Rainier,

I don't regard the first two quotes as attacks on teachers. Going through a PC faculty doesn't mean the resulting teacher is PC. To call someone left-wing is to put them in the same category as the majority of Australians who consistently vote for Labor Governments at the state and territory level. No big!

The third quote is different because it does accuse teachers across the nation of indoctrinating students. (However, I am happy to be a class warrior, fighting in class for the values that made Australia great.) Even so, Kevin Donnelly's criticisms are nowhere near as nasty and vicious as others I have read.

HRS,

If you ignore your doctor's advice and get sick, it is not the doctor's fault. If you ignore your mechanic's advice and your car breaks down, it is not the mechanic's fault. If a boy ignores his teacher's advice, does not pay attention, does not do the work set, does not do the homework, has a parent who does not support the school and achieves little, it is not the teacher's fault. Students are not inanimate objects. They have wills of their own, and they do not actually understand at a very fundamental level what school is or what it is for.

Schools will get better results when the authority of the teacher to teach is returned and when the staffing is returned to what is was; e.g., the Victorian secondary pupil-teacher-ratio was 10.9:1 in 1981, compared with 12.0:1 now.

Teaching methods have developed, but at the same time some schools have gone backwards to the 1970s open classroom teacher-as-facilitator enquiry-based project-based subjects-don't-matter playway to learning. I stress 'some'. Others are simply disordered chaotic places. All of them are expected to extend their responsibilities to deal with sex, drugs, alcohol, obesity, bullying, financial “literacy”, etc.

Parental interest in their children has declined dramatically. In my early years of teaching, in a poor Housing Commission area, some 90 per cent of parents would attend parent-teacher interviews. Today, in a better-off area, the figure is more like 30 percent.

Chris C,

As a teacher I find Donnelly's accusations totally offensive. I guess its different for people who have never taught and are looking in from the outside.

that siad, Other than sucking up to Donnelly online I really don't know what your intellectual or theoretical objectives are.

Hi Rainier,

I taught in secondary schools for 18 years.

Kevin

Kevin, you taught what? where? when? with what results?
When was the last time you taught in a school? and in a government school?
Give us the full story of your credential for your attacks on teachers.

Kevin, you say you taught in secondary schools for 18 years. What subjects did you teach? In what schools? When? With what results?

When was the last time you taught in a school? and in a government school?
Give us the full story of your credential for your attacks on teachers.

ChrisC,
Searching through the Australian Council for Educational Research web-site I cannot find any reference that parents are to blame for a decline in students marks, but there are many studies that do highlight teaching methods as being the most important factor in the performance of the students.

It is difficult to understand how parents make their daughters do their homework but not the sons. Another teacher who calls people “whores” (a high level of morals and a good role model for the students) has also tried to blame parents, so it could be that a mindset has developed amongst some teachers that parents are too blame. This may be true, but it could also be an excuse.

But even if parents were to blame, then what are teachers doing about it. Teachers believe they have a problem, which is the parents. So what are teachers going to do to solve that problem with the parents?

Also do not believe that teachers in schools are the only people who teach or train others. I would think that the teaching and training that occurs in industry is possibly the same if not more than what occurs in schools.

Many supervisors are also qualified trainers and they have to supervise many different people carrying out many different tasks. At present a teacher is not charged if a student fails, but a supervisor can be charged if one of their crew fails and has an accident. That’s a big difference, so do not underestimate the teaching and training that occurs outside of the education system.

It would be interesting to know what teachers intend to do about parents, but at present I do not believe that the education system will positively change from within, but can only positively change by people outside the education system coming into that system. Chaplains can be one of those people.