Mere rote knowledgeBy LEONARD COLQUHOUN
Australia lags behind in online geography quiz One can straightaway hear the dissing: 'Fancy thinking that the mere rote knowledge of geographical facts is of any value - how unprogressive can you get !!' Closely followed by - illogically, but no matter - jibes about those "stupid, dumb Seppos". Two of the frightening things about so-called "progressive education" - as distinct from, say, students actually learning and teachers actually teaching something - are the contemptuous rejection of knowledge, as Joe & Joanna Citizen understand it, and the sneering dismissal of every teacher in every classroom from the 1870s Compulsory Education Acts to the oh-so-enlightened present. They had rote learning. We've got "process". Putting it plainly, "process" means it matters not a damn what young Australians learn so long as they go through a "learning process"; tangentially getting some vague passing acquaintance with, say, 17th century Abyssinia, prehistoric Zhejiang or post-Mycenaean Crete is just as good as knowing the main historical events of 20th century Australia. Guys, it's the "process" that counts. This has two consequences for teachers and schools. Firstly, a new cadre of facilitators, consultants and experts have to be created to mediate the "process" from the gurus in academia and bureaucratia to the poor schmucks who have to actually work in real classrooms with live students 200+ days a year; what's more, there is the concomitant need to replace all previous texts with the New Nonsense - there's also a megadollar or ten there for insiders with good desk-top facilities and an eye on the main chance. Besides, these parasites now have it all over the parents, for whom the latest Edu-speak is just another LOTE. Secondly, once the "process" is in full operation, it's a boon for the lazy, the ignorant, and the incompetent lurking in, and, sadly, often protected by, the teaching profession: no more need to actually know anything, there are no wrong answers any more, no longer will Mr or Ms Know-Nothing be confronted by clever little Leslie with 'But, Ms/Sir, it says here that . . . .'. 'Leslie, it doesn't matter what it say there - it's the "process" that's important'. Competent, committed, knowledgeable teachers who had the sadly primitive, very un-PC notion that, by their very profession, they ought to know [and understand and appreciate] a whole lot more than their young Leslies, well, lighten up, dudes, it's, you guessed it, the "process" that's of value now, not the fact that you know a lot or, indeed, know anything. Now picture your average facilitators at their legal offices: 'But, you don't get it, do you ? Of course I know nothing about conveyancing - it's the "process" that counts. You don't really want us to impose a whole lot of statutes 'n' precedents on you, do you ? Good Lord, next thing you'll be expecting me to know a Certificate of Title from a Section 32 !! But I'm hot stuff on Islamic traffic law and Dreamtime marriage customs'. Or being briefed for brain surgery: 'Now, you'll be glad to know that I got my MB BS via an Essential Processes programme with an intern-centred approach to learning at our own pace. By Semester Five, I'd got enough interest in First Aid to get a "Well Done, Robin" in Environmentally-conscious Elastoplast Recycling. Now doesn't that sound just like the "process" you've been applying these past three years to my two children !!' Yes, there was much that was wrong, inefficient, monotonous, thoughtless or even brutal about Australian schooling in the 120 or so years after the 1870s, but boasting of churning out ignoramuses wasn't one of them. There has to be a balance somewhere, and it needs to be found quickly. No smart-alec "educationalists" have any right to sneer at US ignorance when they are complicit in fostering the same condition in our own schools. PS: an informative follow-up read: E D Hirsch jnr, Cultural Literacy, with an Introduction by former Minister for Science and ALP President Barry Jones, Schwartz Publishing, ISBN 0-86753-420-6 And/or, try to get the companion A First Dictionary of Literacy, ISBN 0-395-51040-6 - but beware [especially Friends of the ABC]: this particular edition is full of Seppo references !!
Leonard Colquhoun, of Invermay 7248, is a retired teacher [but not an 'ex-teacher', as they tend to
end up as EduCentral parasites burdening real teachers with make-work or as ideological drongos
helping to lose elections for the ALP] whose classroom experience spanned four decades
at primary, middle secondary and HSC levels in SE Australia and in PNG
[where he added the words puk-puk and pek-pek to his foreign language vocabulary].
His teaching subjects were English, histories [Greek & Roman, Asian and Modern],
Latin and pre-metric technical drawing, which gave him deeper insight into the saying
"five-eighths of eleven-sixty-fourths of FA". A member of the relevant unions for 30 years,
in his last workplace he was branch organiser for VIEU.
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