Leviticus tells how a goat was laden with the sins of the tribe and sent off into the wilderness in expiation. We teachers are feeling similarly burdened as yet another winning government decision comes back to bite us.
If you’re going to be historical, the original blame lies with the former Labor governments, which thought it would be a good thing to abolish technical schools. Apparently, the comrades felt that the sons and daughters of the proletariat were being ghettoised. The upshot, of course, was that there was very soon a skills shortage leading to the necessity of recruiting foreigners (who still do have technical training in their countries presumably).
Back at the coalface of education, we were suddenly made to accommodate kids into an academic stream to which they were unsuited. They did badly or rebelled or both. Fortunately, there was an out. A kid could leave the system at 15 and it is fair to say that teachers checked their calendars with certain students with the assiduousness of Mayan priests. A 15-year-old is still a kid so it was inevitable that the government would raise the leaving age to 16. Fair dos. It still left the often demanding years 11 and 12 to be completed by those best equipped for the task.
But now Big Sister has decreed that 17 is the new leaving age. O me miserum, the cry has gone up from school staffrooms across the land. For the disgruntled 16-year-old will now be an outright subversive 17-year-old.
The minister talks about equality of opportunity when we all know it is designed to massage the jobless figures. Perhaps if she raised the leaving age to 30 we might kid ourselves that the economy is in the rudest of health.
Meanwhile, discreet inquiries are being made of our charges.
“Is that the manual for a driver’s licence you’re perusing, young Tarquin?”
“Fair suck of the sav, sir. I’ve just turned 16.”
Never has man been so undone by a single word. Just. O God of the Levites, give us strength.
I went to a tech school. It was great. I didn’t have to learn a language other than English, I could do heaps of useful things like metalwork, woodwork and science.
As a writer I may not be in the same league as Patrick White, but I can communicate with the written word thanks to some very formidable female English teachers. They knew exactly how to control and motivate recalcitrant sixteen and seventeen year old boys like myself.
Amongst many other things I can fix a car, unblock a drain, repair a fuse and program computer in about six different languages. None of them English. I must admit I didn’t learn computer programming at tech as. The abacus was pretty much the standard in those days. The tech educated me in a way where I have easily adapted to new technology. My father also went to a tech. He learnt to use a PC when he was 78. He does all his banking and share portfolio for his super fund and is now 83. It’s a pity tech schools were flawed as some high school educated “expert” wrote in The Age some years ago. Just think what we could have been if they weren’t.
They didn’t close techs because they thought they were working class ghettos and it was not because they thought that the trades were dead and that everyone would work for a bank. Although it is a pity banks discovered that computers and ATM’s could do it all and that the drains still needed unblocking and the fuses repairing.
The real reason is they thought they could save money, to bribe the electorate with tax cuts. The people who thought this up were of course accountants and lawyers. All high school trained.
Never let a few facts…
the timing of technical schools demise co-incided with the need to re-build/re-tool secondary schools.
the few remaining apprenticeships were going to more highly credentialled high school students.
Technical schools were not providing the basics they were established to do.
however, in 1994 in the midst of re-building the schools…recall Joan Kirner had peacefully closed or amalgamated 34 techs/high schools during 1993, Jeff Kennett arrived, slashing and burning over 200 schools, and selling them through the likes of the now leader Ballieu
give credit where it is due….Uncle Don Hayward staved the working class areas, sold the schools and boosted the already priveleged (liberal electorate) eastern suburbs schools..all this is a matter of documented fact and has been well publicised.
The current government has belatedly recognised the necessity to re-build the school building stocks.
The starting matra of VCE in 1992 was to fully equip all schools as secondary colleges..unfortunately Don Hayward ripped that promise apart and re-enforced the old high school academic model, which we still have just HSC re-badged…with an unsustainable focus on getting into Melbourne University as a first priority and anything else is a second best..even now 25 years later!!
The more things change…it will be of interest with the national curriculum whether the academics will ever recognise there are greater needs for a schooling system rather than tertiary entry
bitter and twisted..you betcha!
along with many thousands of others with long memories and an interest in education without privilege or favour