Jean Walker

Is there no one out there who can tell me about Big Picture Schools in the US?

Thanks, Cigdem. That is pretty much what I have been told about them. What I would love to know from someone is if they are considered successful. Are they only for a "certain type" of student? The two schools being built here are in low socio economic areas as if it is considered that those children need something different from other students. Maybe they do, but is this it?

Is there anyone out there who could give me some opinions/thoughts about Big Picture Schools. Our state govt here is about to build two of them and they are being touted as the best thing since sliced bread. Any thoughts?

Message says I'm not allowed to open it.

As usual, a very expensive and, no doubt, thoroughly well conducted review, tells them what any group of experienced classroom teachers could have told them now and ten years ago. oh, well As usual here in Oz we are just about to start having League Tables. We'll probably have one of these reviews in 10 years' time.

Further to my comment about our senior college reforms here, a vote has been taken and the colleges will start rolling strikes next week. Also one of the Yr11/12 colleges has written a public letter from every one of their 70odd staff, appealing for their college not to be reconfigured in to this new system. Our beloved Premier has stated he will not change his mind on the reforms. In 10 years time people will be discussing why it was allowed to happen.

The Government insisted that the quality of education in state schools was high. A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Standards have never been higher in our secondary schools." Spin! Spin! Spin! No different here in Oz. Many, many children are not achieving optimal standards in literacy/numeracy despite the money put in and the new methods/strategies employed. Why? Could we come up with an agreed list of the causes/problems and sort the ones that schools may be able to fix from those they can't?

Thanks for coming back and telling us the results. It's always nice to feel you've contributed something useful for someone. Four years later I am happily retired from being state president of our teachers' union and thoroughly enjoying doing some casual sub-editing at our Hansard. No stress, no behaviour problems, good pay, excellent conditions, interesting work - why didn't I think of it earlier!!!

And another one here. Do you think there is much difference from the UK? http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...5013871,00.html

Our Deputy PM, a woman who I originally thought had more sense, has been convinced by "experts" in the UK and the US that this is the way to go. She says they will be different and won't rank top to bottom. Article here: http://www.theage.com.au/national/gillard-...80816-3wrg.html

Apart from selection which we don't have, you could be talking about Australia. Oh, and I forgot to mention - guess what our federal govt has just this year introduced nationwide???? LEAGUE TABLES. If it wasn't serious it would be funny!

Andy If it's any consolation, the Minister for Education who relentlessly drove this reform lost her portfolio over it and her hopes of becoming Premier. There was eventually so much criticism of it in the media and by parents that she copped the blame which was fair enough but as you might expect, the bureaucrats who fed it to her remained in their highly paid posts. Now we have just had our tertiary system revolutionised and it is receiving almost as much criticism, as it was badly planned and implemented and appears to be doing nothing to achieve its aim of increased retention but is driving teachers mad. It's based on what I understand occurs in Ireland (our Sec for Ed is Irish!!) and Singapore with Polytechnics and Academies for Yrs 11 and 12 in separate institutions. These are the students who went through the failed ELs and are now being experimented on once again. Many have lost out in basic skills and consequently find senior secondary work difficult. Previously we had senior colleges for Yr 11/12 with a comprehensive intake where counsellors and teachers nurtured all manner of students through a wide range of courses from pre tertiary to pure vocational and everything in between. I (and the majority of our current teachers) believe they did a pretty good job at this and that we shouldn't be going back to streaming kids off to Academies and Polytechnics at 15/16. But do they ever take notice of practising teachers?

Perhaps social divides are not classified in the same way here in Oz as in the UK but there is a very big difference between the real "working class" and the underclasses and sometimes people bundle them together. I am also very sceptical of Hargreave's beliefs working except in "middle class" schools - whatever they actually are. Here in Tasmania a grand experiment was conducted in the late 90s to about 2006. It was called - wait for it - The Essential Learnings. The entire curriculum from K to Yr10 was upended and replaced by "5 Organisers" with titles such as - wait for it again - Communication, Thinking, World Futures, Wellbeing, Personal Futures. These strands were divided into 18 "Key Elements" which had 5 "Standards" each and 21 reporting outcomes. It was brought to an end in 2006 (and a return made to a subject based but flexible national curriculum) because a) teachers were totally unable to cope with the workload it generated In many schools basic sections of the curriculum such as Science, History, Home Economics, Vocational Technology etc were subsumed into the "Organisers" often becoming unrecognisable and in quite a few schools completely non-existent because their absence could be covered up by all sorts of jargon. It was discovered that some schools had dropped Science and History/Geography entirely. c) The above was particularly tempting in schools where students were loath to do those subjects, difficult to cope with in labs, or experienced teachers were unavailable or workshops/kitchens were becoming expensive or where "progressive" teachers thought that Climate Change and the Environment were complete substitutes for these subjects. d) so much time had to be given to the new approaches such as Critical Thinking and Cross Curricular Learning that basic literacy/numeracy were being neglected and parents started noticing that. e) children of lower ability and/or social disadvantage were disadvantaged by the emphasis on high level skills and methods f) balancing content with skills was extremely difficult to manage and to get equitable across schools I could go on but our teaching staff were surveyed after 4 years of implementation and the majority were against continuing it. An interesting research paper is here: I think I get a mention in it. http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data/er...80/2b/c2/ac.pdf Michael did not include some of the problems that I've listed above but as the union president at that time, these were what our teachers were telling us. BTY We only have one national govt school union here and 90% of all our teachers are members.

This is the link to the UK site which also gives you links to the International Project. Most countries have their own website but the UK one is probably the most comprehensive as it all began there. http://www.u3a.org.uk/

Whoops! meant to start a new topic but have been away for so long I've forgotten how to do it. Help!

Now I'm retired, I am involved in our very new local U3A (University of the 3rd Age). I'm currently VP and responsible for the program. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who is also involved.

I haven't been to this site for a while so didn't read your sad news earlier. My sincere condolences. What a beautiful poem. I'm going to file it away.

Or as Shakespeare put it: "there is nothing god or bad but thinking make it so"

Article in paper today reporting on large research study which says the answer to warding off dementia is a drink a day and pottering in the garden. I'm well in front with the first!

I received the notification that I had subscribed to this thread and I had also forgotten all about it. My post was in 2005 and here I am now having been retired for almost a year. I've found interesting things to do and have been overseas (to your part of the world) for 10 weeks. I'm involved with our local, new U3A and on the Board of our nearby Young Women's Shelter. However, after the initial novelty of freedom, I have applied to be a casual sub-editor for our state parliament Hansard, passed the test and got the job and start in early March when parlt begins its first sitting. Should be interesting!

“We learn what we do.” John Dewey This one has been taken out of context and out of time and over-used by current "gurus" to support their extremist theories of child-centred learning. Dewey said it at a time when all learning was formal and completely teacher directed and wanted to see some change - SOME change. Unfortunately, many young teachers have been brainwashed into believing teaching shoud be ALL "do". This is totally ridiculous and should be fought on all sides!!

I've recently retired after 35 years in secondary classrooms icluding much experience of special needs and then several years as State President of our teachers union and I think any good, experienced teacher willl tell you that a good classroom is a mixture of both and a bad classroom is only one or the other. There are times -and a good teacher will soon learn when - that a child-centred approach is the best and works well, when the students will learn best by being involved in and responsile for their own learning. On the other hand there are times when you the teacher have the best knowledge and can pass that on succinctly, ecnomically and interestingly to students without them having to waste time finding out for themselves. There are times for eacher lectures, teacher demonstrations and there are times for child centred learning and application of that learning. Don't let anyone tell you that you should be practising just one style or the other. The balance of the two will depend on many things - the make-up of your students (you may be explicitly teaching one group while another group is doing its own learning), the time of day, the subject matter, the purpose of the learning, the learning style of the student, etc etc. There is no one god-given method, it's all instinct, common sense, sound teacher training, good PD, ignoring the lunatic fringe of "experts" and learning to be comfortable with what suits both you and your students at any given moment.

http://ca.geocities.com/redhill@rogers.com/brochure.htm While living in England in 1991/2 I taught for a brief time at Redhill, a special school in East Sutton in Kent (see website above) which is a "sister" school to Summerhill. It was a fascinating experience. I was living with the couple, the wife of whom was the school Secretary and we lived in the previous headmaster's house in the grounds. Just down the road was a "campus" of the Maidstone young female offenders' institution - a very odd neighbour for this school I thought! I had previously worked at the Glebe EBD Unit in Harrietsham and when that closed it was moved to Redhill. The building as you can see is stunning - the grand hall was all Jacobean panelling, but very run down. Reading all this brought back many memories of the place.

I think with many more of today's parents than in the past, the "helicoptering" is more about over-protecting them from what they perceive to be this dreadful, dangerous, terror-filled world and not realising that kids need to be able to take educated risks, make independent decisions and take consequences for their actions. Many parents also seem to believe that their offspring won't love them if they make rules, impose sanctions and generally keep to the hard line. It's utter rubbish as kids are far more likely to respect such things and often end up having no respect for parents who over-indulged them.

This doesn't just apply to tertiary education - it's just as rampant in primary and high schools. I said something similar to the media here in my role as union president and got front page headlines.