One of my obsessions

I love the English language. Indeed I love French and German too, and Biblical Hebrew. [I wish I had more years left to get into the language of our near neighbours]. So I am always more than a little interested in language curriculum (I have blogged quite a lot about this before..here. Some of it even seems vaguely intelligible).

We must not allow ourselves to be seduced (yet again) by an easy solution. Manageable though it may be, the teaching of English is not (only) about getting your apostrophes right. (You're apostrophes right. Your apostrophe's right. Your apostrophes' right!) It is also about being able to teach people to communicate effectively, and how to evaluate language based materials.

In a world, for example, where a changed sexual morality bombards the airwaves...at what point do we show people that there is a need to critique what so often are presented as givens.

(Watch British TV drama "Skins", for example, ...a very well-written drama purporting to be the experience of ordinary kids...very popular with young people...and see if you think the attitudes to violence, drugs, alcohol and sex are simply neutral! Do they represent the real world, are they the sorts of value we think are appropriate)

Right and wrong

Teachers are both wrong and right about the standardised testing. (here and here for example).

Both sides of the present discussion no doubt agree that it is important that we focus on our children.

If you don't ask evaluation questions (And in reality teachers do this all the time) like "has Johnny's spelling improved?" or "Can she do long division?" then you are doomed to go round and round in circles. .and just guess at what is happening.

However nothing is more certain than the fact that this information also will be often only crudely analysed. It will be misunderstood and even abused by some with other axes to grind (this would seem to be the core of the teachers' objection).

Part of the reason for this conflict is that there does not seem to be any agreed purpose for the testing.

I mean "so that we can weed out dud teachers" is a fear-driven goal...and probably misplaced. (but it lurks there).

In reality we need to get rid of this fear & blame based stuff and state that the purpose of evaluation is to identify weakness and throw more resources at it.

If we don't do the evaluation then the identification of weakness is just intuition and guess work. Some may be good at this, but it is not the smart or prudent way to do it.

The solution should be to state the clear positive goals of evaluation and what responses might be made. I don't hear this at the moment. Even from Ms Gillard.

"The parents right to know" is not sufficient rationale. "To know what?" and "What is going to be done as a consequence?" are also consequent questions.

In theory, there can be nothing wrong with identifying areas of under-performance and making the connection that more resources need to go in that direction.

In theory there is nothing wrong with identifying areas of excellence (here for example) and suggesting that we promote that.

We can and should do both.

The perversity of our system is that often the connexion is made that we only see what areas are doing well and say "This is where our money is best spent".

So the rich get richer!!, and, The poor get poorer!!

Let's not do that

What education might be for?

My contribution to the wit of the 20th century was "Anglicans like to be told what to do so that they can go ahead and not do it"
I try to not tell people what to do (some would laugh) and this worries some people. We work the education system in such a way that we get good at discerning what bring the teacher's or authority figure's approval, so when we are deliberately not told it can be alarming.
Janet Albrechtsen, the rightist commentator, writing in The Australian this week reminds us that education should be about teaching kids to sift what they are taught so that they can detect the teacher's bias. This is not dissimilar to my own goal, (rather unusual for me to agree with Ms Albrechtsen). I don't want people to believe what I believe, I want them to respoect what I believe but to make up their own minds.
The ongoing grammar debate might have something of this. The trouble is that people want to be told what to do....how easy it is to just assume that there is a set of rules. This is the great flaw, grammar is much more fluid than that.
The rules by and large are not absolute, the only given is that you need to be understood. So accurate spelling is probably more important than meticulous sentence structure.
But if I write that chocolate pudding is deeeelishus, you probably know what I mean.
We make absolute rules...no prepositions at the end of sentences....which don't make the slightest biut of difference (and it is now widely regarded that this rule is more breached than kept).
What about split infinitives? Most people don't have a clue about this ...and although each year ay Synod we used to count up their number, I would like to also contend that this rule is more subtle than it is often given credit for....(did you even notice that I split the infinitive in that last sentence?) viz: to also contend has a slightly different meaning from 'I would like also to contend' or 'to contend also'...'to anxiously deny' (don't you think dear reader) is different from 'to deny anxiously' or 'anxiously to deny'.
The point? People shoudl be being taught to think not to regurgitate!!

testing times

Its worth listening to the recent Background Briefing about the issues of paying teachers for results. It does indeed beg all sorts of questions, not the least of which is the degree of objectivity that might be brought to assessing the idea of "success".
Does Mathematics success mean that a Year 12 student can accurately reproduce the Sum and Difference Formulae (this is the point at which Maths and I parted company...why learn stuff that you can reference more easily in a book) or that they are able to amortise a housing loan, or accurately cost a building project?
More seriously is the issue of how teachers start to "Teach the Test". We all know the problem. If your pay begins to depend on how your charges perform under a certain style of assessment then your method begins to reflect the process which will maximise the results under that method of assessment. Certain schools have masterd this art for years.
More seriously are other incontrovertible truths like parental educational levels influence performance at least as much as teachers. Middle class children with well-educated parents are likely to do well in our system. There are exceptions, bright working class kids who float to the top, but having worked in a number of educational environments where kids do not start with the advantage of having tertiary educated parents it is all too evident that these kids begin at something of a disadvantage.
Some might say this doesn't matter...they are the cannon fodder. But I would want to reward the teachers who struggle with the most disadvantaged and get them to take a few steps forward rather than the "successful" socially advantaged kids who have everything goign for them.
It is a very dangerous game that we play!!