Rudd's WorkChoices Moment? Rudducation
August 27th 2008 22:48
So I come out yesterday morning and say Kevin Rudd is too soft and doesn’t have the guts to take any hard measures to get the job done. Then within a few hours he goes and proves me wrong just to spite me. Kevin Rudd’s new education plan is the epitome of a hard plan designed to try and bring flailing education standards into line. There is a fine line, though, between being hard when it’s necessary and being hard because you think you have to be. On this one, I think Rudd may have waded into Mark Latham’s unruly hard man territory and taken a pot-shot at one of the most important groups of workers in the nation: teachers.
It really is a hare-brained scheme. Rudd wants schools to be monitored by some kind of ranking scheme that would punish schools that don’t score as well by removing principals and senior staff, or possibly shutting them down and merging them with others. This is a plan that is fundamentally about performance based funding, giving more money to schools that score better in some kind of national testing program. He would also send parents report cards of their kid’s schools to let the parents know exactly how the school is doing compared to others in the area. He has also said that he wants to send the teaching students that perform best in university to the most disadvantaged schools to ensure those schools don’t suffer under lax standards. It’s the education revolution that the Australian people were promised at the last election, so Rudd is finally delivering on a promise, thank God. But when the phrase education revolution was coined, most people thought it was pure rhetoric. A way of selling the improvement of standards and resources in schools. No one expected to take it on face value. Rudd said it would be an “education revolution”. And he meant it. A Mao Zedong style ‘permanent revolution’ that amounts to a complete overhaul of the education system and has mutated into what amounts to the WorkChoices of education.
That’s right. The WorkChoices of education. Just as WorkChoices took away worker’s sense of stability, so will this ‘Rudducation plan’. But whereas the whole principle of WorkChoices was to provide more flexibility in employment, this legislation decreases stability while at the same time taking away choice from teachers and educators on the ground. What teaching student at university will be driven to do the best in his or her course when they know that the better they do the more likely they are to be sent to a disadvantaged school that will make teaching a hard task? What will teachers and principals in disadvantaged schools do when they know their school’s scores wont possibly matched up to their neighbouring counterparts? Australian cities are a compact microcosm of contemporary society, which means that right next to a school packed to the rafters with kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds is a school with some of the most privileged kids in the country. How can the two be compared, where one has access to all the resources in the world and the other has next to nothing. The simple answer is they can’t. Yet under the Rudd proposal the underprivileged school will most likely lose its senior staff or even be closed all together due to its inability to ‘perform’.
Not only that, but how about Rudd’s desire to cull teaching jobs? Because that is EXACTLY what we need on the brink of a recession, Kev. More people out of work for factors that might be out of their control. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force him to drink. A teacher could be incredibly good but if the students aren’t interested there isn’t a lot one can do except their best. Culling teacher jobs puts unnecessary stress on teachers, will inevitably make the teacher shortage more pronounced, will increase class sizes and, worst of all, will Americanise the system. Anyone with some familiarity with the US education system will know that the greatest failing of the system is that teachers are forced to ‘teach to the test’, in that the testing is so important in evaluating performance that the teachers abandon holistic teaching methods to teach to the limited scope of what is or isn’t on the national test that would help judge them. Australia’s third biggest export is its education system. An Australian education is valued worldwide. To compromise it by forcing teachers to teach to the test just to keep a job is irresponsible and in short order will cripple the education system.
Kevin Rudd’s hard man act won’t work. If people didn’t like WorkChoices because of its adverse effects on jobs, how do you think they will feel when the education of their children is threatened by out of order policies that are proven failures in other countries? It reeks of Rudd reverting to his former character: top Queensland bureaucrat in the Goss Government that most referred to as Dr Death for his willingness to make ruthless cuts as a means to an end. The cold, mechanical way he has revealed his plans is actually surprising coming from a Labor Government who until now have been the best friend to the education system. The education unions are up in arms, with good reason. Teachers have it tough enough without Rudd coming in, trying to prove what a big man he is by laying the smack down on the people that are given the great responsibility of shaping the minds of our nation’s future. It’s like a mugger that beats an old woman to steal her bag; Rudd has picked on the most sacred job in our country just to prove he has the guts to be tough.
When the teacher’s start striking, I bet Rudd will wish he had WorkChoices.
It really is a hare-brained scheme. Rudd wants schools to be monitored by some kind of ranking scheme that would punish schools that don’t score as well by removing principals and senior staff, or possibly shutting them down and merging them with others. This is a plan that is fundamentally about performance based funding, giving more money to schools that score better in some kind of national testing program. He would also send parents report cards of their kid’s schools to let the parents know exactly how the school is doing compared to others in the area. He has also said that he wants to send the teaching students that perform best in university to the most disadvantaged schools to ensure those schools don’t suffer under lax standards. It’s the education revolution that the Australian people were promised at the last election, so Rudd is finally delivering on a promise, thank God. But when the phrase education revolution was coined, most people thought it was pure rhetoric. A way of selling the improvement of standards and resources in schools. No one expected to take it on face value. Rudd said it would be an “education revolution”. And he meant it. A Mao Zedong style ‘permanent revolution’ that amounts to a complete overhaul of the education system and has mutated into what amounts to the WorkChoices of education.
That’s right. The WorkChoices of education. Just as WorkChoices took away worker’s sense of stability, so will this ‘Rudducation plan’. But whereas the whole principle of WorkChoices was to provide more flexibility in employment, this legislation decreases stability while at the same time taking away choice from teachers and educators on the ground. What teaching student at university will be driven to do the best in his or her course when they know that the better they do the more likely they are to be sent to a disadvantaged school that will make teaching a hard task? What will teachers and principals in disadvantaged schools do when they know their school’s scores wont possibly matched up to their neighbouring counterparts? Australian cities are a compact microcosm of contemporary society, which means that right next to a school packed to the rafters with kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds is a school with some of the most privileged kids in the country. How can the two be compared, where one has access to all the resources in the world and the other has next to nothing. The simple answer is they can’t. Yet under the Rudd proposal the underprivileged school will most likely lose its senior staff or even be closed all together due to its inability to ‘perform’.
Not only that, but how about Rudd’s desire to cull teaching jobs? Because that is EXACTLY what we need on the brink of a recession, Kev. More people out of work for factors that might be out of their control. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force him to drink. A teacher could be incredibly good but if the students aren’t interested there isn’t a lot one can do except their best. Culling teacher jobs puts unnecessary stress on teachers, will inevitably make the teacher shortage more pronounced, will increase class sizes and, worst of all, will Americanise the system. Anyone with some familiarity with the US education system will know that the greatest failing of the system is that teachers are forced to ‘teach to the test’, in that the testing is so important in evaluating performance that the teachers abandon holistic teaching methods to teach to the limited scope of what is or isn’t on the national test that would help judge them. Australia’s third biggest export is its education system. An Australian education is valued worldwide. To compromise it by forcing teachers to teach to the test just to keep a job is irresponsible and in short order will cripple the education system.
Kevin Rudd’s hard man act won’t work. If people didn’t like WorkChoices because of its adverse effects on jobs, how do you think they will feel when the education of their children is threatened by out of order policies that are proven failures in other countries? It reeks of Rudd reverting to his former character: top Queensland bureaucrat in the Goss Government that most referred to as Dr Death for his willingness to make ruthless cuts as a means to an end. The cold, mechanical way he has revealed his plans is actually surprising coming from a Labor Government who until now have been the best friend to the education system. The education unions are up in arms, with good reason. Teachers have it tough enough without Rudd coming in, trying to prove what a big man he is by laying the smack down on the people that are given the great responsibility of shaping the minds of our nation’s future. It’s like a mugger that beats an old woman to steal her bag; Rudd has picked on the most sacred job in our country just to prove he has the guts to be tough.
When the teacher’s start striking, I bet Rudd will wish he had WorkChoices.
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