Thread: Teaching our history sounds like an idea

You must be fairly old if you were taught in school that Cook was the first European to discover Australia.

It has been fairly common knowledge and has certainly been taught in schools for quite a few years, that other explorers found the western and northern parts of Australia long before 1770.

Originally Posted by stallie

And that's half the problem. When I finished school twenty odd years ago, teaching was the course you did if you couldn't get into anything else.

Having said that, there are some brilliant teachers out there. But some duds too.


And don't get me started on kids not having to learn times tables.

I don't think it is only half the problem. Twenty or more years ago I was responsible for hiring graduates in my area for a major company, and so had a lot of contact witrh universities. I was astounded that the entrance requirements for Education were the rock bottom lowest.

As I had already found from an analysis of our staff performance that the best predictor of performance was the HSC (or equivalent) score rather than the tertiary education they had, this made it clear to me that we are setting up to have a teaching system staffed with underperformers.

I don't think that things have changed significantly.

However, despite this theres are some good teachers, as I have found following my children and grandchildren's education.

How did we get in this situation?

When I went to University (and earlier) the only way most people could afford university was on a scholarship. I managed to get a Commonwealth scholarship, but I know several of my peers who, while they qualified for one of these, could not accept it, as these had a very stringent means test on the living allowance, and their parents could (or would) not support them for another three or four years. But a Teachers scholarship paid a living allowance with no strings. And these teachers scholarships required you to teach for (I think) four years after you finished. By this time the new teacher could well be on a set career and would stay.

With the change to free tertiary education and the youth allowance in the seventies, there was no incentive to do teaching. Add to this the job steadily becoming less attractive as pay stagnated and discipline worsened, even with the decrease in demand for teachers as the baby boomers left school, the entry score for teaching had to be steadily lowered. As many teachers are now approaching retiring, the situation is getting worse.

John