FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Telling History

A telling article…

When explaining the approach to teaching at Preshil I often refer to our enquiry approach to learning, about challenging our students to have the ‘courage to question’ conventional wisdom and about teaching children how to think, rather than what to think.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if I am overstating our differences and start to imagine that I must be exaggerating – that surely what we refer to as the out-dated transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, the ‘delivery model’ of teaching where ‘facts’ are learnt by summarising slabs from text books, memorising it, ready to regurgitate for exams, must by now have gone the way of the ‘sabre-toothed curriculum’. Surely the internet has blown away all the need, or even the opportunity, for teachers to decide what students are to think…

Then I read an article such as ‘Calls for curriculum to say Australia was invaded not settled’. “It is inaccurate to tell students that Australia was settled by Europeans…” The Age 4/5/16

Goodness! So the curriculum still is about telling students what to think - and ‘what to think’ is decided by politicians and communicated by tabloids and the study of History is no more than learning a pre-digested and politically constructed story.

Thankfully, the International Baccalaureate deliberately sets out to achieve something quite different through education from political and social indoctrination.

The International Baccalaureate® aims to …. encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

This approach is diametrically opposed to the notion that there is, or even can be, one correct version of an event, and this cannot be learned by rote. In a nutshell, this is why the IB aligns so strongly with what Preshil sets out to do.

Philosophy as a subject has continued to be a significant element, and a popular VCE choice, in the Preshil curriculum because it specifically sets out to teach our students how to think. It is intellectually demanding, and the rigour is in the thought processes, not in the memorising of a correct answer or interpretation. Perhaps it is for this reason that it has remained a relatively small study in VCE across the state.

At Preshil much of the planning for our annual Philosophy Conference on Sunday 31 July has now been completed and we have a great line up of guest speakers. This year we are holding the conference at the State Library to accommodate a larger audience, so we can include more parents and interested community members and students as well as those students studying VCE Philosophy. Further information is available by clicking here.

The Art of Happiness in the Age of Consumption is the theme, which opens up many different lines for discussion and debate. There really will be no telling what the students will think!

Independent Schools Victoria

On 31 May Andrew McMeekin, our School Council Chair, and I attended the Independent Schools Victoria Annual General Meeting and dinner. Preshil was invited to be a part of a video created to showcase independent schooling across the state and it was a good opportunity to meet and talk about the School with other Principals and School Council representatives.

Preshil has long embodied many current initiatives being presented as cutting edge innovative educational thinking, so it is heartening to hear the State Minister for Education announcing significant support for creativity as represented in the Arts in schools. 2017 will see an International Arts Festival initiated by ISV and supported across all educational sectors and I am confident that Preshil will have many opportunities for our students to be involved.

Let’s hope that creativity might also be unleashed into other areas of the curriculum and we will see a much more widespread endorsement of STEAM, as distinct from STEM, where Art and Design becomes the animus of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.