One of my sons is a primary school teacher. It pleases me when I meet people who say, “Our child really prospered when he/she was in your son’s class” or quite frequently, “I hope our child gets into your son’s class”. Guiding young minds in such formative years is no doubt an important and often rewarding calling.

It is a pity that we are not making a better fist of it. Recent newspaper articles making international comparisons with the progress of Australian children in key areas, such as basic numeracy and literacy indicate that we are falling behind on many fronts. It is not hard to find evidence of this. The young people serving you at the local supermarket checkout seem to be unable to add a couple of numbers together without electronic aid. Universities regularly provide remedial programs in mathematics and English to compensate for the poor skills of many of those graduating from high schools.

The conventional wisdom as expounded by academics, the teachers’ unions and largely taken up by the Gronski report is that we just need to spend more money, recruit more teachers and reduce class sizes. This seems wrong-minded to me. I read somewhere recently that the per capita spend on education has increased by 40% in real terms over the last decade. During this period our international rankings have been rapidly diminishing. It is hard to believe that doing more of the same but more frenetically is really going to help anyone much except the teachers’ unions who will gain more members.

It seems to becoming more readily accepted that increasing the autonomy of schools, with more discretion over hiring and firing decisions and an increased capacity to integrate with local communities is a necessary step and some states have moved in this direction.

But what are the other determinants of success in education? This I suppose leads us to question the quality of our teachers. The drive to recruit and train more teachers would probably inevitably lead to a diminution of the intellectual capability of teachers. (Unless, of course at the same time we raised salaries and related remuneration to teaching outcomes in the classroom – I can already hear the unions squealing about that!)

I don’t mean to offend those many fine teachers who are very competent, dedicated and effective (among whom I would include my son) but to question the adequacy of teacher training and the support provided to teachers. My son readily admits that his university education in teaching has not provided an ideal platform for the practice of his profession. He tells me that the practical work in placements in schools whilst he was completing his formal studies was far more useful. That of course is a very pervasive thought amongst many professionals. I, myself, have stated on many occasions that the most important learnings that I have had, came from outside the formal education system. It is hard to emphasise enough the benefits of experiential learning. My son relates to me the hours that he spent learning to regurgitate the developmental stages of the foetus in order to pass his exams, which seems to have little relevance on teaching children. When trying to increase his skills to be able to add some musical training to his repertoire an inordinate amount of time was spent learning the principles of atonal music as developed by Schoenberg which would seem to me to be of little use in teaching musical appreciation to young people.

There is therefore a case to revisit teacher education. It might be better to expose our aspiring teachers to more who might be role models in the teaching process rather than those who have acquired an academic teaching post based on some abstract, obtuse thesis with little application to guiding young minds to useful knowledge in the real world. I note from some of the reports from the higher performing nations in education that mentoring from a respected role model is often a significant part of their teacher training.

In my day job, I work as an executive coach. I provide many of my clients with books and papers to read to help them. But I hope I can add value to that material by relating real examples in my working career about the application of such principles. I am sure such mentoring would be hugely beneficial to teachers as well.

When I talk to my son about what works in the classroom he is emphatic that behavioural control and parent support are paramount.

When he starts a new class each year, he spends some time with his students to establish a behavioural compact. He encourages them to identify the behaviours that are helpful in the classroom. He moderates a discussion amongst the children to agree on what behaviours will be acceptable and what behaviours won’t be tolerated.

Many parents have not come to realise that education is a compact between the child, the teacher and the parents. And again my son stresses the value of parental support. It is not surprising that many of the countries performing well in the education stakes are countries where the family is very important and parental expectations of children are high. I am not suggesting that we emulate all the cultural characteristics of such countries, but I am sure the education of our children would benefit from more parental support in the teaching process.

I have also been long of the opinion that some of the government targets in education are not helpful For example I believe that the attempt to have as many young people as possible finish high school creates underlying problems.

In my youth, those who were not academically inclined left school early to become a junior in the local store, start an apprenticeship, repair tyres in the local garage or whatever. In short they became part of the local economy, contributing their skills and learning to play a part in the community. Now we have many young people who are locked into school and simultaneously locked out of society. They attend school with little chance of success with dire consequences to their self-esteem. The consequent behavioural issues make school a much more difficult place for teachers and students alike. It seems ridiculous to rate schools by their retention rates, rewarding them to keep students locked in irrespective of the educational outcomes.

Angela Shanahan, writing in the Weekend Australian also points out that these failings of our education system are being born disproportionately by boys. On most indicators girls are outperforming our boys in schools. This trend became apparent some 10years ago when the then Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, commissioned an enquiry into the issue. Unfortunately the report was never acted on and, shortly after, Nelson left the Education portfolio to become Defence Minister.

Shanahan writes, “According to experts such as Kevin Donnelly, CIS’s Jennifer Buckingham and Peter West, an expert in boys’ education and development, this is because for too long both curriculum and pedagogy have been feminized. Education has been skewed to the psychological and physical development of the girls.”

Buckingham maintains that the usual contemporary teaching methods such as continuous assessment and more collaborative techniques work well for girls but not so well for boys. This is exacerbated by the fact the emotional development of girls can be up to two years ahead of boys.

So, all in all, it seems as though if we are to improve our place on the international league tables for educational outcomes, we need to examine our approach to education in a more fundamental way than suggested in the Gronski report.

Among the issues that need to be seriously looked at are:
1. More autonomy for schools
2. Better teacher training including mentoring for teachers
3. Engagement of parents to support teachers
4. Establishing improved classroom behaviour
5. Getting the academic underperformers out of schools and into the workplace
6. Addressing the imbalance between the outcomes of boys and girls

Then we might have a chance of meeting some of the ambitious goals that the Prime Minister has set our education sector.

I find it hard when talking about schooling not to make mention of the recent mass shootings at the Newtown school in Connecticut.

What an appalling thing that 20 innocent, beautiful, young children should have their lives ended in such a way.

I have often in my blog essays put the point of view that the most influential determinant of our sense of well-being and our psychological adjustment is the efficacy of our world-view. I recently came across some of the writings of Brian Swimme who is a specialist in mathematical cosmology and he wrote “Diseased mindscapes only produce diseased landscapes” which seemed to me to be an elegant way of expressing the same sentiment.

I can’t imagine a more vivid example of a “diseased mindscape” creating a “diseased landscape” than what I’ve instanced above. And the diseased mindscape just doesn’t belong to the crazed killer but to the American culture and its obsession with guns.

I have been disappointed with President Obama whose presidency promised so much and delivered so little. It is time for him to make amends and stare down the gun lobby!