I've been very impressed with how Australians discuss issues when I see or hear them on video or audio internet streams from their mass media organizations. And it seems to me that I can trace this spark of intelligence back to the schooling system. I haven't ever observed Australian schools first-hand, but I have learned, that up until now there hasn't been an intense curriculum which teachers are expected to follow. Instead, we see a Montessori ethic of teaching - where students receive a generalist's education. I don't have enough information to offer a proper critique, today... but this new "national curriculum" which is being rolled out worries me. When teachers are given a strict curriculum to follow, they stop working for the student, and start working for the state. All of a sudden, they see the extent of their job as being this: imparting content to students and assessing that content. They will often neglect the things that their department can't really measure as easily - things like nurturing students and mentoring students.

You people in Australia see how folks in the USA talk to eachother on the internet. It's not pretty, is it? People in my country of the USA don't know how to think critically. People are really silly. They don't like to read. They discuss national issues using hyperbolic exaggerations - because they think that they can prevail in a debate, if they are more emphatic about their position.

I chalk up all these effects to the fact we educate our children a certain way. I was observing a sixth grade science class the other day... and I noticed one kid in the class was lolligagging. He didn't work earnestly on the assignments in class. And the teacher's aide was very annoyed that he wasn't following suit with the rest of the class. When watching him more closely though, I saw what he was doing on one assignment where the teacher had them sketch a bicycle which was set on a table at the front of the room. The kids were to label the "simple machines" that were put together to create this bicycle. This boy was a perfectionist... He was doing a work of art on that paper of his. He had the bicycle drawn in 3 dimensions, complete with shadow, and highlight and specular. That boy should have been the jewel in the crown of that teacher. He should have been lauded, and encouraged in his desire to do his best work every time. Instead, he was seen by the adults teaching the class as the problem child.

So this, Australia, is what can happen when you start making your teachers little marionettes who have to present material in a particular fashion. You end up with schools that teach students poor work habits. Kids are taught to do shoddy work, in order to get it in on time, so that they can keep up with the class curriculum. Those who go the extra mile are discouraged. Anyone who has particular talents or gifts is told to set those things aside; those things are treated as "diversions" rather than "real work."

Teachers who are working for the state, rather than for the student, tend to become more distant emotionally from the children. They become less reasonable. They think that their job is done when they have presented the material and have assessed it. If the students didn't do well for whatever reason on the assessments... these teachers are scornful toward those students... as they see the failure as being the student's fault, rather than their own fault. The teachers who are following a mandated curriculum feel far less personal responsibility for the success or failure of their students because they have crossed every t and dotted every i when it comes to following the standard curriculum.

I'm enrolled in the teacher education program at my local university this year... and I am frankly dismayed at how the professors treat their studets - even at this tertiary institution. In my opinion, these professors need to be nurturing and mentoring their students. These people are on the road to being teachers, themselves. The professors need to be looking at the "whole student" - in much the same way that they themselves exhort us that we need to look "at the whole child" when we become teachers out in the schools. They need to be assessing the students in tens of different areas when it comes to how well they work with children in the classroom.

Instead, these professors see their job as being done when they present material and assess how well the students absorbed that material. Frankly, I can learn material on my own by going to the internet, and reading a few books. I don't need a professor to present material to me. I don't want to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for someone to do something for me that I could do just as easily on my own. What I need, is to have real hands-on experiences with children... and I need to have professors who are masters of their trade - who can teach me the tricks of their trade, and show me the pathway which they themselves walked, and which I will be soon walking on.

So... Australia... I can see that you might have a very big diversity in the quality of education in various schools across your continent. And I can see how people would want to fix that, and bring the quality up to par across the board. But please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. A Montessori style of curriculum which addresses the students' passions and interests - and which gives kids a generalist education where all the subject areas are intertwined with eachother is a better system than that which we have in the USA - where you teach material and then assess material - and where the student's passions, and interests and ideas become sidelined.