Page 1915 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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MR BERRY: What I am concerned about, Mr Collaery, is that the people who keep saying they support small businesses have ratted on them, in the same way as they ratted on the people who elected them. This Government has not even taken the time to inquire as to the effects of school closures on small business. More importantly, and again from a social justice point of view, this Government is ripping the guts out the communities where schools play an important role. Twenty to 25 schools and 20 to 25 communities have been targeted.
MR STEVENSON (11.33): Mr Speaker, understandably, people in Canberra are concerned about education predominantly and they are concerned about school closures. I think there is one major area that we should be vitally concerned about - the standard of education that our children are getting and, indeed, that we ourselves received. There are many questions that I feel have not been fully answered.
The first question is: do we know how good our education system is? What valid criteria are there for measuring the advancement of children through our schools? How do we know that their ability to apply what they learn is being measured? Indeed, when we look at ACT schools, how do we know that ours are better - or worse - than schools in New South Wales? Where are the practical and valid criteria for measuring these things?
When we look at standards of education there are some glaring inconsistencies in our education system, not only in the ACT specifically but also in Australia as a whole. One of the most amazing things that I have ever noted about our education is that in all the time we spend in such a system we are never taught how to study effectively. It might sound a little unusual that someone could be in an education system for 12 years or longer and never effectively learn how to study. If anybody here thinks that children are taught how to study effectively, let me tell them that I have dealt with a lot of children and far more adults, and I believe that generally people do not know how to study effectively. For example, anyone who attempts to study anything without a dictionary is merely playing at it. If you do not understand the words, you certainly cannot understand the concepts.
It is quite often said that there are certain concepts that we do not understand. There has never been a concept that people have not understood; it is simply a word or words within that concept. One of the things that we should do with our education system and any other area in which people are required to learn is make sure that they have the basic building blocks of how to learn. That would start simply enough with a dictionary. It may sound simplistic, but the importance of that is absolutely paramount. For example, in the Inner London Education Authority, which probably has more kids than the whole of Australia, children selected at random were given a one-week course. During that course, the children's reading
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