Controlling curriculum: cognitive cyber-cloning

Ms Rachel Devlin Rooty Hill High School Rooty Hill, New South Wales, Australia

I am a teacher. Sure. But I am not sure who I am while I am writing this. I am not sure which voice will assume control over the black and white symbols on this page. Perhaps it will be the teacher. The tired, frustrated, disempowered teacher. The words dripping with hope and faith, somehow willing the challenges of education to contain ‘common sense’ rather than the ‘political agenda’. Wanting the best for students. Waiting for those optimum working conditions for staff and students.

Waiting.

Maybe the voice of ‘motherhood’ will take over this page. The personal and quiet anger that will spill in scattered subjectivity.

Possibly the voice of ‘concerned citizen’ might rise up.

I am not sure.

If you have sensed, even in my duplicity, that I am not completely satisfied with education, you would not be wrong. It is not the teaching staff, nor the supportive community members who work hard (to make schools the wonderful dynamic places that they are) that cause me personal concern. My frustration is with the systems, ideas and general restrictions that are imposed upon staff, students and their communities. As a teacher, it angers me. As a mother, it frustrates, and as a citizen it bewilders.

It seems to me that, on a national level, educationalists are continually working on improving the curriculum. We easily bend and flex to the changes that society, culture, philosophy and science provide. We might never quite hit the all-encompassing ‘mark’ because knowledge is always in flux. Nevertheless, curriculum developers work well with changing communities. Teachers ensure that they adapt to this change. Ideally, students just work. Sadly, but predictably, politicians work within the realms of media hype. The fear that educational issues are explored by, and judged on, representations created by ‘ratings hungry’ current affairs shows and radio shock-jocks (and their fans) is a daunting reality.

Even through the fog of political point scoring, Australian educators continue to develop meaningful curriculum. Nationally, ‘Essential Learnings’ concepts embrace the fundamental nature of learning in a democratic society. It seems clear that we, as curriculum developers and teachers, value critical and reflective thinking, communicating effectively, multi-literacies, citizenship/personal/social values, and emerging technology, with literacy and numeracy underpinning our work. As professionals and experts in the fields of our disciplines, as well as pedagogy, we are happy to explore the ‘new’ and experiment in order to foster continual improvement for our students.

Unfortunately, when one has been in education for a few decades, one can see the merry-go-round of trends and political catch cries. Sadly, in some cases, the cliché carries weight: ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. If we decide to invest in true ‘change’, we cannot afford to let things stay the same in our classrooms. Personally, I have seen many changes in curriculum, and yet, these changes have not transferred to the classroom.

These ‘changes’ to curriculum are well versed in many echelons in society. Many non-teachers feel that they are experts. Should I be brave enough to state the obvious battle that teachers have experienced at dinner parties, possibly for decades? If one has been to school, then one must be an expert in education. So when non-educators decide to give me advice on how to be more effective in my profession, I am prepared to gulp my last splash of cabernet sauvignon, throw my napkin to the table, glare in dignified defiance - and then withhold my flaming gunfire of opinion, as it is not worth upsetting the hosts.

Sigh. The story of my social life.

I know my business as an educator. My colleagues know their business. I was therefore delighted to hear that a representative of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) had presented 153 recommendations for improvement of the education system to Julie Bishop, our Federal Education Minister. For a brief moment of insanity, I felt I could relax. Someone was standing up to take the pilot seat. The navigational apparatus of education could, again, be trusted.

Yes, perhaps we could even fly blind.

Then the absurdity of the situation dawned on me. The representative of the ACCI, Mr Hendy, was explaining some of the recommendations. The one that took my interest was that students under seven years of age or earlier must learn a foreign language: ‘We think that's very important - it should be compulsory that, by at least seven, each child who can is learning a foreign language’. He justified this recommendation by explaining that he had found some research that students who learnt a second language within this age group would find it much easier to learn languages later on in life.

Personally, I love the idea of being bilingual. But what does Mr Hendy really know about children’s cognitive development? Or the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for that matter? As a mother, I would be furious to find that some poor infant teacher had to teach my son another language while he was still finding it difficult to decode and encode his own language. Don’t get me wrong. I really love the idea of being bilingual. But I am sure there is a reason why we don’t teach kindergarten children how to drive and how to have ‘safe sex’. Is it realistically the priority of primary teachers? How do they feel about it? I wonder if Julie Bishop is going to ask them?

Yes, it is about priorities, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry obviously have theirs. But we are in a unique group, as teachers, because we care about individuals. We care about what the child’s learning priorities are. There might be some schools that can cater for initiatives, such as learning a foreign language, for students in Stage One. However, we cannot forget that there are schools where this would not be a priority at all. In fact, in these schools, the suggestion could be a laughing matter. Let us not forget that there are colleagues who work in contexts where working on essential issues like basic health and nutrition is imperative. Some are working in contexts where they have high levels of students learning English as a second language, and that English is the priority. Most schools have very specific contexts. So called ‘experts’ might not have considered what is outside their middle class ideology.

No matter what pedagogical guides that Australian teachers work by, I feel confident enough to suggest that teachers know that students must learn what they are ready to learn. (Sure, there are many students who would be ready to learn another language, and many that already do so) but there are also many who are not. I hope I speak for more than my own close set of colleagues when I say that teachers are not interested in teaching the ‘masses’ so that the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry might find prospective employees more affable. And I must proclaim my resistance to any other forces that are only interested in political sway; to use educational issues in such a trite and uninformed manner.

We, as educators, want to support individuals to become the best that they can be. Overcrowding the curriculum is not the answer. Teaching students transferable skills, so that they can more efficiently learn specific skills in their chosen area of employment, might be a more appropriate answer.

What frustrates me more is that so many people feel that they have the ‘deep knowledge and understanding’ to tell us and impose upon us what we should teach and how we should do it. There are so many misconceptions about effective teaching. Anyone can throw a text book at a class and tell them to do activity 37. That is not teaching. Teaching is an area of expertise that is complex, challenging and completely academic in philosophy. When did we surrender our ‘expertise’? When did we imply to other industries, and the public, that anyone is able to decide what we teach and how we teach it? How did we let this happen? How have we undersold the incredible work that we do?

I recognise the importance of the community influencing what we are teaching. This community is made up of parents, potential employers and the staff that work closely with students every day.

Therefore, the idea of a national curriculum has the potential for disaster. I cannot say that I am against it because I have no understanding of the details that might be inflicted upon us. However my ‘teach the individuals’ alarm bells are ringing. Especially considering that people who have little or no expertise might be the power brokers who enforce the philosophies behind a national curriculum. A national curriculum might just forget the importance of ‘background knowledge’ and ‘cultural knowledge’ that is foregrounded in the ‘Quality Teaching in New South Wales Public Schools’ document. I fear that it might forget, or silence individuals and the specific cultural needs of students. I fear that Julie Bishop might be entertaining the wrong candidates for the job of deciding policy.

And to digress, I fear that Julie Bishop might be on the wrong track when she wants to implement ‘performance pay’ for teachers. Does she not realise that ‘we’, as teachers, work as a team? Does she not realise that we work well because we combine ‘collective knowledge’? Does she not realise that we need to unite as a team to do the best we can for students? Does she not realise that dividing us over pay issues might be completely detrimental to our craft? And finally, does she not realise that the school community working as a team, as a whole, is the only way to provide optimum opportunities for all students, no matter who their teacher might be?

Yet I digress into the complex tapestry of educational and curriculum issues and yet, there is something I fear more than the most recent Federal Government concept of what education should be.

What I fear is that nothing will change at all.

I fear that the most vital part of curriculum decision-making in our democratic society might be forgotten amongst the financial burden and vocal political cheerleaders of curriculum change. Those glossy documents do have to have new headings. And, naturally, what we teach is essential. However, I feel that how we do it can sometimes be forgotten.

When we scrape away the political fluff of whatever curriculum hits us next, what we have is a series of accountabilities that we must fulfil. If the implementation of curriculum is poor, it does not really matter what ‘brand’ of curriculum it is that we are teaching. If our profession is not focusing on our craft, our amazing skills of managing individuals, dealing with ‘resistant’ learners, supporting our students socially and being proactive with welfare issues and continually developing better pedagogy, we won’t be achieving any outcomes.

As professionals and experts, I am hoping for a reclaiming of our profession and curriculum, a continuous and rigorous program of professional development with a sharp focus on highly effective pedagogy and a unified pride of our challenging profession.

William Glasser’s book, The quality school: managing students without coercion, perfectly encapsulates our struggle. ‘Teaching is difficult under the best educational conditions, and this failure to take into account the needs of students or teachers makes what is already a hard job almost impossible. Any method of teaching that ignores the needs of teachers or students is bound to fail.’

If politicians take away our ability to use our minds, skills and contextual knowledge, so that they can generate a socially generic curriculum that would please the ‘politically powerful’, they devalue all that we do.

Education would be cheaper if we packaged up a generic curriculum and spat it out in the form of a CDROM. No need for teachers. Everyone can learn the same thing. Cognitive Cyber Cloning could even save a lot of money. I wonder if the Chamber of Commerce and Industry would be interested in employing these clones?