Schooling debate and proposed alternatives

[Will T]

I realise now after thinking about it that a lot of the 'initiatives' I offered were too drastic, I'll leave the arguments below, because I think some of them have validity. For now, I'd like to make some more realistic proposals:

I certainly don't think students who can learn more adeptly at home by themselves should be forced to go to school every day. To correct this without negatively impacting the majority, what if an academic aptitude test was devised for students say in Years 11 and 12 where if they were deemed to be perfectly capable of fulfilling their academic duties at home they would be allowed to. This has the obvious issue of handling SACs and practical experiments for Science subjects that require expensive equipment. A method of counteracting the problem with equipment is that students could be allowed to utilise practical equipment at their local high school. I don't think that would be too outlandish or hard to administrate. As for SACs, doing SACs at home has obvious integrity issues. To counteract these issues, students could attend their local high school on days in which they had SACs and participate as part of their cohort. Or, SACs could be removed altogether. This isn't particularly drastic, because in the 1980s and so forth your mark was dictated by your exam performance, which I think is a lot fairer. SACs currently have quite a few equity issues, mostly dealing with integrity and unfair advantage. As for exams, they could also be done at the student's local high school.

In addition to the comments in below discussions, I don't see why the curricula couldn't be made more challenging instead of trickier. Whether it simply means more content, or higher level content, it would enable examiners to make decent examinations that don't try to differentiate students with subtle things which really aren't at the heart of the content.

The other issue which I'm not making a proposal for is that, if school attendance rates would really plummet to about 10% if attendance requirements were abolished, then I think that says a lot about our current system, and how it alienates a vast majority of the students. There's probably a discussion worth having about that.


• 1   Educational institutions destroy creativity. Instead they promote mindlessness and machine-like perfection of narrowly defined techniques which are rarely used, if ever, in adult life.

•  2   Well defined curriculums which are incredibly narrow in their scope leave no room for further inquiry. Curriculums should be guidelines to encourage further study, not holy texts to be memorised verbatim and then regurgitated on a test or exam. They should also not encourage mediocrity, and instead be broad and challenging.

• 3   Learning how to pass an exam is not education. Teaching a set syllabus and going over past exams in order to maximise marks has no educational value whatsoever.

• 4   Tests should be a tool for students to assess what they can do and can’t do. Not a tool for society, teachers or any other authority figure to attempt to judge or quantify students in terms of their numerical test scores. They should also not be a way of assigning university placement, as this allows society to dictate what students are worth based on their test scores.

• 5   Exams that are designed to separate, beguile and trick students into getting answers wrong are foolish inventions that are of zero value to anyone. Often, highly learned students are told they are inadequate because others studied previous exam papers more intensely.

• 6   Acquiring large banks of knowledge is not education. Societal progress is not made through producing students who are well practised in the art of rote memorisation. On the other hand, learning how to analyse, critique and think about data is what a proper education should be about. Encouraging memorisation like the table of ions in Chemistry and exact trigonometric values in Methods is foolish and does nothing to further scientific progress. The same can be said for any subject that requires memorisation, as the real world does not operate under exam conditions.

• 7   Advocating certain subjects and discouraging others such as the arts creates inequity. Encouraging and endorsing certain disciplines by using incentives and mandates makes children who aren’t interested in those disciplines feel severely inadequate. Also, education should be holistic, and mathematics and languages shouldn’t be championed as the only subjects worth doing. Equal educational resources should be allocated to art, music and drama. After all, is education’s primary goal to produce students who can increase GDP or to give students a beneficial learning experience which helps develop their natural curiosities? As to which is the correct answer I don’t think there has ever been much of a question.

• 8   A substantial amount of internal assessment tasks can be done by outside sources for students to submit. Assignments and SACs that can be done at home and handed in to a teacher have absolutely no educational merit whatsoever and these forms of assessment should be abolished immediately.

• 9   Students aren’t allowed to pursue what interests them. Instead, students have curriculums forced upon them, and if they’re not interested then that’s greatly unfortunate for their career prospects. Often the threat of future prospects is used as a coercive tool by authoritative figures to make students study things they aren’t interested in. Once again, mandating subjects and curriculums provides no societal benefit whatsoever, as all you end up with is a bunch of adults who could never figure out what a gradient function actually is.

• 10   A one-size fits all attitude to education is incredibly naďve and is the height of foolishness. Students are individuals, not machines who can be manufactured on an assembly line to meet required standards of educational performance.

• 11   Attendance requirements are an inanely ridiculous policy. They exist because of an extreme arrogance on the part of schooling institutions which proposes that students have no way of educating themselves. As a result of this, schools must have coercive policies which force students to attend school irrespective of the benefit they receive from it.

• 12   A linear model to education is also incredibly naďve. To assume students learn in such a way is an insult to the mind of a child. Often progress is non-linear and can be incredibly rapid or incredibly slow, it all depends on the learning style of the individual.

• 13   Formal education coerces students into accepting authority. This is seen primarily through the enforced deference students must have for their ‘superiors’. In addition, disciplinary councils who aim to enforce their authority on children through verbal tirades endorse this subservience and obedience to authority.

• 14   Formal education compels students to conform to society’s standards and expectations. This is evidenced through strict dress codes which must be adhered to among other standards which are again enforced by disciplinary measures.

• 15   The idea that students deserve a better education because their parents can afford it is a ludicrous notion. The existence of private schools causes gaping dichotomies and wealth disparities which perpetuate a large array of societal problems.

• 16   The idea that students at public schools are intellectually inferior and belong on the left side of the bell curve is an ignominious disgrace. The fact that private institutions endorse this mentality gives credence to their lunacy. The ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality manufactured by these institutions causes immense stratification based on wealth and privilege, and this separation breeds social inequity.

• 17   Schools have ridiculous operating hours which cater for a minority. Ludicrously designed operating hours create fatigue and lethargy among students, who are repeatedly coerced into awakening at prescribed times which conflict greatly to their natural sleeping patterns.

• 18   Teachers are generally ill-equipped to conduct pedagogy. Often the best, brightest and most articulate individuals are swept up into other professions because of monetary incentives. This causes an influx of generally inept and incompetent individuals on the market, many of whom wouldn’t be fit to think their way out of a paper bag.

• 19   (Edited to remove hyperbole) Compulsory school sports can be very intimidating for students who aren't physically inclined, in the same way that compulsory maths or English classes can be intimidating for students who lack academic inclinations. The point also needs to be raised that compulsory group sports has minimal net benefit for anyone.

Proposed alternatives:

• 20   Students must be allowed to educate themselves.The idea that students are incapable of reading textbooks and learning by themselves in their natural environment is an insult to the capacities of the child. Students should be allowed to learn independently and by themselves in the privacy of their own home.

• 21   School should be drop-in. Along with the abolition of attendance requirements, students should be allowed to come and go as it suits their educational needs, not forced to come as it fits the needs of the school.

• 22   Dress codes and other exercises in mass conformity should be abolished. This includes the mandates concerning school sports and certain subjects.

• 23   Private schools must be dismantled and be made publicly accessible. These institutions are responsible for a great deal of today’s social dichotomies, primarily those concerning wealth but also those concerning elitism and stratification.

• 24   Tests should be administered by students for students. There should be no mandates for any form of testing or assessment. Even the idea of tests in the first place is an insulting concept, because it implies that students aren’t even able to know what they can and cannot do.

• 25   Allocation to university places should be done by interviews which are holistic in nature. These interviews should also encompass the student’s entire educational experience, not just their last year at school.  Also, admission via meaningless numerical scores means people are often ineptly allocated to courses not suited for them. This often forces people who might have been perfect for Science at Melbourne to be funnelled into Teaching at Monash. Obviously this raises enormous questions of resource channelling, but considering you are literally sculpting the future of the Earth by allocating university placements, it is hardly too much to ask for an individual interview for each student.

• 26   Curriculums should be extended to encompass an incredibly broad range of content. Also, they should focus on the development of analytic techniques and oppose memorisation as much as possible.

• 27   English as a subject should be dismantled. All students can speak their native language fluently enough, and considering the only purpose of language is to get across a message, there is no point in forcing students to write in prose about ‘language devices’ that aren’t even remotely persuasive. Too many students are forced to feign their prose because it is impossible to write genuinely about meaningless Herald Sun articles and texts. The amount of bullshit students are forced to invent for English is absurd and the subject has no basis.

• 28   Societal attitudes towards teaching as a profession need to change. The role of teachers is important, and until the time that there is a changing zeitgeist with regard to the teaching profession, monetary incentives will need to be used to attract the brightest scholars. It should not be the role of persons who were poor scholars during their educational experience to inspire the next generation of students.

• 29   Scholarship for its own sake is quaint, and all scholarly tasks need a purpose. Students should be accelerated in their fields of interest and should only be encouraged to study what interests them. They should also study in order to prepare themselves for their roles in society when they are older. As it currently stands, schools waste a whole lot of resources on students who have no interest in certain fields of academia. Forcing students who are going to go on to become clerks to memorise mathematical equations provides no benefit for anyone.

Sorry if it's not perfect, needed to rant.

[lala1911]

I approve of this post.
I forgot who posted this, but someone posted along the lines of "School isn't about learning, it becomes more goal orientated instead of actually learning the content". So, this pretty much means that instead of going to school and learning maths and science because it will help us in life, we're only learning it because we want to score those marks (achieve our goals) to get to university and that's it. If I scored 80% for P.E and learned nothing, I wouldn't care, all I want is the mark.

[Will T]

Good point. The focus on numbers is definitely meaningless and certainly detracts from real education.

[mark_alec]

I'll have to say that I disagree with almost everything you wrote. Would it be too much trouble to number your points to make it easier to reference them?

[Professor Polonsky]

More small-l liberal bullshit... Do you have a petition for this too? Okay, a serious response now.

The harsh truth about our society is that it's competitive, and you need to justify why you're better than someone else in order to get into university / a job et cetera. That's not the education system's fault. It is its task to separate students and rank them, or at least so in your final two years of schooling (and it's actually more than that in some other countries). The system which we have here in Victoria is one of the best ones that I have seen. Sure, it has its faults, but it isn't all that bad. I'll respond to some of your specific points.

•  Acquiring large banks of knowledge is not education. Societal progress is not made through producing students who are well practised in the art of rote memorisation. On the other hand, learning how to analyse, critique and think about data is what a proper education should be about. Encouraging memorisation like the table of ions in Chemistry and exact trigonometric values in Methods is foolish and does nothing to further scientific progress. The same can be said for any subject that requires memorisation, as the real world does not operate under exam conditions.

Firstly, that's not true for all subjects. There are plenty of conceptually-challenging VCE subjects (including English, for example). The ones which do rely on memorisation test more a person's capacity to work hard, which is an extremely important part of most that you will do in life. Ability in cope in high-pressure situations is also an extremely important skill, which is tested through these examinations.

•   Advocating certain subjects and discouraging others such as the arts creates inequity. Encouraging and endorsing certain disciplines by using incentives and mandates makes children who aren’t interested in those disciplines feel severely inadequate. Also, education should be holistic, and mathematics and languages shouldn’t be championed as the only subjects worth doing. Equal educational resources should be allocated to art, music and drama. After all, is education’s primary goal to produce students who can increase GDP or to give students a beneficial learning experience which helps develop their natural curiosities? As to which is the correct answer I don’t think there has ever been much of a question.

I don't see that. At all. Everyone is encouraged to do whatever interests them.

•   Formal education coerces students into accepting authority. This is seen primarily through the enforced deference students must have for their ‘superiors’. In addition, disciplinary councils who aim to enforce their authority on children through verbal tirades endorse this subservience and obedience to authority.

Life.

•   A one-size fits all attitude to education is incredibly naďve and is the height of foolishness. Students are individuals, not machines who can be manufactured on an assembly line to meet required standards of educational performance.

Your belief that there is a possible system which can test every student individually is what is naďve here. This is probably the most important point. As stated above, the education system does need to assess students, as life is about competition. (And if you want to change that, then advocate for a complete reworking of our entire economic system and the fundamentals of our society, rather than going after the education system.) It's impossible to assess every single student based on their own individual needs, which is why we do need a generalised system.

•   A linear model to education is also incredibly naďve. To assume students learn in such a way is an insult to the mind of a child. Often progress is non-linear and can be incredibly rapid or incredibly slow, it all depends on the learning style of the individual.

See above.

•   Schools have ridiculous operating hours which cater for a minority. Ludicrously designed operating hours create fatigue and lethargy among students, who are repeatedly coerced into awakening at prescribed times which conflict greatly to their natural sleeping patterns.

Which they will later have to deal with for the rest of their lives. Better get used to it early. And I'm saying this as a person who usually doesn't get to sleep before 2am and is absolutely dead most days.

•   Compulsory sporting programs are an imitation of military training and an attempt to enforce authority through physical intimidation. These programs provide no benefit to students, as group sports are greatly inferior to individual exercise in terms of health advantages.

Sport education provides the basis for a healthy, active society. Especially now, with our obesity epidemic and low rates of activity, we need to encourage kids to be physically active as much as possible. And unless you can somehow ensure that each child is active individually (can't happen), you need to organise this in a group (same as any other class). Team sports also have many benefits to them.

Oh, lord, usually this is when I say "Okay, then let's see how you fix this", but it turns out your suggestions are even worse than the supposed problems which you have discovered!

•   Students must be allowed to educate themselves.The idea that students are incapable of reading textbooks and learning by themselves in their natural environment is an insult to the capacities of the child. Students should be allowed to learn independently and by themselves in the privacy of their own home.

Actually, one sensible thing. It's entirely possible, I self-taught Methods 1&2.

•   School should be drop-in. Along with the abolition of attendance requirements, students should be allowed to come and go as it suits their educational needs, not forced to come as it fits the needs of the school.

You really trust a bunch of 17-year-olds to be that responsible? You'll end up with a 70% drop-out rate, as people will end up doing nothing out of school. I don't know how motivated I would be to do some of my work if I didn't know I'd have to go to school to show my teachers I understand the material (or hand them in work). You might not like to hear it, but society needs to set compulsory boundaries on its members.

•   Dress codes and other exercises in mass conformity should be abolished. This includes the mandates concerning school sports and certain subjects.

I've gone to schools without uniforms, and sometimes without much of an (enforced) dress code either. A lack of one usually leads to a much worse learning environment, as students' behaviour is not usually at its best.

•   Tests should be administered by students for students. There should be no mandates for any form of testing or assessment. Even the idea of tests in the first place is an insulting concept, because it implies that students aren’t even able to know what they can and cannot do.

Oh my. Like what even?

•   Allocation to university places should be done by interviews which are holistic in nature. These interviews should also encompass the student’s entire educational experience, not just their last year at school.  Also, admission via meaningless numerical scores means people are often ineptly allocated to courses not suited for them. This often forces people who might have been perfect for Science at Melbourne to be funnelled into Teaching at Monash. Obviously this raises enormous questions of resource channelling, but considering you are literally sculpting the future of the Earth by allocating university placements, it is hardly too much to ask for an individual interview for each student.

Which people will end up practicing for and perfecting, especially those with more money. You'll end up with courses costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars, teaching students how to perfect their interview skills (usually by memorisation, which you seem to oppose). I'd much rather students were selected on the basis of their educational achievements than their ability to whip out answers at an interview.

•   English as a subject should be dismantled. All students can speak their native language fluently enough, and considering the only purpose of language is to get across a message, there is no point in forcing students to write in prose about ‘language devices’ that aren’t even remotely persuasive. Too many students are forced to feign their prose because it is impossible to write genuinely about meaningless Herald Sun articles and texts. The amount of bullshit students are forced to invent for English is absurd and the subject has no basis.

First you oppose analysis, and now you want to dismantle what is one of the most demanding subjects in VCE. Yay.

[mark_alec]

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain

2) Nothing stops students or teachers from going beyond what the curriculum requires. Depending on the school and learning environment you are from, mediocrity may very well be discouraged (it was at my school).

3) I agree that "teaching to the test" is undesirable. A good school will do more than that.

4) Why should we not use tests as a tool for judging? Once again, a good school/teacher/student will learn from the test, and will not only be concerned with the 'number'.

5) I agree that writing exams to trick people is poor form. This does not happen everywhere however. English essay questions do not tend to be tricky (though there is often subtlety) and at university exams tend to be much more straightforward.

6) Certain amounts of memorized and 'unthought' knowledge is useful. I find that being able to multiple and manipulate algebraic equations without deep concentration is necessary in understanding many concepts that  I encounter.

7) Nothing in the system does this. Why should equal resources be given everywhere?

The old system used to have take home assessment (I think they were called CATS). SACs are only meant to be done during school time.

9) There is a great scope for choice. The only compulsory subject is an English at the moment. Many would want *all* students to finish high school with a level of competency is other areas, but this is not required at the moment.

10) What is one size fits all? There is a choice of schools, subjects and a large variety of teaching styles. If you want to be home-schooled, you can as well.

11) No, attendance requirements (when a student) are there because otherwise people will waste their time and get up to no good.

12) You do know there are alternative schools that offer things like this.

13) Having people accepting authority is good for societal peace. Are you advocating anarchy?

15) Funding of private schools is a complex issue. Do you advocate banning all forms of private education (but then isn't the government assuming too much control...)

16) What gives you this idea?

17) I agree. Research indicates that high school students would perform better if they started later and finished later.

19) Or you can see them as a valid form of team building, communication skills, cooperative behaviour as well as teaching people how to behave appropriately in competition (sportsman-like behaviour). I think you are using a lot of hyperbole if you think it is military training.

20) Students can do this themselves. If they are motivated, nothing prevents them from reading or studying whatever they want. The evidence is that self-motivated learning typically fails, as can be seen in the massive drop-out rates in MOOCs (massive open online courses)

21) This is a terrible idea.

22) Many schools have relaxed dress codes.

23) And which government is going to oppose all the major and minor religions as well as groups that wish to teach in alternative styles, such as not having uniforms, set year levels, allowing exploration of ideas that interest the students and promoting creativity...

24) I would not trust students. And yes, you don't know what you are capable of until you are tested.

25) As Polonius says below, this is just another form of test, even if you say it is 'holistic'. Having university entrance based on a standardized test makes things easier and fairer for all involved. Moreover, the universities will not pay to be conducting tens of thousands of interviews. I don't understand your example of a student that would have like science being "funnelled" into teaching. One should only put in preferences for courses that they wish to do and there are many avenues to change courses once at university.

26) Writing curricula is hard. As said before there is nothing stopping students or teaching from developing their analytic techniques and learning a broader range of content.

27) Not all students are native English speakers and even of those that are, a large number have extremely poor [written] communication skills.

29) What? You said before that we shouldn't just focus on which courses are more likely to lead to high income careers.

[EvangelionZeta]

I'd respond to this in more detail (attacking individual points) but I think that would obscure the broader problem with this post - that is, that you engage with neither the broader, non-knowledge based outcomes of education, nor with reality.

For better or for worse, schooling is not just so that people can learn as much maths as they want; it's also to teach transferrable skills that are useful in an increasingly complex society, where knowledge's impact is less and less.  Once you get to university, you'll find it's even more the case. 

Moreover, just take a step back and a few minutes, and think about what kind of world your model creates.  Maybe the top tier of students are benefited - what happens though to the rest of society?  To the average child (the majority) who is neither disciplined enough to attend regularly without institutionalised incentives or gifted enough to learn rapidly on their own?  To people from poor communities, where getting attendance is already a challenge as it is?

Finally, I said I wouldn't attack individual arguments, but this point is just silly:

• 27   English as a subject should be dismantled. All students can speak their native language fluently enough, and considering the only purpose of language is to get across a message, there is no point in forcing students to write in prose about ‘language devices’ that aren’t even remotely persuasive. Too many students are forced to feign their prose because it is impossible to write genuinely about meaningless Herald Sun articles and texts. The amount of bullshit students are forced to invent for English is absurd and the subject has no basis.

If you think that the only purpose of language is to "get across a message", then I would invite you to tell me why the same argument can often be so much more persuasive to different people depending on how it is packaged.  Moreover, people might be able to speak English fluently, but that doesn't at all mean that their standard of communication is ideal.  I would go so far to say that we should, in fact, even consider "English" (or at least writing) courses at university as being compulsory, given some of the standards that I see there from otherwise highly intelligent and educated people.  In this day and age, nothing will put you in better stead than good communication skills and (as English often teaches) solid critical thinking.

[Russ]

Yeah, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt until I got to the bit where you compared PE to military indoctrination.

[Drunk]

Keep in mind that these judgements that you're making are based on your experience of secondary school, which, in my opinion, is hardly your idea of education - this I agree with. Primary and secondary school is just the beginning of your education and although it might seem to have been a long journey, you haven't seen anything yet. I remember having a similar mindset as you at one point, but having started uni, it's really opened my eyes as to the endless possibilities of what can be researched, which is where the "real" education begins.

Although seemingly mundane, your early years of education are necessary in preparing you to be able to comprehend what's being discussed in uni, like your ions or trig ratios.  You say educational institutions prevent students from pursuing further enquiry into subject matter because of a strict curriculum, but it can hardly be realistically expected for a typical 17 year old to be researching undiscovered areas in science or what have you - this is what is expected of a PhD student.

You recognise the importance of being analytical and critical in your thinking, but this is an impossibility without having knowledge in the first place. How can someone analyse something if they don't understand it? And how can they understand it if they don't know it? Education is cumulative. You do get a choice in what you want to study eventually, but you need to understand the basics first before you get that choice.

Our system is what you make of it really. While our educational system serves as a competition amongst students, where they can compete for a uni placing or a graduate position, it does endorse further study (moreso in uni), with students continuing to complete their masters or doctorates instead of necessarily joining the workforce, which in turn further develops society with new discoveries etc.

Given all this, I wouldn't exactly say our system is going down the shitter in terms of providing the means for an education - it's worked quite well up to now as new discoveries are being made all the time

edit - ok so having actually finished reading your post now, I'm forced to say that your expectations of secondary school are just too far-fetched and quite simply ridiculous

[tao]

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

I can confirm that under your model of schooling, the attendance rate would be less than 10% at some schools. There is nothing wrong with PE and school stifles nothing, if your passion is X and if they don't teach X at your school, go home on your own and learn it or find someone who can teach it to you. The schooling system is fine the way it is. As always in life, it's easy to point out the flaws in a system but it's a lot harder to create a new system that doesn't generate more flaws.

I suggest you spend your time on something better than trying to fix a system that isn't broken that the large of majority of people think is about the best the system can be.

I'll show you an example of one of your points that people probably sympathise with:
"• 5   Exams that are designed to separate, beguile and trick students into getting answers wrong are foolish inventions that are of zero value to anyone. Often, highly learned students are told they are inadequate because others studied previous exam papers more intensely."

In high school, you have a wide-range of abilities, it's not like at university where you are setting exams in some courses for students who are the best 10% or so. You need to equally cater for the worst student as you do the best student and you also need to separate students from best to worst. Because of this, you can't really make a course that challenges the top 10% of students or at least 80% of the students in the state will struggle. So how do you separate them? Tricks in exams are pretty much the only avenue. I know for methods at least when I did it, I remember when the teacher needed to separate 3 of us in the year level who had straight 100%s through the semester, she gave a challenging SAC that one of us scored 95% on and then 94% and then 89%. The next highest score was literally about 30% or so. So the system is hard to improve on.

[ninwa]

More small-l liberal bullshit...

Oh please, I am small-l liberal and I would never propose this rubbish

[Professor Polonsky]

Oh please, I am small-l liberal and I would never propose this rubbish

I know, I know. But this kinda stuff usually seems to come from liberals disgruntled with wherever they currently are in the world, as it's not being specifically catered for them. This whole hyper-individualistic viewpoint completely ignores that society has to provide for all of its members, and your exact needs won't be met.

[mark_alec]

I think you'll find the 'Liberals' probably complain about all the artsy-fartsy, let's think that everyone is equally brilliant stuff in schools and 'it is a place to nurture your creativity' is the problem, and that they should focus on core 'real' subjects.

[Will T]

Okay some of this may have been exaggerated and outlandish. I was in a strange mood when I wrote it and I've edited things..... But here are some replies to individual points.

More small-l liberal bullshit... Do you have a petition for this too? Okay, a serious response now.

The harsh truth about our society is that it's competitive, and you need to justify why you're better than someone else in order to get into university / a job et cetera. That's not the education system's fault.

The fact that the education system breeds people like you who think they can somehow "justify" that they are "better" than others because of academic credentials lends great credence to its failures (and reflects the failings of the foundations of our society). What's your point? You won the genetic lottery and therefore the rest of the masses don't deserve the same wage or bonuses as you because you're such a hyper-intelligent individual? Or do you even have the nerve to say you're "better" than them because you work harder when you know full well that almost all of what you are is a direct product of the environment you were raised in? I think it is highly shameful to even attempt to "justify" that you are somehow more deserving than someone else.

I don't see that. At all. Everyone is encouraged to do whatever interests them.

Right. Which is why we have government induced LOTE scaling and ridiculous scaling bonuses for subjects like Specialist Mathematics which cannot in any meaningful sense represent the difficulty of the cohort, +12 is far too distorted (and if you look at the strength of the scaling, it remains +12 from the 30-40 range). So I would have to disagree, there are certainly incentives for certain subjects, which means that students who don't choose to study them are actually disadvantaged.

Life.

Saying that things should stay the way they are because they are the way they are is a fairly hopeless argument.

First you oppose analysis, and now you want to dismantle what is one of the most demanding subjects in VCE. Yay.

Well I certainly don't view it as demanding. I think the amount of prose that must be feigned in order to get a good mark is incredibly stupid. I direct this towards EZ as well, I do not see where the criticality and analysis is in English? Perhaps my school is unique in this regard, but all the teachers and students operate under a parrot-like mechanism where the students reverberate whatever the teacher says and that constitutes English classes. Hardly analytical. If it's not like that elsewhere, I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see past the boundaries of my own experiences.

Yeah, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt until I got to the bit where you compared PE to military indoctrination.

Fair enough. That was a stupid hyperbole and I've edited it out.

If you think that the only purpose of language is to "get across a message", then I would invite you to tell me why the same argument can often be so much more persuasive to different people depending on how it is packaged.

Well.... how much truth is there to that? I would have to return the invitation to you, because I don't see how the facts are made to be more persuasive when they are presented with different words.

I can confirm that under your model of schooling, the attendance rate would be less than 10% at some schools.

I don't know how you can possibly claim to know this but okay...? Also, if your statistic was true, that should reflect the fact that the system has indeed alienated a lot of people, although you claim a majority seem to think it's fine the way it is? I find those two statements irreconcilable.

In high school, you have a wide-range of abilities, it's not like at university where you are setting exams in some courses for students who are the best 10% or so. You need to equally cater for the worst student as you do the best student and you also need to separate students from best to worst. Because of this, you can't really make a course that challenges the top 10% of students or at least 80% of the students in the state will struggle. So how do you separate them? Tricks in exams are pretty much the only avenue. I know for methods at least when I did it, I remember when the teacher needed to separate 3 of us in the year level who had straight 100%s through the semester, she gave a challenging SAC that one of us scored 95% on and then 94% and then 89%. The next highest score was literally about 30% or so. So the system is hard to improve on.

Would it actually matter if the curriculum was revamped to be tougher and people struggled more? The claim right now is that it doesn't matter how you score, it only matters how you score comparatively, so in that sense, shouldn't it make no difference if large volumes of higher-level challenging content were incorporated, as your comparative ranking would still be the only concerning factor? That would solve the problem of needlessly deceitful exams without generating any more problems?

[Professor Polonsky]

The fact that the education system breeds people like you who think they can somehow "justify" that they are "better" than others because of academic credentials lends great credence to its failures (and reflects the failings of the foundations of our society). What's your point? You won the genetic lottery and therefore the rest of the masses don't deserve the same wage or bonuses as you because you're such a hyper-intelligent individual? Or do you even have the nerve to say you're "better" than them because you work harder when you know full well that almost all of what you are is a direct product of the environment you were raised in? I think it is highly shameful to even attempt to "justify" that you are somehow more deserving than someone else.

Actually, I think I'm an example of a pretty pathetic outlier who gets scores they don't deserve, and are ranked by our educational system way too highly. But yes, absolutely, our current society is based on supply and demand. You have to rank people, so you can select the best ones. ATARs allow universities to select the students most deserving of a place in university. It's actually entirely possible to earn a high wage without university education or even completing secondary education - and the top top earners a lot of the time aren't in fact the top achievers in school.

So yes, our current society is based upon rewarding certain people with higher wages than others, supposedly to provide an incentive to people. If you don't like the fact that some people get higher wages than others, then you are suggesting structural changes to our society. It's fine, I dabble into revolutionary socialism from time to time, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Just spell out and admit that what you're having a go at here are the fundamentals of our society's structure and economic basis, rather the educational system.

Right. Which is why we have government induced LOTE scaling and ridiculous scaling bonuses for subjects like Specialist Mathematics which cannot in any meaningful sense represent the difficulty of the cohort, +12 is far too distorted (and if you look at the strength of the scaling, it remains +12 from the 30-40 range). So I would have to disagree, there are certainly incentives for certain subjects, which means that students who don't choose to study them are actually disadvantaged.

Sure, the LOTE scaling is a government initiative to get people to do languages. I'm happy to question the legitimacy of that, but from there to conjecture that the only subjects which are supposedly worth doing are languages (and Spesh) is pretty baseless. The subjects with the highest enrolment figures include Further, Pscyhology, HHD and Business Management. And people with very high ATARs do those subjects.