10 ways politicians are retouching education

Regrettably, the potential real educational reform, enabled at the start of the Rudd Governments term has turned into inane partisan promises, worded so cleverly, that every statement has a plausible exit clause, should the wind-change. Both current political contenders have been future-shocked into the job, resulting in a bizarre range of educational promises and threats.

The result, to me – is that politican’s have become adept and believe in retouching education though the media – but seem completely incapable of delivering any real benefit in outcomes, or the work/life balance of trained, passionate teachers.

They have retouched

1. New buildings – replacements, not additional, limited choice, rushed purchase, little or no pedagogical space planning for the future. Keeps builders and banks happy, but essentially an economic tactic, not an educational strategy.
2. New technology – portals that have nice names, but epic lag, laptops with expensive software, but lack of teaching ability to reform their teaching strategy
3. A need for ‘business professionals’ to add new ‘life’ to classrooms (which in fact is long term, bi-partisan failure to maintain contemporary curriculum)
4. A new National Syllabus (that isn’t a part syllabus) with no delivery plan – due 2011
5. Selective ‘super schools’ and ‘super teachers’ – that are impossible to scale due to Human Resource policy and belief
6. Media bile, that attempts consistently to spank teachers as lethargic, lazy and unmotivated drones
7. The myth that public schools in fact are better funded than private schools
8. That there is a need to lift teacher performance, ahead of Ministerial, bureacratic and administration performance (all of whom are not subject to any open, transparent, published measurement)
9. The brain-missing idea that technology brings ‘better’. Technology is of itself empty
10. That more than 2%  (the reality) of teachers currently have the technological insight and skills to vision a better pedagogical method of learning with technology.

We live in a unique time, where access to media and the diversity of messages being thrown at the public – are retouched. The skill at which this is done, to most people that receive them outside the classroom, is so subtle that we accept it as being as real as the retouched worldview most people experience though passive media.

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