Curios of the week #81

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

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This week, I have been taking it easy in Noosa, a seaside town in Queensland where the weather is a little warmer at this time of year than at home. Although Term 3 was relatively short, we were all ready for a break when it finally cashed in its chips. So, I have taken the chance to power down a little and watch the world go by. This has been aided by our apartment which is on the second floor of a complex located on the top of a hill, with balconies either side.

On Wednesday, we went to the markets in Eumundi. I did not buy anything — unless you count a smoked German sausage in a roll with onions and sauerkraut — but I enjoy pottering around. As usual with any kind of shopping trip, it involved my standing around outside shops and stalls, reading articles on my phone or taking in the surroundings while the other members of my family did the actual shopping. And a fine time was had by all.

This week’s Curios include a well-briefed journalist, some culture war skirmishes, the importance in America of studying Algebra 1 in middle school and much more.

Journalist of the week

I used to be quoted quite often in the Australian press but the education journalists I knew have mostly moved on. As you are probably aware, I am keen to get an opinion piece published in one of the Australian papers but that mission has somewhat stalled.

I was therefore delighted to be contacted out-of-the-blue by Martin McKenzie-Murray for an article he was writing for The Saturday Paper. You can read the piece in full if you are willing to hand over your email address. McKenzie-Murray also has an intriguing Substack of his own about all sorts of, well, curios, which I have been dipping into.

McKenzie-Murray is no ordinary journalist. He had twigged there was something odd going on. There was a strange divergence between what he heard from his mostly anonymous teacher sources and received wisdom on issues such as school suspensions and expulsions, and catering for students with disabilities and disorders.

This divergence is at least partly explained by the reason why so many of his sources were anonymous. In Australia, government school teachers are effectively gagged by overzealous media and social media policies. Therefore, the voices we hear on education are removed from the front line and can afford to take a more romantic view and one which confers higher status in academia and education bureaucracy.

As I told McKenzie-Murray:

“I think we could include more kids in mainstream education, rather than specialist schools, and I think the way you would do that is by having lots of structure and lots of routines and lots of support in place to do that. But I still think there’s a role for specialist schools. But what we’re having at the moment is activists saying we need to close all the specialist schools down and that we need to get every kid into mainstream education – we just need to support them, and we just need more resources. But more resources aren’t coming, and that is also affecting people’s morale and their perceptions of the feasibility of actually doing the job.”

I would be interested to know what reaction McKenzie-Murray received to platforming me. I know that, in the past, my critics have complained about this and I imagine they think they own the narrative of a centre-left publication like The Saturday Paper.

Tweet of the week

Tom Bennett pointed out that Heathrow Airport has a zero tolerance behaviour policy.

Some will complain about the comparison Bennett implies, highlighting this poster is aimed at adults, not children in school. To which I would ask: When does the switch happen and how do we prepare children for it? Is it really the best plan that suddenly, when they turn 18, they become responsible for their actions and potentially face consequences far more significant than those they may face at school? Is that fair?

I also note the same people tend to complain about students being given mild consequences such as detentions for not wearing the correct clothing or for being late, arguing this doesn’t happen in the adult workplace. No, that’s right. In the adult workplace, the consequences would likely be more serious unless, of course, you have one of those nice, knowledge worker jobs you can do from home in your pyjamas.

Advice of the week

In the piece for The Saturday Paper, I mentioned the Australian Education Research Organisation’s (AERO) classroom management resources. It so happens they have just released a new set of these resources targeted at school leaders.

Culture skirmish of the week

The war against our common humanity continues and so it falls to me to only report on those skirmishes that have some relevance to education.