makes teenage boys very twitchy. All I had to do was hammer in one nail into the timber frame of a prop for the high school musical on the weekend and I had a helpful young man offering to do… Read More ›
education
formal, eclectic, iconoclastic, autodidactic – all the ways we learn
Australian linguistocide, and antipodeal approaches to aboriginal education
I have a Google News alert set up for, among many other things, the word “aboriginal”. Yesterday, two contrasting stories dropped into my inbox. First, ABC News (Australia) reports that it’s indigenous people’s own darn fault if they’re unemployed and… Read More ›
Bragging on the offspring
The tigling just received a HD+ for her first long narrative assignment in English this year, a story about old age. I think I have a parent-crush on her teacher for writing this evaluation: Beautiful work [tigling]. Mrs Wentworth is… Read More ›
Teachers and performance rates of pay
Pavlov’s Cat has an excellent post that lays out clearly and simply why attempting to shoehorn the complexity of educating children into some objective scale to grade teachers and pay them accordingly is ideology gone wild. More good posts about… Read More ›
A parenting wake-up call
It’s always been my philosophy to provide both my kids with a comprehensive sexual health and safety education to supplement the already good school program in NSW. My parents did that for me, and it made me confident about demanding… Read More ›
For my friends in academia
Parody student evaluations for Socrates, from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Hemlock Available in the Faculty Lounge Socrates is a real drag, I don’t know how in hell he ever got tenure. He makes students feel bad by criticizing them… Read More ›
Control your jealousy
Next year, I will be paid to torture teenagers who want to win Australian Idol. The tigling’s high school needs tutors who are willing to supplement the instruction given in the school music curriculum. It will only be a few… Read More ›
Privilege and higher education
The SMH reports on the results of a study by ANU academics titled Why are high ability individuals from poor backgrounds underrepresented at university? RESEARCH has exploded some myths about university entry and performance – including the notion that richer… Read More ›
Education preoccupations
An article in Thursday’s The Australian caught my eye regarding Labor backbencher Craig Emerson proposing mandatory school-based education until the completion of Year 12 for all students. The ideal of an extended education so school-leavers have more skills and knowledge… Read More ›
Public schools not challenging enough?
In all the angst about education, the Literature Wars and the History Wars and is public education running down beyond hope, I find this excerpt from my son’s state high school newsletter encouraging.
These are the research projects chosen by the 6 students doing Extension History for their HSC this year:
- Does the evidence from the ancient town of Pompeii support that it was built for the wealthy?
- Explain the philosophies of Michel Foucault and their impact on the development of Post-Modernism
- Assess the effects of Gorbachev’s reforms on the collapse of the USSR
- Evaluate the differing interpretations of the causes of Alexander the Great’s death.
- Does History end with Liberal Democracy?
- What are the differing interpretations of the 1951 seventeen point agreement?
- What are the objectives of historians who have written about the Holocaust?
Hoyden About Town 