NAPLAN and white privilege?

Article taken from the Sydney Morning Herald, 15 May 2013.

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Upon reading this short article I found in the ‘Opinion’ section of the Sydney Morning Herald, I found myself laughing out loud, nodding my head in fervent agreement- but then taking a moment to think about why. Which larger themes were being touched on in the jokes and comments? After some thought, I found that comments and jokes were being made based on some current stereotypical views of socio-economic status, class and wealth. This lead me to think about things such as white privilege and perceptions of ‘culture’, and how these views are enacted through parents’ concerns about school testing, results and ranking (i.e. NAPLAN).

What most concerns the author is “why NAPLAN testing is now considered by so many as the core of education ... when you get an exam cram guide for eight-year-olds at No.9 in the best-sellers list, something is awry”. Behind all this cramming is not determined 7 and 8 year old children who desperately want to achieve great NAPLAN results- no, “It’s the adults who are forcing [their kids] to cram for NAPLAN”. He goes on to list some justifications parents make and why they may be led to the point of believing that their children's NAPLAN results are an indication of their worth as a student.

It is important to remember that the author uses sarcasm and comedy to get his points across. For example:

“233. Kids need rewards: Children need to understand effort delivers results. No results, no skiing in Aspen” and “89. Teachers are commies: I hate those postmodern slackers who believe in child-centred learning and don’t read ‘The Australian’ ...”

Jokes about “No skiing in Aspen” and “Teachers are commies. I hate those postmodern slackers...” are poking fun at values held by Australians who align their views with more conservative values, who generally speaking have concern for preserving and building upon individual and national wealth. Thus, we begin to think about what affect ideas of wealth, class and socio-economic status have on the education system, in particular attitudes about NAPLAN results. For example:

13. They made me do it: I needed to enforce cramming because the non-government and public selective schools demand to see NAPLAN results before they will accept junior.

The author highlights the concern of parents who define a school’s overall worth in terms of their NAPLAN results:

2. Bad NAPLAN = Bad School. Who wants to send children to a school where time and resources have to be spent on strugglers who clearly must be troublemakers because they haven’t crammed NAPLAN? ...

This inevitably then breeds competition…

377. If everyone else enforces cramming and I don’t, their kids beat mine and mine lose self-esteem, and we just don’t have time for all that extra therapy.

There have been countless researchers over the past few decades who have found through research that children who live in areas of lower socio-economic status do not achieve as well in NAPLAN or HSC testing as those children who come from a higher socio economic status (Anderson 2012; Pearson 2009; Ford 2013). To make this type of data even more readily available, anyone can access the MySchool website to find the same results. The reasons as to this disparity are highly debated and contested among educational researchers[1]. What the newspaper article insinuates though, is that wealthy conservatives do not want to send their children to a bad school where “time and resources have to be spent on strugglers who clearly must be troublemakers”. Since families from lower socio economic statuses either do not live in wealthy suburbs or cannot afford to send their children to expensive schools, it is the public schools which get stereotyped as ‘trouble’. Meadmore (2004) argues that social class plays a large role in educational choice and outcomes, that social class ‘works in and through education to produce advantage and disadvantage’ (Meadmore, 2004: 1). I think the author is akin to this knowledge and most of his comedy and sarcasm is based on these ideals of social class, wealth and education.

Pulling all of the above together, then, what can be said about how some Australians view public schools? Or the families who send their children to public schools? Considering that the largest populations in Western Sydney are families who have language backgrounds other than English, what does it say about white privilege in Australia? If they view public schools and western areas of Sydney as ‘trouble’, what does this say about attitudes towards multiculturalism?

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[1] As an interesting side note, there are many arguments as to why poorer children do not achieve as well as children from rich families. One of the most outrageous things I read was the belief that poorer children have inferior genetics to those of children from wealthier families. It is this genetic difference that causes poorer children to lag behind their wealthier counterparts. http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/genes8221-a-reason-poor-kids-struggle-at-school-says-government-report/story-e6frfmd9-1226677476327

References:

Anderson, R. (2012) Indigenous Students’ Increasing Risk of Grade Repetition in Early Schooling. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. 41(2): 196-207

Ford, M. (2013) Achievement Gaps in Australia: What NAPLAN reveals about Education Inequality in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education 16(1): 80-102

Pearson, N. (2000) Passive Welfare and the Destruction of Indigenous Society in Australia. In Saunders, P. (Ed.) Reforming the Australian Welfare State. Australian Institute of Family Studies- Commonwealth of Australia: Melbourne. pp.136-155

Stokes, A. (2013) Spare Play Time and Grill the Child. In The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 May 2013.

Meadmore, D. (2004) How do Social Class and Education make the Great Divide? In Saltmarsh, D. (2006) Cultural Perspectives in Education. Pearson Publishing: Sydney NSW