• About
  • Pie philosophy

Too Many Pies

Too Many Pies

Tag Archives: Vallance

Back to basics: Australian Curriculum review report

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Deidhre Wauchop in Education

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ACARA, Arts curriculum, Australian Curriculum, Australian Curriculum review, Chigwidden, Dance curriculum, Vallance

The Review of the Australian Curriculum has been released. This review was undertaken by a conservative English teacher and a conservative bureaucrat. BORING, BORING, BORING, BORING—I could have told them most of what they have discovered for nothing (and a little more succinctly).

C says I have no business looking at this, given it would have been a document core to my work, and now I am retired. But I still care deeply about the arts and education so I had to take a peek.

curriculumreview

Image by epSos .de


First, a couple of disclaimers:

DISCLAIMER: I am a visual artist, but my heart, body and soul belong to dance. And I love to compose music. And some of the best years of my life so far have been in designing and creating theatrical sets and costumes, acting in front of audiences, and teaching drama in schools. And my favourite thing to do in the whole world is engage with and create film, video, animation and games.

DISCLAIMER: I’m an arts educator and have focused on the arts throughout my career, but I do appreciate the importance of other curriculum domains and the essential right of every young person to have access to all forms of knowledge and thinking. Although I’m not sure about science* because I was so bored in science in school; except when we feigned illness from inhaling gas, surreptitiously filled up our mouths with water and pretend-vomitted out the classroom windows; or when every member of the class ‘forgot my science book today Miss!’; or when we armed ourselves with sago and threw the little pearls at the teacher when she wasn’t looking to see how long it would take her to work out what was going on; or when my BF Michelle got sent to the ‘Animal Room’ (Prep room) and tried to cut up all the geology specimens; or when we broke into a chorus of ‘Downtown’ just because our novice teacher looked like she was wearing a tutu (not really sure of connection between song and attire).

DISCLAIMER: I’m a teacher who believes in the right of every child and youth to equal access to the best possible education, and that a comprehensive and progressive education (read—an education for today and for the future) is essential for survival of individuals, communities, countries and the world. A comprehensive and progressive education costs money, and providing this equally to all costs lots of money. This belief means I am a low-life lefty leaner.


BACK TO THE NITTY GRITTY OF THE REVIEW OF THE ARTS CURRICULUM, supported by subject specialists Dr John Vallance and Ms Michele Chigwidden—wait, WHO??? Oh, never mind, the whole report has been compiled by pseudo-educationalists so why not ask someone over dinner what they thought about the arts in schools.

The arts section of the report isn’t worth the pdf it’s written on. There are so many DER! moments it’s almost like the authors have watched a movie of the last decade of curriculum review on fast forward, and have critiqued the best slapstick moments, but didn’t really grasp enough to write a synopsis. So, I’ll just pull out some gems:

The [arts] learning area should be formally introduced at Year 3 but provide a rich source of resource material for Foundation to Year 2, the Foundation years.

In other words don’t teach the arts from Kindergarten to Year 2 because it is much more important that children sit still and do maths and reading. Young children can’t be taught arts disciplines anyway. Have a look at this video of Zony and Yony. They are only 6 years old and have no hope of grasping new choreography. Their crappy attempt is because they are girls, so if you are going to teach dance, make sure it’s only to the girls.


The core content of all five strands should be reduced and a considerable portion of the current core be included in school-based curriculum and activities, thus augmenting the rich arts programs which most schools are already conducting.

In other words don’t teach the arts. There’s enough arts happening in the final year concert. Except visual arts, but that can probably be covered with easter hat parades and mother’s day cards.


The content of each of the arts forms needs to be restructured and re-sequenced along the lines suggested by the subject matter specialists. 

After a few drinks over dinner, subject specialist Ms Chigwidden said some random things about too much Aboriginal dance, some appalling ratios of content in drama where children have to discuss and reflect on their work, the need to buy musical instruments and how good the English curriculum is—in England.

The other subject specialist, Dr Vallance said to get rid of Media Arts, Dance and Drama altogether because he only likes music and sculpture. And maybe he wasn’t drinking enough to want to have a dance.

So, I agree, we should be restructuring the curriculum based on what they say. They say quite different things about what to do, but someone will work out how to pull all those suggestions together sensibly.

[Apologies for the dig Ms Chigwidden and Dr Vallance, but how did you think you would be represented as one of only two voices chosen to make this report appear to be consultative?]


The considerable resourcing costs associated with delivering the arts curriculum need greater consideration, and professional development for teachers is needed as the years progress. 

Professional development is needed when any new curriculum is introduced. A supreme DER! moment.


… only two of the five arts subject areas would be mandatory and the most likely ones would be music and visual arts. 

In case you didn’t get the memo, there is some solid thinking out there about the importance of educating the whole human, including their body, not just their head. Have another look at this compelling talk by Sir Ken Robinson:


IN CONCLUSION—

The report doesn’t tell us anything new. I lived all these arguments over the development of the Australian Curriculum. ACARA dealt with all these arguments in solid consultation, working with and listening to every person and their Tamagotchi. The recommendations of this lightweight (and bordering on spurious) document are different to the path ACARA took. Who should we place more faith in—two authors and two ‘subject specialists’ and 6 months of consultation? Or a comprehensive review over many years conducted by an authentic organisation charged with developing curriculum for all.

*My Year 12 teacher was pretty pleased that I got 123 out of a possible 130 for my final Biology exam. But that isn’t a huge achievement because it was the ‘Web of Life’ course and you just had to use some common sense and draw some pretty pictures. I’m also telling fibs about not seeing the benefit of science learning. I’m a huge fan now, of the connections between art and science. The gist of this ridiculous review lies in that sentence for me. I’m a fan now, but wasn’t at school. Why? Because of the rubbish curriculum and the rubbish way it was taught.

Seems to me that report authors Messrs. Donnelly and Wiltshire may like to return to that time.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Too Many Pies on Etsy

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 160 other followers

About Deidhre

Deidhre Wauchop

Deidhre Wauchop

I'm an explorer - of the visual world and the intersections between visual arts, dance and technology. 'Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.' Rene Magritte

Personal Links

  • Deidhre Wauchop's studio
  • An artist's practice
  • Dancing Capital
  • Food promise
  • Master crafting
  • Violet's blog
  • Too Many Pies

View Full Profile →

Recent Posts: An artist's practice

July 22 2020: Part 2—networking

1000 days ago, before committing to resolve some of the ideas and images that swirled around my practice, I struggled to find clarity of direction. My practice is diverse. I can’t say that I love the media areas that I work in equally. I adore knitting. I have a great affection for digital media. I […]

July 22 2020: Part 1—1000 day gallery

On 26 October 2017 I posted this commitment to end ‘dabbling’ and work towards creating a ‘substantive’ body of work. Over the next few days I’ll update you on my progress. Today, in part 1, here’s a gallery of selected work from the last 1000 days including, at the end, some earlier work as reference […]

PL💚 NTS Exhibition*

* The exhibition was postponed due to Covid-19 but will open to the public Saturday 25 July ending Sunday 2 August. Open daily from 10AM-4PM.   Three of my digital collage artworks have been selected for display in the Lion Gate Lodge, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, as part of the PL💚 NTS exhibition in March/April 2020. The […]

Recent Posts: Master crafting

From addiction to admission

Today I am continuing to declutter some of my work and storage spaces so that I can 😊 … 😅store some more yarn. Beyond having just the whole shebang of yarns and tools, I have categories of projects (unfinished and start-pending) that need to be ‘filed’ in organised niches. I just googled knitting addiction and found an old mamamia article […]

Mastered! 2015

According to the Craft Yarn Council definitions of skill levels for knitters I have done enough to pass beginner and easy levels and am beginning to work at an intermediate level. In 2015, I focused on creating my own simple designs and ‘mastered’ a few techniques along the way: So, here’s celebrating learning to: make simple […]

Yarn calculation

On my Too Many Pies blog I’ve talked about how I don’t like to follow patterns. Now I’ve taken another technical step to develop my own knit patterns—calculating how much yarn I will need for a project before I begin, rather than jumping in and finding I don’t have enough yarn of a particular colour. I’m knitting a cushion cover […]

Recent Posts: Food promise

Taking food for granted

I never would have guessed that I would have to limit the types of food I could eat. I don’t have any allergies or food intolerances so count myself lucky. But for the last 4 months I’ve had a condition called LPR (Laryngopharyngeal Reflux Disease), also known as silent reflux. First two disclaimers: 1. I’m self-diagnosed. […]

Breakfast compote

It’s been a long time in-between drinks (posts) so to speak. We’ve been eating too well and I’m always too hungry to think about getting the camera out to take some pics. We’ve also renovated our kitchen, and with that comes added impetus to post some more stuff about food. Breakfast is huge in our […]

Chocolate cake promise?

What’s the promise in chocolate cake? How does this food adhere to my rules of thumb? Well … it sort of fits into ‘options to suit your health and lifestyle needs’ … sort of. I actually don’t like chocolate. People who know me are used to that fact, but strangers often won’t believe me. We […]

Cannot load blog information at this time.

Archives

  • January 2018
  • September 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014

Recent Posts

  • Project personification, and a strategy for the worthy
  • Let them talk to each other
  • The mood is chintz
  • Five-petal flowers: forget-me-not
  • Food for thought: 3 goals

Enter your email address to follow and receive notifications of new pie posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    %d bloggers like this: