Raising Happy Children

           Many school administrators these days spend an inordinate amount of their time dealing with child behaviour problems. Their problems compound when some parents, informed of their child's unacceptable behaviour, immediately blame the principal, the teacher or the school in general, in fact anybody except their precious child. This is in contrast to times gone by when parents would have supported the school discipline policy and may have even meted out additional penalties to their offending offspring.

            What has brought about this change in parent attitudes and the prevalence of children's lack of respect and increasing anti social behaviour? Well known child psychologist, John Rosemond, believes the situation has been caused by the “psychobabble” which parents these days are subject to. He says for many of today's parents, the problem is that they have too much information on how to bring up their children. 

            In earlier times parents raised children in much the same way as they themselves were raised. However, today's parents have access to more parenting advice than any other generation of parents in history. As a result some families become too “child centred” with the unfortunate consequence that their children finish up being “in charge.”

            Magazines, newspapers, radio, television and a whole raft of self appointed experts provide a constant flow of suggestions and ideas on how to raise children. Maybe that is the problem, says Rosemond? He observes that since the 1950s child rearing has become too confused. He blames much bad child behaviour on the plethora of advice and suggestions that modern parents receive from an ever growing army of academics.

            In his book, "The Six Point Plan For Raising Happy, Healthy Children", Rosemond refers to many of today's fashionable ideas about child rearing as "damaging myths”.

He lists six myths that can make parenting a nightmare and result in badly behaved children. I used to include these six myths of child raising in an a school newsletter at the beginning of each year. At least it let the parents know that I thought that they should be in charge of their children. Unfortunately, there were always a few families where the children were in charge.

Myth 1. Children Should Come First:

Emphatically not, says Rosemond. The more child centred the family is the more self centred the child becomes. Too much attention can be as damaging as too much food.

Myth 2. A Family Is a Democracy:

It definitely is not! There must be a clear expectation that children will obey their parents. Eventually, in every family, someone must have the final, responsible word. That person had better be an adult or else everyone is in trouble.

Myth 3. Housework is for parents only:

Wrong! Children should have set tasks and responsibilities in the household and for which they are not paid. This should start around three years of age when children are keen to copy others and eager to help.

Myth 4. Frustration is Bad For Children:

Not so! Life is full of frustrations and children should get used to that fact. Parents should supply all of a child's NEEDS but only about 25% of its WANTS. The word "No" from a parent is a great character builder for the child.

Myth 5. The More Toys The Better:

Untrue. Most of today's toys, especially the push button ones, stifle children's imagination. Much better are clay, paint, coloured pencils, books, puzzles and construction blocks. These are imaginative toys. So too are everyday things like spoons, pop sticks, boxes, paper bags...not to mention trees, rocks, tiles, sand piles and mud!

Myth 6. My Children Don't Watch Too Much T.V.

Don't they? The next time you see your pre school child watching T.V. ask yourself, 'What is my child doing?"

Quite often the answer is, "Nothing." 

Not one real skill is being exercised. Many television shows inhibit curiosity, initiative, motivation, imagination, reasoning, concentration and attention span. They also fail to promote logical, sequential thinking which often causes problems in following simple directions or anticipating the consequences of their behaviour.

            Maybe ignoring some of the "trendy" ideas about parenting and relying instead on the common sense ideas proposed by John Rosemond will provide parents with their best chance of raising happy, well adjusted children. A school full of happy, well adjusted children would certainly lighten the load for many hard working principals and teachers.

John Rosemond is a well known author, motivational speaker, columnist and broadcaster in The United States of America. His Six Point Plan to Raising Happy Children, first published in 1989,   has been updated since then.  To read more about his books and newspaper articles you can access his website at http://www.rosemond.com/

How Gough Whitlam led me to the Principalship

W. C. Fields once said, “It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never did get to thank her.”

It was a bit like that with Gough Whitlam and me and my journey to the principalship. I guess I should also have thanked John Tonkin, State Premier from 1971 to 1973. For, between them, these two men lifted me out of the classroom in 1971 and plonked me down in Donnybrook in 1975 in the newly established Level 3 position of Deputy Principal Primary.

How did they do it? Well it was a rather complicated and convoluted process that saw me in a couple of Acting positions. In fact by the end of 1974 I had had so many Acting positions that I was very nearly nominated for the Academy Award.

In February 1971 I was happily working away teaching my fabulous Year 6/7 class at Mt Lawley Primary School. At a morning tea early in that school year the Headmaster, we didn’t have any Principals in those days, tapped his tea cup with a spoon and claimed our attention.

The Headmaster was Neville Green, a very, very good operator, so we all gave him our close attention, anxious to hear what pearls of wisdom he was going to cast before us.  Bible scholars will probably read that last line and make a quite unfair inference. O.K. we may have told a few porkies from time to time but that was as close as we got.

“I have been informed by the Department that they are going to appoint a Supernumerary Teacher to this school next Monday,” said Neville and waited for the importance of his comments to sink in.

Ooh ah, we all thought. A Supernumerary Teacher. Next Week. How interesting. Er, umm, what exactly is a Supernumerary Teacher?

“A Supernumerary Teacher,” said Neville, "is a teacher appointed in addition to the number of teachers needed to staff each classroom. The Supernumerary can assist the class teacher or sometimes may even take over the class so the teacher can do other things like meet parents or mark work.” Neville had read our minds. I told you he was an astute Principal…I mean Headmaster. Neville then said he expected to have more details about the Supernumerary position in a day or two and would keep us informed.

At morning tea the next day Neville again played his little solo percussive piece on his tea cup and we all gazed eagerly in his direction.

“I have been told the Supernumerary Teacher is a Mr John Doherty. He graduated from Secondary Teachers College in 1969 and has spent the last two years in National Service. He has just returned from six months in Vietnam and will be discharged this week. He will start at Mt Lawley School this coming Monday.”

Ooh, Ah we all thought. Secondary Teachers College. National Service. Vietnam. Ah, er, um, two years since he graduated. Er. How much help can he be?

“Considering Mr Doherty’s lack of any primary teaching experience in the last two years, I will not be making him the Supernumerary Teacher,” said Neville. Once again demonstrating that, like any astute Headmaster, he could so easily read our minds.

Yairs. Well that makes sense, we all thought to ourselves. No good having an inexperienced teacher as a Supernumerary. Guess Neville will tell the Department to think again and send somebody who is at least a qualified Primary teacher.

“What that means,” continued the clairvoyant Neville, “is that I will put Mr Doherty in to a classroom so that he can acquire and develop the skills required of a primary school teacher.”

Good one, Neville, we all thought. Boy, is Neville ever clever. Makes sense. Put him in the classroom where he can learn how to be a teacher. Yair. Terrific. Hey, hang on! Which classroom? Not in mine, that’s for sure!

“So that means,” said Neville, “that I will require one of you to volunteer to be the Supernumerary Teacher instead.”

Now I had been in National Service some years earlier. The number one thing that my less than glorious army career had taught me was, never, ever volunteer. The other staff must have all have done military service, too, for not one of them volunteered. In fact we all sat there staring intently into our empty coffee cups. We were practising the avoidance technique perfected by all Year One children which, stated simply, says that if I do not look at you when you are speaking to me then you cannot see me, because now I am completely invisible.

Well I don’t know whether Neville could see us or not but he sat down and started talking to the Deputy Headmaster about the Annual Stock Requisition. We gradually dragged our eyes out of our coffee cups and started talking about everything except volunteering to be the Supernumerary Teacher. The school siren rang and we moved out of the staff room. I did not realise as I moved away that morning that my life was about to change forever.

At 11-30 a.m. my class was busily engaged in a Social Studies activity when Neville came into my classroom.

“Noel, I’ve been thinking that you would make an excellent Supernumerary Teacher.” Now normally I thought Neville spoke a lot of wisdom and common sense, but this was just ridiculous. I thought I had better  set him straight with some well reasoned, lucid, cogent argument.

“Um. Er. Ah. I dunno, Neville,” was my erudite reply. Unfazed by my eloquence, Neville then explained how the Supernumerary position would suit me down to the ground.

“You will take lessons in the other classes but you will not have direct responsibility for any class and you will get substantial amounts of free periods. Also, you are doing part time studies at University, so we could organize it that you could leave early on those afternoon when your lectures start at 4-00 p.m.” Neville then showed me a draft timetable and it did seem to have quite a few free periods in it. Now I have to admit that this made the idea much more attractive.

“O.K.” I said, “But I’ll only do it if I teach just one subject through the school. I don’t want to teach English grammar in this class, and maths in that class and art in some other class. And I want to have my own room. I don’t want to be every one’s dogsbody traipsing with all my books and resources from room to room with no place to call my own.”

Neville smiled. He knew he had won. He told me there were two “spare’ rooms that I could choose from. Regarding the prospect of teaching just the one subject he said we would need to talk about that with staff at tomorrow’s morning tea.

Next day the teaspoon’s tune on the coffee cup quickly grabbed everyone’s attention.

“Good morning everyone,” chirped Neville. “I’m happy to tell you that Noel has kindly volunteered to be the Supernumerary.

“Good old Noel,” everyone chortled, inwardly thinking, “Poor old Noel. What a dill!”

Neville allowed the general acclamation to die down before he continued. “He just has one condition. Noel has agreed to take lessons of one hour’s duration in each of your classrooms each week but he wants to teach the same subject through the school. You will all need to agree on the same subject. What subject would you like him to teach in your room?”

“Science” they all yelled out in unison. And so I became the first Science Specialist at Mt Lawley Primary School. Or maybe in any primary school for that matter.

This was the time of The Process Approach to Science. So I devised plenty of child centred, problem solving, hands on science activities that led children to develop the skills of scientific enquiry. That is, by attempting to manipulate materials to solve a problem the children developed the skills of observing, classifying, predicting, measuring, recording, reporting, controlling variables, devising hypotheses and designing experiments. It was the generally held view of wise educators, and of Neville in particular, that Science was both a Body of Knowledge and a Method of Inquiry. Primary schools would develop the inquiry skills and secondary schools would provide the content knowledge. Nothing ever changes.

Neville even gave me a budget to buy balloons, magnets, string, magnifying glasses, dry cell batteries, etc. He came in to the class on my first day as a Supernumerary and said, “Noel, here is $10.00. Put it inside this coffee tin and keep it on the top shelf of that cupboard where you keep the school pads and art paper. When you need some materials go and buy them and put the receipts in the tin. When you have spent all the money bring the receipts to me and I will give you some more cash.”

I told you he was enlightened. I mean, in those days in the early 1970s not even Principals, sorry, Headmasters, received any cash. The Department did not give schools any cash. They just issued a line of credit to purchase text books and school stock. The school would order the goods up to the credit limit, send the requisition to the Department which would purchase the goods and arrange delivery of same to the school. The only cash that the school handled was for things such as bus money for excursions or P&C fundraisers.

I enjoyed taking my action packed science lessons. Fortunately I found some Galt Cards. This was an English series of science activity cards on Air, Water, Sound, Heat, Magnetism, Light, etc. I would set up five groups of activities in the classroom and the children seemed to enjoy moving from station to station to see what the challenge was, using the materials provided to devise a solution and recording the results.

Neville seemed quite pleased with what I was doing and invited the District Inspector, Mr Jim Quinn, to come and see the science groups in action. Mr Quinn also seemed impressed. Pretty soon I was doing regular science demonstration lessons for the students of the newly opened Mt Lawley Teachers College.

Then one day Mr Quinn asked me to talk about activity based primary science to a group of principals at the Teacher Further Education Centre in Bagot Road, Subiaco. I decided to practise what I preached and to set them on a problem solving activity. I gave each of them a torch battery, a small light globe and a piece of copper wire.

‘I want you to connect the wire to the battery and globe so that the globe lights up.”  I was surprised that nearly a quarter of the principals had a deal of trouble doing this. Then I told them to work in pairs and try and get two globes to light at the same time. I told them there were several ways to do this and that they could get the globes to glow brightly or dimly. I asked them to draw diagrams of the various ways that they did this.

Well that science session was quite a success and Mr Quinn thanked me very much for my trouble. About three days later he turned up at my classroom door with another gentleman.

“Noel, this is Mr Steve Wallace. He is the Director of Primary Education.”

I shook hands with Mr Wallace who then asked if I had heard that the newly elected state Premier, Mr John Tonkin, had promised to provide free texts to all pupils in W.A. Government Schools.

Actually, I had heard about this plan. Prior to his election in 1971, Mr Tonkin had promised free text books to pupils. After the election he outlined how he would provide free texts to every child in primary school. Naturally there was a huge outcry that secondary students were going to miss out. The West Australian newspaper editorialised about Mr Tonkin’s broken promise and there was much acrimonious public debate.

Finally, Mr Tonkin, who was a former schoolteacher, answered his critics by saying that he had not broken any election promise. He had promised free texts to pupils and all pupils would get them.

“Everyone in Education knows that primary children are called pupils and secondary children are called students,” explained Supertonk. “I never said that I would give free texts to students, just to pupils and pupils are only in primary schools.” Well it seemed reasonable to me as I stood in the autumn sunshine outside Room 8 with the District Inspector and the Director of Primary Education, reflecting on the free text book debates.

Meanwhile, Mr Wallace soon shook me out of my reverie by inviting me to take on the job of writing science text books for primary children. Mr Wallace was a very enthusiastic and persuasive talker. He reminded me of the footy coach at three quarter time in the grand final delivering his impassioned plea to the players to once more rise up, summon their strength, commit their bodies and go out to do or die for the cause.

Naturally I was very hesitant to accept his offer. But he and Mr Quin were adamant that I was just the man for the job.

“After, all,” enthused Mr Wallace, “It is only what you are doing here every day. Mr Quinn has told me how you are devising science activities over a wide range of classes. Oh, yes, you can do it alright!’

Silently I wondered if Mr Wallace would let me take my Galt Cards with me but out loud I told him that I would give science text book writing a go.

“That’s wonderful, Noel. I’ll be in touch soon to tell you when you will be starting. We are still getting a team of writers together. It may take a few weeks before we are ready to go.”

Writers! I wondered if a plagiarist was going to be included in the team.

Neville Green congratulated me on my new position and said I had made a wise move. About three weeks later Steve Wallace rang to say that there had been a slight change of plan. Instead of me joining the text book writing team, he wondered if I would replace Bob Reid at the Nature Advisory Service. Apparently Dr John Lake, a lecturer at Graylands Teachers College,had won a Rotary Scholarship and would be overseas in 1972. Bob was going to take John Lake’s place lecturing in Maths and Science Education at Graylands.

“So, Noel,” said Steve in his enthusiastic way, “What I’d really like you to do is take over Bob’s job at Nature Advisory at the start of school next year. Will you think about it?”

Well, I actually knew Bob Reid and I had made great use of the Nature Advisory Service. Dr Vincent Serventy and Harry Butler had done a mighty job in the 1950s and 60s in developing this great resource for teachers and students. In fact both of these gentlemen had visited my classrooms when I was teaching at Bunbury Central School and Koongamia. Eventually, after talking it over with Neville Green, I agreed to be a teacher for the Nature Advisory Service. At least I would not need to be a plagiarist in this role.

Just before school broke up in December, I had another phone call from Steve Wallace.

“Noel, Bob Reid has decided not to go to Graylands Teachers College. So he will be at Nature Advisory next year as usual.”

“Oh, O.K. Does this mean that now  I will go on to the text book writing team instead?’

“No. Not now. Because of the arrangement with you going to Nature Advisory, we have put someone else in the science text book job.”

“Oh. O.K. So I guess I’ll just stay on here teaching science at Mt Lawley School.”

“No. I want you to go to Graylands to replace Dr John Lake in the Maths and Science Department.”

That’s the way it worked in the early 1970s. No formal application forms. No merit selection panels. From class teacher to teachers college lecturer in one move. Do not pass go! Do not collect two hundred dollars!

Well, after a lot of thought and further lengthy discussions with Neville Green and Dr Clarrie Makin, the principal at Graylands Teachers College, I agreed. In February 1972 I started working as Acting Lecturer in Mathematics and Science in a tertiary institution. I grew a moustache so that I would look older than the students.

This is where Gough Whitlam takes a hand. He started pushing loads of money into education at all levels. In 1973 the five W.A. teachers colleges were encouraged by the Tonkin and Whitlam governments to become autonomous institutions in an organization called The W.A. Colleges of Advanced Education, otherwise known as W.A.C.A.E. These days it is called Edith Cowan University.

One day in September 1973, Dr Makin called me to his office. He told me that, as the colleges were going to be autonomous in 1974, it was necessary to advertise all positions. He said he was very happy with my work and really wanted me to stay on staff. However, he said the there was a problem.  Great pressure was being exerted on all of the colleges to appoint highly qualified candidates so as to make the W.A.C.A.E. more akin to a university.

I had a Teachers' Certificate and a Teachers’ Higher Certificate plus a B.A. Dip. Ed., but I lacked any real qualifications in Maths or Science, except for a post graduate unit in Educational Measurement and Statistics. Clarrie said it would be hard for me to retain my position unless I enrolled in some post graduate science unit. He said he could then argue to the selection panel that I was actually already doing the job and was upgrading my science qualifications at the same time. He said he thought that this would give me a good chance of staying on at Graylands.

I loved working at Graylands but I told Clarrie that post graduate science units would be completely irrelevant to the primary maths and science courses I was running for future primary teachers. Also, I would struggle to keep my head above water as a post graduate university science student and this would affect the quality of my work at Graylands. I didn’t enrol in any post graduate science units. Needless to say I was not successful in holding on to my college job and, during December, 1973, waited on a call from the Department to return me to classroom teaching.

However, on January 4^th of 1974, a gentleman named Ted Styles called me at home. He said he was the Director of Teacher Education at the Department and he wanted me to work for him as a Liaison Officer between the Department and the five newly autonomous teachers colleges. Specifically, I was to represent the Department in dealing with the hundreds of trainee teachers who had signed on for departmental scholarships, more colloquially known as “The Bond.” I went into the department and had a chat to Ted about what my duties would be. I accepted his offer and became an acting Education Officer in Teacher Education Branch.  This branch was situated in Arcon Centre in Havelock Street. I worked closely with the Education Department’s two Recruitment Officers, Wally Langdon and Gerry McGrade. Both of these very fine gentleman gave me a lot of help coming to grips in working with the departmental bureaucracy.

One of my jobs was to devise various forms for such things as Living Away From Home Allowance, Travel Allowance, Leave of Absence, etc. Before I could have any of these forms printed on Education Department letterhead I had to take them to the Education Department'e Chief Clerk for his perusal and approval. This often took some time.

After one such visit to the Chief Clerk I came back to Arcon Centre complaining as to how the he used to spend a very long time perusing the form, or whatever other document I had given him, only to make very ineffectual changes.

For instance, I pointed out to Wally and Gerry that "After studying it for a very long time the Chief Clerk then says, ,"You need to change "Students must submit this application form before the end of Term One' to 'This application form must be submitted by students before the end of Term One.'"

"Let's face it," I continued to whinge, "It is purely cosmetic. What is his point?"

"He wants ownership of the document," said Wally. 'What you need to do is make a few spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. He'll pick them up in a wink and you'll be on your way."

Wally was absolutely right. I'd make few spelling mistakes, or put a plural verb with a singular noun and the Chief Clerk would swoop on it, make the changes and then hand the document back to me. I was in and out of his office in five minutes.

I enjoyed my liaison work. I enjoyed having my own office in Arcon Centre and working with Ted, Wally and Gerry and salaries and staffing branch officers. I visited each college at least once each week, hob nobbing with principals, bursars, lecturers and students, helping to sort out  payment issues, living away from home allowances, travel allowances and the complex and varied  problems that affected the students and the successful completion of their course. Unwanted pregnancies and drug use being just two of them.

I was amused to note that some of the highly qualified people who had been appointed by the colleges to lecture in primary mathematics and science had very few clues about what young primary student teachers needed to know to teach these subjects in primary schools. On a couple of occasions when I arrived at a college the Bursar would tell me that the maths and science lecturer wanted to see me urgently. This would always be because they were being besieged by panicking students who were about to go on Practice and wanting ideas for science or maths lessons. Of course, though highly qualified, these new appointees were completely in the dark regarding teaching tips in primary science and maths. I would advise them as best I could. It rankled me a little to think that because they had high flown qualifications in quantum physics, or the spectography of particulate matter, they had been appointed to a job they were finding difficult, whereas little old unqualified me had been doing it quite satisfactorily.

Although I enjoyed my life as the Teacher Education Liaison Officer I decided I wanted to get back into a school. Towards the end of 1974 I told Ted Styles that I was applying for a promotion to the Level 3 principalship. The next day Ted sat me down in his office and wrote out a Special Promotion request for me. A few weeks later I was appointed Deputy Principal Primary to Donnybrook District High Schools. Yes, as a Principal. Headmasters had disappeared around about 1973 and Principals were popping up all over the place.

About a month before I left my job as a Liaison Officer, Ted Styles announced that for 1975 he would appoint three Liaison Officers. The three successful applicants came to Arcon Centre for an orientation  week in December 1974 and I gave them insights into what would be required of them. I have always believed that this showed that it took three people to do the work that I had pioneered. Some others take the view that it took three people to fix up the mess that  I had made. Some people can be so unkind!

Anyhow, in January 1975 I took up my Principal’s position at Donnybrook District High School. So it was John Tonkin’s Supernumerary Teacher programme and Free Text Book Scheme plus Gough Whitlam’s federal funding to establish autonomous teachers colleges that had made me a proud member of the principalship. I happily stayed that way for the next 29 years until retiring in 2002.

I know it is bit late, and John Tonkin has sadly passed on, but may I just say, “Thank you, John, and thank you, Gough. I could not have done it without you.”

Getting stuck into it

When I was Principal at Doubleview Primary School we used to have a “Green Lunch Day”. For the ecologically challenged reader, a "Green Lunch" is not an egg and salad sandwich that has gone mouldy. It is a lunch that involves the least possible amount of wrapping. The idea is to cut down on unnecessary packaging and litter. It worked fairly well. Our school’s usually well stocked rubbish bins were less than half full on Green Lunch days.

What we really need, however, is an angry and aggressive 'Green Lunch Brigade", similar to the noisy dissidents who appear regularly to aggressively oppose Globalisation, or almost anything involving change, to march forth into the world and put an end to the entire packaging and wrapping industry.

Just about everything we buy these days is wrapped in plastic, laminated on to cardboard, encased in bubblewrap or protected by alfoil. My daughter gave me a CD for my birthday. I haven't played it yet. I can't get it out of its plastic wrapping. Each morning I go out to get the daily paper. It comes shrouded in clear plastic. I stand in the driveway pulling it one way, tearing it another. The neighbours come out to witness this daily wrestling match, which I rarely win.

Then there DVDs that are wrapped in an indestructible material which has a little arrow helpfully suggesting to “Tear here". Well you can tear there but it won't make any darn difference. Eventually you will need to get a sharp knife or a nail file to remove the wretched stuff.

It is the same with those packages of coloured Post It sticky note pads.

“Tear Here" it says. Tear away, swear away, but you finish up tearing your hair out.

Then there are packets of noodles that also contain a sachet of flavouring.This sachet looks like it is made of alfoil, but it is actually  a form of stainless steel that defies destruction.

And when you try to put some tomato sauce on your meat pie at the football or cricket they give you a plastic bubble of it with a little note at one end saying "Lift here".

Lift away. Nothing will happen. Your thumbnail will break and you will eventually have to stab the thing with a ball point pen. The result is that you get sauce in your eye and not on the pie.

The late Ogden Nash once wrote, "You  shake and shake the ketchup bottle. None will come, and then a lot'll". I am pretty sure that even dear old Ogden would prefer to take his chances with a tomato sauce bottle than fight to the death with cast iron plastic capsules of the stuff.

If you need a battery for your torch or Walkman you cannot just go in and buy one battery. No sir. You can only get them in packages of four, six, ten, twelve or twenty. And you need a hammer and a chisel to prise them out of their laminated containers.

And that raises another important issue...multiple packaging.

It is very hard to buy only one of practically anything these days.

Batteries, clothes pegs, nails and screws are just some of the items now packaged in multiples.

I went into the liquor store the other day, for medicinal purposes only of course, and the fellow behind the counter beamed proudly and announced that I could now get my favourite medicine in a THIRTY SIX can block. 36 cans! I could hardly believe it. What is more, I could hardly lift it.

I can see that before long I will need to develop the strength of an Olympic weight lifter just to take my carton of stress relief home.

It will be a bit like the man who took a weightlifting course by correspondence. He failed the course, but his postman went on to win the weightlifting gold medal at the Olympics.

Surely there are some civic minded activists around who will band together to fight this mania for sticking multiples of everything in indestructible wrapping.

Or maybe I will have to get a job as a Quality Control Consultant in a packaging company.

At least, then, I could tell them where to stick it!

The Misleading Power of PISA

 This was the second Blog I wrote way back in September, 2012. PISA still dominates the thinking of editorial writers and commentators on radio, TV and the print media. Since 2008 Australia has slipped back, or other countries have made gains. Commentators continue to scream that Education must return to the basics. But as a great educator, Pasi Sahlberg has pointed out...you cannot solve a problem by continuing to do the things that caused it in ther first place. Australia's education problem is the ever widening gap between high and low achievers. Gonski was supposed to address that problem but a lot of Gonski money went to the wrong address..wealthy private schools.
Sahlberg says the really basic things required to fix Australian education are: Provide equity by fully resourcing schools with the greatest need, put more resources into nurturing student health and well being in the schools, but also in their homes and in society in general. Finally, he says we must avoid Quick Fixes. They have not worked over the last fifty years. (Written 14/12/2-19. NB.)



Prime Minister Gillard has had an obsession with educational measurement ever since she went to New York and noted the heavy standardised testing regime imposed on all schools in that state by it Education Director, Joel Klein. She was so impressed that she came back and set up NAPLAN and a Myschool website.

Joel Klein is a lawyer. His standarised testing policy, in which failing schools were closed and their principals and staffs sacked, has since been criticised and repudiated by such luminaries in education as Dr Diane Ravitch, author of the best seller, “The death and rise of the great American school system” which provided evidence to show that standardised testing was ruining American education. Dr Ravitch, who helped introduce the No Child Left Behind programme, which emphasised Literacy and Numeracy and standardised testing, now says "Failure in school is due to poverty, not poor teaching."

Dr Ravitch is supported by the Cambridge University's comprehensive Review of Primary Education which also condemned a major focus on standardised testing schemes such as NAPLAN.
Joel Klein, by the way, is now in England working for Rupert Murdoch's online education and standardised testing and tutorial programme. It is expected to bring in six billion dollars a year. Rupert certainly knows where the real money is in education. (UPDATE: It brought in over 13 million pounds in 2014.)

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gillard has appealed to our national sporting instincts and told us that the main game, The International Premiership of Schooling, is for Australia to be at the top of the PISA school rankings.

But what exactly is PISA. It is a Programme for International Student Assessment, which was created by the OECD. PISA, based in Paris, tests a random sample of 15 year olds in a number of countries to see how well equipped they are to face the big wide world of work. It tests subjects which are easily testable like mathematics, reading and science. PISA tested maths in 2003, science in 2006 and reading in 2009. This year some randomly selected students in 30 countries were tested in mathematics plus optional computer based assessments in mathematics and reading. The tests are not based on any particular national curriculum but the bean counters in Paris say PISA provides a powerful tool to influence government policies. Nobody has bothered to explain why? Indeed, nobody has bothered to ask why?

PISA seems to be famous for being famous at ranking what it says are the education achievements of various countries which are based on random samples of fifteen year olds. Unfortunately, it is people who do not really know very much about education who are always very impressed by these sorts of data. Our Prime Minister, also a lawyer, is so impressed by PISA that she wants us to go to the top of its educational premiership ladder.

The countries ahead of us on the PISA list are several Asian countries and Finland. Finland does not have any standardised tests and children do not start formal learning until they are seven years old.

The top ranking Asian countries achieve their high results mainly because many Asian parents pay thousands of dollars each year for their children to spend hours and hours attending special tuition classes outside of normal school hours.

Neither Finland, nor the top ranking Asian countries, have indigenous populations or multi cultured societies where significant numbers speak the national language only as a second language. These are important factors that will always impinge on Australia's test results.

Some of PISA's top ranked countries such as Shanghai and Honk Kong are urban economic zones, as is Singapore. If we could have Canberra representing Australia then we would be indeed be flying high on the PISA table of success.

Unfortunately, in Australia, education is subject to political whim. NAPLAN results, and now the desire to win the PISA premiership, are determining government education policy. Of course literacy, numeracy and science are vitally important, but what sort of citizens should our school's be producing?

Well, business leaders and academics, such as those at Cambridge University, invariably say that employers want people who have the qualities of leadership, responsibility, accountability, adaptability, communication, initiative and self direction, risk taking, resilience, creativity, teamwork, cross cultural and problem solving skills.

In other words we do not want, or need, schools that are intensely focused on literacy and numeracy scores. We want schools that enable students to reach their full potential. This is the Information Era, a time of extremely rapid change. We want students who have developed the necessary skills of enquiry and data analysis to be able to find out what they need to know when they need to know it. We want students with a positive outlook on society and on their fellow citizens.

Many of the children in Year One classes today will, in the 2020s, be engaged in occupations that do not yet exist. Social scientists predict that today's young people will grow up to work in at least six different vocations during their working life. This is not simply changing one employer for another employer in an allied industry, this is taking on six completely different occupations, each requiring a different knowledge base and vastly different skills.

Prime Minister Gillard's pursuit of PISA glory is her response to the Gonski Report. But Gonski wanted six billion dollars to assist stressed out and under resourced teachers, mainly working in run down schools in low socio economic areas, coping with dysfunctional families and children with a variety of intellectual, emotional and physical problems.

It seems nobody asked the teachers how the Gonski money should be spent.

Now, the misleading power of PISA has given Australian education a very different slant.

The lost childhood generation

We have all heard sad stories about The Stolen Generation of Aboriginal children and The Lost Generation of the post war British child migrants. We are now, unfortunately, on the edge of what may become The Lost Childhood Generation

Associate Professor Michael Nagel, from the school of science and education at Queensland University, issued a timely warning recently that parents 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).

Professor Nagel says 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.

However, it is not just eager parents who are force feeding our very youngest children with educational and intellectual competencies for which many (most) are not yet ready. Our schools are doing it to.

In 2009, the standardised testing of literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 was made mandatory in all Australian schools by the Rudd Labor government. NAPLAN was a refinement of earlier national testing programmes introduced by the then Federal Ministers for Education, Dr David Kemp and Dr Brendon Nelson, in the Howard Government. The Labor government subsequently established the Myschool website so that parents, and others, could check on a school’s NAPLAN performance and compare it with other schools.

The fact that all schools were to be compared and judged on their NAPLAN results made principals and teachers focus on improving their NAPLAN scores. As a result, many schools instructed teachers to concentrate almost exclusively on literacy and numeracy in term one in preparation for the NAPLAN tests in May. Many parents began enrolling their children in after school and weekend pre NAPLAN classes to improve their chances in the tests. At the same time “distractions” like in-term swimming, interschool sports fixtures, cultural and educational excursions were postponed until after NAPLAN.

Of course literacy and numeracy are very important, but the pressures caused by NAPLAN and Myschool are having deleterious effects. In some schools, pressure is being applied to early child hood teachers to deliver a more formal approach in developing literacy and numeracy skills in kindergarten and pre primary children. In some cases this has meant that, as far as number and language development are concerned, kindergarten is becoming the new year one and pre primary is becoming the new year two.

In discussing the problems associated with this downward curriculum pressure on the early years of schooling with some young mothers recently, one of them said, “Oh, yes. Now I understand. When David was in pre primary five years ago, he seemed to spend most of the time learning about his colours, growing things, learning about himself  and his home and his surroundings, having fun with play dough, manipulating various shaped blocks and other objects and playing in the adventure playground. This year his brother is in pre primary and his teachers are spending a lot of their time teaching him to count to one hundred and print his name and other words.”

Although various education departments may not say so, the advent of NAPLAN also caused them to start gathering data on pre primary children in order to identify any problems that would affect their NAPLAN results in year three. The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) also collects data from pre primary children every three years. In Western Australia, pre primary early development data was collected in 2009 and again this year.

At this stage it must be pointed out that NAPLAN does provide some useful information to teachers about a child’s performance and where the child and the class stand in relation to the rest of that age group and where their class rates alongside similar schools. Of course, over a school year, teachers gather a great deal of data about child and class achievements, it’s just that NAPLAN results are the ones that parents and the wider community are fixed on. It is this public use of NAPLAN results to determine a school’s “success” which is the inherent problem. Parents are often more influenced by the NAPLAN test results than they are by the class teachers mid year  and end of year reports. They receive the NAPLAN results  in September/October which refer to one off tests  given in May. The school's reports, issued in June and December are up to the minute reflections of the child's achievement in the eight learning areas based on work over the  first semester and second semesters.

Similarly, the collection of AEDI data in pre primary will have benefits for the 25% of children identified in Western Australia this year with various factors that could inhibit their NAPLAN results in year three.

As one anonymous mother blogged recently, “When Literacy and Numeracy tests were introduced I thought it was about addressing inequalities, so when my child sat the tests I joked with the other mothers that we should give our children chocolates for breakfast so that they performed badly and the school would receive more money...some laughed, some were horrified. What I failed to realise is that NAPLAN is picking up on parents’ greatest strength and their greatest weakness, their desire for their child to do the best they can. While the test is a blunt instrument in measuring educational achievement, some parents are treating it with all the reverence of a religion.”

Amanda Holt is a qualified early childhood teacher and the director of an Early Childhood Care and Education Centre. She says, “If you think NAPLAN is bad, try the AEDI. I have early childhood parents wanting us to prepare their children so that they can “pass” their AEDI “test”. I then explain that the children prepare themselves through participating in play activities which are inviting, engaging, complex and supportive of their level of development.”

Dr Ramesh Manocha is a GP and PhD who specialises in mental health. He works in the School of Women’s Health and Children’s Health at Sydney University and is the Chairman and Founder of the online health forum, Generation Next.

In June this year, Dr Manocha wrote an online article entitled “The pressures of kindergarten.” He says that these pressures are real and that kindergarten is moving far away from “the garden for children’ envisaged by the visionary 19th century German educator, Frederich Froebel. Manocha refers to the proliferation of early learning centres that are getting children ready for “the pressures of kindergarten.”

“Where is this pressure coming from? The government? NAPLAN? Parents? The Economy? I do not know if there is one answer, but we should never be speaking of the pressures of kindergarten”, says Dr Manocha.

He says that there is mounting evidence to suggest that we are sending our children to school at too early an age. Working parents may not agree with him, but if we look at Finland, which invariably tops the OECD education lists, children do not start formal schooling until they are seven years old. Finland also does not have any standardised test, except for the one at the end of secondary schooling which is the equivalent of our old style Leaving or TEE exams.

Although Dr Manocha is not sure why pressures are being felt in kindergarten, early childhood teachers are already putting the blame squarely on the need for schools to improve their NAPLAN scores. At the end of first semester this year, I attended a huge school assembly to farewell the school’s Pre Primary teacher. She was not retiring because of age or ill health; she had in fact resigned because, for her, early childhood education was becoming far too formal. I listened, teary eyed, as her students, ex-students, fellow teachers, parents and community members sincerely thanked her for the wonderful impact that she had had on them and the lives of all of the children in her care.  Teenagers, some of whom she had taught twelve years ago, turned up to express their gratitude and to recall with great pleasure, not only what this wonderful teacher had taught them, but, more importantly, how “special” she had made them all feel. Like me, everyone present was affected by these emotional outpourings, but I was also saddened to think that such a brilliant teacher, a pre primary teacher Par Excellence, was lost to future generations because of the system’s pressure to push formal literacy and numeracy learning into the lives of our very young children.

 And it is so unnecessary. In 2009, as NAPLAN was being introduced in Australia, The Cambridge University Review of Primary Education was published. This is the most comprehensive review of primary education ever undertaken anywhere in the world. One of the Cambridge Review’s chief findings was that universal standardised testing of literacy and numeracy narrowed the curriculum and was not in a child’s best interests.

In that same year, in the USA, Dr Diane Ravitch published her bestselling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American Public School System”. The book’s subtitle was “How testing and choice are undermining education”.

Dr Ravitch should know about these things. She was the Assistant Secretary for Education in the administration of President George Bush the First. She was instrumental in setting up the U.S. federal government’s “No Child Left Behind” project, which established a nationalised literacy and numeracy testing programme and established Charter Schools to focus specifically on raising standards in literacy and numeracy.

President Clinton later appointed her to the National Assessment Governing Board which supervised the national testing programme. Failing schools were closed down and the principals and teachers were sacked.

However, after examining the evidence of the national testing programme, Dr Ravitch has now had a 180 degree conversion. She now regrets sacking so many principals and teachers because their schools did not measure up. She now says, “poverty, not poor teaching, is the major cause of failure in schools.” Interestingly, in Australia the various state education departments can predict with great accuracy how well or otherwise a school will perform in NAPLAN tests. They use a socio-economic index based on the school’s demographic to accurately predict school performance. In other words, schools in the leafy green suburbs will always do better than those on the other side of the tracks.

Dr Ravich backs her argument against standardised testing with hard evidence and is severely critical of the highly touted results of the New York school system. The New York school system was administered by Joel Klein (a lawyer) in the 2000s. It had a major focus on literacy and numeracy testing. It is the education system that so impressed our then Education Minister, Julia Gillard, when she was in New York one day, that it set her mind to establishing what eventually became NAPLAN.

But Diane Ravitch produces data to refute the achievements of New York’s education programmes which shows New York college students compare poorly against students from other states who enjoy a broader curriculum.There is also some evidence that New York schools fudged (cheated) on their results.

Dr Ravitch says that school accountability, based solely on standardised testing, has been a disaster. It encourages schools and teachers to teach to the test and devote less and less time to science, social studies, history, geography, foreign languages, art, music and drama. Why wouldn’t they. Their jobs depend on it.

Dr Ravitch says that in the 1990s she was optimistic “that testing would shine a spotlight on low performing schools and that choice would create opportunities for poor kids to leave for better schools.” Sound familiar. The problem was that it did not turn out that way.

She now says, “There is little empirical evidence...just promise and hope” and is convinced that schools operate better “in an atmosphere of cooperation, not competition.”

With NAPLAN being touted as the benchmark for school achievement, Australian schools are now competing against each other. In some schools even the teachers are competing against each other. Some schools principals use NAPLAN results as a blunt performance management tool on teachers whose classes are producing lack lustre NAPLAN results.

Obviously, it would be prudent to take heed of the Cambridge Primary Review, which clearly outlines the aims of primary education and the best ways of achieving them. It would also be prudent to study Dr Ravitch’s book so as to avoid the pitfalls of a heavy reliance on nationalised testing.

Unfortunately, in Australia, teachers are not politically powerful and our education system is controlled by politicians who generally make decisions based on what gets the most votes, not on what is in the best interests of our children...and ultimately, our country. The late Dr David Mossenson, a highly esteemed and very effective Director General of Education in Western Australia in the 1970s, was once heard to say, “I spent the first half of my career trying to get politicians interested in education and the second half trying to get them out of it.”

We can only hope that some Australian educators will acquaint themselves with the evidence presented by the Cambridge University Review and “The Death and Life of the Great American Public School System” and try to influence our politicians before our primary children are completely deprived of the wider curriculum that they previously enjoyed and before our kindergarten and pre primary children are further burdened with the pressures of formal education.

In our primary schools and early childhood centres “enjoyment” should be the operative word. We have all heard the horror stories about children being sick on NAPLAN test day. Perhaps some teachers and school principals have even felt sick on NAPLAN Day too?.

Interestingly enough, the Cambridge Review does recommend an accountability system. It says there should be regular testing of randomly selected children in order to ascertain overall performance levels in various subjects.

Bingo! This was the very system that was so successfully employed by the Western Australian Education Department up until the late 1990s when a conservative federal Minister for Education, Dr David Kemp, using the extortionate tactics of Al Capone, threatened to withhold federal funding unless the W.A. state government introduced universal testing.

Neither Dr Kemp nor Dr Nelson had any background in teaching or education. Our previous education minister, Julia Gillard, is a lawyer. The present Minister for Education used to sing in a rock and roll band.

We should all be praying that one day we can have someone with real teaching experience making the important decisions that will impact on children in our primary schools and early childhood centres. It is to be hoped that more and more educators, like Professor Michael Nagel and Dr Ramesh Manocha, will speak out strongly against speeding up children’s formal development and stress the benefits of letting  them enjoy their childhood.

In the meantime, we can only wait and see what troubles lie ahead as the children who are being robbed of their childhood today grow into their mature tomorrows. I wonder if they will look back fondly and thank us for the way we made them feel?