Archive for homeschooling

Musings: How to change the world

March 15, 2010 · Filed under education, environment, homeschooling, politics, society, Uncategorized

Where should the modern revolutionary be positioned?  If you seek to radically change “the system” should you work from within the system, or outside the system?     It seems to me that history shows a fair share of both approaches…. but ultimately if you are seeking radical change, if you start from within the system, the system is likely to expel you…. so you’re going to end up outside anyway.   Martin Luther, for example, the monk who took on the corrupt pope, and in the process broke the catholic church’s monopoly on the christian God.  By the time he was excommunicated it was meaningless to him and his followers, as they realised that the actions of the pope had nothing to do with an individual’s relationship with God.
 
The problem with being – or staying –  *in* the system, is that you legitimise the system by your very participation.  And generally systems are tremendous as self-perpetuation… that is the goal.   For example the legal system.  Does procedural fairness deliver substantive fairness?  Well sometimes….. almost randomly.  But the legal system can’t acknowledge this problem, as it smashes the legitimacy of the system.  So it is set up so that you can’t appeal a decision on substantive grounds….. you can only appeal on procedural grounds.  So if you like the substantive outcome, you don’t care about the process, and if you don’t like the outcome you have to go digging around for an issue in the process. 
 
Peter Garrett is a nice modern example.  Presumably he thought he could “make a difference” through participating in the parliamentary process.  Maybe that was his most idealistic act yet.  In fact, he was subsumed by the process, and was subsequently unable to achieve anything other than what most droids in that position could have done.  Far better to have continued to use his public profile to agitate for change from outside that system.  It would be like me sending my kids to a school and joining the P&C… or becoming a teacher….. or even a principal… thinking that I was going to radically alter the system AT ALL – let alone in time for my kids to benefit. 
 
The Green Party is an interesting case.  Formed in the devastating aftermath of the flooding of Lake Pedder in Tasmania, green activists decided that their view was not represented by either the Labor or Liberal parties (true) and that they might have more luck in preventing environmental vandalism by having a voice in Parliament.  Here in Tasmania they formed the first “green” political party in the world.   Not to diminish the parliamentary achievements of Green parties, I do wonder if the environment movement has become somewhat castrated by buying into the parliamentary system.  Some people ‘vote green’ and think that is all that is required, and some people with environmental concerns *won’t* vote green to express this value, because they are put off by other policies.  In the meantime, activism for fundamental reform of how our economy interfaces with the environment seems…..  sporadic.
 
Of course, this is all a potentially self-serving rationale.  It takes an *enormous* amount of energy and investment of self to fight the system, be it on the inside, or the outside.  That’s something that I don’t have at present.  Be the change you want to see in the world.  That’s my mantra, and whenever I feel powerless or useless, I return to it.
 
Just came across this great quote:
 
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  Buckminster Fuller
 
More words to live by.

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Country vs City

February 25, 2010 · Filed under community, gardening, homeschooling, parenting

Where to live?  I think I am a country girl at heart, but being brought up in a city, makes that city “home”.

Now that we have kids, we have ridiculous conversations about where is best for the kids to live.  Where will they have the most “opportunities”.  I say ridiculous, because of course there are opportunities in both environments, they’re just different….. so it gets down to *which* opportunities we think are most important.   

Here in the country we live life at a very gentle pace.   Our friends all live walking distance away, and the boys’ homeschooling friends often “pop in.”  We go blackberry picking and get invited horse-riding.  We could have a fabulous garden and a variety of animals.

In the city (Perth) we have all our extended family and most of our close friends.  There are infinite kids activities and groups that you could join.  When T says he wants to do gymnastics, learn to play the trumpet, or anything…. I know that we will be able to source those opportunities.  If we ever wanted to use the school system, there are a choice of schools.  Also, when the kids are older, I think they are more likely to settle in the city than the country….. be it for study or work or social opportunities…… it just seems a more likely outcome.  

We want the lifestyle of the country with all the facilities of the city.  Hmmm.  Yet another example of “wanting it all”. 

The country life

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Mother/Teacher

February 6, 2010 · Filed under education, homeschooling, parenting, unschooling

Despite the odd rant that appears on this blog, I am actually somewhat conflicted about the decision to home educate, and the following post explains this – in part, at least.
 
Further to my previous post on learning, the same factors that apply to adult learning apply to children’s learning – in this case the need for a certain amount of *practise* in order to achieve mastery.  In a natural learning model you are dependent on the environment to “naturally” provide opportunities for practise, and as children develop their own interests, their own motivation to learn (practise) kicks in, including seeking out appropriate mentors.   Now I believe this, and have seen it at work.  I have also seen my children develop completely unexpected interests.  (Today’s example being T requiring a synopsis of Hamlet, and requesting to see the play performed - as the play is referenced in the book he is currently reading with P.  Of course, I *love* this particular example as it is a “school type” example, so it alleviates my on-going concern of will we “naturally” get to anything that the education establishment values?  And of course, this exposes my own conditioning that I still *care* what the education establishment values!) 
 
A different source raised the issue of the mother/teacher tension for the home educating parent.  That some home educated children seem to gain an academic teacher, but lose a mother….. but if you hold tight to the precious primary role of mother, then it can be difficult to assume the role of academic teacher.  Obviously I am in the second group, and my model of parenting is *not* authoritarian, so drilling bored/reluctant children in times tables is *not* going to happen.  I believe my kids will always need a mother more than they need a teacher….. but equally I think that there may be times that they could *also* benefit from a teacher.  Ideally, a mentor, as referenced in my last post – but sometimes I even imagine that a “task master” could have benefits!  (Am I losing it?)
 
All leading to the conclusion that I think that school does offer an environment with the potential to create a critical mass of “practise”.  (Learning proviso:  you have to be concentrating for the practise to work…  divided attention does not lead to lasting learning/brain change…  a real problem for the school model, as they can’t wait for anyone/everyone to be “really” paying attention:  the lesson is “now”)  So the question always comes down to an assessment of the overall costs and benefits of school.  If school was only three mornings a week, I think that the benefits of attending might outweigh the costs…. and I constantly toy with the idea of establishing such a “school” (total enrolments maybe 10, all ”homeschoolers” so that we could *avoid* such government intervention along the line of “My School”).   The focus of these mornings would be practising those skills that don’t come up naturally very often – for example some of the maths functions and second languages. (Of course, one argument would be that if these things don’t come up, then it almost certainly means that you don’t need to know them…… true……. but learning new skills is as valid for brain development in a child as it is for an adult…..true…. but forcing kids to learn things because “it’s good for them” is exactly what has sapped the joy of learning from millions, undermined their confidence in their own learning abilities –  and exactly what *isn’t* good for kids in terms of developing intrinsic motivation, self-knowledge and self-determination…some of the building blocks of a successful life….. anyway this is just a sample of my internal warrings!)
 
Of course, when I think of the investment in time and cost to get such a “school” up and running, I think I may as well create some “faux” practise opportunities (“lessons”)  for my own kids….  but I’m seemingly too busy on my own (non)learning journey!
 
Ah angst…… that special sensation reserved for teenagers and parents.

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My School

February 4, 2010 · Filed under education, homeschooling

Have you gone poking around on this site yet?  I have, as part of my ongoing investigation into school systems.   The teachers union is (rightly) disturbed by the narrowness of the profile that is created for the school…. and how that profile might impact on student’s (or their) self image.  Exactly what teachers do to kids every time they grade papers, write reports – or indeed any of the interminable “sorting” that they do to children in all sorts of ways.  

Parallels between school and “My School”:

1.  Your whole effort is narrowed down to a single number or letter;

2.  Only a very few things are measured…..  and they may well not include the things you’re good at;

3.  You’re compared to a “statistically similar” group *(eg, “everyone born in this 12 month period”) even though there are probably wild *dissimilarities*.

Deliciously, the whole thing seems to be based on placing schools somewhere on a standard deviation curve – so you can be “above average” or “below average” in your “statistically similar” group….. but there is no standard of attainment – either set by yourself or by the external authority - which is the benchmark for success.  So you’ll never know if you’re “good enough” until you see how other’s did.   I must confess to a sense of schadenfreude to see teachers squirm when they are faced with the same debilitating conditions that face their students  – learning as a competition.

The other good part of the site of course is the blurb that each school was required to write about themselves – their “mission statement” and ”values” etc.  I love that shit.  Some committee sat around and tried to come up with something that sounded good….  so you can choose between schools that value “responsibility” or if you don’t fancy that, you could have “caring”…  or maybe “excellence”.   Schools long ago succumbed to corporate-speak….  and they have achieved the same level of meaninglessness. 

Despite all this scorn, I have to come down on the side of “some” information is better than “no” information.   When there was no public information there were consequences of that, and now there is “some” information, well there are consequences from that too…..   increased focus on “teaching to the test”, and those schools that can select their student body, will start to balance their selections with a view to the capacity of students to contribute to the school’s score.  I mean, I just can’t see a fee-paying school happily staying in the “below average” category while they focus on their civic duty to the less able in society…… the scores will influence the choices of their customers (aka parents)… and they will be obliged to respond. 

Institutionalised education systems can’t be “fixed”.  I’m sorry, they’re fatally flawed.  Roll on the *real* revolution…… don’t go!

PS. I did search for ”home schoolers” and “home education” but the site drew a blank on that.  Perhaps because we don’t exist, or because our model does not require testing……  we are already familiar with our students’ abilities, and we are only accountable to ourselves.

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Work, and the next generation

January 15, 2010 · Filed under homeschooling, parenting, society, voluntary simplicity

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about “work” recently – coincidental snippets that pushed me to ponder (again) the meaning of work.  Stuff about the industrial revolution,  the rise of the protestant work ethic,  religious fears about “idle hands”, government employment policies, etc.

Anyway, I should warn you that when I was last studying management techniques more than six years ago, there was lots of discussion around how the best way to motivate workers was by ensuring that their identity was built around their job title and performance at work. (You *are* your job.)  So they’re probably putting drugs in the kettle by now.

My grandparents were all working class.  My parents seem to have been “aspirational” types, and did the hard yards of pulling our family into the middle class – they both achieved a “first” for their family by going to university.   After a stint as a SAHM, my mum returned to work with a vengence, and both my parents worked full time into their 60s.   They both had this *strong* work ethic….  it seems to have been the unquestioned assumption that drove their lives.  You just had a job and you worked at it.   In response to retirement my dad drank a lot more, and my mum pretty much kept working full time - as a volunteer.

I remember when P dropped down to a four day week.  Virtually every Friday, Dad would say “Is P on holiday?”  And I would say, no, he doesn’t work Fridays, he only works Monday to Thursday, and Dad would *marvel* at this wonderful, outlandish idea.  He would shake his head:  “I never thought of it!” 

P and I have managed to sustain the status quo I guess.  We’re “middle class”.  I went to university.   P & I both worked full time for around 16 & 12 years respectively.  We took on a mortgage in order to achieve the requisite “home ownership”.  I’ve since retired under the guise of “motherhood” and P’s dropped his work hours.   My children have been witness to a *lot* of conversations around “How can we organise ourselves so we don’t have to go to (f–king) work??”

Put it this way – P & I have not achieved any “upward social mobility”.   But we haven’t “lost” ground either….. mainly due to luck, and the workings of entrenched privilege, I guess.    We’re just not aspirational, in the same way that I think my parents were.  The luxury of the middle class childhood meant, I guess,  that we didn’t really need to be.    As we’ve got older the focus of our attention has been around how to maintain some  of these middle class luxuries that we value – eg travel –  for the least possible effort.   We have thrown *off* the yoke of the (paid) work ethic.

So the point of this post is…..  what will my kids make of all this??   They’ve been raised in a household that doesn’t value paid work – other than as a necessary evil – certainly not as a life path.  While P *used* to go to work (Mon – Thurs), he hasn’t gone to work at all this year.  I don’t go to work.  We openly plot ways in which we can reduce paid work.  We talk about others “working too much”…. I mean, the list goes on!  

Of the many reasons that we homeschool, one is that school is too restrictive and burdensome….  too much like work!    How could we send our kids into an institution five days a week, when we find that idea too burdensome ourselves?  Let alone “homework”….  it took me years to rid myself of the need to “bring work home”….. I certainly don’t want my kids to form *that* bad habit!

So, I wonder, what will the kids do?  I don’t *think* we’re one of those “jobless families” contributing to intergenerational disadvantage and welfare dependency…. but if we moved country we would definitely be jobless (we like to call it retired).  Will they resent every hour at paid work because we reinforced it was such purgatory?  Will they choose poverty over work?  Will they rebel and work like demons until they drop dead?  Stay turned to find out, I guess.

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Easy trancendence: thoughts from a scatter gun

January 1, 2010 · Filed under being present, health, homeschooling, parenting, society, spirituality, unschooling

First thought…… should transcendence be better spelt transcendance, to capture “dance”, as dance is one of the first paths that humans took to achieve transcendence??   Our culture has such limited opportunities for dance – we are bereft, with the major exception of nightclubs…. in what a mutated and limited form we have allowed dance to occur (no wonder Suave Man is in such short supply!)  Oh for tribal stompings in which I was obliged to participate.
 
Thus to the main topic.  I am currently reading “Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it”  (Geoff Dyer).  I couldn’t *not* borrow this book, as the brilliant title so captures the borderline space of my own yoga practise.  I can always find motivation to go to a class, but when it comes to home practice, my main mastery has been in the area of excuses to myself as to why I can’t do it.  
Re: the book, I can’t do better than the reviewer who said “At times I was reduced to helpless laughter, at others to impotent envy.” It is laugh out loud funny, so is worth recommending for that reason alone. But the main reason I recommend it, is in case your child ever gets into drugs.  (I’m not sure if this is the message of the book…..temporary transcendence through drugs, but this is one reading.)
 
Reading this book could help you to construct an argument whereby you could view this as a reasonably acceptable outcome.  You have succeeded, in that your child is a searcher; has an inkling that there is “more” to the experience of being human.  You have failed, in that they have reached for the easy solution…..  one that probably won’t work in the long run.
 
Amongst my homeschooling literature, I recently read that the most important lesson that your child needs to learn, probably before they are ten, is that you need to work hard in order to achieve your own, worthwhile goal.  How’s that for counter-cultural??  In an age of instant gratification, that’s tough.  I read this stuff and always feel inadequate.  Am I providing the space, the benign encouragement and support, the role modelling, to generate this outcome?  My only consolation is that school is inadequate in this regard as well.  I didn’t learn this lesson.  I don’t recall self-determined goals as a child – let alone ones that I pursued and achieved.  Hemmed in by the goals of others – most of which I achieved too easily….. as they hadn’t been set for “me” – they’d been set for “the class”.  By the time I got to upper highschool, let alone university, I wasn’t signing up for anything that might be too hard…. I was hooked on easy success.  This is part of the damage wrought by the school system…. according to “the school”, I have no doubt, I was one of their “successful students”.  The fact that I was intellectually risk-averse, to the point of limiting my personal interests and aspirations, doesn’t count.
 
Back to drugs.  Another snippet.  I recall a quote from Theodore Dalrymple (a conservative psychiatrist – two reasons to ask why I would be quoting him) saying that drug use was the preserve of those “who didn’t know how to live”.  That probably captures most of us.  I do my best parenting after a yoga session *or* two glasses of wine (true confessions from a breastfeeding mama.)  My experimentation with drugs is limited.  Even years of living with stoners didn’t really tempt me, except in a passive smoking-type way.  (There is something erotic about someone blowing smoke into your mouth, followed by a kiss…..  sigh)
 
So why do most of us “not know how to live”?   Taunted by a vague, intuitive notion of a ‘higher plane’ that we can’t seem to grasp?  So drugs are a short term fast track to try and get there (does this explain my general avoidance…  knowing I’m likely to get addicted to the easy path?).
 
The harder path is a spiritual one.  It’s a total investment of self.  This is where the “just say no” approach to drug use is so bereft.  You have to offer other options - pathways to transcendence that people can say “yes” too.  This is the huge challenge.  As someone who doesn’t belong to any formal spiritual community, I’m happy that my kids can self-determine their path to transcendence, and I pray that they learn the lesson that worthwhile goals require hard work.  Because this is the hardest work of all.
 
 

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The Future

November 5, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, relationships

As hazily anticipated, this trip is prompting some contemplation about my future life.  Previous long term holidays have resulted in decisions to complete my degree, and to return home to marry P, who by his absence revealed himself to be Mr Right. 

At present my thoughts hinge around a possible return to the workforce.  This was initially prompted by my financial fears as this trip is costing *way* more than I ever thought it would, and the only solution I could see was to return to Perth and get cracking earning some money.  I raised this with P in the context of perhaps I should enrol to finish my MBA and look for some type of professional employment.  To my surprise P was quite positive about this, as his own ponderings had led him to think that *he* might like a change, and some house husbandry is very appealing.

Since then, I’ve returned to thinking that maybe I should take a wild chance and instead study to be a yoga teacher.   This woud be a far more scary option, as I don’t know if I could do it, plus it doesn’t come with the same financial security as the first option.  Importantly, this also  narrows P’s choices as he would then be required to have a steady income which was supplemented by me, rather than the other way around.  And he has already diligently supported the family for six years.

In some ways it’s like a choice between two completely different lifestyles.   To return to professional employment eases my financial fears, and also probably my ’educational fears’, in that it is much more likely that my kids will go to school (so I outsource the responsibility) as that would be the 9 – 5 type lifestyle that the family would have – as I don’t know how confident P would be to continue to be the parent responsible for home ed, as the kids got older.

The second choice means I am out of my comfort zone, doing something I haven’t done before and  committing to a way of life that doesn’t offer me the same financial security or educational “options”.  In particular, if I had a job that required me to work early mornings and/or evenings, I would be really unlikely to send my kids to school -  as then I’d never see them!

Of course the other option is P’s preferred choice which is to go bush somewhere, and thereby release ourselves from the need to pay for shelter in the (expensive)  Perth metro area.  Sigh – we already tried to downsize once and that turned out to be a disaster.

P has no family in Perth (not that he seems to consider them a factor anyway) and feels confident that he can make friends in a new place.  I wish I had that confidence.  I know I can meet new people - but will they be soul mates??  I feel like a weirdo already… if I didn’t have some people around to make me realise that I’m not completely alone I would find life a lot harder….  and after almost 40 years, I’ve realised that soul mates are not easily found.  You have to really cherish the ones you’ve got.

I’ve also been playing a mindgame with myself, whereby I “give” P the next five years and he sets the agenda and makes all the decisions for the family (testing my attachment to control, and opening myself to participating in an adventure not of my own making – as per previous post).  You have no idea the anxiety this exercise produces in me!  When I mentioned this to P, he thought this was funny – I’d either be pissed off that “nothing was happening” or pissed off that something *was* happening  – that I didn’t want.    Arrgghh – why do I have a life partner that can shoot so accurately?

In the meantime we muddle along.  That reference to “40 years” does give me a sense of urgency though.  T was worried the other day that he didn’t know what he was going to be when he grows up.  I advised that I didn’t either – but at least he has time on his side.

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Kids Food (and other stuff)

November 5, 2009 · Filed under cooking, feminism, health, homeschooling, parenting, politics

My kids don’t eat enough veges.  Of more accurately – they hardly eat any.  This is my most on-going area of parental anxiety (well, equal to my fear that the joys and freedoms of homeschooling will at some point be outweighed by my kids lack of academic achievement).   Even knowing I am riddling them with food issues doesn’t stop me from constantly fretting about it in front of them.  T ate everything until he was 2.5, and then gradually retreated into a bland carbohydrate diet.  J is somewhat better, but his need to “have what T is having” doesn’t help.

My dad used to tell the story of how in his family he had to eat everything on his plate.  One night he sat there, not eating his (disgusting) veges.  When everyone else left the table , he got up and (secretly, he thought) threw his food out into the yard.  His mum scraped it back onto his plate, and he had to eat it, dirt and all.

I remember my childhood meals of meat and three veg.  I literally gagged at the prospect of eating boiled peas and I pushed them around the plate trying to make the pile look smaller.

Given that P and I (now) eat a lot of veges, and they are always available, I just hope that eventually the kids will gravitate to a healthful diet.  T “knows” what a healthful diet is, and will often say he would like veges for dinner (to watch my face glow with happiness) but when they are served, his face crumples in despair.  “If only they tasted nice mum!”   He happily eats avocadoes, carrots, the peas shelled from fresh snow peas, and will nibble on a leaf.  Sigh.

Recent reading on kids’ health threw up the finding that parents are poor judges of how healthy their kids are, as they confuse happiness and healthiness.  So even though we might *know* our kids’ diet is inadequate, or they have too little exercise or too much screen time, we *think* we are getting away with it:  “Look, they’re healthy!” when in actual fact they’re ‘just’ happy.

Another snippet from the same book.  In the UK, school canteens are shifting to ‘healthy’ menus (thank you Jamie).  At one school, an entrepreneurial 13yo opened a rival canteen, selling the stuff that the school canteen used to sell.  He was doing very well, and his customers included the teaching staff, when the school closed him down as he was ‘undermining their healthy eating message’.   He was pissed off – he wasn’t doing anything illegal.

I like this story as I can’t decide what I think.  Obviously I am committed to the “healthy eating message”, but I *really* feel for this kid!  The injustice!  I take it they didn’t close down the local Maccas as it was ‘undermining the healthy eating message’.  The most amazing learning experience he probably ever had on those premises, and just shut down.  What’s he learnt now? – the little guy can’t win.

Sorry to bore those of you who have heard my experience of being arbitrarily “shut down” by school authorities because my activities didn’t suit them, but I can *still* seethe with the injustice of it!  In primary school, when I was in Year 6, the school decided that girls were not allowed on the school oval to play during lunch and recess (yes, the 1980′s – not quite the dark ages).  A friend and I started “Girls Lib”, a movement to allow girls back on to the oval.  Our initiatives included large posters advertising all the games girls used to enjoy on the oval, and a petition.  When you signed the petition, you receive an handmade badge – “Girls Lib!”  Unfortunately, the boys took this as some sort of gender war, and started ripping them off girls’ shirts – meaning my friend and I were in full scale production of the badges, to replace those lost to the neanderthal boys.

The librarian asked us to move the petition out of the library, so we relocated to near the canteen.  Then after a week or so, my classroom teacher advised that the principal had advised him that we had to stop Girls Lib, because it was too disruptive.  No boy was advised that they should stop grabbing at girls tops and ripping off their badge.  We still weren’t allowed on the oval.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT????????  Not a single teacher –  or parent – including my own – was prepared to step up and support our cause.  Just shut down for causing a disturbance.   That was the high & low point of my career as an activist.  A  just cause, and no one in authority cared about anything, except the quiet life.   Maybe it was at this point that I decided that school was a series of lessons in compliance and control.  He’s probably dead now, but the principal’s name was Mr Colvin, and unfortunately I have never bumped into him as an adult to give him the serve that ALL THE OTHER ADULTS SHOULD HAVE AT THE TIME.  GGGRRRRRRR.

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Ruminations – post school outcomes

November 5, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, politics, society, Uncategorized

A newspaper reported that the OECD Report on Intergenerational Social Mobility found Australia’s education system was the third worst in the developed world for contributing to social mobility.  This fed into my biases about the ineffectiveness of school.  School’s on-going reputation as  *the* mechanism for social justice, creating “equal opportunity”, is baffling, when all around we see it doing such a brilliant job of perpetuating the status quo.  Surprise surprise, doctor’s kids have a good chance of becoming doctors, and Centrelink kids don’t.

The problem here is the flawed belief that an institution can function as a change agent.  It can’t.  The only change agent out there is another person- and in some cases an heroic teacher can be that person.  But here, the institution of school works against any developing mentor relationships, as at the end of the year, you get another teacher.  And on the side of the coin, this structure itself can preclude teachers making major investments in their relationships with the children in their class, as they know that the end of the relationship is already proscribed. 

Anyway, I pulled up the report and have to confess that I struggled with it because it’s full of economic jargon and tables that are too small to read on my PC.  But I got enough to realise that the journo at the Oz had got it wrong, and that Australia’s system is comparatively good at facilitating social mobility – comparatively, not in absolutes –  because the UK, USA and southern Europe have virtually no social mobility (even though everyone goes to school).

This research supports *early* intervention/care/education as the best way to overcome social disadvantage.  So this is not news.  Everything you read says that if you want to make a difference in kid’s lives you have to get in there early (80 – 90% of the brain synapse connections are made from age 0 – 3)  Policy makers just can’t seem to come up with wholistic ways to do this.  They continue to direct their efforts at school – starting at kindy when the kids turns 4!  If you believed they had the nous to be that organised, you’d think it was a deliberate plot *not* to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children.

Further, it confirms my view that school is designed for and by the middle classes/elites.  It serves their children well – it’s obviously designed as a neat continuum from a middle class infancy, and if you didn’t get that, well, you struggle.  And I note that the good economists at the OECD recommend investment in early intervention for disadvantaged groups rather than re-designing school to work for non-elites.   I mean, we wouldn’t want to change what is working is working perfectly well for us, would we?  Worse, we don’t seem to have the imagination to know that it could even *be* different.

 The report finds that in many cases, it is the average socio-economic standing of the school’s parent group, rather than the socio-economic standing of the individual child’s parents, that is the key to a child’s own socio-economic outcomes after school.   This one’s pretty interesting, and I guess is behind the push for aboriginal kids to go to flash boarding schools….. but obviously this is only ever going to be the solution for a minority of disadvantaged kids, as it’s a numbers game.  If a whole bunch of disadvantaged kids rock up to Geelong Grammar, then they are bringing down the average.   I gather that this is also the argument for a school voucher system…  if you can’t afford to buy a house in a rich area and thereby get your kids into the local state school where the other rich neighbourhood kids go, you should be able to buy your way into these schools with your vouchers. 

Anyway, I guess that makes it clear what you are actually buying when you spend money on a private school…. and the more money you spend the more you are putting your child into an environment where chances are all the parents are filthy rich, and somehow – by osmosis – but the best I can think of (and I couldn’t find analysis in the report as to *why* this finding holds) is that if most of the parents are uni-educated and rich, then this is the value system that the child is being exposed to and so they work hard to fit in with that peer group.  Is it that the dominant value system of the school community is a key driver of individual outcomes?

This makes sense, and is supported by all the research that says that in our society teenagers are more influenced by their peers than their parents – and the main reason for this is that they spend far more time with the former than the latter.  That is actually the community within which they have to function, rather than the community of parents/adults.

And is the reason for the high academic results (though I haven’t seen any research on subsequent adult socio-economic outcomes) achieved by some of the charter schools in the US working with disadvantaged groups?  That the seeming inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm of the (young) individual principals/teachers involved is able to oust the general malaise?

On a related topic, I see that in her quest to have more students from low socio-economic backgrounds get to university, Julia Gillard is starting to try to break the link between school results (TER & similar) and university entrance.  (An acknowledgement that the school system can’t  deliver equitable outcomes?)  In Victoria they are are trialling new ways of offering university places – focusing on aptitude tests and interviews and portfolios of work. ( All good news for people who don’t bother to go to school by the way)  I see that the President of the Australian Secondary School Association (of something like that) is all in favour of this, as he feels that the focus on university entrance severely limits the “meanings” of post-compulsory education.  Unfortunately the only other “meaning” he mentioned in the interview was vocational training.

Well, this is all half-baked I’m afraid.  I’ve had it sitting in draft thinking I’ll have time to clear my thinking, but I have just seen that Noel Pearson has pipped me to the post in the latest Quarterly Essay - on “Education and Equality in Australia”. (!!)  The title?  “Radical Hope”.  Anyway, I’m off to find a decent newsagent & I’m hoping to be inspired!

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Ruminations

October 1, 2009 · Filed under homeschooling, parenting, politics, society, Uncategorized

Halls Creek was a weird kind of apartheid arrangement, where all the white “service” people (police/teachers/public servants) had nice houses at one end of the town, and the local aboriginal people lived in the seeming ghetto -  at the other end of town.  I can understand that if the community doesn’t have enough skilled people to take up local positions then you have to attract them from somewhere else, and that probably includes access to a reasonable house.  But why is the urgency and outcome there for one end of town and not the other?  Why are there ”ends”?   How is it that decent housing has been achieved in only half the town?  I read in the paper that the Fed Govt SIHIP (strategic indigenous housing initiative program – or something like that) for the NT has spent $45 million dollars and haven’t yet built a single house.  Where the money went seems unreported.

Speaking of the lack of investigative journalism – another article in the Oz the other week…..  Lightening Ridge, a community in NSW.  Many of the children have been removed by DoCS.  The mothers claim there has been no abuse; that the DoCs workers view their lifestyle through a white middle class prism and don’t approve, and remove the children citing “neglect”.  Presumably the families have gone through the relevant DoCS/govt processes and got nowhere, so contacted the fourth estate.  The relevant journalists managed to get the official line from DoCS, that the childrens’ removal had been appropriate, and nothing else.  Any 15 year old could do that.  Where is the investigation?  If my children were removed because my lifestyle  didn’t fit with govt official values and I was desperate and contacted a journalist and their “investigation”  comprised a phone call to the relevant govt dept and writing down the official line….. I don’t know what I’d do.   That seems more like what you would expect in China, rather than Australia.  

Anyway, this was an interesting article for me on another issue as well. When they visited Lightening Ridge, the journo interviewed a white middle class woman who had lived there for many years in an abandoned bus with no running water and homeschooled her children (I know this as the journo reported these astonishing facts)    It seems there is no school there.  This mother was waxing lyrical about the fab childhood her kids had had, learning about the bush and cars and cooking etc…. and that this was the childhood that all the kids (black & white) were having…..  anyway her kids had “made good” (more astonishment) one doing postgrad studies in Canada, and the other a public servant with the Vic state govt (you can see where the journo got sidetracked….)  Anyway, obviously I appreciated the h/ed kids “success” stories, but I wondered whether the aboriginal children were seeking/sourcing similar opportunities from this childhood – not so much that these are the only type of outcomes that are “good” in my view, but did the white middle class mum in that environment continue to express/espouse those middle class values of “the world is your oyster”  “you can do anything” ” what will you study at uni?” etc etc… and it was actully her input at this level that made a difference?? 

Anyway, I have no knowledge of the potential ”successful” outcomes achieved by the aboriginal children of the community as the article didn’t go there.

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