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You can find previous Brain Dumps here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21. Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37.

So, my last post about my ongoing, much lengthened and slightly unloved Masters of Teaching study was about how I was essentially cramming the last half of a History of Education module into a few days, and then spewing up something that would resemble an essay about one of the defining characteristics modern and future education.

What I ended up writing was a touch polemical... and not really all that focused from my own self critical point of view. I had a sort of core idea to write/rant about one of the many pet peeves that I see affecting either education in general, or specifically the teaching Science and Mathematics at a secondary school level. I'm pretty cranky about both... in that teachers appear to be overworked and underpaid, and every person in the world seems to KNOW how to do their job better... but doesn't end up doing it, but instead piles on a whole heap of unsolicited "helpful" crap. This ranges from parents, bureaucrats, governments, politicians, and culture "warriors" of all types. In the end, it just makes lots of crap work for teachers, who end up having to do EVERYTHING other than teaching... and don't even get me started on how Mathematics and Science end up being warped into something that is either uninteresting and uninspiring, or dumbed down to the point of nonsense.

... anyway, the topic that I chose to write about was the capture of the education system by neo-liberal commercial interests and concepts. A sort of privatisation of delivery by stealth... of course, no government (except probably the United States...) would survive the ACTUAL privatisation of education in public... but the ideas and concepts have permeated through the system to make it near indistinguishable.

Now, this starts at the social and society level... where the pursuit of money is seen to be the highest ideal, and that the numbers somehow represent the "worth" that society places on an individual. We can easily see that that is sort of unraveling in Western democracies in a big way... but along with that sort of concept, is the idea that turning a short term profit/return to shareholders is more important than long-term investment. Which leads to short sighted quick win decisions... which leave gaping holes in actual infrastructure. Again, easy to look around and see that maintenance of infrastructure (physical and otherwise) holds much less priority than "efficiency" and "productivity" wins.

Now... that brings us to the education system. Schools are now seen more as "service providers", families and students are "consumers", education is a "product", government/boards are "enablers", and private companies are "infrastructure providers and facilitators". All these words are already dissonant with the core raw concept of learning and education... these are horrible market and boardroom poop-speak that has unfortunately invaded every aspect of Australian life. They are meaningless...

... but it does position the idea of education as a "market". Families are supposed to be discerning "consumers"... but in actual fact, marketing and spin is pretty much all the data that they have to go on. National testing and all of that... well, that is an impressive industry that is fed and supported by government (politicians) and private companies... eager to push the concept of "accountability"... but what is "accountability", and why are the people that generally the most corrupt in the entire society the ones that are telling us what that is?

After all, WHAT does a good education look and feel like? Is it a number or ranking of students/schools? Is it a result on a test? Is it ticking all the boxes in an endless of "criteria" that have been made up by people who have long forgotten how to write and distill ideas into simple, easy to parse language?

Well... none of those things, I would argue. But this is what is currently what is presented as good education. But this is what you get when you get the private sector involved in something that doesn't have short term gain as the most primary imperative. Sure, I'm NOT advocating for something that looks like pure government control... lets not put that straw man up. But I AM saying that a market based (even by stealth) education system is DEFINITELY not the model that fits education.... because education is not easily quantifiable into the meaningless metrics that are so beloved by politicians and marketers.

So... I ended up writing this pretty lame (from my point of view...) rant that rambled a little bit too much... plus, as I was writing when I was really tired (and I wanted to finish up quickly so that I could watch the Mighty Ducks with my family), I ended up forgetting to write in the killer point in the conclusion! As far as I could see, this deserved a passing Credit at best.

... anyway, my faith in the humanities degrees took another battering. I got a really good mark.

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

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