Article
Education: Taking focus away from core business …
LEONARD COLQUHOUN
It seems to me that many of the difficulties, let alone the problems (both lumped together today as ‘issues’), of current administration and with public policy, can be boiled down to one major factor – taking focus away from core business.
Look at, say, the sorts of nonsense which teachers and police are asked to do, so much of which has almost nought to do with teaching stuff to school students, or with nabbing thieves and thugs, murderers and rapists.
Another example: too many union officials took their eyes off the core business of their orgs, and hared off after tangential PC causes, or used union office-holding to whore off after political fame.
Then there are all these ‘visions’ – mostly turning out to be far from ‘splendid’ – which usurp getting on with the job. Our peculiar Tasmanian one is to ‘lead Australia’ in X, Y or Z. The outcomes speak for themselves.
Finally, there’s the “Tasmania Tomorrow” sort of stuff and guff which, despite the spin-doctored title, has to be done Yesterday. Correlating immediately needed decisions with decisions made immediately seems to be far more miss than hit.
This Mercury story about the Premier’s Academy and Polytechnic changes (always sold as ‘reforms’) to secondary schooling, and many of the attached posts, illustrates this point –
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/09/08/95941_tasmania-news.html .
There are clear benefits to separate courses catering for different needs, but Bartlett’s Let’s Do It Yesterday approach has all but wiped them out.