NATIONAL CURRICULUM DEBATE-COMME

As the Federal election looms nearer the debate about a National Curriculum is gaining more attention and vigour. It would appear that the implementation of such a policy, not unlike the steamroller approach that saw the introduction of GST in Australia, is inevitable; as evidenced in the article Labor the lesser of two Evils, by Liberal Judith Wheeldon. So what will be the implications of such far reaching legislation?
National standards are being hailed as the great policy that will allow a more even playing field and see the state boundries as mere lines in the sand that students will no longer be effected by. I think that the ideal of everyone having a benchmark to strive toward and beyond is a good thing but find the argument of unity through homogenisation both erroneous and degrading. and in fact dangerous. The wonderful motto of the Indonesian government springs to mind- Unity through Diversity. Education today in this country is still being administered as a service, as opposed to a creative higher order venture moving towards experience and transformation.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial world-wide test of 15-year-old schoolchildren's scholastic performance, developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD in 1997. Australian education has been identified by PISA as lacking the intellectual ideals of evaluation, synthesis and analysis.
We already know that only 10% of Australian actually achieve higher order thinking.
The aim of the PISA study is to test and compare schoolchildren's performance across the world, with a view to improving and standardising educational methods.
Sadly, it already appears that the Australian government and policy advisers are one click out by limiting their identified standardising core values to mainstream academic subjects, totally negating what, in my opinion, is the darling of the Gods: the arts.
If such standardization as is being suggested is to occur, will it lead to a competitive market for ‘Core Value’ schools that become nothing more than a factory for achieving academic results that place the school on a nationally rated index thus entitling it to greater resources/funding. This reeks of intellectual elitism and could produce the most unbalanced dysfunctional generation this country has seen.
My other deep concern is how, for example. physics will be taught to 6-7 year olds. The implications appear to be that the ‘start em early’ policy will be adopted, thus seeing these wonderful enthusiastic children being treated as little adults. Didn’t Piaget warn us about this danger 100 years ago.
New Directions for our schools-Establishing a National Curriculum to improve our children's educational outcomes, is the Labor Party's document outlining the direction in which their policy is being developed. This document was actually developed 8 years ago under Mark Latham's influence. It occurred at a time when the knowledge economy was still the prevalent parlance of such coomodities, unlike the present climate of the creative economy.