Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

It’s time to stop the breast beating

 

 

In terms of educators meeting learner needs, it is time for us to stop the self-flagellation and breast beating that goes with the question of educational accountability. ‘Are we meeting the needs of learners?’ is a question that needs repositioning.

Rather than educators and schools being dumped with loads of accountability for educational inputs and outcomes, it’s time for the quizzing to turn to children and their parents. Self-responsibility on the part of children and their parents needs to set in. The question: ‘Are we meeting the needs of learners?’ needs to be looked at in terms of ‘Are learners and their prime caregivers doing their bit toward the development of our next generation?’

I once had conversation with a colleague who told me of a meeting with parents. The meeting was over a child who was particularly and negatively challenging the culture and ethos of the school. The parents upbraided the principal for his lack of care and concern. They demanded that he and the school do more, much more, for the child.

The principal offered a conditional response. He and the school would aim to do better for the child for the one-eighth of the year the child spent at school, if the parents would commit to, rather than neglecting and passing the child off for, the remaining seven-eighths of each calendar year. He suggested that one-eighth of the child’s time was in the realm of school accountability, the other seven-eighths of responsibility belonged to the parents – and, of course, the child.

This story goes to the nub of the issue. Schools have a role to play in child and student development, a matter I have never shirked. However, parents are the primary caregivers and, over time, the gradual offloading of rearing responsibilities onto schools is misplaced and alarming.

The notion of school being a place where fizz has to be applied to every learning situation, in an effort to engage learners, is equally as galling. Schools need to be fun places and learning needs to be underpinned with enjoyable experiences. However, there are aspects of learning, vital aspects, that are repetitious, mundane and focused toward deep cognitive appeal. Not everything can wax effervescent, because learning is not about fizz. It is about substance. I like to think of schools as being the years we add to the bread to make learning rise in the minds and souls of young people. That means biting into key issues and chewing on the meat of learning opportunities. The thought that the best education had to be about froth and bubble in order to enhance appeal to young people is somewhat of a sad commentary on modernity. It also suggests that deep learning is unimportant, that we transmute from day to day in almost a short-term manner.

Motivation and inclination

There seems to be a belief held within society, and certainly implied by governments, that all students are inclined learners. Nothing could be further from the truth. Deliberate disinclination is an ingrained and endemic element of the psyche of many children and students.
Non-response to learning opportunities may be covert, or more overt and defying. Regardless, it is a negative reaction, supporting the fact that while you may lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink.

If children come to school with attitudes of deliberate disinclination and defiance, then it is hard to grow them from those negative attitudes to more positive ones without parental awareness and support. It is also behoven on children and students to recognise and take responsibility for their actions. We are often too quick to excuse children and parents and too slow to recognise that the onus for change and development rests with them, rather than with us.

Sadly, in this day and age, with parents compulsorily committed to work and earning, the upbringing and development, in increasingly total terms, is thrown at schools. I mean this quite literally because the social/government and system imperative is there. Many school educators feel they are being ‘commanded’ to bring children up. When societal failings become apparent, it is the schools and their staff members held up as failing. Parents, prime carers and the students themselves are ‘home free’.

Is a school a school or a crèche

Teachers, particularly primary school teachers, often wonder whether schools are schools. It seems that many, including parents, politicians and the community at large they reflect, think of schools as crèches. According to the Macquarie dictionary, a school is a place where instruction is given for children. A crèche is a nursery where children are cared for while their mothers work. It seems to many educators that parents and primary caregivers are muddled between the two.

I’m not blaming parents for the social malaise of the early 21st century. Talking about parents, schools and children, Jeff Wells (Weekend Australian, 20 & 21 April 1991) wrote that it is a sign of the times  that many families have to offer their children to be brought up  by alternate institutions (to the nuclear family) because of economic imperatives.

During the past 15 to 20 years, for instance, teachers and office staff have become increasingly the minders for sick children, who are sent to school when unwell because parents cannot afford time off from work to care for them. The phenomena of unwell children spending their days in school medical rooms is exacerbated by industrial relations laws that either don’t recognise or are unkind to the needs of parents. However, this puts school staff into a position of being minders, with schools too often taking on the role of health centres.

During the past years, vacation school care, outside schools hours care, (before and after school), homework centres, school extracurricular programs for sport, vocational training, and so on, have sprung up.

Added to that are the in-school imperatives, driven increasingly by Australian Government compliance requirements, that set detailed agendas, and put a real squash on time. Principals and teachers in schools are feeling the squeeze like never before. However, they appear to be increasingly supplicant to demands made and rarely is there any visible counter argument to demonstrate why a change may not be wise.

Neither are things ever dropped off school agendas to accommodate those elements increasingly added on to what is required. Metaphorically, schools are like sponges, given more and more to soak up. But their capacity to absorb and accommodate responsibility is reaching a perilous end-point. Symptomatic of this, is both anecdotal and empirical evidence of teachers leaving the profession in significant numbers. There is only so much a body can take and there is a huge lack of appreciation offered to schools and staff for all they undertake.

Quality education and caring educators will always aim to meet the needs of learners. However, there is an onus on society, its governments and its institutions to make sure that schools and educators are affirmed, recognised and appreciated. Meeting the needs of learners is more likely to happen if key educational servants, teachers and support staff — are given the support, the credit and the recognition they deserve. If this were to happen, there may well be a turn-around in the tendency for principals, teachers and ancillary staff to quit the profession - sooner rather than later.

Toward a quality educational future

As a schools educator for the past 37 years, 34 of them as a primary school headmaster and principal, I can attest to the absolute benefit and systemic gain there is, when satisfied staff give of themselves in the knowledge that what they do is appreciated. This does not mean they are above change and system refocus. It does mean that these teachers feel good about themselves and what they do. It also means that learners under their tutelage are likely to be more, rather than less, inclined.  That’s because educational partnerships are flourishing and developing in an environment high on the positives of quality tone, harmony and atmosphere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Henry Gray commenced his teaching career in 1970, having entered training college as a mature age student. He has taught in remote, town and urban schools, in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory.  His principalship in WA and NT schools encompasses the past 35 years and he holds several degrees.

Mr Gray is a member of various relevant professional associations and was president of the Northern Territory Principal’s Association from 1992 until 1996.  

His concern is that the human side of education always remains at the forefront of teaching and learning. Schools should always be for children and students. They should be the focus of humanist endeavour.

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