monday, 20 February 2006 6:59:14 PM
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Yep Sajo,

They are two good additions to the list... Has anyone else got any to add? I have added another below

Just so noone suspects I'm a teacher... I'm not a teacher!

Here is the list of 10 so far....

1. Underfund public education giving State Schools less resources
2. Pinch money from the State schools and give it to the Private Schools
3. Allow private schools to expel problem kids and put them into the State system
4. Don't give back up support to State School teachers who have medically diagnosed learning disability children in their classes
5. With no training or support expect State School teachers to deal with the added burden of allowing more disbled kids into the State system ... lessening the use of special purpose schools.
6. Undermine the teachers further by blaming them for everything that is wrong with education.
7. Never acknowledge the marking and preperation that teachers do after hours and on the weekend and definitely don't pay them for it.
8: Allow children who do not speak even a single word of English into classes with only 40 minutes of ESL help each week.
9. Place inexperienced teachers into the most difficult schools then wonder why they leave and the children fail.
10. Underfunding remedial services ... so the kids with difficulties get an hour a week when they should get 5 or more...

Finally announce that there is a big move to private schools and that State schools don't give a good eductaion and let market forces do the rest
Posted by Opinionated2, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 12:02:34 AM
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I could be wrong but is it true that independent and Catholic schools educate children far more cheaply than State schools? If this is true then it saves the taxpayer alot of money.(I think this takes into account school fees too)

If these schools have a way of doing it well and cheaply and attract parents then government support to educate even more Australians cheaply and well ought to be encouraged, no?

I’m not one for treating the market as an idol, but it can and does reward excellence.
Posted by Martin Ibn Warriq, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 5:32:30 AM
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I couldn't leave without including Malcolm Muggeridge

"On radio and television panels, on which I have spent more time than
I care to remember, to questions such as: What does the panel think
should be done about the rising rate of juvenile delinquency? The
answer invariably offered is: more education. I can hear the voices
ringing out now, as I write these words; the males ones throaty and
earnest, with a tinge of indignation, the female ones particularly
resonant as they insist that, not only should there be more education,
but more and better education. It gives us all a glow of righteousness
and high purpose. More and better education – that's the way to get
rid of juvenile delinquency, and adult delinquency, for that matter,
all other delinquencies. If we try hard enough, and are prepared to
pay enough, we can surely educate ourselves out of all our miseries
and troubles, and into the happiness we seek and deserve. If some
panel member – as it might be me – ventures to point out that we have
been having more, and what purports to be better, education for years
past, and that nonetheless juvenile delinquency is still year by year
rising, and shows every sign of going on so doing, he gets cold
hostile looks. If he then adds that, in his opinion, education is a
stupendous fraud perpetrated by the liberal mind on a bemused public,
and calculated, not just to reduce juvenile delinquency, but
positively to increase it, being itself a source of this very thing;
that if it goes on following its present course, it will infallibly
end by destroying the possibility of anyone having any education at
all, the end product of the long expensive course from kindergarten to
post graduate studies being neo-Stone Age men – why, then, a
perceptible shudder goes through the other panelists, and even the
studio audience. It is blasphemy."
Posted by Martin Ibn Warriq, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 5:33:57 AM
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Hi y'all
If I might be so bold, the problem with the multiple education debates is that they degenerate into generalities. Positions and propositions are asserted, authorities and counter-authorities are cited, and allegations of bias and ideology are thrown around.

What 'standards' are we talking about? To take one alluded to in the article and contained in some of Donelly's writing:

"Should someone entering a science course in Australia have a sound grasp of rudimentary differential and integral calculus?"

This is part of the third dot point in the article. The traditional answer in most of Australia was yes. Consequently, University science courses assumed this rudimentary knowledge and sought to build from that point. In the USA, the answer was no. Consequently, the US produces many Calculus text books that assume only algebra and geometry for their college level courses. If our 'standards' in this area "slip" to the level of the USA, were they too high to start with, then becomes one question. Another is, if we want to, how do we maintain the 'standard' we had.

Unfortunately, this level of specificity is lost in the politicisation of the debate. I believe that until we can answer the specific questions, the general debate is mostly bovine faeces (if the usual Australian translation of this is profanity, this forum is un-Australian! [sorry, couldn't resist]).

Sometimes, arguing semantics is fundamental to problem definition, which logically precedes problem solving.

odsoc
Posted by odsoc, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 8:35:14 AM
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Winston Smith, the argument re privatisation of public commodities has actually been proven in favour of the negative: read for yourself here -

http://petaldavid.blogspot.com/2005/11/dont-believe-age-age-in-its-regular.html

And thanks odsoc, you summarised it beautifully. Take heart from the latest findings from the UK, in that school fees are so expensive now that people are starting to move away from them. The same will happen here (particularly with the increasing HECS fees at the end of secondary education) and there will be a lot of loud articulate parents demanding improved state education services. The government will have no choice but to deliver on these demands, and the likes of Kevin Donnelly and Ross Farrelly will not be able to publish their articles anywhere, because they are full of old, outdated ideas.
Posted by petal, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 3:47:10 PM
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