Is our education system fundamentally flawed? I spied a link to this page on “Why Schools Don’t Educate” which is a transcript of a speech by John Taylor Gatto as he accepted the New York City Teacher of the Year Award.
It really reinforced one of my long held beliefs that you are your own best teacher. As Bella (my daughter) approaches school age Nicola and I are going to start to make decisions for her about which of the regions schools she will attend and how we structure her home life to make it condusive to learning.
Reading the linked article makes me wonder whether there is a better alternative?
Mr. Gatto mentions (although doesn’t necessarily endorse) home schooling. So what are our home schooling options here in Australia? I found this link to the Australia specific page on the Home School Legal Defense Association. The title of the site it self makes me think that there could be some legal implications above and beyond the moral requirement to educate your own children.
Many of the home schooling organisations in Australia seem to be associated with a particular religious denomination. I’m not necessarily keen to go down that path but is state sponsored education really the only alternative?
Interested to hear everyones thoughts.
I went to boring old public schools for primary school, but I went to Radford College for high school - being a fellow canberran you might have heard of it
Of course, no one actually likes school when they’re there, but over the course of year 11 and year 12 i realised just how good a school it was.
It’s probably the cheapest of the private schools in canberra, and i still think it’s one of the best. Issy started there this year in the early learning center - she’s free of the place when she finishes year 12. Giventhat i know how much they value and work hard at encouraging learning, i wouldn’t send her anywhere else.
But on top of that, I do make sure we do all we can to encourage her mind when she’s at home. drives in the car always involves maths or word play of some sort, to the point now that i’m sick of it but she always keeps whining to play the games
Mitch, my advice is “don’t listen to anyone’s advice!”
The main reason I say this is because no two children are the same. An environment where one person’s child thrives may be ‘hell on earth’ for another. You and Nicola are best placed to monitor Bella’s progress and revise your decisions based on what you observe.
My two eldest sons are quite different people. When they were in Cubs & Scouts, their nicknames were “Chalk” and “Cheese”. One of them would have done well no matter what school he went to. The other needed every assistance a highly-resourced school could offer.
(They are still different today; one of them is an MCP and the other is an open-source aficionado.)
Now, as well as differences between schools, there are also differences between teachers. I have observed that you can strike a bad teacher at a good school and vice versa.
I think your best yard-stick up until about Year 10 is: “Is my child happy?” Unhappiness, however caused, (bullying, excessive pressure, “all my friends go to the other school”, “stupid uniform”, “grumpy teacher”, whatever) is a barrier to learning. If Bella is happy, she will learn.
In later years, when career choices are being targeted and Bella’s talents have been identified a slightly different dynamic kicks in, but we can discuss that later.
Best wishes and congratulations on taking parenting so seriously. It IS what life is all about.
Good advice Mike.
Shame you told him not to listen to you
Good point, Geoff. “Don’t do as I say, do as I… oh whatever.”
And another bit of advice not to listen to…
In general, I have serious reservations about home schooling. The ability to interact with other other children is an invaluable skill which could easily be missed with home schooling.
Even worse, I know some people who have home-schooled their children and then taken their kids to special “play groups” where their children can meet and interact with children with “suitable” backgrounds. “Don’t want them picking up any bad language/criminal tendencies/drug habits” NOOooooh!
If we shield our children from kids with different social/ethnic/religious backgrounds or different skin colour, we do them no favour.
This last point was driven home to me when I took the family to the US many years ago. One of the boys was about 10 when he asked, “Mummy, why do all these men with brown skin keep asking Daddy for money?” It was a bit of an eye-opener. I realised that not only did he not know poor people existed, but he had never met an aboriginal person.
Well I’m pleased to say the now, many years later, I’m not at all concerned about the boys picking up any bad language/criminal tendencies/drug habits. My worst problem is that one of them uses Linux.
OK I’ll shut up now. Promise. See you all at Code Camp Oz!
Home schooling is but one rung below steiner schooling which is in the centre of the earth compared to public schooling.
As long as your kids will be learning and not having sex in the school toilets, I’d say you are on a winner.
Remember, You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. As long as your waters aren’t brackish the rest is up to the kid.
Which is why Delia is going to Radford. ELC as well. Very pleased we got in there.
As somebody with 3 kids, all doing well in school, the best advice I can give is throw out your TV. I’m serious! TV is hypnotic; your brain shuts down. When you don’t have a TV, your kids have no choice but to consider the world around them, to question, to think. It could be a difficult transition if your kids have grown up with TV (we never had one) but I think Mr. Gatto is right on this one.
As for home schooling (something I’ve never tried), it seems fraught with problems. Some parents can be good teachers, but how many? Can you find parents who can teach high school level math, physics, chemistry, literature, art, etc.? Is it really good for the kids to have so little social interaction outside the home?
My opinion,
The school you choose really doesn’t matter, what matters it that you and/or Nicola are involved, and show interest in what Bella does at school. Make sure you spend the time after school to help with their homework, reading etc, or even offer to help out at the school, it benefits your child and all the others in their class..
The other important thing, make sure Bella sees you and Nicola reading. Kid’s love to mimic their parents… My daughters love nothing better than reading books next to me while I’m reading…
(well the 16 month old loves to play with the books, but it’s a start)
That’s my 2 cents…
@David
I’m with you re: TV
I didn’t watch it for a couple of years when I was at school, and apart from the social isolation of not knowing what happened on last night’s Cosby Show, it was great. Although I got into TV again at Uni, I have now kicekd the habit again, and haven’t had a TV at home since 2003. Our kids sometimes get to plug the antenna into the computer to watch a bit of ABC Kids, but commercial TV is verboten.
(It’s the one thing I mostly admire Bill Gates for too.)
I’m against the no TV idea. I thinks its a cruel and unusual punishment to inflict upon your children. Just remember one thing. Kids grow up to be adults who can come back and kick your arse for not letting them watch TV.
Or alternatively becuse you deprived them of it they do nothing in their adult life except try and catch up on all the really cool TV you forced them to miss.
David & Dylan,
Sorry. I cannot agree with a ban on TV. I suggest “Moderation in all things, especially TV”. For some children, you might get away with a total ban, but for others, the ban itself will make TV more attractive and be an unnecessary source of conflict/peer pressure.
I like Eddie’s comment about reading in front of children. True. I suggest discussing inteligent TV like “Australian Story”, “4 Corners”, “Foreign Correspondent” with children is also beneficial. Also, even the youngest child will enjoy anything by David Attenborough.
You’ve just got to be careful with programs on commercial stations. When David says “your brain shuts down”, I’m sure he’s talking about the bottom end of the Redeeming Value vs Time Wasted curve. The slippery slope starts at “Who wants to be a millionaire?” (slightly educational questions), picks up pace at “Australian Idol” (entertainment only) and crashes into the basement at “Big Brother” (’nuff said).
Something I really enjoyed as our kids got older was the whole family howling with laughter at “Good News Week” or “The Glass House”. My wife and I enjoyed seeing our kids laugh even more than the jokes. I’d hate to miss that.
Mike/Brendan,
We watch a lot of programs on our computer. My kids have a pretty extensive DVD collection (considering their ages) and my son is a huge Batman and Spiderman fan. I prefer he get his cultural education at school rather than from the ‘box’. When we are at home, we like to spend time with each other.
We just don’t watch programmed TV.
I had a work friend who not only pawned his TVs and his computer, but also had his phone disconnected, because of communication problems at home. It worked for him, but I don’t think I’d go that far.
Dylan.
I’d say a ban on commercial tv while they are young. Stick to ABC and DVD.
Back to your main point regarding home schooling, most of the (3 or 4) families I know who home-school do so because they have real concern about the perceived negative influences on their kids from peers.
To me, this seems very misplaced. Peers are an important part of one’s social development. To take children from that environment could be disadvantageous. On the other hand, most of the home-schooled adults I know (also only 3 or 4 at last count) don’t seem to have suffered too much. So on balance, it seems to be a question of horses for courses.
The greater point that Gatto made in the speech was that by taking our children out of a broader environment of not just peers but also a range of older adults, we lift them out of a life-context and root them in their present, thereby reducing their attention spans etc etc.
Taking that on board then, I’d say that provided you are giving your kids a broader social context, involving them in your greater life, encouraging them to find mentors outside the confines of the TV screen, that you will be doing better for them.
On the original topic, the short answer is yes, our education system is fundamentally flawed, but not just in the way that Gatto suggested.
mandatory disclaimer: My wife is a teacher and has dedicated the last 8 years of her life to teaching (4 years at university, 4 years as a beginning teacher), so I’m probably biased towards the teaching profession.
The reason I think the system is flawed because we allow politicians to use our kids’ future as a political football.
An example? School funding for flagpoles.
Did you know that only coalition MPs are allowed to “preside” over school flag raising ceremonies, and opposition MPs aren’t? Or that the Federal Government forced the Tasmananian Education Department to issue a second “plain english” report card, essentially overriding the State Government’s approval of the department’s “Essential Learnings” report card, or they would withold funding. After the report cards were issued, media reports quoted parents who described the plain english report as “useless”.
Or how about playing wedge politics with private/public school funding? Public education is increasingly being portrayed as the “poor man’s option”, rather than a viable choice.
It’s also flawed because we put bureaucrats and academics in charge of education departments, people who are out of touch with what goes on at the coal face. In the public system, job security is only endangered by gross misconduct, there is no annual performance review as such.
I know of primary schools where teacher placement appears to be nothing short of affirmative action for males, beating out more qualified and experienced teachers apparently because of their gender.
Teaching is to a great extent a thankless and underappreciated profession - everyone knows that doctors, paramedics and nurses save lives, but good teachers can *make* lives. My wife was a teenage parent and only made it to uni through the support of her teachers in year 12 who insisted that she didn’t have to give up on her dream of being a teacher.
Home schooling is a noble concept, however my wife studied at university for 4 years JUST to learn how to education children from ages 4 to 9. As part of that, she has been trained to recognise a range of potential behavioural and learning disabilities, and to refer them to the appropriate support service within the education department.
It’s difficult for me to believe that unless you yourself were a teacher, that you would have sufficient background to teach your own children through to HSC level. Excuse the dramatic analogy, but imagine putting a self-taught programmer in charge of a mission critical system? Things may seem to be working ok in the beginning, but sooner or later it’s bound to come unstuck.
I can’t speak of the situation in the private school sector, but one thing I do know is that the best teachers don’t do it for the money, so I would be wary of schools who try and give an impression that they have the best staff because they pay more than the public system, etc. Anecdotally, private schools primarily have advantages in resources and class sizes, at least in Tasmania that seems the case.
My wife and I have considered private high school for my step-son, however all schools in our area are religiously-aligned, there are no independent schools.
At the end of the day however, we came to the conclusion that he is capable of being happy and achieving his potential at one of the public high schools in our area.
To my mind, that’s the most important thing, in spite of politics, in spite of bureacracy, in spite of budget cuts, every weekday morning my wife, and people like her across the country, front a class of kids for those 5 or 6 hours a day to help them become better people and achieve the best that they can.
Hi Warren,
Thanks for the details response. A lot of what you have said resonates with me. Let me give you some of my background. I attended a private, Catholic primary school in Queensland. It was a good school, although I don’t necessarily think that was because it was private and I wonder whether it is still as good as it was.
After finishing primary school I spent one year at a private high school in the city before being transfered to the local public school. One of the best decisions my parents ever made for me.
After school I attended UQ for one year and dropped out and actually started working in IT (as a teachers aide - interestingly enough).
During my time as a teachers aide I came to realise a few things:
- There are good teachers.
- There are bad teachers.
The thing that made them good teachers wasn’t necessarily their formal education, but rather their passion for the students.
The thing that made me laugh about your comment was this:
> Excuse the dramatic analogy, but imagine
> putting a self-taught programmer in charge
> of a mission critical system? Things may
> seem to be working ok in the beginning, but
> sooner or later it’s bound to come unstuck.
I can imagine doing that - I do it everyday, when I get into work and sit down at the keyboard - producing mission critical systems
I think what Mr. Gatto was getting at was that there is more to “education” than just getting pushed through the sausage machine to HSC level, in fact, thats just one of the prescribed routes.
If I had the opportunity I’d love to be able to take Bella to work with me to work along side me, since I see my industry as a trade, not just something you learn at school.
I’m not really disputing what you say, since I really don’t know the correct answer (is there one?).
Heh, I knew I ran the risk of that comment tripping me up, but I still think it’s a valid analogy
It certainly wasn’t meant in a disparaging way. Maybe i should have gone the self-taught civil engineer/bridge builder instead? 
One of my friends at uni was home schooled through to yr 12/HSC level, and he was acdemically successful, double degree, etc. So it’s not as though home schooling didn’t work for him.
you have picked up on something though, software development is more than just theory, it’s partly a trade, or a craft, or an art, depending on how you look at it.
In some respects, I don’t think uni taught me to be a programmer, it taught me how to *learn* to be one though. Could I have figured this out on my own? Without doubt, but in the absence of someone to guide me, my learning would have been patchy at best. Whether the guidance is best coming from a lecturer or from a senior colleague on the job is open for debate. The reason a lot of graduates bomb out these days is that they assume that uni is vocational education, which it is not.
My wife and I are both big believers in lifelong learning, so even though we believe in the public school system, it doesn’t mean that absolves us of all educational responsibility outside of school hours. Everything in life is an educational experience, even if you don’t treat it in the context of a “lesson”. At one point we talked of taking a term off and going overseas for an extended holiday before my stepson starts high school.
My wife suggests you may be interested in looking into Montessori schools too as they address some of the concerns in the Gatto speech, eg mixed age group schooling, individualised program, etc. It’s probably as close a compromise between home schooling and mainstream schooling as you will find.
The downside is that montessori has become a bit of a trendy status symbol and a lot of parents are sticking their kids into them without really understanding how they are intended to work. Also we’re not aware of any public montessori schools in Au, though there are private ones.
oh, i forgot to add, the right answer is whatever you, your wife and Bella decide the right answer is
Learning happens when you least expect it…
Hi Warren,
Thanks for responding (once again). We’ve actually looked at Montessori schools. There is one here in Canberra actually.
[...] What about you and some of your Canberra mates, Mitch Denny? You started this discussion. [...]