http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/larissa-dubecki/2008/04/07/1207420296238.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1Smart kids deserve our help, too
Larissa Dubecki
April 8, 2008
It's unfair to sacrifice bright students for a misguided ideology.
WE WEREN'T always so proud of our school, my MacRob buddies and I. Going to socials held by neighbouring boys' schools it was easier to say we went to St Catherine's or Merton Hall than to live Dorothy Parker's adage that boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses (or who enjoy advanced classes).
But some necessary social obfuscation aside, it was pretty evident from the first week at MacRobertson Girls' High, a government school that accepts students from years 9 to 12 based on academic performance, that we'd landed on our sensibly shod feet in a place that was vastly different to the mostly government, mostly suburban, schools we had come from.
For me, the light-bulb moment was realising I no longer had to deliberately mess up my grammar and spelling to slip under the bullies' radar. It was also the not-so-thrilling realisation that if I wanted to be at the top of the class, I'd have to damn well work hard for it.
The Victorian Government last week announced the detail of a pre-election promise to build two more selective secondary schools in Melbourne in addition to MacRob and its boys' equivalent, Melbourne High. The two co-ed campuses will be built at a cost of $40 million in growth areas Berwick (for 1200 students) and Wyndham Vale (800 students), with plans to open for year 9 students in 2010.
Now, no one likes a smart-arse, and MacRob and Melbourne High aren't exactly popular among much of their state school fraternity. The usual ideology-driven objections have been raised over the plan for their co-ed clones. The accusation that they are elitist has been thrown down like an unanswerable slur.
It seems an incongruous accusation, given that we accept elitism in most other facets of life, including our education system. Private schools — and there's nothing more elitist than a good education being predicated on wealth — are an entrenched part of the system, but when it comes to giving a few hundred children a year an escape hatch from a system often ill-suited to their needs, suddenly it's a problem. Elitism is commendable when it comes to sport; no one accuses the Australian Institute of Sport of being somehow unfair to the rest of the population.
At the lower end of the academic spectrum, children with learning disabilities are catered for with special programs. But the students who happen to be bright and possibly, God forbid, enjoy learning, are being asked to submit themselves to classrooms in which the all-too-familiar scenario features harried teachers struggling to keep control over a disruptive minority. In all the debate there's precious little talk about the high-achieving students themselves.
There's plenty of concern for the students at the lower end of the spectrum; namely the fear that standards will drop without some mythical stabilising influence from the ones at the top.
We've seen plenty of newspaper articles on the subject with headlines such as "Don't let schools lose their best", like individual students are trophies. One Sydney academic has even argued against selective schools on the basis that they remove the pupils who provide a challenge to the teachers, an idea that would be worthy of the Comedy Festival if it wasn't simultaneously so bleak.
But while educationalists talk about the "pilot effect", in which higher-achieving students supposedly lead their classmates by being role models, it ignores the sad reality that plenty of high schools are dog-eat-dog worlds in which smarter children turn their talents to hiding their ability rather than celebrating it. At the local high school I survived for two miserable years, it was — how do I put this delicately? — perhaps not medically advisable to volunteer to lead class discussions.
Education Minister Bronwyn Pike also announced last week the raising of the cap from 3% to 5% on the number of students allowed to leave any individual school to attend a selective school. Critics say the increase will inflict further pain on garden-variety high schools, but the argument is based on the assumption that everyone who can go selective will take the option. In my experience, some sit the exam only to knock back a resulting offer. Others, mostly those with well-established peer networks, prefer to stay where they are, or are turned off at the prospect of a daily commute. Anyway, even if a small handful of students were to depart some schools, it would have far less impact than the increasingly common practice of internal streaming, in which schools cream off the top 25 or so students in each year level and put them in a specialist class.
Some students will thrive no matter where they go. Many won't. The advocates of a trickle-down education system are utterly naive. And utterly heartless when it comes to the sacrifice they're willing to make to "fix" the ailing government system. It's not the smart kids' job to try to turn it around. More often than not they'll just end up dumbing themselves down rather than raising the standards for everyone.
Using the bright children as the canaries in the mineshaft is all very good for the miners but it sucks for the canaries. I don't know what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone to a selective school. I'm pretty sure it would have been a lot different. And I'm glad that another few hundred children a year will have a chance to change their lives, too.
Larissa Dubecki is a staff writer.
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