Why private schools work better
The Australian 28th December 2016 Kevin Donnelly Let’s drop Marxist-inspired nonsense and get our children back to the basics. In 2004, in Why Our Schools are Failing, I argued Australia’s competitive academic curriculum was being “attacked and undermined by a series of ideologically driven changes that have conspired to reduce standards and impose a politically correct, mediocre view of education on our schools”. Three years later, in Dumbing Down, I repeated the claim, arguing that Australia’s cultural-left education establishment, instead of supporting high-risk examinations, teacher-directed lessons and meritocracy, was redefining the curriculum “as an instrument to bring about equity and social justice”. At the time the Australian Curriculum Studies Association organised two national conferences involving leading education bureaucrats, professional organisations, teacher unions and like-minded academics to argue all was well and that critics such as the News Corp’s newspapers were guilty of orchestrating a “black media debate” and a “conservative backlash”. The Australian’s campaign for rigour and standards in education, especially its defence of classic literature and teaching grammar, was condemned by one critic as a “particularly ferocious campaign” that was guilty of wanting “to restore a traditional approach to the teaching of English”. Fast-forward to 2016 and it’s clear where the truth lies. Despite investing additional billions and implementing a raft of education reforms, Australia’s ranking in international tests is going backwards and too many students are leaving school illiterate, innumerate and culturally impoverished. In the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, Australian students were ranked 22nd; in the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment, Australian students were ranked 20th in mathematics; and in the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, our Year 4 science students were outperformed by 17 other countries. Australia’s national curriculum, instead of acknowledging we are a Western liberal democracy and the significance of our Judeo-Christian heritage, embraces cultural relativism and prioritises politically correct indigenous, Asian and sustainability perspectives. Instead of focusing on the basics, teachers are pressured to teach Marxist-inspired programs such as the LGBTI Safe Schools program where gender is fluid and limitless and Roz Ward, one of the founders, argues: “It will only be through a revitalised class struggle and revolutionary change that we can hope for the liberation of LGBTI people.” What’s to be done? It’s rare that those responsible for failure are capable of choosing the right way forward. Organisations such as ACSA, the Australian Education Union and the Australian Council for Educational Research are part of the problem, not the solution. Instead of education fads and a command-and-control model mandated by such bodies, where schools are made to implement a one-size-fits-all curriculum, assessment, accountability and staffing system, schools must be freed from provider capture and given the autonomy to manage themselves. As argued by Melbourne-based Brian Caldwell: “There is a powerful educational logic to locating a higher level of authority, responsibility and accountability for curriculum, teaching and assessment at the school level. Each school has a unique mix of students in respect to their needs, interests, aptitudes and ambitions; indeed, each classroom has a unique mix.” The reason Catholic and independent schools, on the whole, outperform government schools is not because of students’ socio-economic status, which has a relatively weak impact on outcomes, but because non-government schools have control over staffing, budgets, curriculum focus and classroom practice. In a paper this year — The Importance of School Systems: Evidence from International Differences in Student Achievement — European research Ludger Woessmann identifies “school autonomy and private competition” as important factors when explaining why some education systems outperform others. Instead of adopting ineffective fads such as constructivism — where the emphasis is on inquiry-based discovery learning, teachers being guides by the side and content being secondary to process — it is vital to ensure that teacher training and classroom practice are evidence-based. Not so in Australia, where the dominant approach is based on constructivism. In opposition, and when arguing in favour of explicit teaching and direct instruction, NSW academic John Sweller states that “there is no aspect of human cognitive architecture that suggests that inquiry-based learning should be superior to direct instructional guidance and much to suggest that it is likely to be inferior”. American educationalist ED Hirsch and Sweller argue that children must be able to automatically recall what has been taught. Primary schoolchildren, in particular, need to memorise times tables, do mental arithmetic and learn to recite poems and ballads. After citing several research studies, Hirsch concludes: “Varied and repeated practice leading to rapid recall and automaticity is necessary to higher-order problem-solving skills in both mathematics and the sciences.” Even though Australia has one of the highest rates of classroom computer use, our results are going backwards. A recent OECD study concludes “countries which have invested heavily in information and communication technologies for education have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in PISA results for reading, mathematics or science”. At a time when Australia’s education ministers are deciding a new school funding model after 2017, it is also vital to realise investing additional billions, as argued by the AEU and NSW’s Education Minister Adrian Piccoli, is not the solution. Australia has been down that road across 20 years and standards have failed to improve. The debate needs to shift from throwing more money after bad, a la Gonski, to identifying the most cost-effective way to use resources to raise standards. As noted by Eric Hanushek and Woessmann in The Knowledge Capital of Nations, the focus must be on “how money is spent (instead) of how much money is spent”. And here the research is clear. Stronger performing education systems embrace competition, autonomy, diversity and choice in education, and benchmark their curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning against world’s best practice and evidence-based research. Teachers set high expectations with a disciplined classroom environment, students are taught to be resilient and motivated to succeed, there is less external micromanagement, and parents are engaged and supportive of their children’s teachers. As argued in the Review of the Australian National Curriculum I co-chaired, it is also vital to eschew educational fads and new age, politically correct ideology and ensure what is taught is based on what American psychologist Jerome Bruner describes as “the structure of the disciplines”. Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of The Culture of Freedom.
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Why the Mainstream Media is Officially Dead By Caleb Stephen December 14, 2016 9:58 am AEDT The mainstream media as we know it is dead. They’ve been discredited big time and nobody trusts them anymore. People have woken up to the fact that the corporate media is nothing more than a dissemination tool for socialism and globalism. As an alternative media journalist and commentator, I’ve been closely watching and analysing the fall-out following the U.S. election over the last month. A survey conducted earlier this year showed that just 6% of Americans trust the mainstream media. Is it any wonder why? It’s true that their demise has been many years in the making, but the defeat that we witnessed following the election was absolutely epic in proportion. The recent U.S. elections were, I guess, the climax in the crescendo of the loss of their integrity. Americans’ distrust of the mainstream media didn’t happen overnight. This dissatisfaction and loathing of the lies and propaganda fed to them on a daily basis happened slowly over time as more and more people began to wake up to reality and refused to buy into their malarkey. During the election, the absolute fawning, gushing, genuflecting and infatuation over Hillary Clinton stank like a rotten corpse. It was palpable… it was blatant what they’re were trying to do in terms of painting Donald Trump as pure evil whilst trying to extol Hideous Hillary as if she was a saint. READ ON -->> http://calebreport.com/2016/12/14/mainstream-media-officially-dead/ This isn’t racist, Islamophobia or cruel. It’s commonsense
Excerpts from artcile by Warren Mundine is chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council and a former ALP national president. Read full article here. "Donald Trump’s victory demonstrates the media and commentariat are disconnected from voters. Almost without exception they failed to anticipate the presidential election outcome — and had little influence on it. Their message that Trump was unfit for presidency largely ignored. Australia’s political media and commentariat are also out of touch. Listening to them you’d think Australians are preoccupied with gay marriage, offshore detention, carbon emissions and identity politics. Most are preoccupied with their families, their homes, their jobs, the monthly bills and their kids’ education and job prospects. They care about the economy and national debt. They want to live in a safe society where Australia’s way of life is valued and respected. There’s a growing disconnect between the views expressed by the media and commentariat and those of many Australians, with commonsense often dismissed as extreme, ill-informed, even bigoted. Here are some examples. Our biggest education challenge is performance declining against global benchmarks. Demanding more education funding as the solution is misconceived. It’s been happening despite substantial education funding increases. Something’s wrong. Australian schools should be the best in the world, not 28th behind Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, the education issue dominating political news has been the Safe Schools controversy. It’s understandable why parents are concerned. Some content in Safe Schools and other school programs, frankly, beggars belief. Teachers shouldn’t be schooling children in gender fluidity or asking them to imagine or role-play different sexual orientations, or teaching them about exotic sex acts, or criticising “heteronormativity”. Governments should shut this nonsense down and focus on improving academic performance. That’s not homophobic. It’s commonsense. ...Australians have a strong record of embracing immigrants in their communities and in their families, and most immigrants embrace Australia and our way of life. But at the moment Australians are seeing something we’ve rarely seen before. A small minority of Muslim migrants and/or their descendants reject our way of life and instead want us to embrace aspects of theirs which go against our laws, customs and culture — women covering their faces, refusing to stand in court, Sharia law regulating divorces, polygamy and even forced child “marriages”. ...I hope the federal government’s welfare reform plans go beyond tough talk and become tough action. Making people take available work isn’t cruel. Sit-down money is cruel. Welfare reform is commonsense. Politicians who articulate these kinds of opinions are often branded heartless and bigoted by the progressive/Left, cheered on by prominent members of the political media and commentariat. It’s rare to hear centrist politicians speak as bluntly as I just have. Centrist Labor tends to pander to the progressive/Left. Centrist Liberals tiptoe. In doing so they leave a vacuum for extremists and populists. Trump, Brexit and One Nation’s resurgence deliver two key lessons. First, politicians who speak directly to voters about what voters care about can prevail, regardless of the media and commentariat. Second, if centrists are unwilling or afraid to embrace commonsense views, voters will turn to extremists and populists, however offensive. The first centrist politician who embraces commonsense with plain-speaking, ignoring the political class and dealing honestly and firmly with issues Australians care about, will dominate the ballot box." Warren Mundine is chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council and a former ALP national president http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/this-isnt-racist-islamophobia-or-cruel-its-commonsense/news-story/31f2cf932163b4e90974f459f077462f Dear Teens, Virginity Is Good for You Here’s Why… By: John Stonestreet|Published: December 9, 2016 6:00 AM Topics: Sexual Ethics, Worldview, Youth Issues Teens who abstain from sex are healthier than those who don’t. Once again, research backs up the life-giving moral claims of a Christian worldview. We talk about this on BreakPoint quite a bit: Young people who wait until after the wedding have a better chance for a stable, fulfilling, happy marriage—not to mention they don’t have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. You’ve probably also heard me or Eric Metaxas talk about how obedience to the Lord’s loving plan for confining sex within marriage brings incalculable spiritual benefits in our Christian lives. But what we haven’t heard in quite a while is the government admit that teenage sexual activity has, shall we say, negative consequences. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—that’s right, the CDC—young people who are virgins register much higher in nearly all health-related behaviors than those who are sexually active. What kinds of behaviors? Things like using seat belts, avoiding drug abuse, eating a healthy diet, going to the doctor, exercising, and avoiding riding with a driver who’s been drinking. In addition, in a finding that the media is sure to either bury or dispute, while sexually inactive teens are healthiest, sexually active homosexual and bisexual teens fare worse than their sexually active heterosexual peers. The CDC conveys this blockbuster conclusion as drily and bureaucratically as possible: “Significant health disparities exist.” Our friend Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, documents some of these disparities. Let’s take a look at just two: First, smoking. Sexually active heterosexual teens are 3,300 percent more likely to light up daily than their virgin counterparts. The “same-sex/bisexual-active” teens are an amazing 9,500 percent more likely to smoke daily than the virgins. Second, drug abuse. Sexually active heterosexual teens are 500 percent more likely to have ever injected a non-prescription drug than the virgins, while the “same-sex/bisexual-active” teens are a whopping 2,333 percent more likely than the virgins to have done so. Now Glenn is quick to add, correlation is not causation—meaning the research doesn’t prove that abstinence causes these other healthy habits. But the fact that the CDC noted a relationship between behaviors that you might at first blush think are unrelated is more than a little significant. And parents should take note, too. As researcher Mark Regnerus has highlighted in his book “Forbidden Fruit,” the intensity of teens’ religious beliefs is more important when it comes to sexual activity than exactly what religious beliefs they claim. So it goes without saying that the first thing we should care about is our kids’ faith. A strong, informed, and vital relationship with Jesus will help them resist temptation and peer pressure—sexual and otherwise—the type that assault them every day at school and online. While the CDC will never be able to put it this way, Glenn Stanton does sums up their findings well: “The sexual choices and values our young people hold have real-life consequences far beyond sexuality itself.” Or in other words, as we say all the time around here, “worldview matters.” The CDC report shows there are consequences for a secular worldview that sees bodies as something we “own,” something external to who we are, something we use (or abuse) depending on our desires, our will, or our “identity.” The Christian worldview, in sharp contrast, teaches that our bodies are integral to who we are, both in how humans were created and in that Christ took on flesh to make all things new. The extent that we and our kids truly embrace this, will determine how we treat our bodies and the bodies of others. Come to BreakPoint.org, and we’ll link you to Glenn Stanton’s article, the CDC study, and other helpful resources. Further Reading and Information Dear Teens, Virginity Is Good for You: Here’s Why…As John has reiterated, worldview influences behavior and attitude, especially when it comes to sexuality. For further study on this topic, check out the resources linked below. ResourcesCDC Study Says Teen Virgins Are Healthier Glenn T. Stanton | The Federalist | November 29, 2016 Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health-Related Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9–12 — United States and Selected Sites, 2015 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | August 12, 2016 Available at the online bookstoreForbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers Mark Regnerus | Oxford University Press, USA | April 2007 Creation.com - Good resource for deep thinkers to learn more about the big issue of origins.2/12/2016 Why Should We Care?
- Dr. Jeff Myers If the primary identifying characteristic of Christians is that they are nice people, then pleasantness ought to be the primary goal of our lives. But if what the Bible reveals about why we’re here on this planet is actually true, then being a caring person is much more than smiling and checking boxes on a do-gooder list. Rather, Christian caring ought to be the very best kind of caring, unleashing human ingenuity and pointing the way for people to be reconciled to God so they may be restored to a high capacity of bearing God’s image and bringing glory to their creator. So how does it start? Find out here. |
Craig MannersWhile much of what is written in this Blog may currently appear to be counter-cultural, given our post-truth culture, it is in no way counter-human beings. I am always for people no matter what they think, do, or may have done in their past. Where I put forward ideas or debate against certain ideology, behaviour, ideas, movements, politics, I remain very much on the side of the human beings even though I may be opposed to their worldview, behaviour and politics. Such opposition is generally out of concern for the ultimate consequences of such behaviour or ideas, especially for children. |