HRS

re:
" ... after talking to many other P&C association members, it leads me to believe that their biggest problems result from not getting sufficient information about what is going on inside their schools. Quite often a Principal will only tell them what the Principal wants them to hear, ... "

"But a P&C association can make use of a Chaplain to find out more about what is occurring with the students inside the school, particularly if there are students at risk inside the school. That’s presupposing that the Chaplain system works well enough."

"A P&C can also train a Chaplain to give them information about what they want to know. For example:- They could ask a Chaplain to provide a monthly or semester report on the school, and then compare that to what the Principal has told them."

"Potentially the Chaplain can provide better information about what is occurring, and a P&C association can make good use of that information. That’s how the Chaplain can become a catalyst for improvements to occur inside a school."

reminds me of a post I put on another forum:

"Scientific American Editor John Rennie's remark about "The Skeptical Environmentalist" comes to mind: " … I am … reminded of H. L. Mencken's remark, "For every problem, there is a neat, simple solution, and it is always wrong." " "

I hope all will pardon me "quoting myself", but I have been driven to extremes, here, and after all, I'm only quoting myself quoting someone else quoting yet someone else again.

HRS, I would take your idea to your local pastor if I were you. Do you really think that the odd person of God is going to do your bidding and betray the confidence of the other educators he or she is working with? You need to discuss this one with a real person who is on your side.

Failing that, I suggest you volunteer for the school tuck shop. That's where the good goss goes down - but don't forget to make yourself useful.

Frank Gol,
The school that gave a grade 9 student a B+ for 15 out of 25 in science, also gets above state average OP scores for its grade 12 OP students. That is another example of how arbitrary and unpredictable the whole education system has become.

Normally school teachers and Principals will try and paint a rosy picture of their school no matter what the situation, so to find out what is really happening in that school, someone has to ask questions and gather extra information. Chaplains can be a source of extra information, and many chaplains are trained in areas such as social work, and don’t just read the bible.

There are other sources of information also, and some P&C’s in high schools now use survey forms to find out what the students actually think of the school. I personally believe such surveys carried out by P&C associations (and not the state or federal government) should be undertaken in all high schools, and those surveys would also act as a catalyst to bring about improvements in schools.

Rainer,
I have a question.

If you have a student that fails, would you consider it your problem or the student’s problem?

If you do give an answer, I will tell you about a company manager I once had.

Sir Vivor.
There is nothing wrong with a Chaplain going to a P&C meeting and giving a report. Many people give reports at P&C meetings.

A Chaplain could also become a P&C member. My P&C has 2 teachers plus the Principal on it, so why not a Chaplain.

Tuckshop workers and P&C members should be expecting an improvement in student performance each and every year for their time and sometimes their money spent. But over 30 years there has been no improvement in student marks nationally, and boys in particular can be badly affected by poor teaching practices, so changes have to take place in the education system, or in 30 years time there will still be no improvement.

HRS,

There are number of factors one would have to weigh up.

Depending on what you assume I'm teaching this hypothetical student here are some factors I would have to take into consideration before I could apply your fatalistic outcome.

• Does the student have learning difficulties? (Dyslexia, other motor/speech skill problems)

• Have I not been supportive of the student's well being and self esteem in learning?

• Has his or her home life had some impact on them doing class and home work?

• Are they having difficulties socialising in the school/classroom?

• Is English a second or third language?

• Have I been clear in terms of setting out assessment he or she understands?

• What was the literacy or numeracy level of this student when they came to my classroom?

• Does the student like me enough to learn from me?

While my 6 or so hours contact with this student a week might not be able to fix some of the above, I would try my best.

Somewhere in the school year I would definitely hope meet with this students parents and try to get some idea about what their expectations and knowledge of their child is.

I realise many parents see schools as a means to substitute NOT supplement a good home life so its difficult for me to say if I’d blame the student or myself.

Having said this I would never blame the student for having lousy parents. They didn’t choose them.

Does this answer your question?

Rainer,
I’ll tell you about the manager I had when I was a shift supervisor in a factory.

On the first day he began, he called all supervisors to the boardroom and said that he expected an overall improvement in factory performance of at least 14% each year. This figure he had calculated from such things as current interest rates and inflation. He also told us that if anything went wrong in the factory, he would immediately contact the area supervisor. And he did.

If an employee was absent without a doctor’s certificate, he would contact the supervisor and ask them why the employee had been absent, and then ask what the supervisor would be doing to ensure that worker would not be absent without a doctor’s certificate in the future.

If an employee was injured, he would contact the supervisor and ask them why the employee had been injured, and then ask the supervisor what they would be doing to ensure that worker did not get injured again in the future.

If he saw a valve leaking product he would contact the supervisor and ask why the valve was leaking, and then ask what they would be doing to ensure that valve would not leak product again in the future.

And so on.

He never once told any supervisor how to do their job, and all he did was ask two sets of questions. But within months that factory had started to improve its factory performance figures.

Now if that manager was running a school and one of the students failed an exam, I am certain he would contact the student’s teacher, and ask why the student had failed, and then ask what they would be doing to ensure that student did not fail again in the future.

Personally I have heard this thing from teachers many times about how parents are too blame for this and that, but the parents are not in the classroom when the teacher is teaching. So the teacher is now directly in control of the student and not their parents.

HRS,

What did you think of my response to your question?

While I appreciate your little story, teaching and learning isn't an industrial 'quick fix' solution waiting to happen. Do you really think students are just little robots waiting to be reprogrammed? C’mon, you’re much more sophisticated in your thinking than this surely?

Teaching and learning is not a didactic process of implanting knowledge and skills (banking education) then testing this banking - you need to really give some serious reconsideration to this very simplistic understanding of the teaching and learning process.

Imagine if you can 30 students, all of varying degrees of ability, different personalities, religions, ethnic backgrounds. And your task is to teach them all.

Where would you start? Do you really believe teachers use a ‘teaching manual’ the same way mechanics fix cars? Puleeze!

I could go on forever about how inappropriate it is to compare a factory to teaching young human beings but instead I'm hoping you won't need that much convincing and just take my word for it.

Cheers mate.

Hi,

Some comments in response to Chris about the history of OBE.

OBE was introduced by the Keating federal government, represented by the national statements and profiles. As outlined in my next book, OBE can also be explained by the influence of William Spady and the cultural-left's domination of education.

At the Perth (1995?) meeting of Australian education ministers, a decision was made not to endorse the national curriculum and, instead, refer it back to the states - the push against the national curriculum was led by Don hayward (Liberal, Victoria) and the vote split along party lines.

The original Victorian CSF, while addopting aspects of OBE, also embraced a standards approach - the Victorian curriculum was no where near as extreme as WA, NT, Queensland, Tasmania and SA.

I agree, not all can be explained using a left/right distinction - Premier Carr (ALP) made sure that NSW retained a more traditional syllabus approach and Geoff Spring (employed by Liberal governments in Victoria and South Australia) was responsible for some weird and wacky new-age curriculum (in part, explained by Spring's involvment with the CDC).

If you read what I have argued over the last 10 years or so, you will appreciate that I rarely, if ever, attack teachers or individual schools - my beef is with the educrats and the curriculum writers and education academics. All of whom are responsible for making the work of teachers so much more frustrating and difficult. Obviously, there are some schools that have a traditional approach and not every clasroom is a hot bed of postmodern relativism.

But, look at the syllabuses, professional associations and teacher training, and it is obvious that the left has been successful in its long march.