Putting on the SIDE.

 

“What’s in a name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, that was William Shakespeare’s opinion and it is true, a rose would smell as sweet no matter what we called it.

But what if we called roses, “Snottygobbles”?

Would my wife, the love of my life, feel delicious shivers to the core of her being if I sent her one dozen yellow snottygobbles? I think not. They may smell as sweet, but I will not expect her to rush to the phone to brag to her friends about it. So, despite Shakespeare’s poetic observations, names are important.

Big business spends big dollars paying marketing experts to devise catchy names and phrases for their products. Film stars, models and other public figures change their names to give themselves a more acceptable public persona. Let’s face it, nobody cared much for a lanky fellow called Marion Morrison until his name was changed and he became an American film star folk hero known as John Wayne. Bernard Schwartz was just a cheeky kid in the Bronx. He became a sex symbol of the 1950s and 60s as film star, tony Curtis. And Reginald Dwight didn’t get half as much fan male as he does now as Elton John.

Adolf Hitler’s father was an illegitimate child who took his mother’s maiden name, Huttler, which later transformed into Hitler. Adolph's father was actually sired by a man named Schiklegruber. So, if Adolf's  father had not been an illegitimate bastard, young Adolf (who we all know was an absolute bastard) would have been called Schicklegruber, too.

Political scientists are still arguing whether the German people would have marched off to war on a frenzied wave of Nationalism, shouting out, “Heil Schicklegruber” whenever their Fuhrer appeared. Maybe they would have just all fallen about laughing at him and World War 2 would never have happened.

Names are important, which is why it is a shame that whenever the Director-General of Education in Western Australia, or any other Department of Education Directors want to broadcast policy directions and planning initiatives they do so by using a teleconference video link from the School of Isolated and Distance Education. That’s S.I.D.E. for short. So,  official pronouncements from the very top could be said to be a SIDE SHOW!

Now, I am quite proud of education in Western Australia. I think it compares with the best in the world and we do so over a vast area. When our leaders tell us important policies via video link it is a very important event.

 It should not be a side show. What can we do about it? What can we do about S.I.D.E? Well, we could try to form a different acronym and switch the letter around a little bit.

Isolated and Distance Education is I.D.E.S. Considering what happened to a great Roman leader on the Ides of March, I doubt any DoE leaders would want to be associated with I.D.E.S. Distance and Isolated Education is D.I.E.S. Obviously and acronym much too terminal for advanced educational thinkers with dynamic policies.

The only real solution, Shakespeare not withstanding, is to change the name of S.I.D.E. completely. Trust me. It will still smell as sweet.

May I suggest that S.I.D.E. becomes the Technological Educational Regional Resources Institute For Improved Curriculum. That’s T.E.R.R.I.F.I.C for short.

Then, when the Director General of other Directors have a teleconference it won't be a SIDE Show it will be a TERRIFIC show.

Or as Shakespeare once almost said,                                                                                                           "What’s this video link Biz?                                                                                                                    That, which in the D-G shows,                                                                                                                      With a better name, how sweet it is?”

PS. I wrote this story in 2000, nearly a quarter of a century ago. I realise that video links may now be a thing of the distant and isolated past.                                                                                                            The story was published in WORDS, the quarterly magazine of the WA Primary Principal's Association, in  the August 2000 edition.                                                                                                      Recently, I heard that there is now a growing desire within SIDE to change its name.

What a TERRIFIC idea.

 

Trump and a misleading media.

 

John Flint, a highly creditable journalist, was right on the money writing in The West Australian newspaper(02/10/2024)  when he wrote that Donald  Trump is not a normal candidate and that his normalisation as a Presidential candidate is largely the fault of the media because it has  “failed in its fundamental watchdog role.” How sadly true.

I have just read “The Men who Killed the News” written by a respected journalist and a former Murdoch Editor, Eric Beecher. The book outlines how media moguls over a two centuries have abused their power, manipulated the truth and distorted democracy.

Many years ago a journalist sought out Dame Elizabeth Murdoch after her son Rupert had added yet  another media agency to his already mammoth media empire. He asked her how she felt about her son’s highly successful career as a journalist. Quick as a flash Dame Elizabeth replied, “My son Rupert  is not a journalist. He is a businessman.”

This was epitomised when Murdoch’s Fox TV News started dramatically losing its ratings in 2020 when it reported that Joe Biden had won the Presidential election. As Fox  continued to report  about Biden’s lawful win, rusted on Trump followers stopped watching Fox News in droves.

Rupert Murdoch does not like losing money or power.  To recover his ratings and his advertising revenue he started giving the Trump followers the doctored “News” that they wanted to hear.                   The fact that it was not true did not worry Murdoch. He was making money once again.

Today, traditional forms of reporting the news are under threat from social media platforms, such as Facebook and X owned respectively by Mark Zuckerburg and Elon Musk. Much of the information on their internet platforms is not only untrue but sometimes highly toxic.  These two men have shown they do not care  for the truth. They only care about the mountains of money they are making.

In a democracy it is essential that there is a free media that presents the facts to the people. However, as John Flint has shown, a lazy or dishonest media can make even the sub normal seem normal to a lot of people. In an era of fake news, misinformation, unregulated social media and artificial Intelligence, a free and functioning democracy  requires more than ever, a free press that provides honest and professional journalism to its citizens.                                                                                                           Otherwise, we may all begin to believe the sub normal is normal.

Remembering Royal Shows of Long ago.

 

In my childhood, the long, long journey from the joys of one Christmas to the next was punctuated by two other events that could not be fully enjoyed unless a certain amount of money was available. These were the Annual Royal Agricultural Show in October and Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November.

My earliest memories of the Royal Show are a mixture of merry-go-round rides, Chairaplane rides, the Octopus, log chopping, Professor Wilkinson doing tricks on a motorcycle, Dodgem Cars, The Mounted Police galloping at speed with long lances to spear white markers on the grass, displays of food and farm produce in the Centenary Pavilion, bustling crowds, Sheep Dog Trials, surging crowds, strong animal smells, hot dogs and fairy floss. Free sample bags. Oh, and Sideshow Alley.

In those days, the two big days of the Show were People’s Day on Wednesday and Children’s Day on Thursday. Wednesday was a public holiday and city schools were closed for both days. My father used to used to take our family on People’s Day. I fondly remember the first year we went to the Show. It was 1948. My parents had a block of land in Mt Lawley but building materials were in short supply and you needed a government permit before you could build a house.  So, in the meantime, we all lived in a large two storey house at number 8 Aberdeen Street, quite close to Beaufort Street, along with my grandmother, an uncle, two aunties and my two older  cousins,  Maurie and Raymond. 

My parents loaded my my two sisters and me into  the family car, a blue Essex Tourer. Dad had folded back the canvas hood and the family set off from Aberdeen Street just like royalty riding down the mall in an open carriage.     At the time, my cousins had two dogs. Maurie’s dog was a Scottish terrier he had named GK after G.K. Chesterton. Raymond’s dog, Danny, was a beautiful collie dog just like Lassie. Unfortunately, when Dad drove out of the side lane he did not close the gate. The family’s high-spirited departure had excited both dogs and G.K. and Danny soon set off after the Bourke family making their royal progress along Beaufort Street towards the Barrack Street Bridge. Despite the dogs’ barking and yapping, Dad decided to keep on driving. As he drove passed the Swan Barracks he waved his right hand and yelled at the barking dogs to go back. They took his gestures as a sign of encouragement and continued their bounding and barking alongside our open vehicle.

What  started out as a royal procession quickly degenerated into a scene out of Dad and Dave Come to Town.      My father drove his family in the open car over the Barrack Street Bridge escorted by the two barking dogs. Startled onlookers in Barrack Street looked at the passing parade convinced that some rich squatter had arrived in town for the Royal Show with his family and farm dogs in tow. By the time the car reached Murray Street, the dogs found other city distractions to occupy their attention and the Bourke family continued on to the Show without their canine escorts.

As soon as the family  entered the main gates, Dad picked out a landmark where we were to gather if ever we became lost.  He pointed to the main door of the Centenary Pavilion and said, “If you ever get lost, go straight to stairway leading up to those doors and wait for your mother or me to come and get you. Do not go anywhere with anyone else.”

Babe was well aware of “Stranger Danger” long before the term became fashionable. She warned my sisters and me to be particularly wary of ladies offering  lollies or any other inducements. Mum told us that quite often, wicked men dressed up as women just to trap little boys and girls. Filled with such foreboding, my sisters and I never wandered far from Mum and Dad. The other reason we did not stray was that Mum and Dad had all the money that was so necessary to obtain full enjoyment of Sideshow Alley.
 

When I was about twelve years old I started going to  the Show on my own or with my school mates. I would save for several weeks leading up to the show. My main source of income was the tuppence refund I would get for returning empty cool drink bottles  to the Beaufort Street grocery shop and the  five shillings per week I was paid by  Aunty May, who operated the lucky Bunny Lottery Kiosk in Barrack Street. Each afternoon after school I would catch the tram into Perth and at 4-30pm I would run the day's taking and the lottery ticket butts to the Lottery Commission office next to Newspaper House in the Terrace. Aunty May told me never to travel the same way twice in a row when carrying the cash and ticket butts.

I would take great delight in counting out my money and working out how many rides, sideshows, cool drinks, hot dogs and serves of fairy floss I could afford. It always seemed like plenty, but invariably by late afternoon I would have only my bus and tram fare in my pocket while still desiring more rides, sideshows and food. At least in those days the show bags, or sample bags as they were then called, were free.
 

The main attraction at the Show was Sideshow Alley with its rides, dodgem cars, House of Horrors, Ghost Train, the  motor cycle Wheel of Death, Blum’s Boxing Troupe and various other sideshow tents. Two sideshows remained etched in Leon’s memory forever; one featuring Big Chief Little Wolf and another featuring the alluring French fan dancer, Paulette.
 

Big Chief, Little Wolf was a American Red Indian who became very popular in Australia after the war. He was a sensation at the big wrestling matches in Sydney and each year would tour several states attending their annual Shows, putting  on exhibitions, demonstrating wrestling holds and talking about his colourful life. He always wore a huge Indian feather headdress and attracted big crowds wherever he went. On one occasion, Dad took me to Reilly’s Hall in Inglewood to see Big Chief Little Wolf stage a boxing and wrestling exhibition against Paddy Boxall, a well-known state champion boxer of the 1940s. Big Chief Little Wolf was a great wrestler but he was an even better entertainer. He was doing the World Championship Wrestling hoopla and  bunkum thirty  years before it became a Television sensation.

Paulette was an exotic French lady who quite possibly was just a girl from Bayswater named Beryl making pin money at the Show. However, as Paulette, with her sexy "French" accent and exotic dancing, she had a lot of fans. Of course, her two biggest fans were the big feathery blue ones she used so cleverly to keep her naked body covered as she danced around on the small stage inside the tent. She certainly aroused young Leon’s interest in the female form and he spent a great deal of his hard earned pocket money visiting the creamy skinned Paulette, always in the hope that once – just once – she would drop one of those blasted blue fans. She never did.

Ah, yes! Some wonderful memories of  those wonderful The Royal Shows of so long ago. 

 

The usual NAPLAN results bring the usual media and political hysteria.

The latest NAPLAN results have been published. Predictably, politicians and media outlets are lamenting the "terrible" results and urging instant action to rescue Australia's failing standards in literacy and numeracy from sinking in a sea of ignorance. Two points should be made at the start.          First, the latest NAPLAN results vary very little from all other  NAPLAN results over the years since 2009. Secondly, to class teachers, these NAPLAN results may be  interesting but they are not very useful. The tests were administered in April and these result, published about five months later, in late August are ancient history.. Their classes have moved on quite a way since April.

What these  NAPLAN results do show us, yet again, is that there is a huge gap between high achieving and low achieving schools. What these NAPLAN results do show, yet again, is that NAPLAN results are determined by the location of the school on the Socio-Economic Index. In other words, schools in the leafy green suburbs do better than schools on the wrong side of the railway tracks. This is not new. It was exactly like that when David Gonski proposed in 2008 that schools should be funded more equitably. In fact Mr Gonski went further than that. He said that  schools should be funded according to their needs. It sounded great but it did not happen. In the decade after Gonski funding to private schools increased markedly in comparison to the funding of government schools. At the same time the achievement gap between high and low NAPLAN achievers grew wider.

Over all of that time the media and the politicians fretted over the yearly NAPLAN results They said  our schools are failing. They said  teachers are failing our children and they must work harder. This is akin to generals complaining that soldiers to whom they gave faulty weapons and scarce ammunition are losing the battle. If the problem is clearly the inequitable distribution of resources why do politicians and the media throw their hands but do nothing about the real cause of the achievement gap.

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg was formerly the Director of Education in Finland, one of the world's high education achievers. Dr Sahlberg is now a professor of Education at the Gonski Institute at the University of Sydney. Six Years ago Pasi Sahlberg tols us that three things needed to happen to address the  problems in Australian education.                                                                                                                         FIRST: Stop the inequitable distribution of resources to schools. Provide extra funding to schools in need.                                                                                                                                                                      Second: Make Wellness a priority in Australian education. Sahlberg said that it is difficult to perform satisfactorily at school if you are sick, tired, hungry or traumatised by physical, emotional or sexual abuse.                                                                                                                                                                            Third: Avoid Quick Fixes.

The Quick Fix is what politicians favour because they believe it tells their  electorate that they are doing something about the problem. Thirty Years ago Professor David Elkind, then Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Education at Rochester University, worried by the pressures being applied the schools, warned that politicians generally made changes in education, not primarily for the benefit of the children, but to impress their parents and obtain their votes at the next election.

The 2024 NAPLAN results have seen the politicians deliver another Quick Fix. The Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, has just announced that he has set up a review to examine early childhood education with the objective of providing quality education for al children fro birth to age five. Not only that all children will be assessed on their mathematical aptitude before entering Year One. Sounds like Minister Clare knows what needs to be done to fix our achievement gap.

Well not everyone thinks so. We shall have to wait and see what the committee sees as "quality education" for children from birth to age five. We can only hope that it does not involve formal instruction in literacy and numeracy, The President of the WA Primary Principals Association, Niel Smith described the proposed numeracy tests for children in the early years as a waste of time and money.  Government schools are under resourced and teachers and principals know where precious resources could be much better spent.

The problem is that many politicians and some parents see education as a race. They believe the sooner you start the race the better you finish. Well, for years, educators have said that education is not a race. It is a developmental process. Thirty years ago Professor  Elkind wrote “The Hurried Child”. In it he said that many problems arise because young children are involved in formal education too soon.           He said children’s education is not a race and activities should be “developmentally appropriate.” Unlike our politicians, Elkind spent a lifetime researching the subject.                                                    

In August 2012, West Australian feature writer, Cathy O’Leary, wrote an excellent article warning parents that they should resist speeding up their child’s development and instead allow their children to enjoy their childhood (Warning on smart baby toys, The West Australian, Cathy O’Leary, 28/08/2012). Ms O’Leary quoted Associate Professor Michael Nagel, from the school of Science and Education at Queensland University, who warned that parents should resist speeding up their child’s development and instead allow their children to enjoy their childhood. Professor Nagel said that parents trying to advance their child’s development with enrichment tools or programmes may be doing them more harm than good. The process could cause children undue stress and hinder important brain development that will be detrimental to later learning.
Professor Elkind’s earlier warnings were much more dire. Forcing formal education on children not developmentally ready would produce some children,” whose academic self-esteem is all but destroyed during their formative years, who develop an antipathy toward learning, and a dislike of school and will never fully realize their latent abilities and talents” He added that these disaffected children would have “an antipathy to learning and a dislike of school. This will create an enormous educational and social debt that we will have to face up to and pay, at great cost, sometime in the future.“                     That future has arrived.

NAPLAN forced the formal instruction of literacy and numeracy into Kindy and Pre Primary and maybe into Daycare. At an important time in their development, when young children should be engaged in enjoyable activities developing their creativity, their imagination, their social skills and learning about themselves and their environment, their family, their home and their school, they are being burdened with formal instructions in literacy and numeracy. We now hear of parents of Pre Primary children being advised to give their children homework to develop literacy and numeracy skills. There is talk of ” the pressure of Pre Primary”. There should never be any pressure in Pre Primary, or Kindy!

Sadly, it is not just politicians and some eager parents who are force feeding our very youngest children with educational and intellectual competencies for which many are not yet ready. State Education Departments and school administrators have been coerced into implementing the process. One sad outcome of this introduction of formal education  to the very early years is that many highly competent early childhood teachers have  resigned or taken early retirement.What they were being pressured to do was not what they signed on for a early childhood educators.

Over thirty years ago, Robert Fulghum wrote an international best seller, “All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten” There was no mention of formal lessons in numeracy or literacy.

Hopefully, the WA Principals Association will be a beacon of reason against all those who are intent on robbing our very young children of the enjoyment of their childhood. Oh. by the way, in Finland they do not start formal education until children are seven years old.  They also enjoy an equitable distribution of education resources.It seems to work for them.