Gold standard in education?
schools defend their 'best practice' position, but droves of kids are leaving the system
A while back I was chatting with the manager of the local Home Education Unit, responsible for overseeing the approval of home ed registration applications and renewals, and the belief that the Australian school system offers world’s best practice in education to children, often claimed as the ‘gold standard’ was emphasised repeatedly.
What was unsaid, but implied, was that Education Departments viewed home education as stepping away from the opportunity to provide that level of excellence, thus naturally disadvantaging children. And that because of this, the Department needed to scrutinize home ed learning plans and make sure they were adequate to address and meet children’s learning and developmental needs.
It’s frustrating for me because it’s my experience and belief that most home ed kids would still be in school if the schools could and would meet their learning and developmental learning needs!
The manager and other staff members of the Home Ed Unit know that home education is just as good if not better than school based education, but mainstream schooling pays their wages and calls the shots.
It’s a ‘we have to say this’ defensive comment.
Education, the way it’s currently set up around the world, is a massive industry that employs hundreds of millions people. School, in its many forms, from childcare centres to universities, is deeply embedded in our economic system. The incentive to retain the status quo is huge.
Home education is seen as operating outside the system, and yes, in one way we’re rejecting schools as the only place education can happen, but we’re still a part of the education system. If we weren’t we wouldn’t be regulated, wouldn’t have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get permission to homeschool and unschool our kids.
It’s convenient for the government agencies to argue that we’re choosing to ‘operating outside of the school system’ as it gives them an excuse to shirk from their responsibility to provide support and funding to home educated students.
While at the same time insisting that we provide our kids with ‘gold standard’ level educational opportunities…
Although the local Home Education Unit team (and those around the country) recognise that it is a lot easier to do that outside of the school setting, and that home education is paving the way in many regards when it comes to future of education, with it’s agile ability to take up and use technological advances in the delivery and practice of education, the machinery of school reform crawls forward slowly, too slowly.
And it’s defensive posturing doesn’t help.
The challenge, as I see it, for the home education movement, is to stay free to continue to develop diverse educational practices that meet the needs of individual learners, and not become subsumed by the outdated monolith that is the deeply embedded culture of school in our society, simply because it is hard for the educational bureaucrats to think outside that paradigm and take in the rapid and exciting changes taking place in how people learn today.
Stark Raving Dad sums it eloquently in this post, where he talks about two different approaches to social development, asking are we truly happy with the widespread ‘gold standard’ practices in school, suggesting that if asked the next generation what they thought they’d ask us to tear it down.
