Remember back in the day when schools were managed by educators, who were able to interpret a syllabus to develop a curriculum that supported learning outcomes and engaged the imagination of students at the school?
Remember when schools strived to be at the leading edge of the learning process? When diversity was valued and nurtured? When the goal was to be “the best”, not “the same”?
The curriculum offered by NSW public schools is increasingly being restricted by bureaucrats who have not one zot of interest in, let alone any understanding of, education, schools, children, learning, or pedagogy.
NSW bureaucrats are dumbing-down the public education curriculum to align with their own narrow, blinkered view of the world, rather than providing the leadership required to construct vibrant and innovative learning environments in our schools.
We saw another example of this blinkered, dumbed-down, take-no-risks approach this week when the “leader” of the technology infrastructure in NSW schools stated, in an article in The Australian newspaper, that “the education revolution laptop scheme is not going to look at iPads”. Why? Because, among other things, “the iPad [is] incapable of carrying the school-issue software package used in laptops”, while a spokesman for his counterpart in the ACT said “[the iPad] was difficult to support as a centrally managed device”.
So there we go. That’s it. Not even going to consider it. Doesn’t fit our old model.
After more than two decades working for a multi-national healthcare company, the NSW DET Chief Information Officer (CIO), and a similarly well-qualified spokesperson for the ACT education department, have made the decision, on behalf of schools in their jurisdictions, to not even trial a new and exciting piece of technology in public schools because:
a) they can’t install their traditional “office” software applications on the device; and
b) they can’t apply their centralist management policies to ‘control’ it!!!
Where were the Teaching & Learning leaders in making such a decision? – Invisible.
Have we heard anything from the departmental Directors responsible for Teaching and Learning? - Not a word.
Do they know anything about the use of mobile devices, or alternative software applications, in teaching and learning? - Apparently not.
Have our educational leaders considered the use of alternatives to “traditional office software” to enhance learning opportunities in our schools? Or alternative devices to “laptops” to support learning? Do they even know that they exist? Have they considered the learning opportunities that might become available as a result of deploying iPads (or any other non-traditional mobile communication devices) in schools? Not a chance. In most cases schools ban the use of such mobile devices outright, and use web filters to block access to publicly available alternatives to “traditional” software applications.
The result of this bureaucratic option-strangling, and the inability of senior educators to make any meaningful contribution to the decision-making process, is that we risk creating dull, narrow, uninteresting, de-motivating learning environments that increasingly provide less challenges to motivated students, and struggle to manage students who don’t fit “the mold”. All innovative ideas are blocked. The locked-down, traditional approach is the “safe” approach. No risks.
The only software on the horizon of these technology bureaucrats is the software that they have used in their own little world for the last 15 years – the same bloated software on which they have now spent millions of public dollars in licensing fees for traditional school computers. Software that may be widely used in the corporate world, but has little application in Stage 1 classrooms.
But how would they know? They have never engaged with the learning environment in a Stage 1 classroom. Or any other classroom. Yet they are dictating how educators use ICT in these environments.
Who is running the show? Are schools there to support the whims of the technology bureaucrats, or should the bureaucrats be supporting the needs of schools?
It is clear that the pendulum has swung very much in favour of a model that encourages mediocrity, where people with technology blinkers, and no educational background, are imposing a straight-jacket on the learning opportunities available in public schools.
How are the bureaucrats getting away with this? Because the senior “educators”, who should be driving the agenda, have been there for too long. They are from the “old school”. They have been slowly and surely promoted through a system that favours “yes” people. Plodders. Careers in offices, away from the classroom. They don’t understand new technologies. They are not prepared to speak up, because they lack the knowledge to debate the issues. They are close to retirement and don’t want to jeopardise their cushy positions or their generous government-sponsored super-annuation packages.
They are asleep at the wheel.
Our public schools, our students and our teachers, will be paying for this incompetence for years to come.
