POLITICIABS, bureaucrats and the commentariat should pay more attention to George Orwell.

Look at his observation in Shooting an Elephant —  Politics and the English Language [1950]: “Political language …  is designed to make lies sound truthful,  … and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

Fifty-five years on, too many of them are still impressed by “pure wind”.

And nowhere has so much “pure wind” been masquerading as solidity as in Education. Don Watson, former speech writer for ex-PM Paul Keating and the author of Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language and Dictionary of Weasel Words, has done Tasmanians a favour in lambasting the latest hot air from Paula Wriedt’s Education Department [or what ever it’s called at the moment].

In an article by Heather Low Choy in The Mercury of Wed 7 Sept 05: (Read it HERE)  Watson is reported as taking the bureaucrats and spinmeisters of EdCentral to task for “the use of meaningless buzzwords like ‘key element outcomes’.”

A side-bar [not on-line] to the main article tells hapless parents, and us, the following:

“Teachers this year will be reporting on ‘Being Literate’ and ‘Being Numerate’ from the ‘Essential Learning —  Communicating’. When you were at school you may have referred to this area as English and maths.”

As you’d expect already, it gets worse, but let’s stay with ‘Being Literate & Numerate’ for the time being.

Can anyone from Ms Wriedt’s very own Pravda-like bureau explain in words of very few syllables, and without recourse to ideologically-sanctioned jargon, precisely why this nonsensical lingo is needed ?

Watson is right:  it’s “like something out of the Soviet Union. It’s a language not unlike Stalinist language in being totally abstract”.

Wriedt should get onto state-wide TV and tell us why “Being Literate” is better than “English” or “Reading”, preferably without any underlying sneer about “when you were at school” and were too dumb to realize that English, like oils, ain’t English.

It gets worse

As noted above, it gets worse.

“Teachers will collaborate to record student progress on each key element at a point on a continuum consisting of five standards. Common progression of statements which describe each student’s acquired skills and understandings are provided at each point of the continuum for each key element”  [from a progress report to parents at one particular school, as read by Liberal MHA Peter Gutwein in Parliament, quoted in a side-bar to Low Choy’s article].

Run that past me again. No, on second thoughts, DON’T.

Two caveats are needed.  We have to assume the report of Gutwein’s speech in Parliament is close to verbatim, and that the Member read the “progress report” accurately.

Let’s try to work out what it might mean:

“Teachers will work together to record student progress …”  so far, so good. You’d expect them to do so, wouldn’t you, though the proverb about too many cooks trying to “work together” does come to mind.

“…  on each key element”:  what about “in each subject” ? or even, if reporting across various subjects is relevant and important, “in various skills such as …” ?

Then, perhaps, “Being Literate” might even get to be called “Reading”.

“… at a point on a continuum consisting of five standards” D’oh ?

What’s wrong with: “Teachers will work together to record student progress in each subject on a five-point, A to E, scale.” Surely, most parents would realize that, like 59 km/h merging “in a continuum of velocity with 60 km/h”, high “B” grade work merges with low “A” grade work. What they don’t need is the jargon.

OK, so far, fairly good —  we think we’ve worked the first sentence out. Let’s boldly go where no EdCentral apparatchik has dared to go, to work out the second sentence, which was: “Common progression of statements which describe each student’s acquired skills and understandings are provided at each point of the continuum for each key element” 

Brand new trendoids

How does “Reports will detail what is expected for grades A to E” look ?

But the really sad thing is that Ms Wriedt’s little helpers presume that replacing poor old “subject” by brand new trendoids such as “Essential Learning Elements”, “Key Learning Areas”, “Understandings”, “Learnings”, etc, is actually a step forward.

They’d possibly tell us: “Change is inevitable in a progressive country. Change is constant.” *

But not all change is beneficial, especially change which seems to have been done simply for the sake of change, and most especially when such changes are given one of Don Watson’s worst weasel-words: Reform.

Are today’s school-leavers more knowledgeable or fluent in English now that it is no longer called “English” ? If there were problems with the way the subject was taught, say, 30 years ago [and, yes, there were] —  “when you were at school”   —  does calling it “Being Literate, Essential Learning dash Communicating” tackle these problems ?

What if part of the problem of teaching English was that teachers were not being trained to teach ?  What if another part was that graduate teachers were ignorant of English Language and Literature ?  Does changing the names of subjects tackle those problems ?

A little historical diversion to Calabria. If you look at Westermann’s Grosser Atlas zur Weltgeschichte ** [ISBN 3-14-100919-8], page 31, Roman Italy,  you’ll see “Calabria” in the heel of Italy; but if you then go to page 54, Charlemagne’s Empire,  “Calabria” has seemingly shifted itself across the peninsula to the instep and toe of Italy.  Why is this so ?

It is the result of thinking that changing a name equals changing a reality: when the Byzantine governor of southern Italy lost Calabria-in-the-heel, rather than tell the Big Tzatziki in Constantinople [now Istanbul], he simply transferred the name to what had till then been called Bruttium. Easy !  No problem !

Teaching as a subversive activity

So: “Right, you don’t know how to teach, and you don’t know John Milton from Paris ?  No worries —  we’ve just changed what you are being paid to do from Teaching English to Collaboratively Facilitating Young Adults*** Being Literate on a Five Standard Key Element Continuum.” So, no worries, eh ?

Thirty years ago, teacher unions and other with a genuine interest in better schooling, particularly in Coalition administrations where state schools were for those who couldn’t afford Geelong Grammar, or Hutchins, or The Kings School, took a seriously WRONG TURN, and missed the GO BACK sign.

Seduced by the notions of teaching as a subversive activity, and by unrealisable dreams of being in the Vanguard of the Revolution, they downgraded the very concerns which should have been at the forefront of their activity including, among others, teachers’ pay and conditions, school resourcing and maintenance, and class sizes.  Street marches against apartheid in South Africa [but not against the caste system in India] were far more exciting than agitating for the re-painting X High School, new toilets at Y primary school and re-equipping all the science labs of Z School District. Putting these off till “Come the Revolution” was a gross strategic error, compounded by the tactical one of affiliating with one side of politics, resulting in “their” Party ignoring them as being so rusted-on that they can be fobbed off with the modern-day equivalent of blankets and trinkets, and the other Party dismissing them as being so hostile that they’re not going to vote for us, so who cares ?

Curriculum change [and, yes, it was needed] was effected in such a way there emerged a privileged new caste, that of the Curriculum Expert, full of the latest jargon, spaced out on Paulo Freire, the Revolution, Deconstructing the Canon and totally unburdened by such mundane matters as filling in rolls, marking tests, doing yard duty, writing reports, attending Parent/Teacher nights, all that stuff. Instead, they Made Work for real teachers, the ones who hadn’t the gall or cunning to flee the classrooms and take the soft option, a bit like the outside player in a football team who waits on the slick handpass from the inside player in the packs with his head over the ball.

Politicians loved them

Politicians loved them. They gave the pollies some nice new jargon [avoiding anyone actually knowing what was being said], and the pollies could create impressions that, while roofs still leaked and science teachers had to ask students to bring in their empty egg cartons, All was Progressing in Education, while in reality, as Don Watson observes, “They’ve forgotten what kind of words go where to make sentences that tell us something. It’s awful.  …  If you use this language in describing your course, the course will inevitably take on some of the sludge-like qualities of the language.”

Picture this scene a few years ago, at an In-service for teachers at a reasonably well-run girls’ school in Melbourne, in case anyone wants to start mentally Googling for a Tasmanian site. The In-service Facilitator, a Bright Young Thing, mid-30s, starts by saying that she’s an “ex-teacher”, but is now in Curriculum Branch.  Most of us, realize that we are about to be Spoken Down to by an Expert —  well, she must be, she’s no longer in the classroom AND is being better paid.

[Is there any other profession in Australia that has handed over so much power to people who don’t do any real work ?  Who seem to have Licences to Make Work for others ?]

Anyway, Ms Expert [Don’t fret: it could have just as easily been a Mr] grandly announced something along the lines of “Until a few years ago, teachers in Australia had no idea what they were doing, and were not really Educating anyone, because they did not do what I’m just about to tell you …”

“Excuse, me, Ms er, …” enquired one long-time classroom practitioner, “you’re telling us that for over a century since the 1872 Education Act, all those dedicated men and women who worked in 60-, 80- 100-pupils classrooms, in one-teacher rural schools, in hundreds of state primary schools, who taught several generations to read and write, all these teachers, they did nothing worthy of your respect ?”

Even Ms Curriculum Branch Expert back-pedalled.

And Ms Wriedt’s Acting Department Secretary, Alison Jacob, needs to “Do Better”.  At the end of Low Choy’s article, the best she can come up with is “Terms such as ‘key elements’ … have been publicised and referred to in newsletters, parent forums and earlier parent brochures since 2001”  —  in other words, we’ve told you dumb parents all of this time after time, so why are you still whining ?

Here, maybe, is the answer: “We expect to have our children taught, not facilitated, to be taught English, not “Being Literate, Essential Learning dash Communication”, and we expect to be treated better than the proverbial mushrooms.”

Nor should self-respecting teachers stand for this —  they should feel insulted that they are being asked to talk to parents in such moronically obtuse jargon. Ms Wriedt and her minions should be feeling heat from irate classroom teachers —  the ones who do the real work, it can’t be over-emphasised.  Their union leaders, far from “collaborating”, in the French Resistance sense of collaborateurs, should be telling EdCentral “We’re here to teach English, Maths, Science, Art, and so on, not to foist this sort of sludge on innocent children and long-suffering parents”. 

George Orwell got it right: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible”.

PS: the writer has not yet worked up the nerve to Become Literate in the 91 pages of Essential Learnings, and acknowledges that his impressions of it are at one end of the five-standards continuum.

* Benjamin Disraeli, Speech at Edinburgh, 29 October 1867, in The Times 30 October 1867

**  This is one of the most detailed, yet easily readable historical atlases readily available.
Visit: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=westermann

***  Have you noticed how we no longer seem to have “Children’s Books” ?  Instead, they’re for “Young Adults”. Now, young adults seem to me to be people aged from 18 [the age of majority] to, say, 25, or, at the latest, 29. Exactly what IS wrong with the expressions “Children’s Books” ?  Or “Books for Teenagers”, “Books for Young Children” ?  What’s so wrong with calling children “children” ?

Leonard Colquhoun 7248