Dumbing us down

In the last two days I have read Dumbing Down by Dr Kevin Donnelly, a treatise on the impact of OBE and political correctness on the education curricula taught across Australia. Frankly, it scared me. It also explained some things to me about the ways in which I was taught, particularly in secondary school, and the methodology which I was taught to use when I did my Grad Dip Ed in 1996. Finally, the book encouraged me to stay committed to homeschooling and to keep on the path of a traditional, conservative, liberal arts education (aka neo-classical).

Having read Dumbing Down, which is full of quotations and referenced research from both sides of the OBE debate, I felt the need to read a bit more of my newly-acquired West Australian Curriculum Framework. Having been forewarned, I was unsurprised to find that "Reading" and "Writing" are only the last two of nine outcomes listed for the English Learning Area. Further, the types of materials listed to be read include such "texts" as "signs, billboards, notes, messages, memos, instructions, reports, newspapers, magazines, CD-ROMs, Web pages ..." as well as more difficult texts that conservatives like myself would categorise as "literature".

As Dr Donnelly warned in his book, the requirement of critical literacy (analysing texts in terms of an awareness of power relationships, from an anti-establishment, cluturally-left perspective such as feminism) seems to be everywhere in the Curriculum Framework. English outcomes 3 (Conventions), 5 (Listening), 7 (Viewing) and 8 (Reading) all list the desired outcome of "critical awareness" along with the more reasonable and expected "understanding". I would rather have my children taught cultural literacy than critical literacy.

Another point well-made in Dumbing Down was the sad lack of measureable standards against which a student's achievement can be assessed. The outcomes themselves are vague and the "Phases of Development" that suggest typical curriculum experiences give no measureable standards by which I can confirm whether my children are achieving at the required level or not. For example, in early childhood (K to year 3), "Positive attitudes towards reading and an understanding of the relationship between meaning and print are [to be] encouraged. ... Students are taught strategies such as use of picture and context clues to make meaning, rereading to reestablish meaning, visualising or 'making a mental picture' and sounding out unknown words. Over time, students are encouraged to take responsibility for their use of strategies and to use them independently. Children respond to texts in many different ways. These provide the means through which students can demonstrate understanding and interpretation of texts." What on earth does this edubabble translate to?

I think the first sentence means that I should encourage my kids to enjoy reading and being read to, and to understand that graphemes represent phonemes and thus written words represent spoken words. (But if they meant that, why not just say it?) Following on from that, I am obviously meant to teach my kids to read by telling them to look at writing and guess, and if that doesn't work, (and why would it?) I should teach them the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the English language and thus how to actually decode and read what is written. (At what level? Should I expect them to be able to read simple CVC words or multisyllabic, compound words of foreign origin?) Over time, (presumably by the end of year 3), I am to expect them to become an independent reader, able to read fluently on their own using their knowledge (presumably of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of English). (At what level? Should they be able to read simple Cat on Mat classroom readers or chapter books with few, if any, pictures?) Finally, my kids will be able to respond to the written word somehow. (How? Do they need to draw a picture of what they have read (eg in a story), use ideas from it in their play, answer questions about the characters, or simply narrate back to me what happened?) And yes, even in Kindergarten they are expected to (critically) interpret whatever they read.

Oh dear. I see I shall have to work out a teaching syllabus all on my own, because this Curriculum Framework provides no framework at all.