Education as Nurture

Students in Year’s 3,5,7, and 9 across Australia have recently sat their NAPLAN tests. Yet again the media have sensationalised the testing regime and the debate regarding the validity and reliability of such tests has again divided the nation. Unfortunately in the midst of these hotly contested debates and political point scoring agendas lies our students - eager, impressionable and full of hope and expectation regarding their learning and their futures. It has been rather cynically said that children enter our schools as question marks but leave as full stops. This should not be so!! Learning should be a journey of wonder and discovery yet in all our clamouring to become a more learned nation, and our efforts to make sure students are being measured and assessed, we reduce such a complex and essentially developmental process as learning down to a one moment in time test score. By doing so I believe we all too often forget that at the heart of education lies an education of the heart.

The experience of international benchmarking of academic performances across OECD nations has been that those nations who consistently bombard students with standardised tests like NAPLAN without building understanding and who ignore the relationship between reciting an answer rotely and genuinely understanding a given concept or theory invariably fail to succeed on any measure within these benchmarks. Significantly, Finland, a nation that has been regularly placed at the very top within these measures, has a very different approach to their education programs. Firstly, Finland do not place high value on standardised tests and prefer to build understanding and evidence of mastery across a range of subjects through more authentic and problem based assessment tasks. A Time Magazine article described their aversion to formal national testing by declaring:

“The Finns are as surprised as much as anyone else that they have recently emerged as the new rock stars of global education. It surprises them because they do as little measuring and testing as they can get away with. They just don’t believe it does much good”.

Furthermore, the training of Finland’s teachers is rigorous and requires that EVERY teacher undertakes a Masters of Education program. The Finns term this degree a masters in kasvatus, which translated derives from the same word they use for a mother bringing up her child. Quite literally, Finns believe that their teachers need to have a master’s degree in the “art of nurturing and caring”. Dr Howard Hendricks, author of the best seller “Teaching to Change Change lives” (which every Heights College teacher was given as a gift at the commencement of the year), stated that “No one cares what you know until they know that you care”. Successful learning therefore needs to be based upon this relational foundation - an ethic of genuine care for each and every student that we teach. NAPLAN tests and standardised measures of performance are necessary indicators of a child’s progress and reveal an important chapter in that child’s educational journey. However, may we never fail to understand and appreciate that it is the intangible, hard to define, difficult to describe but impossible to deny “connectedness” between a student, a teacher and the subject matter that lies at the heart of all learning and all growth and development throughout the educational journey.

May we therefore celebrate that our students are “works in progress” and not isolate their identity to a NAPLAN footnote or a paragraph - but rather see such measures as part of a contribution to the much fuller epic story that is being woven together that represents their life’s journey and destiny. May the nurturing in all our students continue!!

NAPLAN and Diffendoofer Day

The current debate surrounding NAPLAN and the possible creation of league tables for Australian schools shows no signs of diminishing. Teachers, parents, government agencies, school administrators and union representatives are each offering different perspectives on this issue and each argument is seemingly well reasoned leading to much confusion surrounding the “right” perspective. At the heart of this and indeed all education debates is the central question of what we really value. Andy Hargreaves, a world leader in education, wonderfully summed up the current debates regarding standardised testing and ratings according to test scores by stating that when we don’t “measure what we value, we end up valuing what we measure”.

A well balanced “Education Revolution” should value excellence in all of life’s dimensions – academically, physically, spiritually and socially; and should seek to provide classroom environments where learning in all its fullness can be celebrated and encouraged. In highlighting this emphasis, I am reminded of the excellent Dr Seus book “Hooray for Diffendoofer Day”. As the father of four children, Dr Seus was a regular favourite at bedtime, and this particular book, whilst not as well known as Green Eggs and Ham, or Cat and the Hat, contains some of the most revealing and accurate comments on schools and education that have ever been written. The book, in typical Dr Seuss style, humorously tells the story of Diffendoofer School, and the wonderful teachers there (including the highly creative Miss Bonkers) who make learning “come alive” within their students. Such a celebration of learning is treated with cautious suspicion by the serious and sober looking principal, Mr Lowe, who feared that students may not be learning “much at all”. The nervous Mr Lowe then announces to the school:

“All schools for miles and miles around must take a special test

To see who’s learning such and such – to see which school’s the best”

If our small school does not do well, then it will be torn down;

And you will have to go to school in dreary Flobbertown”.

Flobbertown was a very dark and scary looking school where everyone does “everything the same” without any life, joy and creativity. Miss Bonkers tells the students to not worry about the test because “you’ve learned the things you need to pass any test... and something else that matters more – we’ve taught you how to think” The story ends with Diffendoofer students achieving “1000000” percent and the entire school celebrating their outstanding achievements.

Surely our goal as educators should be to cultivate an environment where students learn how to think and where the joy of learning is celebrated in all its many dimensions. This is what all great teachers and educational leaders aspire to and what they desire for every student in their schools. This is therefore what we really value and what determines our measure of excellence in all that we do. I’m certain Dr Seus would heartily agree that to do anything less is to put an end to the dynamic art of teaching and turn it into a paint by the numbers profession.