Primary Schooling

Many western world school authorities have placed the context of real schooling in the hands of the inexperienced. It has happened because of the laissez-faire attitude of governments and authorities, and their unfortunate belief that the possession of a university degree imposes know-it-all powers on the possessors. There is also a prevailing belief that one’s experience in one educational field of endeavour, imposes wide knowledge of another. Consequently, plumbers have been placed in charge of a garage because they own a car. Their experience has been too brief and too narrow.

Present-day schooling in many states, districts, authorities and schools around the world is  mostly under the control of people who have moved into positions of authority through non-school or part-school avenues. The authorities that are experience-based [e.g. Finland] are way ahead of all others in terms of achievement in all key areas of learning.

Not many Grade 3 teachers move directly to positions as Deans of Education faculties, but many University Professors have taken important positions controlling the activities of primary and secondary schools, even systems. Many of them must feel quite uncomfortable. The array of backgrounds of people controlling, advising and running school operations with which they have limited experience is staggering. In Australian states crucial positions are occupied by proven public servants, bright academics and hard-data test-technicians, who exert a more than useful influence on political decision-makers and on those already occupying a power position. It is  out of kilter, big time. Worse still, in countries,such as the USA, that Australia tends to copy, where lawyers,  scientists and non-school professionals are in charge of school districts, state departments and Washington-based progams , ‘tested’ academic achievements tend to range from bad to miserable.

There needs to be a much clearer demarcation between domains of schooling. Those experienced in primary schooling should stay where they are and run the show, secondary teaching run  by experienced secondary teachers, tertiary by tertiary. For positions in many authorities, districts and schools, an ambitious parvenu is able to present a distinctive CV, interview well, and move to a task with little or no experience in the job requirements. The method is sometimes called the Patel system of appointment. [Patel is a medical doctor who was appointed to a hospital in Queensland without his expertise being properly examined].

The various sectors of the educational world need to be returned to their owners.

The premium theme of this presentation is to illustrate why this should be so and to emphasise that the nature of compulsory education should not be dealt with as it presently is.  It is all too apparent that governments and authorities seem unable to focus on the pupils and their attraction for learning and incapable of arranging workable systems that start from this point. They prefer the top-down, ‘some-one-else should know what to do’ position, currently employed.

In perilous times such as these first two decades of the 21st century, primary teachers, their principals, their representatives and their colleagues have become medusoid. Professional ethics are held in suspension, while jellyfish learn to pussy-foot. Perhaps my generation did as well…during the 1970-80s  world-wide Standards Debate, the 1980s Minimal Competency Movement in the U.S. and the 1970-80s Assessment of Performance in the U.K.  If so, now is an opportunity to start to develop backbone and establish firm ethical standards.

We start this by sharing our knowledge with our communities of what happens in schools. As John Goodlad suggests :”We must generate in all communities a richly comprehensive conversation about what our schools are for.”  We must talk turkey about the effects of mass testing on school curriculum time, encourage them to withdraw their children from the national tests and discuss how we can help communities to provide better schooling. If the allocation of school time to curriculum issues has to be re-arranged, parents should choose the items that have to be cut. It is their country’s curriculum that we are using. Testing is valuable when used for internal school purposes only and aimed at sharing each pupi’ls personal  evaluation and improvement.