Page 379 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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Dealing with adolescent young adults is, of course, one of the most difficult challenges for any teacher. It seems to me that one thing that is going to make or break the high schools is a recognition of just how difficult that is and what the challenges are. The discussion paper that was put out by Mr Wood and various attempts by principals and others throughout the ACT have wrestled with just what we can do in order to give our high schools the same sort of concept of success as goes with our colleges in particular and also our primary schools.
It seems to me that high schools have suffered a great deal under the cutbacks of recent years. We all know that education is expensive; but the price of an uninformed, self-conscious and angry graduate is much greater in the long run. So, what do we need to do in terms of the high schools? I think we have done a great deal of the reviewing. It is now time to stop reviewing ad nauseam and be prepared to take action to implement the program. The high school principals are clearly ready for reform, and teachers in the system are also ready for reform. Most importantly, the people for whom the system is designed, the students, although they may not be consciously aware of it, seem to be ready for some kind of reform.
Mr Cornwell, in his speech, said that he wondered whether anything could be achieved by throwing more money at the high schools. Of course, often people say, "The answer to everything is simply to throw more money into it, but the truth of the matter is that we do not have more money". That is not the truth of the matter. The truth of the matter is that we have determined that our priorities are such that we will spend less on education and more on other areas. In terms of a comparison between us and other States, we can look at the Grants Commission, which says, "You already spend more money than anybody else on education". Those figures need to be looked at very carefully to see what is achieved in the ACT in education, what people in the ACT want out of education and how much we want to spend on education. In the ACT in particular, education is considered a very high priority by the community, as is revealed in poll after poll. I think the Liberals will agree that their polling shows that education is considered a very high priority, as seems to come out time and again.
We need to look at a curriculum that addresses the need for our future generations to be creative problem solvers, lateral thinkers who are environmentally aware and socially responsible. We know, of course, that very depressing statistics being gathered at the present time show that a very high proportion of young people between the ages of 15 and 21 are committing suicide. It is a very sad thing, and it is of course at the extreme of the problems of young people.
When we hear the Liberals speak of education, as we did yesterday with Mr Cornwell, we hear them constantly talk about the need for skills testing. Their focus on skills testing is a focus on the three Rs. One wonders about the Liberal attitude on these issues, especially when one reads in the ACIL document the comment about schools. It might reflect the sort of attitude the Liberals have. I will read just a small amount:
Schools. Last year's controversy over funding of non-government schools was a disgrace, showing Labor's 'politics of envy' at its worst.
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