Notice how Kevin Donnelly cherry-picks the issues he responds to and the partial concessions he makes when confronted with unassailable facts contrary to his general position. He concedes to Chris somewhat uncomfortably that so-called "outcomes based education" and all the bad things that accompany it is not the creature of Labor governments alone, and that some Liberals pushed it harder than some Labor states. But his central (still unsubstantiated) thesis remains - "outcomes based education" came about because of "the cultural-left's domination of education" exercised through that all-conquering triumviate, "the educrats and the curriculum writers and education academics" What tosh!

And what does Donnelly ignore? Chris said: "The picture of postmodernist 'anything goes' that Dr Donnelly keeps on painting in issue after issue of The Australian is not an accurate description of any school I have taught in or heard of." Donnelly's response? Silence.

Chris said: "The constant exaggeration of the difficulties in the government school system simply crowds out any discussion of the real problems it has." Donnelly's response? Silence.

Donnelly concedes that "Obviously, there are some schools that have a traditional approach and not every clasroom is a hot bed of postmodern relativism." But why does he not explain why these schools have held out against the all-powerful villains when, as he claims, "it is obvious that the left has been successful in its long march"?

The long march and the triumph of the left remain a figment of Donelly's overwrought imagination - and bears little relationship to actual life in most classrooms. But he knows that good news about education doesn't excite headlines or sell books.

Rainer,
The manager mentioned previously was headhunted into that company and paid a lot of money. He was a very experienced manager, and he also was a teacher. His first job was to teach the supervisors in that company to solve problems instead of ignoring those problems and allowing them to occur again, and to aim for continuous improvement.

I think the education system should be looking very closely at what certain industries do.

Industry has to be dynamic and innovative otherwise it does not exist for very long. Industry has to be continuously looking for ways to improve, and industry cannot be continuously making excuses, but has to solve problems.

If an employee has a bad accident, the supervisor of that employee can be charged, the manager of the company can be charged, and the board of directors can be charged. So industry has to be continuously motivating its workforce so that failures do not happen. Industry is also continuously training and retraining its workforce, and frequently meetings will become brainstorming sessions to solve problems and advance the company. Industry has to be made up of problem solvers and doers, rather than excuse makers.

I compare my experiences in a number of industries with what I have seen in education, and what I see is an education system that is incestuous and stagnant, lacking in innovation, has minimal concern for continuous improvement, makes too many excuses instead of solving problems, is filling up with gender prejudiced feminists, tries to hide information from the public, cannot motivate the students, has minimal regard for the parents of the students, while at the same time it lives mostly off the taxpayer.

That is why I see the necessity for people outside the education system to be brought into the education system. The chaplains can be a start in that area, but other people should follow as well, and bringing in outside people will be the only way for the education system to advance instead of staying in the same spot for 30 years.

Frankgol, good post there. bravo!

Kev,(Gee you must hate Rudd) I gotta admire your enterprise for milking the Tory's to pump up your retirement funds.

Kevin,

Thank you for your response. I accept that you do not attack teachers or individual schools, but the conclusions you draw from the documents you read are highly critical of the government school system but not supported by the experiences of classroom teachers. Only the naïve and the ambitious follow government documents.

You maintain that the Keating Government introduced OBE. It did not have the power to do so. It could only advise on education. In a complete reversal of long-time political positions the Liberals are now centralists and Labor is federalist.

The inservice which introduced me to OBE was in 1994. Below is an extract from a report I wrote then: 'According to the DSE et al, the new focus in education is on "outcomes", not "inputs" or "free-floating process statements" - on learning not teaching: the DSE is therefore moving from "course advice" to "curriculum support material", and the era of re-inventing the wheel in schools is over.
'The CSF (Curriculum Standards Framework) - all 300 to 400 pages of it - will cause schools to focus on content, the how of learning and the demonstration of learning having taken place.' (MEN IN SUITS, 20/6/1994) The claim that OBE would focus on content rather than process is the reverse of the claim made about it today.

The focus on 'outcomes' was part of a political campaign to justify the cuts to teacher numbers in Victoria by getting the public to forget about 'inputs'. It was accompanied by a particularly nasty series of attacks on teachers as a pampered elite. It was not a trendy left idea, but a hard right one.

As far as I can tell, the test of OBE is the specific outcomes set. They can be clear and worthwhile or they can be vague and ridiculous.

Schools and teachers do have a moral compass. They uphold standards of right and wrong, of what is true and what is false, of honesty, of decency, of dedication to their noble calling. Very few classrooms would be 'hotbed[s] of postmodern relativism'.

Chris C,

I'd review you're view that Old Kev does not get stuck into teachers-he makes broad allegations about them in his book - for example:

he declares;

“Teachers who have been taught in tertiary faculties steeped in political correctness have had, and are having, a significant impact on schools”.

And;

“In the hands of left-wing teachers, such objectives provide ammunition to present boys and men as misogynist and to indoctrinate girls with the latest feminist tract about gender inequality”

But here is by far the biggest porky of them all -

“Across Australian schools, in areas like multiculturalism, the environment and peace studies, students are indoctrinated and teachers define their role as new-age, class warriors.”

Chris B,
Most of the material being taught in primary and secondary schools is not new by any means.

Most maths is hundreds of years old. Newton’s 3 laws of motion were developed in the 1690’s, and maths was so advanced at that time that Newton was also able to develop a mathematical formula for gravitational attraction.

Earlier you said that you have taught a number of English books, but out of that list I remember being taught in the 1970’s Macbeth, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird and Nineteen eighty-four.

The subject material has hardly changed in decades. So why haven’t the student marks improved in now 3 decades when teachers have had so much time to develop their teaching methods, and teachers have so much honesty, decency, and dedication to their noble calling.

Please do not blame the parents. Most co-ed schools have students that come from the same socio-economic background, and the sons and daughters in that school come from the same families, but there is normally a significant difference between the girl’s and boy’s marks.