INTRODUCTION
… the aims of education are to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens.
— English educationalist Sir Ken Robinson
It was connections made with Finnish fans of Australian music that took me to Finland, where I was able to get a first-hand look at their education system. As a schoolteacher of some thirty years’ experience teaching from grade prep to year 12, in both government and non-government schools, I figured it would be valuable professional development. After all, Finland has the reputation of being the best in the world when it comes to education, so maybe I could find just what all the fuss is about and even borrow a few secrets.
Discussions with teachers and teacher trainers in Finland led me to re-evaluate the education system I had been a part of for three decades. I knew that Australian teachers were leaving the profession in great numbers, and student results were going backwards … but I assumed we were doing all we could to counter this and that the methods we had adopted were backed up by solid research and the latest ideology. Like most Australian teachers, I had accepted the introduction of a standardised curriculum, standardised testing and student ‘achievement standards’ for as best practice for students and teachers alike.
But my trust was misplaced.
Finnish teachers looked at me as if I were a child molester when I described the NAPLAN tests given to children as young as eight. With shocked expressions, they asked why Australian teachers allowed this to be done to such young children. They then suggested that (of course) the results of these tests should lead to increased funding and assistance for those students and schools that did not do well.
There was no reasonable answer to this. My investigation into what made the Finnish system so successful was quickly becoming an inquiry into why my own system was so unsuccessful.
The next few years would see more time in Finland, more time in schools there and more time interacting with Finnish educators at all levels. Dozens of education books were read. Dissertations on Finnish education and teacher training, in addition to countless formal and informal interviews with Australian and Finnish teachers, followed. How had Australia found itself in this position? Why?
Is there any research or proven ideology behind it?
The same had to be done in respect of the Finnish system. What did the latest educational thinking say? What does the neuroscience tell us?
What about the multinational testing of 15-year-olds’ academic performance—that goes by the acronym PISA (Program for International Student Assessment)—that was pitting the world’s educational systems against each other?
How do teachers fare in these systems? The Australian media headlines blame teachers for declining results from the NAPLAN tests and suggest that up to half of them are leaving the profession within five years of graduating. Most importantly, what about the students? How do they fare under the two systems?
If NAPLAN scores are always in decline, then why are we persisting with them and other aspects of the standardised system? Even Singapore has abandoned the idea that every student should be able to do certain things at a particular age and all those in the same grade should be ranked against one another.
SCHOOL DAYS
My experience of school as a student rather than a teacher was typical, I suspect, for the era. Primary school was a mixture of government and Catholic schools as my family moved house three or four times, though never leaving Melbourne’s western suburbs. Our first moves were due to my father changing jobs and we relocated again after he passed away. In those days the western suburbs of Sunshine, North Altona and Albion were on the fringes of the ‘country’, and open fields were just a short walk away on the other side of Kororoit Creek.
Despite this ‘country’ feel (I was nearly going to say ‘pastoral’, but that would have been overdoing it: to my knowledge there were no poems written about Kororoit Creek), Melbourne’s west was very much like an old car in the city’s backyard. It had seen better days, such as before the Massey Ferguson (previously Sunshine Harvester) tractor factory shut down, but no-one was really prepared to fix it up, and many doubted it was worth fixing.
Schools were unforgiving places in the late sixties and seventies. Our sixth-grade classroom at Our Lady’s adjoined the principal’s (a nun’s) office, giving our class’s lessons a soundtrack of leather straps hitting hands (I hope that was all they were hitting!); a none too subtle reminder of why it was best to toe the line. This particular school had not a blade of grass anywhere on the asphalt playground, most of which was taken up by an imposing church the size of a small football ground itself (or so it seemed to this ten-year-old) and the height of a ten-storey building, casting a shadow over the schoolyard until at least midday. The terrifying boom of Father Murphy’s voice truly sounded like it was coming from the depths of the hell he auctioned to the lowest bidder.
Secondary school was a Catholic boys’ college, St John’s Braybrook. Entry exams made it easy to identify those not suited to academic study and we were all placed in six or seven streamed classes with close to forty boys in each. I’d managed to scrape into the second from the top of these (St Luke), although any sense of accomplishment was lost on me, perhaps as I felt I’d had no say in the matter.
An avid reader since mid primary school, I devoured Jules Verne among others and was starting to take an interest in the music press, music becoming something of an outlet for my inner world particularly since my father’s death.
My grade prep teacher had made me write with my right hand instead of the left I instinctively grabbed the pencil with, meaning my handwriting was never particularly ‘neat’. Much to the amusement of classmates, my year 8 teacher described it as ‘like spiders climbing on the blackboard’.
Classes were conducted with strict formality. Some teachers still addressed students by their surnames, and students got into the habit of calling every teacher ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’.
One teacher, rumoured to have been of German descent (to us at the time this as good as said ‘Gestapo’, and he certainly had a big, booming voice and accent so no-one ever dared ask him if it was true) and a large, completely bald man, had a habit of grasping students on the neck with a firmness that drew tears from terrified thirteen-year-olds. I’ve never forgotten sitting in this class and turning around to note that every face I saw had tears on it. As a young boy, the eldest of three brothers just recovering from the death of their father, my experience of secondary school was not the relief from the pressures of home that I might have hoped for. While I was anything but a ‘bad’ child, like most teenagers I would occasionally forget a small element of my homework and find myself in the firing line of pedantic teachers.
There were no subject choices to be made, although the top two of the streamed classes did not participate in any of the practical, or ‘trade’, subjects as we referred to them. So I missed out on woodwork and metalwork. Discipline was strict. Students who did not have their towel to dry themselves in the showers after sport (many were shy about doing so in front of the sports teacher who stood at the shower entrance observing the entire process very, very closely) were required to run extra laps of the sports oval, ironically making a shower even more necessary. I distinctly remember thinking that if I ever became a teacher I would do all I could to put a stop to these archaic practices. This is the earliest recollection I have of ever actually considering education as a career path, though the significance of the idea stemming from a belief that it could be done better rather than from a positive influence is not lost on me.
As was common in Catholic schools of the time, many of the teachers were religious brothers, and I can recall the entire class staying back after not taking our RE (religious education) studies seriously enough. Copying biblical passages word for word put an end to this poor behaviour (seemingly), and a Sunday detention (I’ll never forget riding my bike to school in full uniform on Sunday—seemed to have forgotten about the Sabbath