Syllabus changes teach ‘woke’ agenda at expense of academics
Children need a solid foundation in maths and other core subjects, not lessons in being ‘woke’, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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By all means simplify the curriculum, but don’t dumb down children further in the process.
The long-awaited revision of what educators should teach and kids should learn fails to hit at the heart of what’s going so wrong in this country.
What a missed opportunity by the boffins at the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.
On one hand, we have teachers shouting to the rafters that they don’t have time to imbed material in young minds so kids not only “get it” but can apply it.
The volume of stuff, for want of a better word, in the syllabus engenders a once-over-lightly approach, and if you’re not one of the super bright kids or whose parents fork out for private tutoring, then tough. We’re moving on. Keep up, stupid.
But on the other hand, the very basics children so desperately need to become proficient, particularly in mathematics, are being spectacularly discounted.
Why “multiplication facts”, better known to those of us with wrinkles as times tables, should be delayed until Year 4 is anyone’s guess.
And guessing is pretty much what children will be doing as they tackle higher-level maths.
Without the quick reckoning that automatic recall brings, kids will be slower to complete maths problems later on … when marks count towards a job interview or university degree, and the ability to reason becomes most important.
Australia’s dismal performance in PISA, the international triennial benchmark that surveys 15-year-olds, is telling.
We are going backwards fast in the assessed areas of reading, maths and science. Look at the latest graph and the sharpest decline is in maths. It’s like we fell off a cliff in 2003, the earliest year charted.
China, on the other hand, is top of the pops.
While we know about Tiger mothers and fathers, when do Chinese kids begin rote learning? As soon as they start school – not four years later.
As one maths teacher with four decades’ experience commented on The Courier-Mail website when the Prep to Year 10 syllabus changes were unveiled: “Knowing times tables is an essential skill in mathematics. The earlier you learn them, the better equipped you are. I am dismayed and disheartened when children enter year 7 and have very poor arithmetic skills.”
Many believe even the existing Year 3 commencement of teaching times tables is dragging the chain.
As one reader noted: “Students in Year 2 are more worldly aware than students from years ago and are actually capable of doing harder work than they are receiving now.
“At a minimum, Year 2 students should learn the two and three times tables. Learning it in Year 4 is ridiculous!”
Also mooted in the ACARA revision is the delaying of teaching fractions from Year 1 to Year 2 when children are “more conceptually ready’’, yet these same six and seven year olds will be taught about respectful relationships including laws around consent.
If schools must go back to basics, as educators and employers widely agree, then more time should be spent on reading, writing and arithmetic instead of being “woke”.
Issues around respect are best taught in the home, and just because that might not be happening with the rigour of previous generations shouldn’t mean classrooms prioritise them over the skills to make kids competitive in the global economy in which they now are expected to operate.
Like the ability to competently read and write, maths is never useless, no matter where you end up later in life.
Author Amanda Ripley puts it like this in her New York Times bestseller, The Smartest Kids in the World: “Maths is a language of logic. It is a disciplined, organised way of thinking … Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher-order habits in kids’ minds: the ability to reason, for example, to detect patterns and to make informed guesses.”
In a world where information is cheap and unfiltered, logic is invaluable.
Teaching kids to think starts with instilling the basics so they have a sound foundation.
Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
LOVE
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