GIVING THREE Rs THE Rs

I want to talk about education. Or lack of it. Or to be more specific: what your kids are being taught at school, what they aren’t being taught at school and what they should be taught at school.I know I’m going to sound like an old fogey when I say that in my day we were taught this or that and it is nearly sixty years since I started primary school.

But very early in our school years we were taught Times Tables and nearly six decades later I know instantly that six sevens are forty-two and nine nines are eighty-one.

How many young students these days can do that without reaching for a calculator?

Despite all the changes in schooling – and I do think children are more intelligent and more worldly than we were – I still think that the basis of a sound education must stat with the old Three Rs: Reading, Writing and ’Rithmetic. Get those right and you’ve got a good start in life.

It is true that there are things we missed out on that are now taught in schools. Things like sex education, and hygiene and social skills. There is also the IT  world which didn’t exist back then and it will be a dream come true when every student has a laptop.

But none of this is worthwhile if the basic Three Rs are ignored. Children have to be taught how to read and write and spell and speak English.
I raise it today because The Australian Primary Principals Association says teachers spend too much class time on lifestyle issues at the expense of reading, writing and maths.

Students literacy and numeracy skills are being eroded because they are spending too much time in ‘add-on’ courses like bike safety and sex education.

APPA president Leonie Trimper says a plethora of ‘add-ons’ had crept into overcrowded state curriculums over many years, making it ‘impossible to achieve’ learning aims.

Her concerns are echoed by other teachers around the country. In a survey released last month, 96 per cent of 5000 Australian principals and teachers said they wanted a simpler, less-crowded curriculum. That’s 96%.

To add to the pressure the Education Department in Queensland grandly announced that 2008 would be The Year of Physical Activity with its Smart Moves program.  It’s not too much of a smart move if all you achieve is making kids physically fitter but mentally flabbier.

There’s a balance here and I believe it should be left to the schools’ principals and teachers to weight those scales. Confront lifestyle issues. Things like car and bike safety and sex education are important. But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

If a first time job seeker can’t spell basic words and can’t tell you instantly that five fives are twenty-five then what the hell have you achieved?

Friday, October 10, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008