Extinguished Guest Writer
Phil Cullen
Ex Director Primary Schools Queensland
The Janus Look
Phil's website
An earlier letter from Phil worth a read
I’m
totally disillusioned and disappointed by the lack of interest in the effects of
NAPLAN on the lives of young Australian children shown by those who should care
more than they do about child development and the nasty treatment of children at
school. As a consequence. I worry a great deal about the future of our great
country. I’ve been around for a while, done a lot of things connected to primary
schooling, so I’d like to share an overview of what I reckon has happened during my life with kids; and then predict what is likely to happen.
I
took over my first classroom in May 1946. I was so proud. I had always wanted to
be a primary school teacher and I had arrived! I still love primary schooling 67
years later. Love it. Love it. Love it.
I
started teaching in the way that I was taught, the way that everybody seemed to
teach...from the front of the classroom near a blackboard with a desk and large
space all of my own, spending a lot of time yapping my head off across a
demilitarised zone to the youngsters who sat still in a confined space all day
facing me. It was standard practice.The techniques were based on fear. Teachers had taught this way for hundreds
of years, since the Dame Schools, Charity Schools and Common Schools first tried
teaching in groups. Such explicit, didactic, sermonising forms of instruction
featured, as a rule, some pretty nasty bang, crash, wallop techniques. They only
worked for a few easily frightened kids. – of
the birch, of endless repetitive listings, of detention and public disgrace –
applied to learning. We all believed in the prevailing dogma that children would
not pass any examinations unless they were roused enough to fear the
consequences of failure.
When
Grammar Schools wanted to judge the scholastic ability of those who might be
allowed to enter their hallowed halls, written tests for applicants became
favoured, so much so that governments took over their preparation, publication
and distribution. In my home state, it was called the Scholarship Examination.
From it, the examination bug went feral. Those that could ‘pass’ them were
offered privileges; those who couldn’t were dumped. The successful continued
being schooled in a new arrangement of classroom setting, based on subjects that
could be tested. The rest were not wanted at school and had to educate
themselves out in the big bad world at about fourteen years of age. Not the best
of schooling models, but the only one we knew. All children were schooled
following the premise that universities wanted only the best scholars and
schools should prepare everyone for a likely academic future. Schools were not
run for ‘also rans’.
This
sort of toxic psychology lasted for some years and, to my eternal shame, I was a
part of it. I wasted midnight oil, school time and professional gumption --
retarding children’s development by being crazily focused on testing. Then, I
realised that there is nothing honourable, nor ethical, nor professional about
stern blanket testing, especially the prevailing 2013 dirt-raking political kind
that is endemic to standardised external blanket testing. Never has been. Never
will be. It took two little Year 2 pupils to make me notice how much stress,
unhealthy competition, creative dullness and missed learning opportunities I was
causing. I just hadn’t given a thought to professional ethics nor to the
emerging knowledge about the school conditions necessary to help people to learn
with self-motivated enthusiasm....without fear. Others were learning that the
3Ls [Love, Laughter and Learning] were essentials for high performance in the
3Rs....while I was mistakenly chasing high performance through tests. Slow
learner that I was, I then did a complete 180 degrees. I now hate blanket
testing with origins beyond the schools with an intense hate, that I never
thought I could possess.
If
I had taught them learnacy, then top levels of personal numeracy and literacy
achievements would have come as a natural consequence, Hells, Bells and
Buggy-wheels, we have NAPLAN running our programs. The longer that Australia’s
NAPLAN has the kind of control that it has, the more that reasons arise for all
teachers to hate and despise Standardised Blanket Testing supplied by
non-local-school personnel. It stinks to high heaven and no form of it should
ever exist.
Real learning |
The
1960s to 1980s was the most progressive period in history. It produced the
creative geniuses that have since provided us with more comfortable living and
working standards far beyond the expectations of the citizens of the period.
Schools and their clients were free to learn, free to innovate. The world
started to become a very small oyster. Achievement became self motivating; and
schools were starting to use shared and self-evaluation techniques that involved
the pupil, the parent and the teacher in the pursuit of excellence. A visit to a
fair-dinkum child-oriented classroom was so exciting one could almost touch the
LEARNING atmosphere. You could certainly feel it.
The
present encouragement of didactic modes of instruction did not have the high
priority that is now promoted in the test-based atmosphere of the classroom.
Indeed the teachers, moved off the stage and shared more face-to-face maieutic
and group modes than had ever been tried. It was working well. During this truly
Golden Age of Education [1960s-80s], children were enjoying the role of ‘pupil’
with a caring teacher: “I learn. You teach. We’ve got this contract. Treat me as
a pupil, not as a student!!” Today, in 2013, they should be internalising. “Hey
Teach, You’re breaking the contract. Get rid of this NAPLAN crap and get back to
pupilling.” NAPLAN now rules schooling. It shouldn’t; should it?
Even
the School Inspectors, once feared apostles of the testing regime and making
judgements about school quality from their own backboard tests and oral
questioning, changed during the 60s and 70s. Appointed from the outstanding
principals of the day, they free-ranged around their schools to assist in any
way they could. The knowledge that they had accumulated over extensive
experiences was shared. They knew what a good school was and what a bad school
was without using paper-and-pencil tests. They knew which was which within
minutes of arrival.They gathered pollen from the best practices that they had
experienced and better ideas blossomed. Some were working partners of the
State’s curriculum development. They worked with close contact to the specialist
curriculum officers and the State’s multi-representative PCC – Primary
Curriculum Committee. Quality control and guidance was at its peak. Curriculum
changes and their effects on classroom activities were moderated at the
classroom level and discussed with all and sundry as to effectiveness. Changes
were alive, accepted or rejected; a far cry from the time when curriculum
changes were received in the post.
[We
had learned over the years that top-down curriculum innovations originating from
desk-wallahs in centralised other places, just don’t work. New Maths,
Cuisenaire, Whole Word or Phonic based Reading are examples. Nothing that is not
endorsed unanimously by classroom teachers will work. That’s why NAPLAN, now in
charge of the curriculum, wont help anything. It’s taking longer to get rid of
than most execrable impositions have taken because the business- based cum
profit-making cum totalitarian political force imposing its dictatorial will on
the conduct of schooling is stronger than any previous.]
Things
were going well, until, in mid-1980s, befuddled academics with high level
politico-bureaucratic control absorbed a special scato-meme invented by
corporate managerialists from Up-over somewhere, who believed only in impersonal
structural alterations just for the sake of change. In scatological terms, it
came from the bottom of the pit. In my state, the Education Minister and the
Director-General, both of whom had had unpleasant experiences in their short
teaching careers decided to get rid of Inspectors and those sections that were
concentrating on curriculum delivery, teaching and learning and teacher
development and seemed to be enjoying it. The pair just didn’t like their own
lack of control over effective schooling and felt inadequate. So, they blatantly
manipulated fellow officers and deceitfully arranged for a ‘preferred option’ to
be preferred because it was the one that they wanted. With skilful adherence to
managerialism’s impersonal forms of structure, they arranged for learning
activities to be ‘outsourced’, introduced ‘performance indicators’ that relied
on best-written CVs and thespian skills, ‘down-sized’ the Inspectorate by
summarily removing their positions, and removed the school-experience-base of
primary and secondary schooling by getting rid of divisional control. Out went
any semblance of an Education Department that was supposed, from time
immemorial, to be school based.
They
made things easy for a rookie Premier, under the influence of managerial
high-flyers such as Peter Coaldrake and Kevin Rudd to confuse the public service
generally...especially the caring services.
This
kind of organisation model, common to all Australian states and federal
governance, has devalued school experience, caring for kids, belief in teaching
as a pupilling enterprise, basic humanity and belief in professional
ethics...from the Australian school system. It’s been hellish for children and
caring teachers. It devalues down-to-earth, hands-on experience. It stinks.
NAPLAN
is the devil child of these kinds of irrelevant and irreverent changes to
schooling arrangements. Efficacy hawks and testucators,
quite unfamiliar with classroom practices, went wild with the blessing of Joel
Klein and his Australian agent, now PM, and have had a field day supporting the
destruction of learning development and belief in the human spirit. Small wonder
that little useful progress of the kind that was a probable dream in the 1980s
has been bastardised and that irreparable damage has been done to at least a
generation of our future citizens. Australia is now committed to mediocrity. Our
controllers just do not know what they are doing
[
http://www.saveourschools.com.au “How Figures Show No Progress
in Reducing Low Student Achievement in the Past 30 Years” ]
What
a pity that we couldn’t have done what the Finns did in the 1980s? STOP and
THINK ! THINK. What goes on in those classrooms, we should be asking. It’s not
too late, if we are prepared to drop the stupidities completely, return the
dignity of the teaching profession to its owners, trust our schools to produce
the goods; and encourage a love for learning in each school child for his or her
entire school life, Australia can do it. It has a teaching force, that has been
the envy of the world. It needs to be trusted. It can lead the world if it
tries, not fall behind as it is doing now....thanks to NAPLAN.
Principals.
Stop being such gutless wonders. Reclaim your school. Reclaim your ethics.
Believe in your professional ethics and exercise that belief. Stop being a party
to the cruel outcomes of fear-based learning. You’ve been duped. No
half-measures. You can get rid of all of the stupidity by simply saying, “No
more”. Send the tests back, if your representatives have been too eichmannised
to act on your behalf.
Teachers. You
unfortunate pussy-cats. Your pleasant co-operative nature, part of your DNA, so
necessary for the most wonderful of the caring professions, is being
compromised. Your professional leaders are letting you down and your unions have
deserted you. Believe in yourselves again. Things are tough for you. You can
tell the parents of your pupils how you feel and advocate that they opt-out by
removing their children from the May tests. It’s so easy. You are also part of
an enormous, locally-influential voting bloc. You do have power if you wish to
exercise it. Just talk about NAPLAN to everyone you meet.
Parents. You can help
by sending a simple note to your child’s school, telling it that you opt-out.
Also, you vote. So do teachers. If, together perhaps, you ask your local
candidates where they stand in regard to the banning of NAPLAN with the
intention of voting only for those who would ban it, there would certainly be
more political thought about the pestilence.
Are schools suffering from Eichmanism? |
In
the early 1980s, I dreamed of a wonderful future of happy children at school –
right through to Year 12 – bursting a boiler to get to school each day
because of all the rich learning experiences that they could
share. Shared evaluation of efforts to achieve at the highest level
would change to self-evaluation as the pupils moved through school and would
continue through life. The development of happy, exciting achievements in
learning was on the way. My closer primary school colleagues of the 80s and I
could feel the joys of learning in primary schools spreading, and, between us we
had more experience at recognising learning improvement than most. We foresaw
that the children at school at the time would love whatever they had to do and
would constantly try to do better....whether it was digging a neat ditch or
solving a tricky bit of space science. Learning would become a part of a happy,
useful life-style. Ah well!
Then
came managerialism....square pegs in charge...encouraged by a ridiculous,
verging on a stupid, political take-over of school-based learning
enterprises....pushing around compliant high-level pussy-cats who don’t give a
rats about kids.
Dreams
shattered. Truly, Today’s NAPLAN control of schooling in Australia is
devastating and disgusting. The longer NAPLAN exists, the worse it will get.You
can bet on it.
Poor
little Treehorn. His parents, teachers and principals still ignore his problems
and those of his school mates.
Hang
in there, kid. One day!!! 2013 ?? Let’s pray.
We
both have NO to NAPLAN stickers on our cars.
Have
you?
Love
you.
Phil
Cullen
2 comments:
How To Be a Primary Teacher and what is it like to be a primary school teacher in the 21st century? What you think?
Really enjoyed Phil's guest blog - his scenario is to be played out in New Zealand. Lets hope educators and parents wake up what is ahead of them.
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