Latest / When Will They Learn? / Episode #12 Ooh, gossip!

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Episode #12 Ooh, gossip! · When Will They Learn?

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: welcome to when will they learn i'm greg ashman and i'm katie wade this is
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: the podcast where we explore what's trending in the world of education
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: in each episode we discuss podcasts articles and opinion pieces
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: that are shaping education discourse at the moment and examine these through
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  SPEAKER_01: a science of learning lens we discuss not just what's popular but what's supported
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: by the evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: This week we'll be talking about isolation as a form of punishment.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be talking
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: about a report on science education in Australasia
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  SPEAKER_00: and from that we will pivot into internet arguments
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: and all that kind of thing
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: and finally we'll
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  SPEAKER_00: be talking
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  SPEAKER_00: about the plight
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  SPEAKER_00: of working-class students
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  SPEAKER_00: in the UK
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Katie, how have you been?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been good we're um we're up on school holidays up here and you are as well right?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep it's a turn break here too yep all good.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Have you gotten away at all?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um no I'm going to Melbourne for a couple
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  SPEAKER_00: of days um tomorrow um I've got this side project with Ed Rolo
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: that I've been working on uh the measure project and so I'm doing a bit of work
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: with them on that and just getting away and going out for dinner and things like
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  SPEAKER_00: that.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that's lovely.
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  SPEAKER_00: Have you been away anywhere nice?
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  SPEAKER_01: I was up at Mooloolaba,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is sunny coast,
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  SPEAKER_01: for a couple of days last week,
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  SPEAKER_01: really just enjoying the fact that it's winter in Queensland.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And unlike my previous winters in Victoria, it's warm.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm able to wear short sleeves.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it's cold in my office, but I'm like, it's warm everywhere else.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is Mooloolaba where the aquarium is?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
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  SPEAKER_00: I like the Sunshine Coast.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we get up to Queensland, that's where we like to go.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's gorgeous up there.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's...
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  SPEAKER_01: I quite like it.
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  SPEAKER_01: I like the nice beachy, calm feel.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, although Noosa can be a bit overwhelming.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It gets a bit packed.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I still want to know if you've been to the chocolate shop.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: The chocolate shop?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: i think every time i every time you go anywhere i suggest some kind
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  SPEAKER_01: of junk food place i'm like here's like a chocolate shop
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: or here's chocolate like every time you go anywhere i'm like here are sweets you
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  SPEAKER_00: need to go try food right okay all right there's a chocolate shop i'll bear it
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: in mind right what have we got this week uh caiti
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so our first article is from The Conversation.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's written by Erin Leaf, I think you say it.
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  SPEAKER_01: The article is called Isolation as a Form of Discipline.
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  SPEAKER_01: How should schools manage poor student behaviour?
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  SPEAKER_01: And this article is a great one because it really kind
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: of hinges off exactly what we were talking about earlier.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: In the last episode of the podcast so last time around we spoke
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  SPEAKER_01: about school suspensions increasing
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  SPEAKER_01: across Victorian schools principals being given more power to suspend students
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  SPEAKER_01: and how we're talking about you know around 150 students being suspended
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  SPEAKER_01: across public or state schools in Victoria each day.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: This piece kind of hits off that a little bit,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it's also in response to a school in Victoria that have copped some criticism
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  SPEAKER_01: for, they use the word isolating, a group of year nine students who were away.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was on a boarding school program.
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  SPEAKER_01: and these students snuck away they've gone to the pub and they've
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  SPEAKER_01: then been internally suspended and they use the phrase isolate because
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  SPEAKER_01: the students were kept alone for certain periods of time
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  SPEAKER_01: during this internal suspension
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  SPEAKER_01: so in this article they and again it's really like it comes from
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  SPEAKER_01: a really similar vein to the one that we discussed in the last episode
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  SPEAKER_01: where they speak about teenage behavior being you know partly explained by the fact
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: that teenagers have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex which is what i would
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  SPEAKER_01: because neuroscience again um we're gonna have to change the name of the podcast um
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  SPEAKER_01: so
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  SPEAKER_01: they've got their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex which is like your smart part of
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  SPEAKER_01: the brain that makes good decisions so self-control and consequences and they speak
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  SPEAKER_01: about like that doesn't mature until you're
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  SPEAKER_01: in your mid-20s i don't know maybe older maybe older are we claiming
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  SPEAKER_00: that kids can sometimes do silly things katie is that is
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  SPEAKER_00: that what this neuroscience is showing us i think it is um
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: yeah i i think that's what we're getting at i mean i wouldn't know
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  SPEAKER_01: because i'm now older than my mid-20s right
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  SPEAKER_01: so like i don't ever make silly decisions ever um fully developed prefrontal cortex
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: there yeah yeah um well that's entirely what it's true
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: so they speak about this like they've kept these students isolated
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  SPEAKER_01: or internally suspended whatever you want to use for a couple of days but this was
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: the part and I don't know if you read this or if you sort of did a bit of
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: a deep dive in this section Greg
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  SPEAKER_01: They do really similar to last week where they say, I mean, I'll read it out.
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  SPEAKER_01: They say suspension and other forms
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  SPEAKER_01: of exclusion remain common disciplinary responses in schools,
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  SPEAKER_01: but research shows they are rarely the most effective.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, I wonder, they have a link where it says research shows.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I clicked on the link and I read this research.
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  SPEAKER_01: Did you read it at all, Greg?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've got the abstract, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Oh perfect so it was a meta-analysis and this meta-analysis now they're saying that
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  SPEAKER_01: that suspension's not effective this meta-analysis it's got kind
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  SPEAKER_01: of two main findings um one of them is that suspensions
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  SPEAKER_01: and academic achievement have like an inverse relationship
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  SPEAKER_01: if they're suspended they're going to do worse in terms
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: of their academic achievement and
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  SPEAKER_01: Which makes sense because they're probably not at school if they're suspended.
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  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to have an impact.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I suspect that's not the only part.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it also said that,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know, students who are suspended are more likely to drop out of school.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that goes back to what we were saying last week,
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  SPEAKER_01: last episode, sorry, where we said that sounds like a causal claim.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: But not necessarily.
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  SPEAKER_01: Students who participate in behaviours that are more likely
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  SPEAKER_01: to get them suspended are probably students who are more likely to also disengage
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  SPEAKER_01: with school,
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  SPEAKER_01: drop out,
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  SPEAKER_01: might come from backgrounds where they're not supported in their schooling.
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  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, this is actually this only part of the story.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not if you're suspended, you're going to drop out.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's behaviours that get you suspended would be more likely to be associated
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  SPEAKER_01: with other environmental or behavioural or whatever factors that are also going
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  SPEAKER_01: to lead to drop out or dropping out of school.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I totally agree.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that this is a central problem.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other articles that I linked to
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  SPEAKER_00: does try and address that a little bit so what researchers do when they try
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  SPEAKER_00: and make they try and sort of get causal claims out of correlations
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  SPEAKER_00: because ultimately you you can um like if the weight
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  SPEAKER_00: of correlational evidence is strong enough like with smoking causing cancer
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  SPEAKER_00: for instance um no one did a randomized controlled trial to show that
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  SPEAKER_00: because it would be deeply unethical um but we fairly certain it is because just
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  SPEAKER_00: because of the sheer weight of evidence and what researchers try and do is they try
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  SPEAKER_00: and control for things so they try and
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  SPEAKER_00: identify lots of different individual characteristics and then try and match kids
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  SPEAKER_00: on those characteristics and then try and match ones that have been suspended
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  SPEAKER_00: with ones that haven't and try and tease out the causation that way but
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  SPEAKER_00: of course there might be some other difference between those two kids
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  SPEAKER_00: that you haven't captured and it might be directly relevant to why
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  SPEAKER_00: They were excluded like one of them might have done something significantly worse
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  SPEAKER_00: than the other because no two students are identical and so it's really hard
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  SPEAKER_00: to turn these correlations into causal claims and so researchers do one
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  SPEAKER_00: of two things well activists I suppose do one of two things they either kind
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  SPEAKER_00: of gloss over that and
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  SPEAKER_00: kind of slide from associations into implying causal claims or they do this business
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  SPEAKER_00: where they can try and control all these factors I don't find it that convincing but
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  SPEAKER_00: of course the key thing that it misses out is the definition
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  SPEAKER_00: of suspensions working here is that they somehow fix the child or give
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  SPEAKER_00: the child better academic outcomes and I don't think anyone
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  SPEAKER_00: Thinks that's what suspensions do.
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  SPEAKER_01: No, well, it's about the fact they don't rehabilitate a student.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
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  SPEAKER_00: What are they meant to?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's what we were talking about last time.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about the community.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily about the person being suspended and they work in the sense
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  SPEAKER_00: that the victim doesn't have to come face to face with the perpetrator the next day
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  SPEAKER_00: or they work in the fact that
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  SPEAKER_00: the community is drawing a line in the sand and saying we don't do that here
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  SPEAKER_00: if you're going to do that you can't be here and that's really important for
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  SPEAKER_00: a community otherwise the culture deteriorates
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  SPEAKER_00: so they've got this very narrow definition of what suspensions and explosions means
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  SPEAKER_00: in terms of working the other thing I mean they jump off from this school story
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  SPEAKER_00: and I've just got a little bit of a
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  SPEAKER_00: a personal beef on that i mean the problem with these stories about schools
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  SPEAKER_00: and what they allegedly did to students is that the school can't comment
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  SPEAKER_00: in anything other than the most general way because we have a duty
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  SPEAKER_00: to confidentiality
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  SPEAKER_00: so we can't say actually what these students did was blah blah blah you haven't
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  SPEAKER_00: quite you've got the wrong end of the stick slightly
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  SPEAKER_00: and we we didn't quite do this we sort of did that what i understand is
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: that this is some sort of like
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: residential camp for Geelong Grammar and so they go away on this residential camp
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  SPEAKER_00: and so these kids had apparently snuck off to a pub but I don't take any of this
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  SPEAKER_00: at face value having been on the other end of it having been
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  SPEAKER_00: Working in a school that found its way into the press and reading things about
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  SPEAKER_00: the school that were simply not true,
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  SPEAKER_00: but that I couldn't respond to for the same sort of reasons,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I take this sort of thing with a little bit of a pinch of salt.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I found it quite outrageous, actually.
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  SPEAKER_01: I just find it frustrating that we come in there with these big...
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: media frenzy around a school that's done something and we are getting one side of it
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  SPEAKER_01: and when you've been based in a school that has been the subject of this you know
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  SPEAKER_01: that it's you know that that's not the full story and that there's so much more
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  SPEAKER_01: to it and regardless of what
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  SPEAKER_01: Regardless of what the students did,
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  SPEAKER_01: there are so many details that are missing and that are exaggerated.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I was saying they're using the word isolation and isolation is just such an extreme word.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a boo word.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a boo word.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a word that's meant to invoke, meant to make you feel, oh, that's terrible.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even though it's describing something that's actually quite commonplace
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  SPEAKER_00: in schools is that you would remove a student from the situation
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  SPEAKER_00: and put them somewhere else.
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  SPEAKER_00: what i found outrageous katie yeah the second guessing of the school so the author erin leaf
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  SPEAKER_00: says a more effective response for an incident involving students sneaking off to a pub would
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  SPEAKER_00: combine appropriate consequences with opportunities to learn
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: for example this might involve helping
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  SPEAKER_00: students understand the risks of their decisions repairing any harm caused rebuilt like
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
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  SPEAKER_00: How does Erin Leaf know that that's not what the school did?
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  SPEAKER_00: How is she in a position to suggest a better response than the one that
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  SPEAKER_00: the school put in place,
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  SPEAKER_00: given that we can't know all of the things that happen there?
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  SPEAKER_00: And then we can teach kids about risks of decisions and we can make them repair harm.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: How exactly do you rebuild trust?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do they rebuild trust?
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  SPEAKER_00: How do they develop strategies for making safer choices?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do we teach them to do that?
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  SPEAKER_00: And what exactly does that look like?
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  SPEAKER_00: And how do we know that that's effective?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do we know it's not something the school's doing already?
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  SPEAKER_00: It just raises a lot of questions for me.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think on that note, too, like,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: Leif says,
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  SPEAKER_01: well, the teenage brain's not fully developed, uses that prefrontal cortex argument.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say that that actually cuts in both directions, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could actually argue the opposite.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: So if the teenage brain's not fully developed,
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  SPEAKER_01: that means that they're going to make silly decisions and do silly things.
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  SPEAKER_01: But that also means that if we're trying to teach them,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: hey, look, you know, there are risks associated with these behaviours.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, surely if their prefrontal cortex isn't developed,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: then that's also, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: that's not going to land as well with them anyway,
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  SPEAKER_01: because if it was, they'd potentially have been aware of those risks.
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  SPEAKER_01: They'd definitely...
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  SPEAKER_01: would have known about about the fact
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  SPEAKER_01: that there were consequences I think like you I mean like if we're saying
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  SPEAKER_01: that you know self-control or consequence weighing are things
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  SPEAKER_01: that are still developing for young people well surely that's an argument
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  SPEAKER_01: that supports the idea of having a consistent real clear consequence
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  SPEAKER_01: for what you're doing
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  SPEAKER_00: yes and one way you could paraphrase that caiti is that the kids knew that going to
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  SPEAKER_00: the pub was wrong that it was risky but kids are kids and they did it anyway
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that idea of like just get like a little bit of
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: a I don't know I mean can I call it like can I go really basic like a cause
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  SPEAKER_01: and effect like if you go to the pub and you sneak off then there's gonna be
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: a consequence for doing that and that consequence is gonna suck
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: so you're probably gonna be you know I mean that's gonna act as a deterrent
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: for some kids not all but it's gonna be a deterrent for some
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: but regardless I mean it's what you said like it's necessary for maintaining the
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: a claire culture where there are certain behaviours that are allowed
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  SPEAKER_01: and certain behavi colours that aren't.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well the other thing Katie is in society we have consequences for...
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  SPEAKER_00: breaching taboos and norms and and harm harming others and if we if we were
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  SPEAKER_00: to remove those in schools then we're not actually preparing kids for the society
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  SPEAKER_00: that they're going to graduate into but the thing for me is that um like what the
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: the the tension that leaf puts between say so she talks later on quite reasonably
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: about behavior education and i've followed that link and i looked into that
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: now that's quite reasonable stuff it's about teaching kids you know how
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: to participate and and the behaviors you want what the rules are all that sort
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: of stuff this is classic tom bennett stuff this is you know basic you know building
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: a school culture teach the behaviors you want to see and all that sort of stuff
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: but that's not instead of having these consequences available it's all of that and
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: the idea that um so at one point and they always say this where is it um
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: They basically say that suspension should only be used as a last resort.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: It says that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a last resort.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the evidence suggests it should be a last resort rather than a routine response.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who is routinely suspending kids from school?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Usually, and we made this point last time, it's the last...
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: of a series
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: of interventions
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: unless it's something
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  SPEAKER_00: really extreme
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  SPEAKER_00: that the kid has done
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  SPEAKER_00: usually
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's right at
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: the end
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: of a serious
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: of interventions
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  SPEAKER_00: and it's certainly
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: not the first thing
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: people will do
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: but the other
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: link I clicked on
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  SPEAKER_00: was
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: leaf says while schools need to respond to serious behavior evidence suggests that
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: the most effective long-term approach is not simply imposing consequences
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: because that's what we do we just impose consequences it's all we do caiti we just
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: go there's a consequence not having a conversation with you about it not going
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: to explain why not going to try and get you
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: to understand what why it is what you did was wrong just going to simply impose
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: a consequence instead we should build protective factors so i looked at
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: i followed the link for protective factors and i got to
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: a queensland government website here are the some some of the protective factors
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: that we should be building katie supportive relationships okay all right
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: but there's again there's a bit of a cause and effect thing there isn't
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: that like it's harder for teachers to have relationships good relationships
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: with students that are that are really challenging and so maybe the reason why
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: we see a positive correlation between good relationships and uh you know behaviors
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: and academic outcomes and things like that is because the students who are more able
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: to build those relationships um are the ones
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: that don't get suspended anyway other things we should be building personal
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: resilience develop coping skills problem solving abilities positive school
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: engagement well i think we'd all want to build that caiti access
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: to opportunities access to education recreation employment and community resources
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: well that sounds nice cultural identity and pride i think schools are pretty good
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: at building that although maybe there's more we can do but isn't part of
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: the cultural identity and pride being these are the behaviors that we would accept
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: as part of our school community
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: yes um well that's the school culture i think what there that's code for um uh the
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: the different cultures that the students might come
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: from yeah i think that's what that's
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: about healthy peer relationships community support i would love
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: to build community support um
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: That would be great.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't seem like it's something that I have a huge amount of agency over.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Access to mental health services.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, again, schools are limited in what they can do in that space.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're very fortunate.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: My school is an independent school that we've got an educational psychologist
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: on our staff,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: but we're privileged and fortunate and that's going to be hard for schools to do.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience building activities, social skills development.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: positive parenting practices not a huge amount we can do about that
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: because we've got so much control over this yeah emotional regulation so again
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: the research suggests you know
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: that kids have got good emotional regulation are less likely to be suspended
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: but like but how can we teach that with the prefrontal cortex yes they've got
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: the neuroscience caiti and um lifelong learning so the thing is it's like
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: They are all nice to have, but they're not really practical suggestions.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: The only practical suggestions in there really is the behaviour education,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: which I think we can all agree with.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't see that as in opposition to suspending students when necessary.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just don't think that schools are doing that frivolously.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps...
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: we agree and and articles like this are um the result of some kind
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: of misunderstanding where researchers who don't work in schools
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: and don't manage classrooms assume
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: that um schools are frivolously uh suspending students because maybe they talk
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: to students maybe i've seen this before so research done where researchers
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: who don't work in schools they'll interview kids kids who've been excluding
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: that say why were you excluded oh
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: i was excluded for tapping a pen on
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: the table god it's terrible kids are being excluded for tapping a pen on the table
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: and of course you know and as well as me katie that when a kid says
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: that there's usually something a little bit more to it that they're missing out
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: and they weren't actually excluded just for tapping a pen on a table so um yeah
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: so i i think maybe what's going on here is um a a a miscommunication
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: between the sort of research community and what's actually happening
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: in schools yeah no i completely agree i think that's exactly is they like we're
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: pitting these two things against each other this idea of consequences and this idea
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: of behavior education or yeah or working with students after
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: the fact they don't actually have to sit in opposition it's not one or
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: the other it's a case of you need a consequence and
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you need that for several reasons and having a conversation with
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: a student is not a consequence.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: In most scenarios, if not all, it's not a consequence.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't mean that it doesn't or it shouldn't be part of that process
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: because there is an element of that where you need to...
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you suspend a student and they're returning into the school,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: there should, and any school I've ever seen or worked with, there should be...
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: a good process for actually bringing that student back into the school
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: and helping them understand hey this is what went wrong this is what's going
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: to happen and here's how we can support that student to come back into
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: the school that's part of that process and it's the part
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: that like articles like this we they just skim over it they don't they ignore it
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: because it's not convenient it's not going to it's not going to get your clicks
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: from people who want to you know school bash on the internet
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's second guessing, isn't it?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's researchers knowing better than schools, what schools should be doing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the glaring bit in this article is the bit where Leif knows better
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: than Geelong Grammar,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: even though Leif can't possibly know all
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: the circumstances surrounding what happened there.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's overreach by academics when they think they can do that.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think, look, it's...
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, we all want to see fewer suspensions and exclusions.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: As we were saying last time, the path to that, though, is not to just...
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Artificially reduce them and stop suspending kids for things that you'd suspend them for.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: The path to that is better intervention early on,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: teaching kids to read so they don't get frustrated in with academic subjects.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: All these sorts of things we want to see them come down but we want
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: to see then come down because they are the result
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: of something. We don't want to artificially take away
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: that tool from school leaders so that they don' t have
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: have that there when it's necessary
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shall we talk about the second article, Katie?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do the second one, yep.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this one is an interesting one.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: No one pedagogy is best.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Science academics call out binary debates in new blueprint.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is by the Education HQ news team.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't actually have a named author.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Education HQ is like a trade newspaper about education in Australia.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's available online.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: i've got a subscription to it's often very good sarah duggan is one
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: of their uh journalists i this one's a bit different so um it's it talks about um
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: a new report uh issued by the australasian so that means australia and new zealand
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: and anything else included in that i can't remember but
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: the australasia science education research association a very worthy body
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: of very worthy people um
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: and it's proposed this national strategy for science education and and it's
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: a disappointingly flatulent report as you might expect from you know a committee
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: of worthy people uh it's quite abstract it's hard to interpret it's it's achingly um
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: right on and sort of fashionable and trendy and like so it talks
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: about knowledges instead of knowledge uh why does it do that well that's a bit
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: of post-modernism that's crept in there that you can have your version of uh why
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: the moon goes around the earth and i can have my version of why the moon goes around
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: the earth
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: and they're just different knowledges there's not just there's not one knowledge
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: that we can have um which is an odd stance uh in terms of science education
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what that's sort of signifying.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: They talk a lot about indigenous knowledges.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that could mean all sorts of things.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it could mean really valid stuff about stuff that Aboriginal
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: and Torres Strait Islander people learn through experience living in Australia
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: that has a real scientific basis that we can learn about and inquire into
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: in science lessons.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or it could mean...
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: the entirely inappropriate teaching of non-scientific content in a science context
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: as we've seen sometimes happening in New Zealand and maybe
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: because this body spans New Zealand maybe that's what's going on there's a lot
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: of vague language conceptual,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: procedural and epistemic knowledge as well as the ability to design,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: analyse and interpret scientific investigations seek out and critically analyse
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: and make decisions drawing on scientific reports
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: like it's waffly and it's trying to draw this balance between
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: so what a lot of people will do this so they will take the debate
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: between is explicit teaching more effective or is inquiry learning more effective
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: and they sort of rise above it and say well we are the wise ones and we know that
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: in reality you need a little bit of both
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: of these things different times different circumstances balance this and
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: and they never tell you
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Really, well,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: how do I decide when I'm using explicit teaching and
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: when I'm doing inquiry learning?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: They just sort of imply that it's that famous paper,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: the De Jong,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Tan De Jong paper,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: that Zhang and Sweller and Kirchner and I and a few others responded to,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: made this argument probably in the most sort of academic way.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of neuroscience in there.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a...
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a rearguard defence of some inquiry in the curriculum,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: so they've kind of accepted that you need a bit of explicit teaching of content,
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: but they're not really very clear about what that is,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: of course, which is why you end up with the impoverished...
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: impoverished science curriculum that we have and there's a discussion about learning first in
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: where they talk about you know that the first nine years of schooling uh learning first found
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: that the science curriculum in australia covered just 44 topics compared to the average
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: 74 topics in other systems that's because we have this sort of abstract 21st century skills
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: groovy way of talking about science education science education like in the australian
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: curriculum is connected on
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what I'm going to describe as being, I don't know, what would you call them?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like skills?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's connected on things like,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: and I hate using the word skill, but I can't think of anything else.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like, it's based on like scientific inquiry and sciences.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it science as a human endeavor?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Have I got the word?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not topics.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: So a third of it is like biology, chemistry, physics and like geology for some reason.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's a third.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then a third is science inquiry skills,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: which like, I mean, how many times can you teach control a variable strategy?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: You also can't teach that without the content,
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: which is why surely that would just you would just have more content and
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: then just layer that on as part of that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then a third of it is science as a human endeavor,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: which is like a sort of humanities type approach.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: it's a basket where you can throw in,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: climate change and all those things that people are really probably AI now and all
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: the things that people like to talk about.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, climate change is a major issue.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to dismiss that at all.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in anthropogenic climate change, but the amount of it we do.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: in the curriculum no wonder that I wrote an article
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: the other day no wonder like kids are getting really bummed out by it all but um so
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah and and that's that's that's kind of like what we have but one of the bits
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: of this article um so they
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: in this I've read this report well I don't think I've read all
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: of it I mean there's only so many abstract nouns you can cope so I skimmed a bit
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: of it
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it does mention sort of differentiation a little bit in the report.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what Education HQ have then done is they've quoted me.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in a blog post that went out this morning,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: I said I didn't know where they got this quote from because when I Googled it,
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: all I got was another Education HQ article from 2024 where the two paragraphs
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: on me are exactly the same.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the two paragraphs, why are we pinning so much on differentiation?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: policy level and he questioned in a blog post and then ashman has suggested a range
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: of alternatives to differentiation including ability group and that links to
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: a blog post but not the one that the quote's from those two paragraphs are there
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: in this 2024 education hq article so they've sort of lifted it out of there to put
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: in here to as my response to
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: The differentiation that's being proposed in this report, which is odd.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I did track down the blog post, though.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a brainwave and realised it wasn't on my current substack.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It must have been on my old WordPress site.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's quite a while ago they've gone back.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really old.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: But what's happened is...
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: That an academic,
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: an Australian academic,
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: who really doesn't like me at all,
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: has done a Twitter thread about this and
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: pointed out that the blog post
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: that it refers to, that it actually refers to from 2020,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: more recent blog posts of mine are available katie on the topic of differentiation
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: but um so then this academic has has has criticized it and um it's fair some of
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: the criticisms fair like really you know we need a bit of everything
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: the usual criticism that you get um that there's no there's no one way
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: that there's lots of ways and but i'm not going to tell you how to decide which way
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: to use and then um
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: then other people have there's a little bit of personal attacks because this sort
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: of group of people who interact and sort of talk about me on X like
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: to get really personal and then other people have jumped in
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: and there's this one person who said that they looked really
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit creepy actually sort of googled me a lot and found my PhD thesis
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: but also found places where I'm referred to as a PhD so apparently on
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: the world economic forum like why i'm mentioned at the world economic forum is
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: beyond me i can't remember i'm listed as a phd candidate
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: and somewhere else i'm listed as a phd candidate and from this they've drawn
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: the uh conclusion that i must have been using the title of doctor
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: before i obtained my phd now i don't know why um
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: that follows uh it's quite mad um
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: but i didn't uh um i didn't start calling myself i don't really call myself doctor
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: much anyway katie i only do it if i'm presenting at conferences and things
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: but i certainly didn't before i actually got my phd in 2022 um the there's criticism
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: that my phd is very narrow um so why am i extrapolating all this stuff
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: about explicit teaching from that um
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: i'm not sure that you are
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: though uh well someone said it defines me this one guy this there's a guy in
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: the uk uh teacher educator um who really doesn't like me
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: at all i mean all these people don't like me
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: and uh he he said it my my phd defines me which is interesting because i was writing
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: about education several years before i even started on my phd so um
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, very, very strange.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that this kind of behaviour where you disagree with someone,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: but instead of saying why you disagree with them and sort
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: of refuting their argument,
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: you kind of personally attack them and suggest that they're up to no good or
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: that there's something shady about them or...
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some nefarious thing going on.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: This approach is...
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: for the people doing it they obviously find it highly convincing that i'm
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: a bad person but for anyone else watching it who isn't
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: like on taken sides and isn't on my side or isn't on their side
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: and they're just watching this take place on
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: the internet they go oh that's really bad and so some people have sort of jumped in
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: and said i don't agree with ashman i don't i don't often don't agree
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: with what he says i i think he's wrong about a lot of things
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: but this isn't right this cattiness this having a this having a person that go
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: at him it doesn't make any sense so it's actually self-defeating
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: for the people who engage in it um because it draws them no fans at all and it sort
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: of pushes people away because no one kind of wants to be in that club of people sort
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: of being a bit weird
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: and personal i don't know i don't know that's my take this is like my whole thing
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: where i'm like you like it is so fine to come in and attack an argument
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: and say i disagree with this argument i disagree with the point that you're making
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: um but like we shouldn't be about attacking an individual and if any of your
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: if your criticism of any kind of point someone's making if
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: that criticism is very much centered on the person and not on the point
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: then you're doing it wrong that's just an attack on an individual
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: and your point doesn't land anyway it's also it's unnecessary um yeah
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: and it ranges so I get I can't so one argument is I can't have opinions
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: about teacher education because I've got an experience in teacher education
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: which is actually kind of not true because I do a lot of teacher education as part
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: of my role but it is true that I don't work in
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: a teacher training college that's true but obviously at my work at Clarendon I'm
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: in charge of professional learning and I have to deliver some of that and I work
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: with new teachers and things like that
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, but even so, that doesn't matter.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's called the argument from authority.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that basically because I don't.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: have a credential or I don't have
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: a position or something,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can't have a point on it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: I get called the conservative
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people would love
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: to associate explicit teaching
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: with right-wing politics
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: because then they can sort
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: of dismiss it on those grounds
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: because we all know that
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: right-win people are bad
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: So...
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: See, I just don't understand
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: this whole conflating
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: any kind of educational
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and look, right-wing people aren't bad.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right-wing people and left-wing people just have different ideas on what's going
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: to be best for society and things like that.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that battle of ideas that's important.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: But for some people, they think it really is a good thing.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Good versus evil struggle.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can paint someone as being on the evil side,
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: which to them is the conservative right wing side of politics,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: then you just win the argument.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why you get that.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're just undermining people by with whatever arguments convenient.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then we go, oh, great.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's now undermined whatever point they were making.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's a strange business,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't really mind too much because,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been doing this long enough now that I've kind of got used to it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: I find it really embarrassing when they complain to my boss, which they do sometimes.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: The academic who started this thread has done that, and I have a very supportive boss.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: My previous boss is also very supportive, but it's just really embarrassing when...
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's just like a waste of someone's time to be like yes thanks for now yeah bringing
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: in like you know poor like principal or whatever of a school who's got to now deal
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: with your internet hate yeah so fortunately i've been very well supported
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: but i can imagine a situation where i wasn't and um so it's
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: not this academic but someone's complained to my university of new south wales
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: when i was doing a phd there apparently one of these people's complained
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: to um australian catholic university where i'm a honorary fellow at the moment
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: as well none of these go anywhere because obviously i haven't done anything wrong
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: but um
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's just annoying and it's embarrassing.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think this behaviour does them any favours
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't think it's winning them many converts, but they engage in it anyway.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting one.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I've taken us off on a real tangent.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's good because people were requesting that you talk about this.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people be like, we need to get Greg to talk about the Twitter thing that's going on.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, well, it's not really a podcast article or opinion piece.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad we've brought it up.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: oh okay um i didn't i wasn't sure people would be interested i mean it is very it's
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: it's very strange um but i love
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: the internet controversy like i'm always i'm always here
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: for it i'm like i think there's yeah i think there's a real piece in there
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: where it's like as soon as you're as soon as you're like speaking publicly
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: about you know i mean research your opinions on the research how that might look in
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: a school immediately
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you've got people online who disagree and the disagreement's fine.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's just some of the ways that people go about it is not pleasant.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: there was the one where the guy really had a go at someone
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: and claiming their post was AI generated.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you think that, it's a bit, like, off to sort of really go after them for that.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a really good article...
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's from 2008.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite old now.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's by a guy called Paul Graham.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have I mentioned this one before, How to Disagree?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think so.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you Google Graham, How to Disagree, 2008.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously that's the era of message boards and things like that.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Twitter, I think, exists.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, Twitter doesn't exist in 2009, does it?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, it does because I was on it at school.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, yes, that's true.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was on it in 2009.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was created.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: um so 2008 this article and he's talking about people disagreeing with each other on
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: the internet and he comes up with this like hierarchy and there's some swear words
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: in there katie
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: so i'm just warning you i know you yeah i know you've there is two you're very
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: innocent so yeah but um
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to be protective of you there.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: But, yeah,
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: but it goes through this hierarchy of disagreeing and it starts
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: from just calling someone names.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's got this one.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is the lowest form of disagreement is what he says.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to pull it up as well.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then it's ad hominem.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I hate saying that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: yeah so the the really good point he makes about this because i get this
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: a lot you get this one heaps yeah so ad hominem saying that an author lacks
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem so that's the one
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: that says that i can't say anything about teacher education
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: because i've never worked in teacher education even though it's hugely relevant
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: to my work um and
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: a particularly useless sort because good ideas often come from outsiders
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: the question is whether the author is correct or not if his lack
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: of authority caused him to make mistakes point those out and if it didn't it's not
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: a problem so that's a bit like when we were talking about the disconnect earlier
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: between researchers and schools maybe there's a miscommunication going on and
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we were saying, we were making that argument by pointing out where that leads to errors.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't saying,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: this person can't have opinions about schools because they don't work in schools.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different kind of thing.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: But we could say...
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is wrong.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Schools do only suspend students as a last resort.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that because we work in schools.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a miscommunication here because saying that schools should only do it as
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: a last resort is redundant.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: So dealing with the actual arguments itself.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: The other point he makes is if you do that,
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: if you deal with the actual arguments itself, it's much less emotional.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: It takes the emotion out of it.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the top of his hierarchy is refuting the central point.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone comes along and refutes the central point, so I've got a blog post out today.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: If someone comes along and says, well,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: I disagree,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've gone wrong here because there are these low ceiling, high,
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: low floor, high ceiling mass tasks that look like this and you've got that wrong.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go, oh, okay.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel that upset.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: I might feel a bit embarrassed if I've made a mistake, but I'm not going to be that upset.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite reasonable.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the level.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone comes along and says,
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: you're an idiot,
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: you don't know what you're doing, you've got no qualifications to talk about this.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Your pace is AI generated.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm going to feel much, well,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't now because it's happened to me so much,
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: but if you're new to it,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to feel much more emotional about that kind of attack than
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: um then they're much more reasonable does this happen
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: to you much katie do you get many people sort
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: of ad hominem ad hominem i don't even know if that's
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: a verb you i'm glad i don't have to say it again um
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say,
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: like, it took me a long time to get into posting substacks in the first place.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I said the reason was because I would watch what would happen online and watch
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: the internet attacks.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to deal with that.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm worried and I don't know if, like...
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was going through that classic self-doubt where I was like,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: do I actually know enough to be able to come in and say something
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: that someone's not going to take a single sentence and blow it out of proportion
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: and go, well,
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: here's evidence that this is incorrect or that this isn't fully true
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: and you've said it.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it took quite a bit for me to do it and it actually took me accidentally doing
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: a post at one point somewhere online,
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: like just a posted somewhere and people kind of came at me for it and I went,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: I actually don't care because I don't get myself a stick.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: um and from
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: that point i just went you know what i can do what i wanted people aren't gonna like
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: it but
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: i'm like people don't like a lot of things that i say and
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: do and that doesn't matter um but no i get a bit like i said to someone recently thing about um
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember the line but I said something about the fact
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: that I was like I'm someone who isn't really bothered by a lot of criticism
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: because I have people jump into my inbox on LinkedIn weekly
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: with you know what can sometimes just be arguing points
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: and I would again like I typically ignore them and sometimes I thank them
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: because they give me inspiration for future posts but sometimes they come in
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: with personal attacks and I'm like alright thanks I guess I have less reason
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: to listen to you now.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah goodbye.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: yeah i'm just like that's great you're out um that is for
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: the feedback what i i think and i've written about this a number of times
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: so i don't want to bore people but um i think a lot
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: of people misunderstand what uh internet debate is about so say you
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: and i are disagreeing on the internet right um
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Usually what happens is if someone is clearly losing the argument,
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: rather than say, oh, well, look, you're right and I'm wrong.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: People don't do that.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: They will start redefining the meanings of common terms.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: They will do anything.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: They'll do anything to not admit that they've lost the argument.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be a bit frustrating, at least at first.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You think, well,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've sort of won this argument here,
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: but now the person is trying to redefine what everything means.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, why can't they just accept that?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not the point.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: When people have publicly sort of adopted a position,
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: they would rather look silly by staying stuck to that position than look
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: reasonable by moving away from it because there's so much ego wrapped up in it
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: but that's not what the debate is about the debate is about the people
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: who are watching who haven't committed to one side or another and are trying
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: to work out what they think and if i'm trying to redefine words and squirm and
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: in response to your good argument then they will look upon that
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: and think oh i think greg's probably he's not he's not right here
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: and i think katie might be under something
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: yeah so um and that's what it's about so
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: when your opponents do this personal attack stuff um i know the effect that has
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: on this audience that's watching i know that they don't like it i know
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: that it makes them probably more sympathetic towards me and less sympathetic towards
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: the people attacking me and so
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: To a certain extent, I'm like, go for it, do that.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll even highlight it.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, one of my favourite things is...
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I love when you do this.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when a new one sort of appears,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: a new critic appears who isn't sort of very familiar with me,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things I'll often do is sort of criticise my books.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll say, oh, you've written a book about blood.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's rubbish and blah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll quote tweet that with a link where people can purchase a copy.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I find that highly amusing myself because I'm petty in that way.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Very petty in that way.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So final article is called white working class children failed
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: by education system says inquiry.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this was an article published for the BBC by Vanessa Clark and Kate McGough.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: so um and i want to like i'm going to start off with a quote from this article
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: so it said once in a generation reforms are needed to fix an education system
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: that is not serving the interests of white working class children
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: an independent inquiry has included has concluded
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: end quote um so it's not anything about like you know we've got some students
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: who are going to need extra support or we should it's instead it's we've just got
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: an education system and it's just completely not serving their needs um ever so um
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the article, basically, it sort of roughly sets out a couple of arguments.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's basically education system doesn't serve.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they speak about working class families and they define these using the free schools program.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a free meals program?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Did I say that?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, free school meals.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Free school meals.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, something didn't go right in the words.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to say.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: For our American listeners,
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: working class, I think, means something slightly different in America.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: But working class in Britain and Australia,
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: it means the people who do manual work and so this isn't quite
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: that because kids are eligible for free school meals well i mean there's
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: the same thing in america kids in america are eligible for free
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: or reduced place lunches it's the same sort of thing so we're talking about
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: the lower lowest socioeconomic grouping in society that's what that's what we mean
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: by talking about working class in this context when i was writing
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: a note tonight i really said like what we're talking
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: about is you know well i'm going to say towards the lower socioeconomic um
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: status students which is probably how we'd refer to it in Australia but it this
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: so this um this independent inquiry was done by what is it it's
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: the multi-academy trust star academies supported by the department of education um
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: and really like look it's got some like it's got a couple of statistics
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: that are referenced about the fact that um
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Students who are from what they're defining
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: as working class backgrounds are less likely to go to university compared
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: with other peers.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're less likely to succeed in schooling and they really get into that.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem, and I don't fully disagree with it, but the problem with this one is...
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with this paper for me is that they're framing,
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: it's...
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying that there's this mismatch between the education system
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: and the population that it's serving.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they actually get into...
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like they come undone with themselves.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I've just got to find a part.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've lost where I am.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they say the system emphasises academic progression.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: They really emphasise that the focus of schooling
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: is on tertiary pathways.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: But this is where they get into the idea that they're like, oh,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: things like,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: written work or academic or preparing students for tertiary education isn't going
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: to work for everybody and it's not effective.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: But they then go on to give this,
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: like they give this story of this young student,
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Adam, who, I don't know, who, you know,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: wasn't behind like he was struggling with schooling and he wasn't behind
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: because he wasn't trying but he was essentially he was behind
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: because he'd not been taught properly and he speaks about how
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: in year seven somebody actually did teach him properly and they taught him phonics
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: and he was able to read and that that was like life-changing
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: so they actually they kind of speak about how the school system needs all these
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: extra things to support students who don't learn academically and aren't going
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: to learn through like reading writing but then they actually give an example of a student where
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: if you teach them well then we've solved this problem um before i go like before i
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: do you want to chime in with anything on that one look i got plenty to say on this caiti
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: um
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: eight
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's, I probably,
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: depending on how you, I mean,
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't eligible for free school meals, but I came from a working class area.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, look, your point touches on a really important point there.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I would suggest this is our poet plumber's point.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we do need all kids to be able to read.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: i remember reading once about italian lorry drivers who go to the opera
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: because they're absolutely in love with opera they listen to opera
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: as they drive around now driving a lorry a truck to americans and australians sorry
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Truck drivers.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Driving a truck is coded as a working class occupation,
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: but this doesn't mean that things that are considered part of elite culture are out
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: of bounds to working class people.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the point of education.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that what's going on a lot of the time is that kids
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: from deprived backgrounds are being failed by the education system,
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: even though England's made improvements.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: In the last 10 years or so,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're at the average level and a lot of kids will still be being fired.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: failed, they weren't being talked to read properly. I mean...
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: the kid who doesn't like writing,
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: I made note on that, probably wasn't taught how to write very well.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why he doesn't like written work.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly it.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a case, I suppose, if we've let kids down.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: When they get to a certain age,
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: usually around about 14, you start letting them make some choices.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need some more vocational pathways for them.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think a wider point, though, is I was there in, let's go back to, let's say, maybe 2000, 2001.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: So ancient history, Katie, and I was living in Ealing and I went to
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: The local Labour Party meeting,
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: because despite what people say about me,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I used to be a member of the British Labour Party.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to the local Labour Party meeting and our MP was talking.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, they were looking to massively expand higher education.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was sceptical of this because I thought it would lead to tuition fees,
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: the cost of university education going up.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was worried that a lot of people would end up doing courses
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: that weren't particularly worthwhile and didn't add
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: value like so at the time in 2000 if you went to university you were
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: a smaller proportion of the population than today and by going
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: to university you could pretty much guarantee you'd end up earning more money as
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: a result of that the argument was society was better off for people
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: who became engineers and doctors and things like that so
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: the state would subsidize people going to university what was happening around
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: about 2000-2001 was
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: in the uk was that people say no we need more students to go
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: to university that's going to cost more the state won't be able to fund it
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: so students will have to pay for more of that themselves
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: so once you now have students contributing more towards the university education
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: but also a great number going so
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially,
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: courses that cater to students who would have had lower educational outcomes
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: than previously.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you're paying for this and you're going to this course that caters,
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: then actually the benefit of going to university becomes more marginal.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the same as it used to be.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's a mistake.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was worried about that.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the MP who was Stephen Pound, who I was talking to, I think I can name him now.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm breaching any confidences at this distance.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said that the argument was, yeah,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: some of these courses wouldn't be great and wouldn't necessarily be that worthwhile.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: But by going to university, you would make these kids middle class.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: and the research suggests that therefore their children will have better outcomes
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: and they'll have better educational outcomes and health outcomes and things like
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: that so that's how this was supposed to work and I remember looking at him sideways
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: and thinking he'd done a bit of a conjuring trick there
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: because I couldn't couldn't really disagree but I also didn't it didn't seem right
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: to me that that and also what about if these working class kids don't want
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: to be made middle class what if they're sort of quite proud
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: of being working class now the intervening
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: 25, 26 years, I think has proved my skepticism was valid.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've got working class communities in Australia,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: in the UK and around the world who feel disenfranchised,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: not listened to, who are being pushed into populist politics.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is that we've built our whole system of worth around going to university,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: And getting a degree and not really valuing the working class culture
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: that some people belong to.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so the point about poet plumbers is that people should be able to aspire
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: to be tradies and plumbers and truck drivers.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, to be honest, in Australia right now, those are quite well paid people.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: careers but that doesn't mean that they don't need an education um
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: and it it doesn't mean that they can't appreciate the arts or sciences
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: or high culture or politics or go into politics or you know all those sorts
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: of things that we associate with an educated life sorry i went off
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: on one there i apologize no no well i think it's just that there's a view that
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: if you're teaching students
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: maths and english
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: and historians i leave you teaching them these core what we might call academic
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: or what we might call academic content
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: then what we're doing is we're defining success as only being that you're excelling
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: at all of that and that you want to pursue that and you want to pursue something
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: that is dependent on that and i just don't think that that's the case
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: but it's something that it's
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that I see all the time online where it's as soon as you start
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: to put students into a schooling system where one of
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: the outcomes is tertiary education or further study and in order to get into
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: that you need to do well at whatever these academic prerequisites are.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Then it you know
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: then immediately you're saying well everything else is not successful
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: and that's just not a true that's just not
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: a true view it's like school doesn't purely and we've said it
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: before school doesn't purely exist to prepare you for what comes next like part
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: of it is about you know teaching you the knowledge so that so that regardless
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: of what you choose to do how long you choose to stay
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: in school it's like you can read
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: and write you can communicate you have enough knowledge about the world that you can
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: watch what's going on on the news if you're into that or you can make judgments
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to which political affiliation you're interested in, whatever it is.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's so that you can become a more worldly person.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say this is the career path.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: and it doesn't mean that schools don't need
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: to have like i think most schools now have some kind of vocational pathway or option
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: as part of it and if they don't there's enough schools
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: that i think people can just pick and go to a different one for
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: the most part i think a lot of state schools generally do in australia yeah yeah
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: and i think in the uk um
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: yeah there are vocational options in australia quite a lot of them and you know
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: in victoria we've got vet and these different programs that people can follow and in
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: the uk there's been this perennial like it's been going on ever since i was
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: a lad people saying that vocational options are undervalued and they're looked down
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: on because in in uk there's a kind of lot of bit of snobbery um like the clap around
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: the class system and so these vocational options are often sort of looked down on
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: and people are always trying to
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: boost them even now Andy Burnham who's apparently going to be
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: the next prime minister his big idea is
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: to introduce more vocational options for students and make them sort of more valuable
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: and people value them more and all this sort of stuff. I feel like that's very different in
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Australia like i feel like we really do hold kind of like vocation to a really high standard
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really different view.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: i think yeah i i think there might be a little bit of it i mean
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: but um it's not quite the same as in the uk i think but obviously i haven't lived in
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: the uk for a while look one thing i wanted to mention though just getting
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit gossipy um are you like this are you so name calling name calling um
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: are you familiar with the argument between bridget philipson
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: the uh education minister in the uk and kemi badenoch the leader of
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: the opposition i'm not no well i wouldn't expect you to be but uh what happened so
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: when the uh labor current labor government got elected into 2024 one
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: of their um policies were that they were going to introduce a sales tax like the gst
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: on independent school fees so independent schools in the uk don't get
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: a subsidy like they get here
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: so people just had to pay full fees but they wanted
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: to introduce this sales tax now this is really unusual there's hardly any countries
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: in the world that do this most are of the view that
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: if parents educate their kids independently or in private education that that saves
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: the state money because otherwise the state would have to pay for their education in
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: the state system so many states like Australia
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: to some extent will subsidise independent education so whacking a tax on it is a bit
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: of an eccentric thing to do
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so they said they were going to bring this in and they were
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: going to use the funds generated from this tax
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: to employ additional teachers in the state school system.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, they brought this tax in and there's a big debate about
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: like lots of independent schools have closed often citing
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: this tax and also changes that the government made
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: to another tax national insurance employers contributions
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: it just made these schools economic and quite uneconomic
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: and quite a lot have closed down.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bridget Phillipson has been kind of a little bit mocking of independent schools.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like say the state schools need one of
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: the tweets is something like state schools need teachers more
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: than private schools need embossed notepaper or something like this.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And she's been quite sort of
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: direct and out there in some of her comments on this.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I would imagine that if a private school is likely to shut down,
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: they are still just due to funds.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: They are still channelling those funds into, you know, embossing or gold foiling their logos.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this debate's been going on.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that is clear... People are arguing that...
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are arguing that no more independent schools have closed down than would normally.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Other people are saying, no, it's a lot more.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that is absolutely clear...
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: is that they haven't recruited all these teachers for
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: the state education system there are fewer teachers in
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: the state education system now than there were in 2024 um partly this partly this is
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: where is this tax going well well since then they sort of changed their tune
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: and uh anyway but and and kind of walked crept back from their manifesto commitments
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit and partly this lack of teachers is because there are fewer kids
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: in primary school now because of the um
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: collapse in the sort of birth rate primary schools are educating fewer students
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: so we need fewer primary school teachers so some of this is kind of natural
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: but nevertheless the promise in 2024 when all of this was known was
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: that there would be more teachers and they'd be paid for by this tax well anyway
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: when Keir Starmer the Prime Minister resigned he went to the House of Parliament
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: to give his question time performance thing that they do there
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: a bit like question time we have in Australia
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think everyone expected Kemi Badenoch,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: the leader of the opposition,
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: to sort of give him an easy time because, you know, he just said he'd resigned.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: But she's a pugilist and she really went after all the people on his front bench
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: who might have positions in the new government under this Andy Burnham.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she called Bridget Philipson.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: She called Bridget Philipson, the education minister, a spiteful class warrior, right?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Spiteful class warrior.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the sort of comments on independent schools and all this sort of stuff.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what is name calling sit again?
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: DH0, isn't it?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: DH0.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it made me smile when I read the quote from Bridget Philipson in this article,
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: looping back to the article eventually.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: The communities in this report are my community's
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: i know what they've given this country and what this country failed to give back
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: so bridget phillipson makes a lot of the fact that she is working class
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: and um yeah class warrior i think i think she probably is a class warrior
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: whether she's spiteful or not wouldn't be for me to say
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: that was when will they learn thank you so much for listening as always
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: if you've got a podcast article or opinion piece that you would like a greg and i
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: to discuss in a future episode please make sure that you either comment it on
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: the link below or you reach out to either of us on any of our socials
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: that you can find in the show notes along with any of the resources that we've used
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: or referred to in today's episode thank you