Why are We Waiting?
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By Dr Bryan Cowling
Posted on 04 March 2011
Only a fool would deny that school education in Australia is without blemishes. Thankfully our problems with schooling are not as catastrophic as those in the United States described by Davis Guggenheim’s in his stirring documentary ‘Waiting for Superman’ soon to be screened in Sydney. We have our skills shortages but not on the same scale as the United States where it is claimed that by the year 2020, 123 million jobs will be high skills/high pay but only 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill them.
Our problems are of a different kind. We have an increasing gap between the achievement of indigenous children and that of non-indigenous students. Despite our multi-ethnic and multicultural composition, most students have only a limited understanding and appreciation of a culture and religion other than their own. We don’t take seriously teaching students the principles of philosophical thinking, thus limiting their capacity to protect themselves from manipulative advertising and spurious ideologies. We recognise the powerful influence of popular culture, social media, reality TV and the like on children and young people but our systematic efforts to help them to critique and control these influences are still very feeble. We acknowledge that every student should experience a holistic education (intellectual, physical, social, cultural, moral and spiritual) but in an increasingly crowded school week, our attention to some of these domains is barely tokenistic.
Of course, four and a half years ago a politician from Queensland perceived that our schooling was less than perfect. He wrote a paper, convinced his peers and at least half of the population that he was right and became Prime Minister. Over the ensuing four years the government he led poured billions of taxpayers’ dollars into schools through the so-called ‘Education Revolution.’ Schools everywhere have certainly benefited from new computers, new buildings, new tests, a My School website and they’ve been promised new national teaching standards and a national curriculum. But has this expenditure reduced any of the deficiencies described in the previous paragraph? Has it revolutionised teaching and learning? Our ‘superman’ may have enhanced the appearance and physical facilities and expanded the technological capacity of our schools but his money has barely made a difference in the areas that really matter.
Public education in Australia is vital. Too often it is portrayed as the poor relation alongside the more resource-rich private schools. Despite his rhetoric, Kevin Rudd was not able to extinguish the cancerous envy, competition, name calling and prejudice that continues to flourish between the public and the private sectors. Governments talk about rewarding able and conscientious teachers but by and large the teaching profession continues to devalue itself because as a society we do nothing to elevate our respect and gratitude for it.
The revitalisation of public education in Australia requires a real cultural revolution. At every level it cries out for outstanding, visionary and courageous educational leadership, though not an American ‘superman!’ The current Federal Government has an opportunity to craft a radically different way of distributing funds to schools that reduces the current real and perceived inequities; to reposition public, Catholic and independent schools within collaborative precincts and to create more flexible life-long learning pathways to meet the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century. Current and future principals of public schools need to be trained and equipped to lead and manage their schools similar to the way their counterparts operate in the private sector. We need to restore the confidence of the community in their local schools. Accountability for the quality and character of every graduating student needs to be judged on many more measures than academic testing and contrived league tables.
As Christians we should be affirming that every child in our community can learn and succeed; that we value highly those who have chosen or been called to teach and that we expect all schools to deliver a holistic education for every child. More than that, we should be in the forefront of improving the quality of education in all spheres and supportive of the politicians and other leaders who champion this cause.
Dr Bryan Cowling is the CEO of the Anglican Education Commission, a former principal of an Anglican school and a senior executive in the NSW Department of Education.
11/2/2011
