Curios of the week #115

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

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Last weekend saw me visiting Hanging Rock for my eldest daughter’s first cross country race of the season. Cue lots of jokes about it being a splendid place for a picnic. We have been having unseasonably warm and sunny weather for autumn, which has its advantages but is starting to hit the farmers hard. We could use some rain.

We were privileged to welcome Emily Hanford to Clarendon on Thursday and Friday. I first became aware of Emily through her reporting on APM about early literacy in the US and interviewed her for my podcast—I must get back into podcasting. Since then, Emily has produced her own podcast, Sold a Story, that, unlike mine, is arguably the most successful and influential podcast addressing issues of K-12 education. Pleasingly, even the state education minister here in Victoria has listened to it.

It was great to catch up with Emily and discuss the state of world education.

This week’s Curios include an obvious solution, some student journalism, two dodgy YouTubers and much more.

YouTubers of the week

Everyone these days wants to grow up to be a YouTuber and two of my favourite educational thinkers and authors have done just that.

People either love or loathe the way we collectively plan lessons at Clarendon, as I have learned from my recent posts on the topic (here, here and here). However, coming through the middle with a balanced discussion are Martin Robinson and David Didau on their excellent YouTube Channel called It’s your own time you’re wasting!

They managed to annoy me by again claiming the lessons at Clarendon are ‘scripted’ but I have addressed that argument so many times that it’s not worth reheating here.

I do think it says a lot about our profession that this is such a contested topic. I have to make large imaginative leaps to understand the opposing case.

Thread of the week

I tried to summarise the history of education and what has gone wrong with a thread on Twitter/X:

You can read an unrolled version here.

Epistle of the week

In that thread, I pick up on something else that caught my eye this week. Katharine Birbalsingh posted a letter to Twitter/X that she had written opposing the British Government’s new schools bill.

I was struck by one particular aspect of this letter. At present, Free Schools and Academies—government funded schools that have a measure of independence and that have been set-up in deprived areas or to replace failing schools—are able to recruit and employ unqualified teachers. The UK government want to stop that.

Anyone involved in education in my state of Victoria knows how laborious and pedantic the process of teacher registration is. Teachers simply cannot work in Victorian schools without this registration and it acts as a brake on initiatives to address our teacher shortage. Katharine Birbalsingh’s letter explains why the UK government’s move is so short-sighted and, by extension, what we are missing out on in Australia:

“The problem with this is that there are lots of unqualified teachers who do not want to go through that bureaucratic process. I have an excellent Economics teacher just out of university. His plan is to teach for some years and then find a higher-paying job in the City. He is adamant that he simply would not have come to teach for us, had he known he would have to jump through bureaucratic hoops.”

It would be more defensible to insist teachers had a university teaching qualification if we could be certain these courses all delivered practical training in classroom management and the science of learning. We are long way from that position.

Obvious solution of the week

Still on Twitter/X and I was struck with how far people will go before they reach for what seems to be an obvious solution.