Readers may have noticed the occasional post here whacking VCAA and, more generally, Victorian mathematics education. Why? One reason is simply that Melbourne is my home town; it is where I grew up and to where I returned, thirty years ago. So, I simply know much more about Victoria’s maths ed idiocy. Also, I still have the memory of a time when things were not so idiotic here, when a lower-middle class public school kid could compete almost fairly with Polo Grammarians because he had good textbooks based upon a sane curriculum assessed in a sane manner and with it all delivered by properly educated and unencumbered teachers. I am not simply appalled by VCAA and its circus of fellow traveller idiots, I am actively furious at them for their ignorance and arrogance and incompetence, for their denying to today’s shitkicker kids the opportunity I and many others were given.
That is plenty sufficient, of course, but another reason to focus on Victorian educational idiocy is because Victoria often seems to be the source for broader infection. The original National Curriculum, which was far superior to the current insanity but which also paved the way for that insanity, seemed to be very much a Victorian led thing. Victoria, of course, also had, and has, the techno-zealots, key players in the CAS-perversion of senior mathematics, the insidious tendrils of which are now reaching into other states. That techno-perversion has led in turn to the insane “modelling” fetish and the “algorithmics” fetish and the “authentic real world” fetish and the “pseudocode” fetish and so on, all the sundry ways of ensuring the kids never attempt any actual mathematics, and much of which is creeping, or leaping, into other States. Victoria has a lot to answer for.
If Victoria is our natural focus, however, we’re also very happy to lay into other jurisdictions if and when some nonsense is brought to our attention. In the early blog days, we got stuck into Western Australia, and again earlier this year, and a few weeks ago we gave QCAA a sequence of whacks for their 2024 exam junk. We don’t stray overseas that often, but of course the Boaler cult ensures that we have to trip to America on occasion, New Zealand is pretty nutty and England has its fair share of clowns. We even took time once to defend rural Peru.
Should we have more posts on other Australian States? Probably. There’s nothing stopping some interstaters doing what I do, and I damn well wish they would, but it probably ain’t gonna happen. So, it’s likely me or no one. And, the focus of this blog on Victoria implicitly suggests that other States are in better and good shape. With the possible exception of New South Wales, it is far from clear that the “better” is true, and the “good” is definitely false.
From a quick view, it seems possible that Queensland’s senior exams are currently worse than Victoria’s. I wouldn’t bet the house on it but there is vaporous nothingness to some of QCAA’s exploratory-investigative-modelling nonsense that suggests a much broader infection; they seem to have caught Victoria’s disease and seemingly posess none of the antibodies to counter the infection. To be clear, QCAA cannot compete with VCAA in terms of arrogance and nastiness and dishonesty; that’d be akin to out-vaulting Sergey Bubka. But, QCAA’s greater integrity notwithstanding, exams really matter and QCAA’s exams seem to really suck.
Which brings us, finally, to South Australia: is South Australia even stupider than Queensland? That possibility was suggested by an article that appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser about a month ago (M, P).
Glenunga International High teacher lashes out at ‘soft’ 5Cs
The article seems to have been inspired by the lashing out of just one teacher. We know nothing of the school, let alone the teacher, but he lashes out in a manner of which a Marty would be proud:
A fixation on “soft-option” teaching that is a “waste of time” is hurting students at the state’s top-performing high school, according to a frustrated teacher.
The experienced teacher said stressed-out Years 7-11 students at Glenunga International High School were being forced to devote precious time to studying a “breathtakingly stupid” learning principle called the 5Cs – critical and creative thinking, character, citizenship, communication and collaboration – and that was diverting them from serious studies.
The 5Cs. It’s a safe bet that these five Cs can be distilled into one C: Crap.
As Dorothy Parker noted, there is always a fresh hell to be had. South Australia’s new hell appears to be the “21st Century Skills” madness, which infected the Australian Curriculum and which seems irresistible to educrat nitwits.
The article quotes well-known nonsense hater Fiona Mueller in support of the teacher, and then gives the Government’s response:
Education Department chief executive Martin Westwell said it supported Glenunga’s use of the 5Cs framework. which was endorsed by the University of Melbourne.
“Endorsed by the University of Melbourne”. As if that’s a good thing. Westwell is then quoted directly:
“The outdated notion that schools and teachers must choose between ‘back to basics’ and the development of so-called ‘soft skills’ is misguided and driven by ideology.”
Ah. We’re the ideological ones. One would have thought it was you clowns with your latest buzz-twaddle, but apparently not.
This is never gonna end. Modern education is a Hydra of madness, always with new snakes on the way. Education done well is pretty much all alike. But every idiotic Australian State appears to be idiotic in its own idiotic way.
If we have a national curriculum that has been endorsed by all the states, why do we have different curricula for each state?
1) The Federal system
States are responsible for education, and a clown car of idiotic Education ministers approving the AC does not make the AC the curriculum for any state.
2) The writers and consultants of the AC were self-involved mathematical midgets.
Did I mention that already? In any case, the cretins involved in writing the AC couldn’t agree on anything because, Tolstoy again, all States are idiotic in their own particular ways.
3) The AC is not an AC
That heap of shit is incomprehensible and unimplementable, and everyone, including the idiots at ACARA, knows it. The States have no choice but to try to maek some sense of the thing. Which they cannot.
It is true, as Marty points out, that States are responsible for education in Australia. However, they sometimes hand over these powers to the federal government. For example, in 1974, funding of public universities was taken over by the federal government even though public universities were – and still are – under state laws. In 1975, Tasmania handed over responsibility for the railways in the state to the federal government. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Jesus, Terry. Who the Hell cares? They’re all idiots. Who cares whether it’s a Federal idiot or a State idiot?
In South Australia, teachers have to teach directly from the Australian Curriculum. There is no SA one. There is a move by the Department for Education to create a South Australian curriculum, but my understanding is that it will only be released to State schools, not Catholic or independent schools.
Here stage 2 (year 12) exams are eventually published often without vital diagrams because they are copyright, but no solutions are ever published which is a huge advantage for those schools whose teachers get chosen to do marking.
I’d rather be in QLD where they are fairly new to exams and and are yet to do them perfectly than here.
There’s no further detail that doesn’t make this situation more depressing and more enraging. How can there not be one education minister with the brains and the balls to call out this insanity?
I think the answer is – unbelievably – that they mostly don’t know about this sort of thing. Maybe Ben Carroll is an exception, but they speak almost exclusively to money-people and to high ranking folk in the department who mostly like things the way they are.
Carroll makes the best sounds, but I see little in the way of deeds.
Read your post after a tough day of teaching. Picked me up no end. Thank you and keep up the great wacking.
That post was a pick-me-up?
Teachers are not having a great time of things at the moment. Especially in Queensland.
Anyone who speaks out against the crap they have to put up with will therefore be a pick-me-up.