No romantic teachers please

No romantic teachers please.

Schoolteachers who were no longer wanted are now wanted.


I'm staring at a headline in yesterday's Business Day newspaper [Jan 20, 2006] ---'Back-to-basics teachers wanted, not romantics' a report by one Sue Blaine. I puzzled through most of the article which seemed a generally pretty humdrum report on some education department recommendations that will apparently take the rest of the year to surface, and may never surface, and broadly deals with what could be called a maybe, maybe class of speculative news report of the type that normally merits no more than a second glance, simply because it isn't news, except of course for the teasing headline.

It takes the writer until the last column to sneak in the really radical part of this ministerial committee proposal. Apparently the ministerial educational committee proposes to 'Retrieve the word 'teaching',' Curious- I think.

For those readers who are confused here, the entire ethos of the new Outcomes Based Education system, to which South Africa has expensively moved recently, is concerned with virtually eradicating the role of the 'teacher' in it's historical sense.

The principle is to replace that word with a 'classroom manager' word/ phrase. This entity arranges the material that must be 'learned' by a learner and then assesses what has been 'learned'. As I observed in a previous blog [The bureaucratisation of childhood] the guiding inspiration behind the new education system [not to be confused with the content] is that the child educates itself under guidance and adroit leadership and in principle it is an outstanding concept. The traditional 'talk and chalk' teacher becomes both manager and child minder presiding over a series of 'experiences' from which young impressionable humans will derive all the knowledge accumulated by society over millennia.

In effect the current teaching cadre of 300,000 odd humans should have been terminated because their approach was declared obsolete. Instead they have effectively been mass re-employed, in a manner that is close to fraudulent, as information processing administrators. Notwithstanding this everyone [ie: newly re-titled teachers and society at large] thinks that they are still doing their original jobs. They should have been replaced with 300,000 completely newly trained classroom managers, although for obvious reasons that is not a particularly practical idea. Nonetheless that is how radically different OBE is to anything we have ever experienced.

The ultimate 'futuristic' vision of an OBE [Outcomes based education] system, mine certainly, is one where all so-called 'learners' are independently logged online into giant compendium sized interactive learning systems with virtual reality simulation devices encasing their heads. A 'classroom manager' wanders about the room checking that the kids don't litter, that they are not sneaking off into cyberspace for a little truancy on the 'net, and of course that the indicators reveal that the learner is progressing normally.

All assessment tasks would be completed graded and returned within moments of performance thus enhancing an accelerated learning curve reinforced with regular personalised revision. People would take their 'matric' whenever they were ready: some early, others, who played more, later. This system would produce progenies from every sector of our society. Presently there is a current disturbing trend towards greater and greater exclusion of those traditionally excluded.

OBE is an interesting experiment and for a limited number of outstanding children who are fortunate enough to have sophisticated resources access, and clever parents, it is a heaven sent dream that facilitates glory.

But for the rest: kids operating in an inherently unruly environment, and most classrooms are inherently unruly environments, this self-realisation is slow coming, and there are increasing reports that refer to an alarming rise in drop-out rates, kids reaching senior school who can't read and write, and a veritable tide of growing innumeracy that embarrassingly places us at the bottom of the international 'clever schoolkids' heap.

Therefore what was really fascinating about the Business Day article was their punch line references to the Ministerial committee report, quoting: 'Apartheid schooling and resistance against it, coupled with a [romantic] 'progressivist' [sic] theory [with its replacement of 'teaching' by 'facilitation'] have served to undermine the key role of teaching in schooling and education.'

Sue Blaine finished her report by quoting this remarkable statement, also from the ministerial committee report: 'Some of the key problems in SA's State funded education system-.are caused by the move away from the practice of 'teaching'.' Wow talk about understatement-. The entire problem more likely apart from the most obvious reasons. The opportunity cost of embarking on this incomprehensible [for many] OBE system is the thousands of schools not built, upgraded and renovated, the thousands of teachers who have simply given up and opted out, free education opportunities. This OBE operating 'system' could turn out to be one of history's most sympathetic cons. What should have been a sensible and simple idea to be grafted into what we had and then tweaked has become a gobbling bureaucratic nightmare that is swallowing all the money that should be on the front line, not to mention swallowing childhood for millions. It is rather like George Bush sending his troops into Iraq with inadequate armour and minimal back up because the general staff wanted to create a different way to win wars by avoiding fighting.

This alleged position shift by the ministerial committee is a remarkable one and one must wonder what has prompted this sudden about face, although the thought that the entire system is collapsing into a sea of mediocrity does come to mind. Nonetheless we are faced with incongruency.

Only months ago the National Curriculum Statement [NCS] for grades 10--12 was published, and was promoted vigorously by the minister, with regular advertisement in many varied media. Already a hundred thousand or so 10th grade kids are about to experience the end of childhood as the new system kicks itself into life.

The following statement appears on page five [of the NCS] outlining the 'kind of teacher that is envisaged' for the new system: 'mediators of learning, interpreters and designers of learning programmes and materials, leaders, administrators and managers, scholars, researchers and lifelong learners, community members, citizens and pastors [whatever they are] assessors and subject specialists.'

Nowhere in this statement is there any space for the old fashioned 'tell 'em tell 'em and tell 'em again' stuff that used to be called teaching, and which has been actively discouraged for years now. [Presumably this is what the ministerial committee intends by 'teaching' in place of 'facilitation'.] Interestingly the word facilitation does not appear in the NCS either.

Rather the emphasis is on the penultimate of the qualities outlined above, namely 'assessment'.

Point 2.1 of the recently published 'Subject Assessment Guidelines' states: 'Assessment should be part of every lesson-and teachers should plan assessment activities to complement learning activities' No mention of any teaching in that statement, in fact 'the informal daily assessment and the formal 'Programme of Assessment' should be used to monitor learner progress throughout the school year.'

A technical note.

Bear in mind here that most school 'lessons' are approximately thirty-five minutes long and most classes contain upwards of forty energetic, robust and boisterous young humans. The newly dubbed 'learning outcomes mediator' [former 'teacher'] probably runs an average stable of about two hundred children to comply with a 'full timetable'' requirement.

Multiply this 200 by about 19 [for a language teacher] formal assessments per learner. Presume that each takes only twelve minutes to assess [they actually take longer I'm told but we assume a simplified assessment to cope with time constraints] and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the former 'teacher's' homework amounts to: 200X19X12 = 45,600 minutes of additional 'assessment' workload. Alternatively 760 hours of non-classroom formal assessment work. Another way is to say, more than one entire month working full time 24 hours a day, or if we talk in terms of a statutory 40 hour week, then 19 additional weeks a year compared to the 'old days' to assess only.

We are obviously going to need much longer years to get all this done, or we will burn out 'class room' managers faster than we are.

For instance, I recently spoke to a science teacher who said she took early retirement, rather than face another such year. At that stage it was only the Matric classes that were subject to this new bureaucratic regime. So far this is only about the formal assessment: there is also continuous assessment. Incidently for this huge additional burden she was taking home five grand a month after deductions and found that kids she had taught recently would do a six month bookkeeping course after school and then earn more than she did.

Continuous assessment is intended to be carried out on a minute-by-minute basis every lesson. This means that 'teaching' has had to be eliminated because it is too time consuming [and it is] and it must be supplanted by some form of guided instruction model that the kids follow - The ministerial; committee can't have it both ways - the classroom time is finite. If eighty percent of a classroom 'learning outcomes mediator's' time is devoted to assessment and twenty percent to maintaining some semblance of classroom discipline then truly there is no time at all to 'teach' in the old fashioned sense, assuming that what the ministerial committee means by 'teaching' is what I understand by teaching.

For instance to follow a typical new age classroom experience for young tenth graders: 'OK here are five pages of brilliantly constructed text outlining the essential elements of a macroeconomic system and the role of micro- economics within that system. When you've finished reading it, answer the questions about Cuba and the lost city of Atlantis and don't forget to demonstrate an ability to co-operate with the other five learners in your group-you have ten minutes to arrive at a definitive analysis of Marxian dialectic materialism and after that I must assess whether your contribution has helped save the people of South east Asia from a terrible tsunami or whether your compulsive need to appropriate your classmate's MP3 player, so you could listen to Shakira on the earphones, has forever ruined your chances of being anything other than unemployed in our job shedding economy.'

The Process

Each grade ten 'learner' will complete a total of 87 formal assessment tasks [across their total subject range] being their requirements for the year and then progress to complete another 87 formal assessment tasks in grade eleven and then because grade twelve is a tough year they will only have to complete 81 tasks. [Ref: National curriculum statement subject assessment guidelines.] Oh of course then they write the matric exam, which counts 75 % of the final matric mark-all that effort for twenty five percent of the final mark! If 'teachers' weren't generally such a charming collection of well-meaning schmucks who are so completely fucked over by their various sweetheart unions they should be taking the State to the CCMA for abusive working conditions

There is no reference in any of these documents to 'teaching'. In fact given that the child has to produce some completed task of momentous importance almost every third school day there is simply no time for teaching in any sense never mind the old fashioned system. Obviously this is why they are now called 'learners'. They are in effect becoming abused learners, and I predict a class action suit by disgruntled citizens about three decades from now, against the State for stealing childhood.

As a result of the bizarre assessment demands being made on the euphemistically so-called 'teacher' the numbers of such humans is declining rapidly, as anyone who can ducks from the job to take up more lucrative and less time consuming occupations. Those who pontificate on matters educational have to resort to the traditional scoundrels assertion that 'dedicated teachers' will put up with any old crap because they are dedicated-bullshit. They are leaving and not many are joining. Anecdotal observation has it that only twelve new maths 'teachers' graduated last year countrywide, but of course this may only be a malicious rumour. There was also a brief report, immediately canned, on SAFM last week to the effect that private schools are now encountering recruitment difficulties.

This week the radio has been broadcasting plaintive advertisements offering prospective teachers free tertiary education in an attempt to ensnare foolish young acolytes into a trade that like the clergy has become less and less attractive in a fast-moving materialist world.

Who really wants to work their sanity to the bone controlling unruly classes in order to assess their ability to learn almost nothing at all for an immense output of energy-They all end up writing the same kind of Matric and the results are no great shakes. Mr Perlman on SAFM ran a debate this week on misleading advertising and no mention was made of the fact that this advertisement for teachers is so misleading as to be actionable. I think I am going to send this blog to the advertising standards authority and demand that all advertisements for 'teachers' carry a compulsory health warning like tobacco does. This job will be injurious to your health and your long-term financial well-being. Rather go study to be an accountant or a lawyer.

Frankly the authorities appear at odds with themselves, assuming Sue Blaine's article has any veracity. This is not in itself unusual. What is strange is that they do no seem to understand that the die has been cast-you can't have both. Attempting to develop any real understanding of any complex subject with a mixed class of random 16 year olds can take weeks of patient effort. This idea that 'learning' can be acquired through some osmotic process involving sophisticated self help coupled to the rod of continuous assessment is fallacious notwithstanding that it does work brilliantly for some, a small elite, of motivated, clever kids. Now it seems as though some courageous ministerial advisers are sticking their necks out to say so.

This message had better be heard loud and clear in time for some adjustment to be made to the present unworkable system which holds that the outcome is of greater importance than the process, if anyone remembers for long enough what the outcome was supposed to be, apart from not being able to read, write and do arithmetic...

It is instructive that the home of this absurdity, Britain, is itself trying to come to terms with the catastrophic outcomes of three decades of this appalling system, which have left the country intellectually under resourced and unable to compete effectively with the millions of Chinese kids who don't have the disadvantage of overcoming outcomes and are successfully 'taught' in the old fashioned way. Specifically it has left the working class kid at the same old disadvantage that they always suffered.

The hard bottom line on the education system is that only 17% of those who wrote matric in 2005 qualified to attend a university or other tertiary institution. As a hardened cynic I would suggest that was about ten percent more than a modern country needs to make things 'happen', given the rate at which formerly complex work is being either dumbed down or factored out of existence, except that I would be wrong we need many more than that. There is also the separate issue that the matric results are themselves a dubious statistic, manipulating statistical data to present a more politically desirable result, and the real 'pass rate' level is lower still. This is evidenced by the vast drop out rate from tertiary institutions, not all of which is attributable to poverty and in inability to pay varsity fees because the fee money has been gobbled up by all this changing bureaucracy.

I also suspect that a critical evaluation would reveal that very few of those 17% who do make the cut emanate from township or poor rural schools, and there is no indication after ten years that this new OBE system is impacting at all on this trend, if anything it is exacerbating the trend because fewer and fewer kids can cope with the vast plethora of assessment material they are required to produce with minimal knowledge.

This hardly seems in keeping with the purpose of a 'people's government' and perhaps some people on the ministerial committee are feeling the onset of panic.

This government has just produced its own, second 'lost generation', and judging by the rising tide of furore on the streets the kids are going back to basics themselves, many back on the barricades in a disturbing number of places.

So could someone please tell me again: why we are spending billions turning a sow's ear into a dog's breakfast?

Loves ya all
NiK