Bondi Pete. My children don't want to even think about thinking, they just want to remember what they have been told as they are concerned about making mistakes because they know that all the attention will be placed on the mistakes and their marks. I just despair when I see what the system has done to thier brains, confidence and potential.

Oliver, if my children had of been happy I wouldn't be complaining thats for sure, I would be praising the system.

Jolanda and Bondi Pete,

There is a difference between pedagogy and andragogy. Young chindren need instruction,adults don't. There is a middle ground in my experience 16-22 years, as adolescents become adults, mentally and with regards independence.

At undergrad. university, I often set exams 30% rote, 70% critical/independent thought, but it does depend on whether it is a 101 or 301 subject. One does need to know the rudiments and also to apply their undestanding in a variety of novel situations.

Outcomes based education has many meanings. In one sense, it is nothing new, as teachers have always taught to outcomes. In WA, it seems to be disaster in the making. In Victoria, it was the result of a plot by the Right to undermine public education by falsely claiming that prior to the Liberal election victory of 1992 teachers had been teaching processes instead of content, that spending money on education is just 'throwing money' at education and that teachers were a privileged and pampered elite. Thus, its introduction was used to provide rhetorical cover for the disposal of 9,000 teachers, the tearing up of previously legally enforceable contracts setting out teaching and learning conditions and a whole host of other absurdities.

Victoria still has OBE. Among the outcomes are specific requirements for traditional skills such as correct grammar and vaguer less assessable items. The danger in it is, as Peter Sellick points out, is that what cannot be measured is discounted and the teacher's role as a developer of minds becomes narrowed to what can be measured: nothing has meaning unless it can be turned into a number.

It is difficult for teachers to resist this pressure because their profession is under sustained attack from the Right whose claims about what teachers do in schools are false but repeated ad nauseam

Peter ,For school students, there was no indifference to todays problems with their inspired winning performance of ST COLUMBA'S COLLEGE in the Rock Eisteddfod .They loved getting their message over about the methods of political control used by our and other governments .
They will make good citizens well aware of the politics of fear .
No wonder Howard wants to take the Education curriculum away from the States.For Australians, his would be a very different and "whitewashed" History.