Simon Templar says, "It is the pot calling the kettle black for a teacher to accuse anyone (based on no knowledge at all in this case) of being unprofessional!". But Simon is doing precisely that - making grand claims about teachers when he has no knowledge at all.

So what's Simon's claim? "The source of our national educational crisis is a massive failure of teachers to teach." If there is any 'national educational crisis ' (and what's the evidence there is one?) it's not about children failing to learn; it's about a massive failure of governments to fund schools adequately and equitably.

But what 'crisis' is Simon actually identifying? Unless he's been completely brainwashed by Kevin Donnelly, he would be aware that the overwhelming majority of students stay at school and complete Year 12 and about half of those go on to further education. Despite Donnelly's manfactured 'crisis', now parroted by Templar, all but a tiny minority of students learn to read and write perfectly well.

Teacher bashing is music to the ears of conservative politicians. It comes in cycles. It's often the prelude to cuts in education funding for State schools and transfers of taxpayers' money to the private schools. The doomsayers soften up the public to accept cuts on the spurious grounds that money is being wasted - so it's better to give funds to wealthy schools which do a fine job. And so some panicky parents follow the funds.

Last posting Simon was all for implementing the one thing he could remember from his Psychology class: "that reward tends to increase the prevalence of a behaviour". In this posting he's now perversely advocating reductions in pay and wholesale firings. Then in his next paragraph, he asks: "If teachers are not expected to work hard, if their incentives do not reward them for educating our children and punish them for failing at their jobs, how can we expect anything better than the mess we have".

Methinks Simon is a scatterbrain. It has to be said: even the best of education systems produce failures.

There are many variables in relation to how a student will perform in the classroom, the ability of an individual teacher is not always a factor. Examples of students who find clasroom learning difficult might have a mental health disorder, have learnng difficulties, live within a dysfunctional family, have a cohort of friends disinterested in learning, have had a bereavement in the family, poverty can have an impact, or where students are trying to cope with parents who have separated. Illegitimate drug use by parents or carers is also a factor in how well a student will perform. While each of these eamples may cover a small percentage of students when combined they add to a significant and changing number of struggling students within a school.

Even "Workchoices" can have a significant impact on students in the future as workers/parents can be forced into working hours that are not conducive to family life; creating attachment issues which could be reflected in the classroom as non-compliant behaviour.

Teachers have no control over these matters, and some of the above factors come together more in particular geographic areas than in others.

Teachers are an easier target to blame than to tackle macro determinants within communities.

My apologies to both Jonathan Ariel and Simon Templar for confusing their names in my previous post. The post should have been clearly addressed to Jonathan.

Simon Templar,

If you think the “source of our national educational crisis is a massive failure of teachers to teach” and “reductions in pay or wholesale firings for our failing teachers and school administrators as well as raises and bonuses for those who succeed” will end it, you do not know much about teachers, their intrinsic motivation or the collegiate professional judgment that underpins the successful schools that I experienced in 33 years of teaching, 28 of them in leadership positions.

No school I have taught in provides any evidence that “school systems are mini-versions of the socialist states that collapsed from the sheer weight of their economic backwardness”.

Teachers do not need to be punished to do a good job. They need support, and the system needs the restitution of the pay and conditions stolen over the past generation to attract more able people to teaching.

I never had to review an incompetent teacher. (There really aren’t that many of them.) I therefore approached every review that I conducted with the aim of ensuring that the teacher being reviewed had the evidence necessary to meet the criteria and thus gain a much-deserved salary increment. Some of those being reviewed were confident. More of them were nervous at having to be put through such a process.

Of course, even a painless review has a cost. The time to for both the reviewer and the teacher being reviewed has to come from somewhere. It is either an imposition on the time of both the teacher and the reviewer or a subtraction from the time spent on preparation, correction and the like for students. Those who advocate review mania seem to think the time is created, like the universe, out of nothing. There is also the cost of photocopying the reams of paper required. (Remember the promised paperless office.)

To impose a performance pay system on the education system would be very costly and achieve little. It is just another fad from the same sort of people who brought us the massively inefficient self-managing school and the all-powerful principal as chief bully.

I think that no matter what is done, what needs to happen first is that there needs to be supervision, integrity and accountability in Education at all levels.

The system has been set up to cover up and as a result there are some who are not exercising their duties with integrity and impartiality and they are in positions of significant power and they can inflict great harm.

These bureaucrats could ruin a teacher’s life just because they can. These types of people have tried to ruin children’s lives http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/

There are too many secrets and too many issues that are not dealt with and resolved.

Thank you Simon Templar for your honesty on your 'contempt' for teachers'.

I make no apology for realising that you have been alluding to being a 'professional' within the field, and are still doing so (although now not as a teacher), with the intention of misrepresenting your opinion as informed, when the content of your posts clearly demonstrate the opposite. Teachers' on this forum picked that up in a millisecond.

I advise Jonathan Ariel, because obviously he doesn't know, nor do you ST, that good professional protocol prescribe that professional titles should only be attached to public pronouncements when making statements within your area of expertise. Most professionals take this protocol seriously. What if a teacher decided to write 'articles' on the medical profession, speech pathology, physiotherapy, finance?

It makes me wonder what sort of individual would have such a vendetta against teachers', when they have supposedly been in the workforce for 20+ years? Most reasonable adults, including teachers', can look back at their school days with honesty and admit they were not always angels in the classroom and less than respectful towards their teachers on occasions. The memory of teachers from my own school experience are (bar one or two) of highly professional individuals.

It makes me wonder why a professional from another field would go to the trouble of writing an article about a profession that they clearly are clueless on? Do they not know that the article is up there for all to see, and that article is demonstrative of their professional ethics, let alone their academic credibility?

I suspect that individuals who would hold such a vendetta or write articles on a public forum such as this are revealing themselves to be Liberal party hacks.

It is indicative of the culture of disrespect and arrogance that has somehow entrenched itself within the Liberal party over the last several years. Was it not John Howard that referred to scientists as 'beaureaucrats'?

It is this sort of unfortunate mentality that has alienated one-time-Liberal-voters, such as myself.