From the Principal

Left behind in the twentieth century, with nothing to hold onto but a ‘good test score'...

Twelve years ago Sir Ken Robinson came to international prominence with the message that “our attachment to an industrial model of education is crippling our kids’ potential. It’s stifling creativity, innovation and joy with its narrow conception of what real ‘intelligence’ entails. It’s locking educators in a ruthless cycle of testing. It’s a system where schools are mere puppets to the agenda of politicians and policy makers."

This is, once again, the message he recently delivered at the FutureSchools Expo and Conference  in Melbourne, as reported by Sarah Duggan in the Australian Teacher Magazine.

His TED talk, ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ has apparently been viewed by about 50 million people world wide. And yet over those twelve years since he delivered this talk it seems nothing much has changed in our education system.

Here we are, more than a decade on, and David Gonski has arrived at the same conclusion; no longer exhilaratingly bold or new, he tells us that, yes, the industrial model has failed our kids, even by those measures that it was believed to do well, such as the basics of literacy and numeracy. Forget about Robinson’s rather more revolutionary message that Dance is as important as Maths….  Gonski observes that the best school systems are moving from standardised testing to a mix of more sophisticated evaluation methods – just not in Australia where the educational discourse continues to obsess over NAPLAN while it is business as usual in classrooms across the country.

This tired reiteration of the need for change brings to mind a discussion led by Jeremy Heimans and Dr Leyla Acaroglu on Q&A this week, around the new power structures and ways of achieving change through the irresistible aspects of the digital environment and our potential capacity to gather huge opinion groups and activists around specific causes and issues. The institutions and organisations that will survive and flourish in this environment are those actively responsive to audience and shifts in demand. Governments and their instrumentalities are, needless to say, almost invariably unresponsive.

At Preshil we are able to assess what is valuable, not just value that which can be assessed.

In this light, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that education systems are not just unresponsive to arguments, but pretty much impervious to the need for change. Dr Acaroglu has actually set up a project – ‘Unschool’ – to help adults unlearn the habits they were taught at school which cripple their ability to operate in the contemporary world of design, disruption and rapid change.

Back to Sir Ken, he claims that “far from bettering the educational opportunities for children, current ‘reforms’ have established a system that has created a culture of conformity, compliance and competition – principles that are misconceived and hostile to human development.” Conformity, compliance and competition  could very well be the unwritten motto for many schools identified as successful by their outstanding test results.

As on many occasions, I feel enormous gratitude for the wisdom that enabled Margaret Lyttle to specifically identify these three core elements as harmful, hindering both learning and the healthy development of emotionally strong individuals. Preshil is truly fortunate to be able to embrace the needs of twenty-first century learning without having to break out the straight jacket of conservatism and traditions that are inimical to change.

At Preshil we are able to assess what is valuable, not just value that which can be assessed.

Marilyn Smith

Principal

marilyn.smith@preshil.vic.edu.au