Education in the 21st Century

Neither my birth nor my adoptive mother finished high school - in fact, my adoptive mother didn't even get to start.

My adoptive mother was born in the 20s, and that cut-short education was fairly widespread then. Go back further, and education was typically even shorter, and often patchier.

These days, most people finish high school (although the removal of tech schools in the 90s under Kennett was a mistake), and many get further education, whether at a tertiary (i.e., university) or vocational (i.e., TAFE) institute.

So the historic trend has been towards longer periods of education. To simplify, that probably matches the increasing technicality of life after the industrial and scientific revolutions (i.e., there is more to know), and the growing complexity of life generally (tax returns haven't been with us for forever, and there are quite a few other financial and legal aspects [especially driving] aspects that have added to the complexity of life).

Recently, there has been considerable fuss over Australia's educational decline relative to other nations. Most of the analysis of that has focused on the obvious, such as class size, funding cutbacks under the neoliberal "government", and time constraints and underfunding preventing effective teaching. Some of the fuss has been overblown - see here.

There have also been calls for better teachers. That's probably a good thing - provided those teachers have the time and other resources to actually teach, and if the time and other resources became available, that would also allow our current teachers to manifest their abilities more effectively.

Now, the neoliberal "government" has called for the curriculum to be cut back (see here).

Unfortunately, given the biases and shortcomings of our neoliberal "government",that probably means cutting back things that don't directly enable product (students completing school) to be effective cogs in the business world - things like being aware of the problems of discrimination, students being decent human beings as adults, schools managing issues such as student welfare, including the effects of domestic violence in the home (other than using neochristian prayer, I mean), and crucial skills for the future such as creativity.

That would be a disaster - socially, and economically, although the neoliberals seem to be immune to evidence on that.

As I wrote here:

Einstein: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Neoliberals (esp. re economy, climate denial, and today & yesterday in APH): You just keep going on repeat.

There is a lot in the curriculum, but there needs to be - both so we can be a better society, and so we can perform better economically, and so we can have even half a chance of addressing the climate crisis.

Trying to squeeze the curriculum into six years at primary school and six years at high school (it was seven and five when I was in Qld. in the 70s, incidentally) isn't working.

The solution is, in my opinion, to continue the historical trend, and stretch out our education system - specifically, high school. Primary school should still allow plenty of time for children to play and be children, but I would like to see one (preferably two) extra years tacked on to the end of high school (perhaps under a different label) to enable our students to have a chance to properly absorb and integrate all that they need to know in the modern world.

This would increase the costs of education - as a simplification, by around 6 to 11% - and that would be on top of fixing the current underfunding.

However, the cost of not doing so would be worse - financially, $20 billion a year, according to this, (compared to less than half a billion expenditure, according to this and this), and socially, even more.

Time to act on what the experts advise, and give everyone more time to do so.