Curios of the week #20

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

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To Bundoora this morning for the All Schools Cross Country Championships. Please wish my daughter good luck.

Following last week’s curios, Andrew Old wrote a post mentioning the arguments I made about educational progressivism. You can read Andrews post, ‘Prog and Trad are back’, here. Then, in response to Andrew, Michael Salter posted his own blog. More blogs later.

It is reminiscent of the heady days of teacher blogging circa 2014. I wonder whether we could return to something like that if enough of you committed to penning your thoughts. Substack is a neat, clean interface that I strongly recommend and that gives you the option of adding paid subscriptions once you’ve built an audience.

What is there to lose? Come on, give it a go.

Today’s curios include an academic dispensing sensible advice, more blogs, a fightback in New Zealand and much more.

Equity argument of the week

Since being appointed Australia’s federal education minister, Jason Clare has repeatedly spoken about equity. This appears heartfelt, but equity in education can so often be translated as making sure nobody learns anything much and is therefore situated in conflict with excellence.

However, in his response the the recent Teach Education Expert Panel report, Clare has demonstrated a taste for a more evidence-informed approach to delivering on equity.

So, I gave him a little nudge.