Is It Time We Completely Overhaul The Teaching System In Australia?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I heard podcasts, hear more kiss podcasts, playlists, and listen
live on the Free Robin Now with the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's got a text from my my ex wife. I've
got a feeling someone else has used her phone. I'll
just give you the first sentence. It begins, I am
a stinky poo.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Butte started text, good morning son, and.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Is that what he's learning in school?

Speaker 4 (00:49):
I must be.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I feel like that's the kid that they're dealing with
at school.

Speaker 5 (00:55):
He sets the scene early.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
He does. He says, yes, you're right.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
He begins the story with the statement.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
But here's my question, right? And this came up on
my feed today and it's really got into my like
it's like a little worm in my head because I'm thinking,
who does our current education system actually help? When I
think about my three sons, who are all very sporty,
I'm dyslexic, I think, yeah, the couple of them are two.
It just the system doesn't seem to cater for individual

(01:23):
needs anyway. This is not just me saying this. I
found this this morning, and I think we should talk
about it.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
We've designed a school system is built around getting kids
to memorize meaningless, contextless facts. For this test that measures nothing,
doesn't measure intelligence, doesn't measure creativity, doesn't measure anything we value.
Finland has one of the lowest levels of ADHD in
the whole world. They never require children to sit still
for more than forty five minutes without giving them fifteen
minutes to run around. Amazingly enough, their kids pay attention

(01:49):
much better than ours.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
The part of our.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Kids that can't pay attention to this boring, mechanical repetition
is the best part of our kids. This is not
in any way criticism of teachers, who are heroic people
and do amazing work, but they're being forced to work
in this rigid testing based system that is screwing them
over and screwing over the kids. If you want kids
who can make canically memorized stuff, I've got news for you.

(02:11):
We've got AI who can do it a hundred times
better than your kids. What we will need is the
kids who can do the things that the AI can't do,
and that's creativity, that's empathy, that's paying attention to each other.
And we've got a school system that is literally destroying
those capacities in favorite of the thing the AI does
much better.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Interesting it's such a real issue that we are going
to face, is that AI is going to be able
to do things better, and there's going to be you're
going to need to have a skill that that the
computer can't do.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, but if you think about the school system from
when I was in school, when you and now are kids,
it was all by rote. Yes, you had to learn
and exams like our year twelve us have just finished
these massive exams where they had to go back and
talk about Shakespeare by being great chunks of it to
use in context.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Like reader remember it? And then just anyone ever used that?

Speaker 5 (03:00):
Again, Well, this is why I didn't pay attention to skill.
I just knew it was wrong.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Ahead of even back then you were putting the system.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
I'm like, this is wrong, man, this is not helping me.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Let's be constructive.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
What would work?

Speaker 4 (03:19):
I spot?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I mean, honestly, that's that idea of because I know Raffie,
my six year old, he really does struggle to concentrate
and he can recover like often have to take him
away and he has a recovery period he comes back
into the class. But that idea, that finish idea in
Finland where they have every forty five minutes is a
fifteen minute break. Get out of your chair, move around,

(03:40):
get it all out of your system, and then you
can concentrate again.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
That's brilliant.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Would that work for Monty who loves school?

Speaker 5 (03:47):
Yeah, like probly she loves schoolship, but she doesn't need it.
But she can do both, Like she loves playing around
and run around and being outside, but she can also
sit there and concentrate. But on this, like, I believe
a lot, and everyone's different. Every Things work differently for
different people, like ad hasty stuff whatever, Like you stimulated

(04:07):
differently and you can control your ADHD differently. Run's different.
So I agree with that so much. I believe that
there is better ways to teach our.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Kids their team one sixty five. If you're a teacher,
if you're a parent, I mean, let's be constructive. We
can all stand here and throw arrows and say it's crap.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
And we're certainly not saying it's the teacher's fault, but
the system, Like do we need to change the system
and how do we fix it? What do you reckon?
What do we change to make it better?

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Luis of Elderly, you're a teacher, what do you think
about this.

Speaker 6 (04:38):
Yes, Look, I really believe we need national curriculum. That's
true national curriculum, just like Finland. In Finland, they do
so well because their teachers are paid well. They're paid
also to be highly educated. They all have masters and
specialized areas of study, but mostly they are paid extra

(04:58):
to actually design fantastic resources and units that they share
nationally to one central learning management system. So they don't
have what we currently have, which is ridiculous what we
think is national curriculum, but we have parents paying exorbitant
fees to send their kids to schools to compete against
other schools. What on earth are we doing with that?

(05:21):
We should be collectively making all of our children in
this station smart. Free access to these fantastic resources would
be true equity that would revolutionize our system. We absolutely
have to have critical and creative thinking rather than wrote learning.
We don't teach Shakespeare so that kids remember the Shakespeare test.

(05:42):
We teach these texts so that students learn how to
develop an argument about them. But let's give them critical
and creative problem solving to fix problems in the real
world where they use that knowledge. They use what they
know about literature or about examples in history. Whatever it
is they're learning to apply to real world problems, give
them a four day week, one day a week to

(06:04):
actually do that application with project learning. Then we might
have a true national cricque and we're mobilizing every student
with equity to move forward in this country.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Okay, we need to get you to John Langbrook, who's
the education.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
You've thought about this excellent?

Speaker 2 (06:25):
All right, let's just let's just take that off and
we're sending it to the people that need it. Thank
you so much, Louise