Curios of the week #90

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

This week has seen me visit Melbourne for a spot of recruiting in our new electric school car. The car drives like a dream but it could not do anything about the traffic we experienced on the way back as the result of the closure of a highway slip road.

We have also had some new classrooms come online over recent weeks and I took the opportunity to visit a new lecture theatre when it was not in use. I am thinking about the venues we will be using for researchED Ballarat on Saturday 15 March 2025. Click the link to buy your $35 tickets. It is going to be great.

This week’s Curios include a conservative, some statistical motivation, a new sputnik moment and much more.

Censorship of the week

There is a clinical psychologist, Naomi Fisher, on Twitter/X—who may now have moved to BlueSky—who is in the habit of making long posts, detailing her romantic views of childhood and her opposition to some of the rules and structures that schools often put in place. A few times, she has commented that her posts seem to anger those who don’t share her views.

Maybe they do, but I do not respond in that way to them. I find it helpful to have someone prominently, clearly and appropriately articulating a position I disagree with. For a start, it makes a change from trolls who engage in personal abuse. However, more importantly, it enables me to disagree with this publicly stated position and give my reasons for doing so. We all benefit from these discussions. They expose the flaws in bad arguments and allow third parties to decide where they stand.

This is why I believe in a professional right to comment. Teachers and other professionals should be able to comment on matters of public policy. This does not imply a right to break confidences or publicly air personal grievances. Instead, it would enable them to add their voice to debates about, say, different teaching methods. We do not have such a right in Australia and I am told by teachers in government schools that they are effectively banned from making such comments by strictly enforced media and social media policies.

This is wrong. And it remains wrong even when teachers want to say things I disagree with, such as voice discontent about Victoria’s move towards explicit teaching.

Reporting in EducationHQ, Sarah Duggan quotes Peter Hutton, a principal who has dared to speak. According to Hutton, school staff and school leaders:

“..do not have the right to enter the public debate about whether the science of learning, explicit instruction (ought to be enforced). They are gagged by their employer.”

Apparently, teachers can even be stood down for ‘defending themselves’.

I don’t think I would agree with Hutton’s view on explicit teaching, but I believe that he and every other teacher or principal who shares his views should have the right to publicly state them.

Conservative of the week

Just as we can learn much from those we disagree with, we benefit from hearing from a range of voices from across the political spectrum.