satire
23 Oct 2008
Rudd's gr8 Educashin Revalushin
Are modern children too thick for school? Should we hire Shakespeare as a casual History teacher? Ben Pobjie asks some tough questions that Tony Abbott will probably try to answer
Education. We've all had one, and it made us what we are today. Whether we received a formal education at an expensive, high-class, elite private school, or whether we learned the hard way at the school of hard knocks (aka the "public school"), we all, in one way or another, passed through what, for want of a better term, we shall call the Australian education system.And as such, we all have our particular complaints about schools. They're not strict enough. They're too strict. The teachers are unmotivated. The teachers are too motivated. The economics curriculum spends too much time on Keynesian models and gives insufficient credit to the Chicago School. The library is on fire. And so on.
This is why, as you may remember, Kevin Rudd promised an education revolution at last year's election. "I will start an education revolution!" Rudd would shriek furiously at press conferences, and the nation would swoon at his strength and decisiveness and the vague hint of violence in his eyes.
But how would he do it? How would he address the problem of our abysmal schools, where the only thing more blatant than the teachers' efforts to transmit leftist propaganda is the students' slack-jawed indifference? We waited with bated breath.
Well now the time has come, it seems. Having undertaken the Apology Revolution, the Alcopops Revolution and the Giving People Lots Of Money Revolution, the Government has got around to education, with the National Curriculum Board releasing its recommendations for how to implement an effective national approach to our schools.
Key to this is history, with the board recommending less focus on Australian history, and more attention to global history. This is vitally important, because for one thing, our own destiny in this corner of the planet has always been shaped to a huge extent by events going on in foreign lands; and secondly, Australian history is really, really boring.
Seriously, do you remember doing Australian history at school? The Rum Rebellion and the Eureka Stockade and Federation and oh God I'm falling asleep just typing it out now. Sometimes we would hear about other countries' histories, and they were all full of civil wars and angry Indians and guillotines and mad rapist emperors, but just as we were getting excited it would be back to Australian history and more gold-panning and sheep.
It was Hell, I tell you. Let's learn more about General Custer and the Black Hole of Calcutta, less about Captain Cook discovering the Blue Mountains and Harold Holt choking on his vomit watching The Dismissal. Our children are never going to use this information anyway — let's at least give them a thrill.
Of course, Tony Abbott has weighed in, as per his 1994 election promise to say something pointless in a whiny, grating voice on every issue that ever arises in Australia. He believes that Australian students should learn more about English history, on the basis that it is important to learn about "where we came from". England, of course, is where Abbott himself came from, which only emphasises the importance of history as a means to avoiding the mistakes of the past.
Also, history will become compulsory for all students up until Year 10, which will be good for them, cutting time wasted on meaningless pseudo-subjects like "home science" and "commerce".
So the changes for the history curriculum are most welcome, as is the decision to get back to a traditional grammar-based teaching of English, and get away from the trendy, avant-garde, laissez-faire, haute-couture approach that has seen standards slip so far that the only way modern youth can express itself articulately is to use French.
The state of literacy in this country is an absolute disgrace. Go up to any youngster in the street today and ask them the difference between an adjective and an adverb. They will give you a blank stare, and then have you arrested. That's what our system has done. More lessons on basic grammar, fewer on stranger danger, I say.
We need to move away from modern trends in English, where students spend all day studying shoe commercials and Home and Away and answering essay questions like "wht u thnk bout sbtxt? gr8?" and "Alibrandi iz a noob. Dizcuz."
If we want our children to become fully rounded, confident, innovative, respectful contributors to society, we have to get back to Shakespeare. Why? I don't know. Nobody knows. But research shows that the remedy for every educational problem is to get back to Shakespeare, and while it might be fashionable in today's schools to spit on science and vomit on facts, I don't swing that way.
Of course, the education revolution isn't just about curriculum. The Federal Government is absolutely committed to increasing resources, pumping millions upon millions into our overstretched schools and providing every student with access to a laptop on a rotating seven-day roster.
Furthermore, the Government will make available detailed data on all schools' performances, so that we can see which schools are good, and which schools are ethnic.
Some criticise this "league table" approach and fear that it will lead to discrimination against schools from lower socio-economic areas, but as Julia Gillard might rightly point out, if we can't discriminate against those from lower socio-economic areas, just who can we discriminate against? A little clear thinking, please.
Unfortunately, this mention of stupid poor people leads me to my final, rather depressing point. Yes, the education revolution is worthy, yes it's well conceptualised, yes I like laptops. But there is an elephant in the room here, a big, fat, mentally challenged elephant. And the elephant is this: the education revolution will not work, because children are stupid.
I know you've noticed this. I know you've seen them, hanging around on street corners with their baggy shorts and stupid floppy haircuts. I know you've heard them grunting to each other in their strange, inelegant moron patois. I know you've fantasised about running them down in your car. Kids are stupid. They deliberately spend money to put singing animals on their mobile phones. They get pregnant at the drop of a hat. They like the Presets. Since I left school, I've noticed that the children are getting dumber every year.
And so no matter how many well intentioned, carefully thought-out education policies are implemented, they'll never work, because children today simply lack the mental capacity to be educated. It's natural selection: the boom in call-centres and McDonald's means stupidity has actually become an evolutionary advantage.
So go ahead with your education revolution, Kevin. But don't expect it to do any good. I have seen the future, and it is misspelt.
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
So that’s what happened to Harold Holt. Pobije, you’ve scooped it again!
I think Telstra should do the history curriculum cos they know all about the Wall of China and stuff
Ben when will you learn that The Presets are really quite good
Ben Pobije: Weren’t you able to work up a bit of interest for Australia’s mining history?
Gold and all that jazz.
Your satirical look at teen-aged youth is spot on as satire. You think it’s an overstatement. Ah ha!
During one of my many hyped- up republican moments I read an article written by one of my béte noirs, David Flint. In it he wrote how the monarchy had garnered Australia’s youth vote. Furious, I marched out of the house and down to the local nightclub in Commercial Rd.- populated by hoons and youths. I asked a few of them about their preferences. They were v polite, but they did go slack-jawed with the exception of two or three of them. These guys-they were male-asked what a monarchy was? When I explained it, two of them were outraged that Australians weren’t running their own show. But, hey, Flint’s youth hypothesis was nowhere near the mark. Visual evidence to the contrary, these kids were not the dregs, at all, at all. I don’t know what sort of youths Flint was banging on about. But it does bespeak a certain lack of education.
Richard Laidlaw, Bali
Thanks Ben. Since I began getting older, I’ve noticed that satirists keep getting younger and younger. But better, in your case. Good one. Shame about the adverbs.
I’ll learn yas ‘bout hedjewcash’n’s.
First of all yous got ta learn bout dates,
Ben. Everybody noz dat Harold holt did’nt eat corn flakes.
Dame Zara fed im rat poiz’n. she did.
An inmy day kids was even smarter than dare teachers and dare parents. We woz so smart we could grow our hair and wear beads and flowers and stuff, and not wash or wear old people clothes’s.
Yeah we was the revoltin generashun…we don’t get fooled again!!!
In doze days ya didn need a pry mini zda ta give ya a lap top.
Afta smokin a few jjj’s ya could imajin ana thin on ya lap top ya liked.
Dare waz the 3 rrr’s
readin ridin an rootn. and a 4th r rehabilitashun.
How can we kommunykate without old waggle stik. Sirra, get ye to a nunnery.
Hark, what light from yonder window breaks…It is the east and Juliet the sun.
Alas poor yorrik i knew him well horatio.
Oh for the good ol Monarch notes, cribs forever.
Outline Scoutline Searchlight, Tharunka, Honi Soit
Anywon seen my copy of Oz magascene and Nation Review anywheres?
Trust yas now are alls clued up and hedjukated.
If ya not I’ll rip ya bloody arms off ya ignorant pheazants.
So y’all comes back now ya hear
Today theys just dont wanna lissn, so sit a spell, relaks an
pls sept my apple oggies. cu
gr8 m8 sic
Biuqs, I’ll learn they’re good when they start being good.
Its not just kids. Wilful ignorance and rank stupidity in the populace is what allows people like us, who write letters and such, to feel superior. I suggest we keep the edge by spreading misinformation and outright lies to idiots of all ages.
The other day I told a young woman at the pub that soccer was invented by Hitler as exercise for armless thalidamide victims. She bought it hook, line and sinker. I only wish I could be there when she lays that one on the next dinner party.
Aren’t dumb people funny, God love ‘em.
Hi Venise,
Can you see any kid other than a mildly deranged, born to rule, friend of the family, monarchist weirdo hanging around with David Flint? Certainly not long enough for him to develop an understanding of their thinking, although possibly long enough to threaten him and take his wallet. I know I would.
Revilo, you old possum, please teach Dr Dog not to be so rude. Ben was only trying to make a mild point about Kev’s educational make-over.
It is well known that dancing is good for the right-left coordination of the brain so a little laptop will go a long way to curing the economic rationalist in the room. Just too late for the little man to repeat or is it.
Certainly Julia could do with a refresher at prep - so long as there are no computers and there are people who teach diction. Kev doesn’t need diction - he needs more laptop, preferably in America, to while away those few small hours which he currently wastes sleeping. Remember the Pursuit of Excellence and the proliferation of the idea we could work smarter and spend more time at home.
Kev missed that year. He just works dumber and expects people whom he expects to be acolytes to be equally stupid - which is why when they wake up they leave - in droves.
How dare the power hungry mongrels pretend the young need to be smarter when they themselves are so stupid as to have stuffed up the world the way they have? Talk about shifting the blame.
Australian History is not boring Ben - its embarrassing.
If you can only reach for a number of words in your vocabulary then you are at a definite disadvantage to understand subtlety. A language can constrain your thought patterns, which is one of the reasons I love this mongrel language called English. If you hear a word in a different tongue that turns out to have a specific variation of understanding that was not previously available, then you just nick the bugger.
I hated Shakespeare. I only really got into reading when I was bored at my Grandfathers and found his SF paperback collection. Reading became fun. I started to read newspapers, then it stopped being fun and got very serious.
I’d recommend Leviathan by John Birmingham for history of Sydney that has enough asides to get you through the dry bits.
Now who were those Kings and Queens that I spent so much time reciting?
I recommend 1066 And All That, Graeme. It’s the most comprehensive study of English history in existence.
So if you hated Shakespeare and loved SF, what did you think of Forbidden Planet?
Nice.
I think you might be selling kids a little bit short, though. Sure, most of them seem to alternate between only two states of being (stunned mullets and catching flies), but I wonder how much of this is innate and how much is learned behaviour.
I teach kids (and adults) in Indonesia, and I can assure you that even the little ones have no trouble distinguishing between an adjective and an adverb. In fact the primary school-aged kids have a far stronger grasp of the structure, and certainly a more extended knowledge of the metalanguage of the grammar, of English than did the vast majority of my fellow students at university in Australia.
Some of my peers persist in the assumption that kids are dumb, and the result is the equivalent of the old programmers’ maxim: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). I treat them as if they’re smarter than they think they are, and nine times out of ten they’re pleasantly surprised by the results.
A good read Ben. I’ve also discovered a liking for Shakespeare as well, it just didn’t appeal to my teenage self.
I always liked Shakespeare. Louis Nowra, on the other hand…
Dr Dog: Sorry to be so long; guess I caught up in the US election. Re: your comments.
COMMENT 1: I don’t believe you. I’m sorry, but I can’t, it’s too good to be true.
COMMENT 2: Yaiz. Spot on!
IN GENERAL: I must be a wimp. I love Shakespeare. It started when I was a teenager, and has continued on throughout my adult life. I still have my original copy. It’s v uncool of me to admit this love. But there it is.