Dr David Warner

Principal

ELTHAM College of Education.

In a recent article on trust, David Loader (Educare, 2002) penned the line: …we have claimed the classroom as ours and fought to ensure that it could not be violated…  Loader was referring to others as Principals, inspectors and other teachers, but I want to take some license and suggest that often the others are seen as students, in particular today, boys.  The analogy can apply to the whole culture of industrial age schooling, premised on 19^th century curriculum and twentieth century management control.

Boys today are remarkable exploiters of technology and the multimedia society in which they live.  The skills they possess in these areas coupled with the enormous information they can access, make them extraordinarily different from their previous generations.  There is confidence, a great sense of enjoyment, considerable collaboration with their peers, creativity and problem solving capability.  They understand their music and culture, can differentiate between sub-cultures, can critique fashion and discriminate media hype and advertising.  They explore film, video and dvd and can create interesting sound systems and amateur film.  They can enjoy and analyse sport and sporting personalities.  They have a fair handle on themselves and don’t see too much wrong with being “me” focused, but within the context of supporting their mates.  They can distinguish between right and wrong and make informed choices when they want to.

These great attributes start early.  Not too many require adult help with GameBoys, Playstations, Nintendos and computer games from about five years of age.  They seek help from their mates and problem solve with them.  They connect their games and collaborate.  Most can save and direct their purchasing to what they want.  They demonstrate as highly disciplined learners, able to focus, give time-to-task, give effort and achieve.

In fact, most are pretty capable outside the school and classroom!  Many, however, react against learning situations that involve their putting away their talents, skills and interests and taking on stale classroom corners.  Their living and learning is fast-paced, just like their computer games, music and sport.  Their attention is multifaceted, but often short as they move from one activity or screen to the next.  Thirty to sixty minutes where they are required to focus on one area of often seemingly irrelevant curriculum does not sit comfortably with the lives they lead or their perceptions of the world around them.

Stop!  Why am I just talking about boys?  I guess mainly because the media hype focuses on them (as well as House of Representative Standing Committees).  Yet, I don’t see much difference in the skills, talents and perceptions that girls have of the world in which they live.  I suspect, for example, that young women use SMS messaging and chat rooms for communication more frequently than young men.  They too are strongly part of the new world.  Generally, however, they are more accepting of the classroom, control and curriculum.  I suspect that this will not last and increasing numbers will rally, like many of the boys, against an environment that is out of sync with their real world. 

If we look beneath the surface even now, we may well find that the difference and, therefore, the attention is on boys’ more active, loud and physical behaviour.  That this is a distraction for teachers and adults is not in question, but to simply blame boys for it is in question. Lets also take a little historical license.  If we asked those teachers who were in classrooms prior to the development of affirmative action policies for young women (girls can do anything), I suspect many would remember that feeling of dread at dealing with Year 8-10 girls!  As usual, we took a narrow view of the issue by simply focusing on action for girls, and we certainly needed to take affirmative action.  However, with hindsight, we needed more properly to address the whole culture of schooling, its curriculum and its teaching-learning approaches.

I will hypthesise that our concern for boys, if not addressed appropriately, will become equally our concern for all young people within this decade.  However, it is not simply looking for affirmative action for boys, but rather looking at the whole question of schooling for young people in the 21^st century.

We have increased school retention remarkably over the last twenty years, not because schooling has become better but because, in the emerging knowledge era, there are fewer jobs and opportunities in the traditional less skilled areas of the labour market.  This in itself has become a problem for boys, indeed all young people.  They have to stay on and be subjected largely to curriculum designed for the much smaller numbers in previous years that stayed at school to go onto university. 

Needless to state the obvious.  This is not the problem of young people!  It is our problem-society, governments and educators.  Not only have we not created appropriate curriculum and learning environments we have kept schooling out of touch with their remarkably transformed world.  While some call for a return to the past with technical or vocational schools, these too will fail because the old technical schools have nothing to do with responding to the remarkable skills and world-views that young people have.  Vocational education in schools will only work effectively when it is seen as important to the experiences of all young people, not just for those who find the traditional academic not their “cup of tea”.  But yes, you say!  A bit of applied, hands-on technical work will keep them busy and they will be less of a problem.  What a dreadful answer for young people living in the knowledge era!  It is the easy cop-out.  Equally, to focus on a traditional academic/liberal education curriculum for some or all, will not provide any answers.

So, where do we go?

First, we have to make the obvious, if hard, decision that the problem is not with young people.  If anything, they are victims of a 20^th century (possibly 19^th century) belief system that is premised on the outdated industrial paradigm.  We need to recognize that, while boys might be pushing harder at the moment, it is about all young people and their schooling experiences.

Second, we as adults have to recognize that the world of young people is different to our world.  They are of the information age and Knowledge Paradigm.  Symbolically, their world can be found in keyboard access to the Internet where they are not scared to push the button.  They take risks that most of us as adults will not take.  A risk-taking generation is confronting a conservative, non-risk taking generation.  It could be challenging and even fun, but we are scared by it.  We have to confront our fears and try to understand their world.  Once we understand it we can work with them to create schooling that engages them.

Third, we have to continue to look closely at our curriculum, the learning experiences we create, the co-curricular activities we offer and how we express our philosophies of working with young people.

Fourth, we need to actually identify the teaching skills and attitudes that are compatible with young people in the Knowledge Era and that will move them forward and engage them in the schooling process.  If we still rely on old methodologies of classroom management and didactic teaching, young people will continue to disengage.  Now it is mainly boys, but tomorrow it will be both boys and girls.

Fifth, we need to review our architectural concepts and designs for schools and our timetabling.  Traditional four-walled classrooms and timetables based on set periods of time so firmly entrenched for traditional subjects are not working, particularly for younger and middle schooling aged students.

Sixth, we need our universities, home to critical research and development and of a critical questioning of society, to find and ask the big picture questions about education and schooling in society.  Sadly, those areas of universities that can attract industry research partnerships seem to be the most valued, but we do not recognise that schooling and education is our most significant industry and seek large-scale support for educational research and development.  Where is the foundation for research into schooling set up by the major corporations because they recognise that without effective schooling and post-school education the Australian economy will increasingly become less competitive in a global knowledge economy?

Seventh, we need to recognize that the knowledge era also is about sharing knowledge.  We need to share what is working and be honest with each other about what is not working.  An important part of this is being able to recognize that continuing to push the traditional is to deny the enormous changes occurring in the lives of young people.  Of course we can still control, but that will not do very much for ensuring we do something about disengagement and, therefore, the very fabric of our society in the competitive global village, the knowledge economy.