Thank you Maximus for taking an interest and your sincere and worthy questions.

The answers to your specific queries about the Japanese syllabus are here:

boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/japanesec_syl.pdf

You will also find in those folders the prescribed vocabulary, grammar structures and kanji required for HSC.

And the answers to your more general questions are all on the transparent, publicly-accountable NSW Board of Studies website:

www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au

Including HSC standards, performance measures etc. And there are both external standards set by the board of studies, and internal standards set by the school and the teacher. At the end of year 12, the teacher's and school's internal standards are then offset against the state benchmarks, and "normed" to the overall state's performance to provide a common ground. For example, if one teacher has given all their students 100% in-class, but their exam performance reveals they're really only average students in the statewide exam - then the internal assessment scores are adjusted to reflect this.

Now, if you are as sincere as your questioning suggests, you will glance through these documents and quickly realise that there's more to this edu-macation business that meets the eye and hey, guess what, there actually are some specialist technical needs that teachers are trained in, in order to interpret and implement such documents.

Who would've thunk it?

But if you're like most insincere critics of education, you won't even take make the minimal effort required to give them a cursory examination, since it's much easier to carp on upon something than to make even a cursory attempt to understand what one is criticising.

The editors of The Australian hope you choose to do the latter, because this issue sells them a lot of newspapers, and if people had a good understanding of it, they'd realise there's a whole lot less to the "schools crisis" than meets the eye.

The choice, as always, is yours.

I think that there is a crisis in education. I have intellectually gifted children in the education system and they are just so tired of being 'educated' to think and sound the same and having to constantly compete to get access to the education that they need. They just want to enjoy their childhood and learn.

My children tell me that alot of their peers feel the same way and that many dont even know how smart they are because school just keeps focusing on where they dont measure up and not allowing them to excell and move forward in their areas of need.

The curriculum is stifling because they squeeze students in to age/grade barrells every year. The range in any group can be as much as 3 years and that is just chronologically, that doesn't include mentally. Then they aim to educate in the middle. For the vast majority it is a bad fit.

When school is boring or you dont understand school becomes a real chore and a pain and generally that leads children to being unhappy and often that leads to no good.

Mercurius,

Many thanks for your challenge - wink, wink. And by the way, I'm still gob-smacked by your brilliant name, I really love it. Salute.

But yes, I fear we on are different sides of the divide. Hopefully that shall not affect our dialogue on this most genuine and serious issue that this topic of education is.

I must tell you that when I read that you were referring me to "NSW Board of Studies", a chill ran down my spine and for me, credibility flew out the window - I have no respect for that lot of trash whatsoever.

Unfortunately at this time of night, I must attend to my domestic duties and cook the evening dinner - meat and 'tatoes, you understand, but with some gourmet sauce I am yet to assess and determine. It all depends upon what ingredients the resident matron has purchased for me and stocked in the pantry. However, I am enthused by your post and shall respond to it gracefully in the fullness of time.

And oh yeah, if you want your links to work on this site, paste the full URL into the text, like this - http://www... (accompanied with rest of address)

Look forward to further engagement tomorrow. All the very best mate. Respect.

Has anyone heard of the Barrows and Tamblyn (1982) Problem Based Learning Model (PBL) as taught at the Universiy of Newcastle Medical and Nursing Faculties?

I have taught PBL at four university nursing programs. Discovery learning - yes. Prescriptive - no. Outcomes based - yes - insofaras essential skills must be assessed and attained at an excellent level, for example: mental health assessment.

Cheers
Kay

I don't mean to offend those that have commented that their children complain about the limitations of the curriculum, indeed I find that a more non linear, post-modern approach to education curriculum would encompass the needs of the individual student, but you must realize the heart attack that would cause in parliament, considering the political rigor that Howard condemned the post colonial views of history recently. Neither do I want to take away from the concerns of the idealistic teacher, who feels the ‘outcomes’ based rubric hinders student academic exploration. I most exclusively want to highlight instead, for my own clarification (yes that means correct me if I am wrong) what this education row is really all about. As a recent school leaver (the class of 2002) and final year university student, I am finding this 'education crisis' debate to be rather unprogressive, tedious and recurrent of 1950s politics in this country. I am referring to John Howard’s comments concerning his concerns over left wing ideological influence.

Sorry, but before I do that, one point I do want to mention is the need to defend the use of outcome based education. I will concede that my experiences do not equal that of Mr. Sellick (occupational or generational) but my view as a former secondary humanities student does hold a contextual significance.

During my final years in secondary school, I was an avid student of English, modern history, ancient hist. I also was studied extra units in English and (dare I say it) studied post modernism for my HSC. The curriculum rubric for us students was like a Bible (bad use of simile) but it was an essential blueprint of the subject at hand, and a reference for our conceptualization of key themes and issues. As we would learn a new key theory, we would religiously highlight or tick the outcomes and be academically content.

(cont)

(cont)
These guidelines were never perceived as being restrictive, from a students point of view every point on the page represented an acquisition of ‘new’ information, new thoughts and questions. The rubric was how students were able to identify and self- assess their preparation for final exams and assessments. Personally I felt that it gave us a sense of autonomy as we could clearly make out the ‘beginning’ point and the ‘end’ point and see all the expectations in between. Like most things approached in a linear fashion, (teaching history in a modernist perspective) there was room for students to become disillusioned with the limitations imposed by these outcomes, they could also visibly perceive where they were falling behind. This only meant that it was clear to determine how much work was needed to get themselves back on ‘track’, more significantly so could the teachers.

The outcomes approach is but a small aspect of the larger more recent concern within the ‘education debate’. In his infamous Quadrant speech last week Mr. Howard attacked the Board of education for their role in creating and influencing a leftist ideology in Australia. Well ok, he didn’t specifically say the education system, just the ‘universities’ and the ‘communistic’ academic intelligentsia. He tried to downplay this ideological condemning by placing it in ‘the-way-history-is-taught’ context, once again taking up the battle in support of Windschuttle and Blainey and their conservative interpretations of Australian history.

If this is the real issue then Mr. Howard you really should come right out and say it. At least your Education Minister made it clear the other night in a vox pop outside parliament house, ‘...Students are being made to read Macbeth through a Marxist and feminist perspectives'... she was outraged and continued to point out how the curriculums were being completely distorted to represent the specific ideological beliefs of those in charge of creating them