The old teacher standards debate

You can demand high academic standards in teacher trainees until you are blue in the face but people with high academic standards don't want a bar of chaotic Australian State schools.  They have better job options. So dummies are all you can get to teach there

What is needed to raise teacher quality is to make teaching more attractive and that means making public school classes less like a warzone.  And the only way to do that is to enforce civil standards of behaviour from the students.  Unruly students should be diverted to special schools where physical means can be used to enforce compliance with the rules. In the old days students were caned as a punishment for bad behaviour.  That could work again but Leftist opposition ensures it will not be reintroduced.

So what is the alternative?  Australia has a well-known alternative:  40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools.  Such schools are expensive so the kids concerned have to come from middle class homes -- where even a look can be sufficient discipline.

So in such schools teachers are allowed to teach and that is where the good teachers go. At my son's private school, he even had two MALE teachers, wonder of wonders

So Leftist failure to permit adequate discipline consigns as much as 60% of the child population to schools where very little gets taught in the worst cases.  How compassionate!


THE way to lift Queensland's academic standards? Get brighter teachers. It's not rocket science - but then science, of any kind, is not the strong suit of most who are fronting our classrooms.

By accepting into education degrees the students at the bottom end of tertiary entrance rankings, we can't then expect top outcomes. An OP17 won't get you into most university degrees - and fair enough, too - but it will ensure you a seat in the lecture theatres at the Australian Catholic University.

I've written about this issue before and am familiar with the arguments of those who disagree with me, including fans of ACU and proud parents of young teachers who say the ability to relate to kids outweighs academics.

Now, Deanne Fishburn from the Queensland College of Teachers is claiming that "you can't be registered as a teacher in Queensland without meeting high and rigorous standards".

As director of the QCT - which, according to its website, "registers teachers for Queensland schools and accredits the state's preservice teacher education programs" - Ms Fishburn is hardly going to admit the status quo stinks. Naturally, she will defend it.

However, as part of her argument, she says that those high standards include that "teacher education students must have passed senior English and mathematics". That means obtaining a C. Hardly what I'd call excellence.

When economic experts are continually identifying the greatest jobs growth in fields that require higher level maths and critical thinking, such as engineering and technology, why are we settling for a pass mark in those who would inspire and instruct future job-seekers? It is unreasonable to expect people who are average achievers themselves to be able to confidently unpack complex problems to others.

Alarming findings from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute back me up on this. Only one in four teenagers is learning from a specialist maths teacher - someone who studied maths at university, including for six months as part of their four-year education degree. Too often, sports or music teachers are also taking maths classes.

It's no better in primary school, with former AMSI director Geoff Prince saying that teachers are "breaking out in a cold sweat" when they have to teach maths. Contrary to the requirement to which Ms Fishbum refers, Mr Prince says many "haven't done maths through to Year 12 (and) don't understand fractions and percentages properly themselves".

Ms Fishburn argues that focusing on OP scores (soon to
be ATAR) distorts the real picture of the beginning teacher workforce. Reason being, she says, is the average age of graduate teachers is 28, meaning they are likely to have a career behind them or perhaps another degree. They might also have had several gap years, stuffed around  switching courses,'Or taken longer than usual to complete their teaching qualifications.

Don't get me wrong - life experience is valuable, but it shouldn't excuse academic mediocrity or underperformance.

In Finland - a much stronger performer than Australia in PISA international benchmarking - all teachers hold a master's degree.

Teaching polls as Finland's most admired profession, and you can't just walk into an education degree. You have to be the cream of the crop. This is how it should be.

As Peter Goss, director of the Grattan Institute School Education Program, told the Courier-Mail yesterday: "Teaching is a complex job. It requires strong cognitive abilities as well as the  emotional skills to relate to the  children, but unfortunately the academic backgrounds of new teachers has been dropping for 40 years and has continued to drop even over the last decade."

  Lowering the bar to address teacher shortages - which is partly why an OP17 is  considered adequate - will not  attract high achievers.  What will, however, is not an easy fix. It requires a major shift in how we, as a society, view the value of education and, in turn, respect, train and remunerate teachers.  Kids deserve the best educators - those who combine academic proficiency with "soft" skills such as creativity, communication and empathy, but as it stands now, that boils down to sheer luck.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020





Scott Morrison says hazard reduction burns are more important than cutting carbon emissions in protecting Australians from deadly bushfires

Good that someone in power gets it

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared hazard reduction could be more important than emissions reduction in protecting Australia from increasingly dangerous bushfire seasons.

Mr Morrison has also revealed the government was considering a way to name and shame states which don't complete required hazard reduction burns.

'Hazard reduction is as important as emissions reduction,' the prime minister told Sky News on Tuesday. 'Many would argue even more so, because it has a direct practical impact on the safety of a person going into a bushfire season.'

Mr Morrison flagged clear national standards for meeting hazard reduction targets, along with a review of land-clearing laws, native vegetation rules and allowing grazing in national parks.

'We report all the time on what our emissions reductions are, but across the country there is not a national system of reporting to track how hazard reduction is progressing,' he said.

'There's been plenty of chat around emissions reduction and that's fine, hazard reduction though is the thing that is going to take a more practical effect on how safe people are in future fire seasons.'

He said a proposed royal commission should look at how states were performing on reducing fire risks in the face of hotter, longer and drier summers.

While the royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday fires took 18 months, Mr Morrison wants the mooted inquiry into this summer's disastrous season to run for a maximum six months.

He also wants the probe to look at when the federal government is able to step in above state counterparts in natural disasters. 'I want to know when the trigger line is,' he said.

Mr Morrison has come under fire for his response to the fires, which have killed almost 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Climate change debate has been central to the fallout from the disaster, with the government criticised for not taking more action.

SOURCE  





Tony Abbott says 'every extreme weather event' in Australia is being used as 'proof of climate change' by eco fanatics who have become 'religious' in their beliefs

He is clearly still aware that global warming is hokum

Tony Abbott says climate change zealots are wrongly using 'every extreme weather event' as undeniable proof of global warming, with the former prime minister denying it was the main cause of Australia's unprecedented bushfire crisis.

Mr Abbott launched a stinging rebuke of eco warriors at an event for the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, in Washington D.C. on Tuesday - where he also lauded US President Donald Trump's first term in office.

The former Liberal Party leader and volunteer firefighter said deadly bushfires were inevitable in Australia and pointed to the century-old Dorothea Mackeller poem 'My Country' which describes the country as a land 'of droughts and flooding rains'.

Mr Abbott said climate change activists were almost 'religious' in their beliefs that global warming was to blame for the ongoing fires, which have devastated a record amount of land.

'I'm not one of those people who sees the current bushfires as confirmation of all we have feared about the changing climate,' he told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'I see the current bushfires as the sort of thing we are always going to be prone to in a country such as ours.'

Mr Abbott said those who believe climate change is the most important factor in extreme weather events use it as the reason for fires, floods and Hurricane Sandy - which devastated the Carribean in 2012.

'If you think climate change is the most important thing, everything can be turned to proof. I think that to many it has almost a religious aspect to it,' he said.

Mr Abbott, Australia's 28th prime minister, led the country between 2013 and 2015 while served 19 years as a volunteer firefighter for the Rural Fire Service.

He supported Prime Minister Scott Morrison's stance that climate change had some role in causing bushfires, and praised his response to the state of emergency caused by the fires.

SOURCE  







Dozens of vegans storm a steakhouse and ruin people's dinners in protest against eating meat - but run away scared when the police are called

Vegan activists have stormed a Queensland restaurant as part of a protest against the meat industry.

Protesters held up signs and repeated the chant 'it's not food, it's violence' in the middle of the Black Hide Steakhouse in Brisbane at the weekend.

The protest was part of a global movement by activist group Direct Action Everywhere.

The group live-streamed the protest to Facebook, urging animal rights supporters to share the video and spread their message. 

'We're at a steakhouse to disrupt normalised violence,' the woman filming the video said. 'We have around 25 dedicated animal rights activists standing in solidarity for animals that are needlessly slaughtered for food.

'We have the choice to end violence with our dollar and in 2020 there is no longer an excuse to pay for someone else's suffering.'

The diners appeared uncomfortable as the group stood in the middle of the restaurant chanting and holding their signs.

Others stood out the front of the steakhouse confronting those who entered the restaurant with their message against meat.

The group are well known for their activities in Western Australia, where they have held several marches and protested outside abattoirs and butchers shops near Perth.

Direct Action Everywhere spokesman Arcadiusz Swiebodinksi said the group planned more protests in Queensland.

'We came here to Brisbane because its a very heavy animal agriculture state here in Queensland and animals need to be spoken for everywhere, he told 7 News. 'This is just the beginning.'

One diner said he was unhappy about having his dinner interrupted. 'Don't interrupt other people's life everyone has got a right to make a choice - they can make there's.  Let the people here who like eating steak make theirs,' he said.

Others offered their support to the steakhouse on social media.  'Hi, sorry you had to put up with those vegan d**k heads last night. We love eating your steak,' one person wrote.

The protest lasted less than 20 minutes, and by the time police arrived the activists had already left.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here