The alarm clocks of more than a million NSW students shrilled
the end to another long summer of freedom and sent them trudging back to
school this week. Swapping T-shirts for tunics and regulation shorts, they
lined up at assembly, raised the Australian flag and were lectured by their
principal.
When the bell rang, they trooped into class, sat in desks in
neat rows as the teacher stood in front of the blackboard and told them to
open their books and start learning. Next bell, next class, repeat ad
nauseam.
It could be a scene from the 1950s - before the social,
pedagogical and technological revolutions of the past 50 years - rather than a
classroom of the 21st century.
Or is it that much different from the late 18th century, when
William Blake penned The Schoolboy:
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Today's children who clock up more than 30 hours a week at
school are light years ahead of their predecessors in pinafores. They are
sophisticated communicators who vote for Big Brother evictions and
Australian Idol winners, conduct snappy conversations in SMS and hold
forth in internet chat rooms.
But when it comes to their schools and their education, these
children are like lab rats subject to a litany of tests. The well-meaning
assessments make education one long performance review from kindergarten to
year 12. Adults wring their hands about their reading and writing, whether
they are learning phonics, why they backchat. No one ever asks the students
why they are bored in class.
There is a tension about how schools should prepare children
for the wider world they will eventually enter. With an overcrowded curriculum
that force-feeds students subjects such as "civics and citizenship", do
teachers have time to tap into students' creativity, let them have fun and
foster a love of learning? Or do they tick the academic "outcomes" boxes and
succumb to the calls of conservative commentators to return to rote
learning?
continued at http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-school-Id-like/2005/02/04/1107476806578.html (very
long article, but well worth the read. has a lot more to
say).
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