Is homeschooling good or bad?

The homeschooling system has been an enriching and overwhelming positive for certain families. It has become popular just like current parents choosing over private or public schools. According to the article the percentage of children who are home schooled in NSW has increased up to 65 per cent in four years. There has been an increase from 1703 in July 2008 to 2802 in July 2012. Parents choose home schooling over sending children to school therefore over the same period, the school population of NSW only grew by less than 3 per cent. (Tovey. J.2013)

There are various reasons and motivations that triggers parents to decide whether to home educate their children or not. Many parents home school their children because of religious matter and bullying issues as the article mentions "bullying, philosophical objections to schooling and a desire for personal learning as reasons for rejecting formal educations" (Tovey. J.2013). Children who are bullied at school hesitates to be at school and have a strong sense of rejection so it is heart breaking for parents to send them school. According to Remeikis' news article, bullying prompted Brisbane mother Linda Richardson to look at home education for her step-daughter. (Remeikis. A 23 June 2013). "She was in grade 10 at the time she really struggling with high school and the whole bullying issue and i am a registered teacher and at the time I wasn't working, so I said 'Well, I am a teacher, I am at home, do you want to do home school?" Ms Richard Said. The advantage of home schooling is they get to enjoy and study at a flexible environment with comfortable people which allows them to progress further at a comfortable pace. Especially for those children who are bullied for certain reasons, they are distracted by people around them, rather feel scared to be in a crowd and would not be able to learn. They also can save time and money as they don't need to travel and spend money on tuition fee.


But I certainly think there must be disadvantages to home schooling. Major problem is socializing problem as school is a place where you take your first step to learn how to socialize and interact with people. By staying away and running away from people may lack essential social skill and might be bullied even more in the future for not being able to fit in. Also, regardless of how well educated the parents is and unless they have been trained and hold qualifications as a teacher they will not be able to teach as efficiently as as a trained professional teacher would. I am also worried that there might be a danger for the kids to regret missing out on school experience and not be able to relate their experience with other children.


There are pros and cons to home schooling and I believe it is not a light decision for parents to make. I think it is purely up to the children's decision. For instance, if they are in a situation to strongly neglect public education and is really in need of home schooling, then that is totally fine. But if the parents want to keep them at home simply because they want them to be safe and keep an eye on them all day, that is definitely the most stressing thing for the child.


Reference


http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/10/18/3872392.htm?site=goldfields


http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/home-schooling-up-65-in-four-years-20130907-2tcj8.html


http://www.smh.com.au/national/home-schooling-a-positive-choice-20130622-2opo8.html

A reflection on a current educational issue in Sydney relating to culture and identity

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/school-system-punishes-poor-says-report-20120209-1rxar.html

It is sad to say that having a low socioeconomic status greatly affects a child’s education, how they are judged in society and how the view their own identity. As much as we ourselves or the government may try to deny it, and pass over the issue with schemes and ‘benefits’ that only apply to some children, it is inconceivable to think that being socially and economically disadvantaged goes against systems of social justice in education, and is a problem that still has not been fully addressed.

Paula Rothenburg (2007) argues that people who are more privileged in the realms of wealth and socioeconomic status, and so are middle to upper class citizens, strive to maintain this privilege for their offspring. And so the dynamics of power and privilege shape the key experiences in their lives and therefore, in some part, shape their identity. At the opposite end of the spectrum, or those who are not middle to upper class white citizens in the predominantly western culture of education in Australia, are the possibilities of multicultural, working class migrants who face challenges of identity in education due to these factors alone and therefore also contribute to feelings of self-worth or lack there-of. Of course, this is a generalization of society, but it is key to criticising the influence of perceived difference on identity in education. By bringing this issue into a classroom setting, we can also analyse the role of the teacher when regarding issues of disadvantage, comparison and identity. As Henrikson (1971) states “The possibility that teacher attitude plays as significant a role in the classroom as some of the studies have indicated is of great importance to further planning in education for the disadvantaged child. It challenges the belief that the child who is disadvantaged in both home and school is so because one environment is working irrevocably against the other. It asks whether it is not possible that the disadvantaged status of the child, as viewed by the teacher, itself creates the disadvantage for the child within the classroom.” (p.428). From this we can see that identities can be internally and externally shaped and contribute to the learning experience of students, with factors such as race, geographical location and family attributes playing a significant role in the teaching and learning process.

This undermines the structures of social justice systems, refusing to acknowledge that equality of resources or terms of diversity do not account for individual difference in students and their learning outcomes. As the article states, the Gonski review recommends ‘an overhaul of the funding regime with particular focus on disadvantaged public schools. The report argues investing in high quality schooling and equal opportunities from the early years to the end of upper secondary is the most profitable policy.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 2012). So this is a possible program that could potentially fix the underlying issues of educating socioeconomically disadvantaged students and begin to close the gap to achieve a higher standard of education across the board, rather than just focussing on the easier to teach, richer children who have an easier means to achieve than others.

References

• Henrikson, H. (1971). Role of Teacher Attitude in Educating the disadvantaged child, Illinios, Research in Review
• Rothenberg, P. S. (2007). Race, class, and gender in the United States (seventh edition). New York, Worth.
• Stevenson, A. (2012). School system punishes poor, says report. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/school-system-punishes-poor-says-report-20120209-1rxar.html.

Naplan... More like NoPlan

Seeing this amusing yet worrying comic got me thinking about NAPLAN. I've had previously strong views on NAPLAN before this course, however I found that some of the views presented in this course really challenged me to think about my views, especially with NAPLAN, differently to what I had previously.

Firstly I thought about NAPLAN and its objectives and aims, this national test assesses all students from years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in a broad variation of questions targeting literacy, numeracy, grammar and reading. As the NAPLAN website, (2013) states specifically about their writing task that addresses a literacy aspect, “The Writing task targets the full range of student capabilities expected of students from Years 3 to 9. The same stimulus is used for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9…. The same marking guide is used to assess all students' writing, allowing for a national comparison”. The element of having all students across the board doing the same test, regardless of age, the results gained from NAPLAN being graded not by what different levels of knowledge students should have reached at different points of their schooling, but in general, assessing what they can remember and how they perform on one specific day infuriates me. How can one test with the exact same content and questions be the appropriate measure for students ranging from these wide assortment of ages. I feel that this element puts so much pressure on teachers to not only have to teach to the stupidity of this tests' structure, but then what happens if a teacher let’s say teaches a year 3 class this year and next year she is put on to a year 5 class. Does she teach the exact same content the exact same way in which she did the year before with students that were 2 years younger?

Ford, (2013) also states her opinion on the issue, with her focus more specifically on the cultural gap and its effect on students with reference to the NAPLAN test, which is another element of this test that I believe is a monumental negative, "Since the introduction of National Australian Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in 2008, results continue to show very poor educational outcomes for indigenous students, especially in the NT" (pp. 81). 

Not only is there a clear disadvantage for students as a whole, but the cultural gap she speaks about is becoming an even bigger hole with tests such as this one. Ladson-Billings, (2004) pin points the issue that I am concerned with the most, the role of the teacher in this process, "a poor quality curriculum coupled with poor quality instruction, a poorly prepared teacher, and limited resources add up to poor performance on so-called objective tests" (pp. 84). Now obviously if a teacher is ill-prepared they will not succeed in any situation, however I believe that in this situation and in relation to NAPLAN even a well prepared teacher is and will very much suffer. The importance of remembering content and not actually comprehending what they are learning is the main issue here for me, clearly presented in the comic that lead me to this debate in the first place.

Ford, M. (2013). Achievement gaps in Australia: what NAPLAN reveals about education inequality in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 80-102.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). New directions in multicultural education: Complexities, boundaries, and critical race theory. In Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, 2nd ed., ed. J.A. Banks and C.A.M. Banks, 50–65. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

NAPLAN Website. (2013), ‘NAPLAN’, Available from: http://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/naplan.html          

[Accessed on 10th August, 2013]

Globalisation Affecting Classroom Practices in Australia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19476254

The increasing power of globalisation means improved communication, travel, knowledge and greater effects of global communities on education all around the world. This has led to a need to change classroom practices and policies to ensure the highest quality instructional system, particularly for Australian schools, because this country is renowned for its’ multicultural and global sense of culture and capabilities. In my opinion, it is the job of schools to accommodate to the expanding need for global knowledge and connections and to alter classroom practices in order to achieve the best educational outcomes for all students studying and produce well rounded, global citizens that can contribute to the ever increasing global labour market.

With greater travel and global movement now more available to the masses, and more desirable, Robertson (1992) describes a compression of the world and a demographic shift in the social understanding of space and time. Combining this with the increase of the power of money within the global labour market, we can see how an orientation towards business models and direct institutional control has led to the view of education as a commodity. Furthermore, due to recent changes in Australia’s migration policy which has reduced the number and type of migrants allowed into the country, Australia’s economy has been affected as many educational institutions rely on the income from full-fee paying international students to assist in the distribution of quality education to all students. Education is Australia’s largest services export (Marginson 2011, p. 21) with the sustained belief about the value of international education as an international good in the global labour market. It is clear to see that improved global mobility is a large contributor to the economic needs of education systems around the world. This is why educational institutions are increasingly becoming viewed as businesses and are altering classroom practices, in assessments and testing, to remain a predominant provider of international goods and services.

Globalisation has also caused a shift in individual and societal senses of identity and this is particularly relevant to education because schools now have to deal with highly flexible notions of belonging and citizenship (Ong, 1999). With an increase in complex, multiple identities in the classroom, globalisation and mobile individuals diversify communities but also cause a ‘complex cultural diversity characterised by a fluid & dynamic set of relationships’ and so the idea of a single, homogeneous, national cultural identity has been challenged (Leaney, 2013, Week 3). Basu (2011, p. 1309) states ‘As a public institution, the school has a mandate to serve all students and to create an educational system that is sensitive to diversity and that allows for equality of opportunity… the exclusion of the experiences, values, and viewpoints of Aboriginal, racial, and ethnocultural minority groups constitutes a systemic barrier to success for students from those groups’.

Hence, by changing classroom practices to support lower language skills students and multiculturalism, globalisation influences educational outcome requirements and classroom practices to support students within a global context. It is the ‘connections between education and democracy in the period of increasing cross-border movement, transnational processes, and accelerated flow of capital, commodities, culture and people’ Mitchell (2001, p. 52) that support integration and movement flows due to globalisation and force schools to become more integrated and considerate towards difference. Through continuously changing practices of integration and understanding by teachers and students and the reorientation towards education’s value in a global community as a commodity, it is clear to see the globalisation is forcing a shift in the way teaching and learning is conducted in Australian and global educational institutions.

References

• -         Basu, R. (2011). Multiculturalism Through Multilingualism in Schools: Emerging Places of “Integration” in --- Toronto. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(6), 1307-1330, doi: 10.1080/00045608.2011.579536
• -          -          Gratton, M. (2012). The globalisation of work – and people. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19476254
• -          Leaney, G. (2013). Global Context of Australian Education, Week 3. EDST1104 Social Perspectives in Education Lecture Notes. University of New South Wales.
• -           Marginson, S. (2011). It’s a long way down: the underlying tensions in the education export industry. Australian Universities Review, 53(2), 21-33.
• -          Mitchell, K. (2001). Education for democratic citizenship: Transnationalism, multiculturalism and the limits of liberalism. Harvard Educational Review 71(1), 51–78.
• -          Ong, A. (1999). Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• -          Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: A Brief Response. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,31(3), 319-323.

Students stop taking Asian languages in senior years

Despite the fact of  rise in Asian people immigrating to Australia, the news article proclaims that the proportion of students taking Asian language has decreased during senior years. Between 2010 and 2012 the number of students learning Chinese has grew up to 42 percent however in the recent period the number of HSC students studying Asian language has dropped by 27 percent. In 2013 there is 902 students taking Chinese which shrunk by 5 percent to last year. (McNeilage.A, Tovey.J, 2013) 

According to the president of the Board of Studies NSW, the reason for this issue is "''To the extent that studying a language is a functional advantage for interacting globally, the paradox is that as the world globalises, you don't need another language and people are aware of that,'' and, ''Everyone that goes to 

China knows you can get around pretty well with English.''. However, despite the decrease there has been a 

rise in students taking Asian language during 2010 and 2012. Every students must learn a second language during junior high as a mandatory subject but this article shows that students give up when it comes to taking HSC. 

The director of the Chinese Teacher Training Centre at the University of Melbourne, Jane Orton she says that the people learning foreign lanauge tends to stop right before HSC because they don't want to compete with background students. As she said ''There are kids who would like to go on but they just literally can't afford it for their futures,'' and ''It's like having a race for the under 12s. You can't have long-legged 15-year-olds racing down. Of course they're going to win.''

 Therefore there are numerous students learning French as it is similar to English and it's much easier for them to learn, at least it is easier than Mandarin. This year there 663 students took French as a beginner but only 52 students taking Chinese beginners. I totally understand this factor because as an Australian perspective, French is a lot easier and familiar. I think as HSC is becoming more stressful and competing and society is getting harder, students know what subjects to take for them to boost their mark. 

As someone preparing to be Japanese teacher in the future, I think it is so unfortunate that people are putting them selves in a disadvantaged position in the most advantaged place like Australia. Multiculturalism allows us to engage with other ethnics and gain experience without having to travel and meet people. I strongly agree to Dr Orton's statement " more parents need to value the learning of language, beyond just employment opportunities". Students should know the benefits of learning foreign language not just to be successful but for the possibility of becoming a bigger person with great understanding of other people. 

Another news article that I found inspiring by Anne Merritt she said "Learning a foreign language is more than just a boost to your CV or handy for travelling. It will make you smarter, more decisive and even better at English" which i totally agree because I've experienced of knowing my mother language stronger due to learning English as second language. 

References

1.     McNeilage.A, Tovey.Josephine (2013) Students stop taking Asian languages in senior years, Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, Retrieved from
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-stop-taking-asian-languages-in-senior-years-20131007-2v4cu.html#ixzz2hFkW11vz

2. Merritt. A (2013) Why learn a foreign language? Benefits of bilingualism, England, The telegraph, Retrieved from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10126883/Why-learn-a-foreign-language-Benefits-of-bilingualism.html

A reflection on my experience of culture and identity in education

At the beginning of 2013, I was able to attend Ashfield Boys in Sydney for 10 days of practical teaching experience, which only involved observation. I was amazed about how much I saw, heard and learnt in only 10 days. I spent a lot of my time in shock (at the teachers, not the boys!), but there were a few moments where I felt relieved and impressed. What does this have to do with culture and identity? What I soon came to realise was that behind the behaviour of the lazy and rude teachers, were assumptions about students’ cultures and identities.

Ashfield Boys has an ICSEA value of 1028 (just above average), 59% of its student population lies in the middle quartiles of the population, and 73% of students come from a LBOTE (ACARA, 2012). From this data, it would seem that its students are not harshly disadvantaged; the school is really just an average school- neither extremely well off nor extremely disadvantaged. The perception surrounding the school though is one of low SES families who do not achieve well academically.

What I soon discovered was that the academic success of the boys was being put down to their different cultural backgrounds. Their culture became synonymous with their identity- you didn’t just have Lebanese parents- you were Lebanese and your ‘Lebanese’ identity explained everything about you, including your academic success. I found this to be extremely problematic, as teachers assume that ‘Lebanese’ students are one large hegemonic group who all have the same values, motives, backgrounds and personalities. We could call this stereotyping. Researchers such as Steele (1997) have called this stereotype threat and have identified it as an obstacle to student learning.

In my classes I saw boys in year 8 from Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, African, Indian and Asian backgrounds whose reading, writing and numeracy were at primary school levels.  It was evident that their low levels of reading and writing directly contributed to their lack of interest in class, but somehow teachers did not make this link. I saw boys from specific backgrounds constantly targeted, blamed and punished for off task behavior in the classroom. What I realized was that these particular boys happened to have some of the lowest literacy rates in the classroom, and thus not being able to keep up with the class, they would begin talking to someone else. The teacher believed that because these boys were from a particular background, they did not have respect for the teacher or a desire to learn- because that was just part of their culture. The fact was that regardless of where these boys’ families were born, they had been left behind in their literacy, and this had nothing to do with their backgrounds. The teacher was doing nothing to help them, but in fact frustrating and disengaging them more and more.

This stereotyping of students’ culture and identity was something I saw every day at Ashfield Boys and which was truly damaging. I think in the context of wider Sydney or Australia, not just Ashfield Boys, this is a commonplace occurrence and has really just become a norm which nobody really sees and issue with. What I saw is that this stereotyping of cultures and student identities is very damaging and causes disadvantage. On a larger Sydney scale, this stereotyping affects parent’s choice of schools. As we can see in Ho’s (2011) research, parents send their children to mono-cultural schools. It so happens that the majority of students from LBOTE in Sydney cannot afford to attend private schools, resulting in the monoculture of Sydney’s elitist schools. Ho does not state directly in her article that these parents are purposefully trying to avoid low SES families with LBOTE, but if we read the comments of parents or even some politicians, we can see that the idea permeates that public schools (where the majority of middle-low SES families send their children) are not good places to get an education (for example see my Blog about the North Sydney Coalition MP). The stereotypical link between bad education = public schools = LBOTE students is being reinforced by public comments such as these- and is extremely problematic.

References:

ACARA, (2012). Ashfield Boys High School MySchool website, Accessible at http://www.myschool.edu.au/SchoolProfile/Index/67908/AshfieldBoysHighSchool/41189/2012

Steele, C.M. (1997) A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance. American Psychological Association 52(6): 613-629

Ho, C. (2011) Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism. Journal of Intercultural Studies 32(6): 603-619

Uniformity

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/students-drop-old-uniforms-to-conform-to-a-new-reality/story-e6freuy9-1226532766683

This article fascinated me greatly as I’m very much interested in the recent issue and debates of uniforms in schools, particularly the huge push for unisex uniforms. At the present this issue is one of the most debated in the education system in Sydney and as this article explains more and more schools are thinking about opting away from the ‘traditional’ tunic for girls and shirt and shorts for boys and instead providing a unisex ‘skort’ as they are calling them for girls who wish to wear a more comfortable option. (Simalis, 2012, pp.1)

For me when I was at school, being a huge tomboy I would have loved this option! I did and still hate those primary school tunics, uncomfortable like no boy could ever understand and for me, even that young, it wasn’t something I wanted to wear at all. Not that I think children being asked to wear a particular type of uniform takes away from their independence as one Anonymous debater on the website debate.org states “School uniforms take away from a student’s independence and creativity” (Anonymous, 2013, pp.1). I think that opinion is a little extreme as there are many other ways students can and do express their identities. I just felt uncomfortable in having to wear that and feeling like there was always a comparison with the other girls around me who were all different in their own rights, wearing the same thing.

I don’t understand the big issue of giving students the opportunity to have a third option with their uniforms. If a girl at school wants to wear a skort and shirt compared to a tunic, why is this a bad thing? She’s choosing to wear the uniform isn’t she? She’ll still learn and gain as much of an education as a girl in a tunic won’t she? I feel like educational issues like this, especially those and hotly heated as this one that revolve around culture and identity is missing the simple point of why education is in place in the first place. There are so many other things to worry about in a education sense, why does it matter if there is a third uniform option for students?

For me, this article not only conjured a connection to the identity politics topic in week 4, but oddly I found myself reciting a quote from the Phillips, (2206) reading. “Calvin Klein. For this guy, symbolism was more important than function” (pp. 1). I realised after thinking why I had made this connection.

There is a relationship between why this boy felt he had/wanted to wear his Calvin Klein underwear the way he did and the way for over 50 years uniforms in Australia have stayed extremely traditionally constant. I believe that parents are scared of change because of the aesthetic appearance it will produce. Parents of the older generation are used to seeing tunic uniforms with lined patterns, little tie on the top of a bright solid coloured collar, the tunic falling into a perfect triangle, because that is what they see is ‘fitting’, or ‘fitting in’ if we compare it to the Calvin Klein wearer (no pun intended). We are so scared to go against tradition or what is the ‘norm’ before us that these seemingly unimportant or less important issues become front page news.

Anonymous, (2013), ‘Can the use of school uniforms improve a learning environment?’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.debate.org/opinions/can-the-use-of-school-uniforms-improve-a-learning-environment

Phillips, A. (2006). What is culture? In Arneil, Barbara and Deveaux, Monique and Dhamoon, Rita and Eisenberg, Avigail, (eds.) Sexual justice / cultural justice. London, UK : Routledge, 2006, pp. 15-29.

Silmalis, L. (2012). ‘Students drop old uniforms to conform to a new reality’, The Sunday Telegraph. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/students-drop-old-uniforms-to-conform-to-a-new-reality/story-e6freuy9-1226532766683

[Accessed 26 September 2013]..