MY attention was immediately ensnared yesterday, when on opening The Mercury there it was: a headline bold enough to sink the Titanic, and the revelation below it that Don Watson —author of such contributions to linguistic debate as Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language and A Dictionary of Weasel Words — didn’t really think all that much of the jargon which has pervaded the development and implementation of the Essential Learnings Framework in Tasmanian schools.
Well, I thought to myself, over my sausage roll in the lunch room. There’s a surprise. The headline read, in reference to the Framework: Simply Put, It Fails.
The Essential Learnings is frequently couched in terms of ‘world’s best practice’ and ‘cutting edge in curriculum reform’. (Before I go any further, I will permit myself a whinge over the name ‘Essential Learnings’ — firstly, it’s a tautology, and secondly, the use of the word learnings as a plural is somewhat clumsy and, I suspect, grammatically incorrect. But that’s not for here.
I managed to escape the increasingly cloistered confines of the classroom just before they were implemented, so I have escaped the rigours and stresses of having to translate them into effective pedagogy. As a lecturer in pre-service teacher education, however, I have become cognisant with the wholesale changes they represent for how teachers plan work, teach content and monitor progress.
Many of the theories that drive the ELs Framework are well grounded and pertain to generating intellectually stimulating and engaging units of work. I have some concerns with some finer points of the Framework, particularly its bias towards a homogenised curriculum where particular disciplines become melded into ‘blocks’ on the timetable, with names like Inquiry Learning and so on, and also a perceived confusion of the terms ‘curriculum’ and ‘pedagogy’, but on the whole, there is considerable benefit to be found in applying many of the theoretical principles (such as Teaching for Understanding) on which the Framework has been developed.
I should also add that it mirrors similar approaches that other states have taken, although this is a double edged sword: it signifies a global shift in the ethos of curriculum development and so on, but at the same it’s difficult to wonder why we have to follow anyone else’s lead or, to use a euphemistic expression, keep up with the neighbours. The times they are a-changin’, I suppose.
However, the biggest mistake by far that has been made with the development of this Framework, which has plagued it from the beginning, has been the complete adoption and repetition of the convoluted jargon that Watson referred to in yesterday’s piece in The Mercury as Stalinist language. Phrases such as those which are enmeshed in the Framework documentation, mostly because they are drawn from the cognitive and curriculum theory that has informed the Framework, are not and never were aimed at the Mums and Dads. Other phraseology is a direct adoption of new Corporate Speak, of the kind that Watson demolishes in his latest books.
It may be pertinent to ask how Watson got his hands on the information; there certainly seems to be an agenda to undermine the Framework, and if possible embarrass the Department of Education and/or the Education Minister, Paula Wriedt, along the way.
An example of language decay
Shadow Minister Peter Gutwein has been vocal (as he is again in today’s Mercury) about this rather serious shortcoming in the selling of the Framework to the wider Tasmanian community. It may be that someone has fed the ELs documentation to Watson, knowing full well what his reaction would be; I can relate though that Watson mentioned the Framework as an example of ‘language decay’ during the launch of A Dictionary of Weasel Words here in Launceston at the end of last year, so he has been aware of the insidiousness of its language for at least that long.
The implementation of the Framework has certainly been controversial, as numerous Letters to Editors have attested. But in spite of any conjecture, any conspiracy theories, any navel gazing, this reasonable assertion remains clear: Watson has a point.
Today’s Mercury reports that the DoE has published a Jargon Buster on its website, and a selection of the parent/student populace of schools around Hobart were canvassed to see if they knew what some of the key phrases mean. One parent, when asked what a rubric is, replies that he has no idea, and then asks: “Was there a rubric’s cube?” Responses like this should be setting off alarm bells somewhere in the DoE.
In my humble opinion, parents as a key stakeholder group have been alienated by the adoption of a Framework built on an impenetrable, largely unknowable language. (At least, unknowable to anyone without a teaching degree or a thesaurus, and in some cases even the thesaurus would be of limited use.) It’s one thing to bandy around phrases like ‘world’s best practice’ and ‘cutting edge curriculum development’: it’s another to shoot yourself in the foot by making that practice, that development, inaccessible. While many schools have been proactive in disseminating information to parents and their communities, the essential burning question remains: why obscure such an important and influential shift in the education of our children in such jargon in the first place?
I had a Rubik’s Cube when I was a kid. I could never solve it; no matter how often I twisted it, how much time I spent puzzling over it, I never got it. I could get one side of complete colour, which I remember counting as a minor victory, but the other five sides remained a jumble of different coloured squares.
I wonder how many parents in this state have viewed the language utilised in the Essential Learnings Framework with the same level of frustration? No matter how often they read it, meaning may never emerge. Watson also mentions in his critique that this should be taken as a sign that they are still literate. He’s right about that, too.
Cameron Hindrum lectures in Language and Literacy at the University of Tasmania, Launceston.
