Understanding Education - Article Example

Critical Review: Reconstructing Childhood by Noeline Kyle Noeline Kyle’s Reconstructing Childhood is about the rise of compulsory mass schooling of children in Australia beginning in the 19th century and how this phenomenon changed children’s lives and the lives of their families. Kyle’s article put emphasis on mass schooling introduced in the 19th century even before the reform clauses of free, compulsory and secular education were strictly enforced. It came about driven by the need of the Australian government to develop an educated and competent workforce that will allow the country to compete with the rest of the world at the time when massive industrialization was going on in Great Britain and America. It would seem that Kyle’s objective in writing this article was to show that mass schooling had radically altered the lives of both children and their families, although it did not necessarily create equality and social justice. In proving her point, Kyle cited the differences between how children and families lived their lives before and after the imposition of the mass schooling, a phenomena Kyle termed reconstructing childhood and social reconstruction. Education, for example, was largely a family concern before the implementation of the mass schooling but the latter’s imposition not only shifted the matter of education in the hands of the professional experts such as the teacher but it reconstructed the social life of children in the sense that their lives now revolve around school activities more than their family. In addition, Kyle noted that families whose parents were used to having their children help them economically through labor, not only find themselves on their own but also had to alter their family style to accommodate the expenses entailed by sending their children to schools, a fact especially true with the lower class families. Critical Review: What Does Economic Management Have to do with Education by Peter Meadmore This article written by Peter Meadmore details the management styles employed by the Australian government on public education since 100 years ago to the present. The objective of the article is to point out how the Australian education system arrived at its present set up of school-based system as a result of the devolution process undertaken by the government since the mid-1980s. The present set up which is conceptualized along the corporate managerialist lines, where the private sector’s involvement is integrated into a public function, brought about not as a means to enhance it but primarily as a response to the worldwide predominantly economic discourses like globalisation and free market. The author argues here that devolution per se however does not necessarily equate to an enhanced learning experience for school children despite the fact that the previous education system which was largely centralized was found ill-equipped to meet regional educational needs. In arguing that devolution per se does not necessarily result positively, the author cited previous researches as well as specific ill effects like inconsistent funding, a growing centralized control with respect to policy guidelines, the widening gap of hierarchy between principals and the rest of the education staff, and the undervaluation of teaching over managerial imperatives. However, this argument failed to convincingly pin down devolution as the culprit that caused the aforesaid negative effects which can be put down more on individual management styles of respective regional school boards. Except for the lack of consistent funding by state governments, all other so called ill effects of devolution can be corrected through sheer policy changes rather than reversing the devolution process. Critical Review: What is the Relationship between Social Governance and Schooling by Gordon Tait Gordon Tait’s What is the Relationship between Social Governance and Schooling looks at mass schooling from a different perspective – as a means with which the government controls and manipulates society at large. By the way with which Tait presents how the government goes through the processes of individuation by identifying children by specifying their places within the school system, differentiation by distinguishing one from the other after individuation, and finally, normalization by intervening in the school children’s lives by methods like counseling after identifying and distinguishing their social and psychological defects, it would seem that the article really intends to make the readers wary of how deeply the government is interfering with the lives of its citizens. Tait however, masks this intention by declaring that the article merely wanted to look at schooling from a different view, - the opposing view – that schools were microcosm of society in general, but that society is a reflection, a spilt over, of what goes on inside schools and that schools are not a mere product of the evolution of things but rather a deliberate effort by the government to effectuate a more manageable society. Tait’s perspective however, could at times, seem incredibly paranoid. For one, he did not offer concrete and solid evidence that indeed the government, from one administration to another, conspiratorially intended to implement measures, using teacher’s expertise and other corrective apparatus, that would eventually make children easily manipulated by impinging even on their psychological frame. This Stepford Wives-like scenario is most unlikely in the absence of a government master plan, an ‘operate at a distance’ mechanism, to use schooling as a means to eventually tame the citizenry in general. Critical Review: ‘Shoes Well Cleaned and Heels Repaired’: Scientific Management, Eugenics & Teacher Selection and Preparation in Australia by Grant Rodwell Rodwell’s article focuses on the influence of scientific management and eugenics in the process of teacher selection and preparation. The application of scientific management, a tool employed in the industrial sector, and eugenics which was originally meant as a devise for the betterment of the human race through manipulative techniques that would eventually result in better human race to teacher selection was viewed by the author as a source of discriminatory practices. This is because both these methods, according to the author, tend to concentrate on the physical rather than mental fitness resulting in the exclusion of teacher applicants who were physically disabled and/or of different ethnic origins or a member of the Aborigines. The intent of the author in writing this particular article is purely expository, to expose a discriminatory practice in the history of education which occurred between 1910 to 1970 but which other authors rarely discussed or referred to and perhaps, as a means to point out the error of the adoption of measures from completely unconnected disciplines to education. In writing the article, Rodwell discussed specific education practices in the past which had system management and eugenics undertones, relying much on historical data of the education practices in the hiring of teachers. In vilifying the adoption of these two systems, Rodwell made rather sweeping statements against them without justifying his reasons why tests, such as IQ tests, given to potential teachers were quite reprehensible. While discriminatory practices such as the exclusion of those with physical handicaps and Asians and Aborigines from the practice of the education profession were indeed blameworthy, yet it is quite impossible that these two measures were adopted by Australian educators if they were of entirely of no redeeming value. References: Kyle, Noeline. 1999. “Chapter 3, Reconstructing Childhood.” Understanding Education. Prentice Hall, pp. 18-25. Meadmore, Peter. 2004. “Chapter 11 What Does Economic Management Have to do with education?” New Questions for Contemporary Teachers. Pearson-Prentice Hall, pp. 141-152. Rodwell, Grant. 2003.”‘Shoes Well Cleaned and Heels Repaired’: Scientific Management, Eugenics and Teacher Selection and Preparation in Australia.” Carfax Publishing, pp. 67-84. Tait, Gordon. 2006. “Chapter 2, What is the Relationship Between Governance and Schooling?” Cultural Perspectives in Education. Pearson Education Australia, pp 25-36. Read More