Copycats, Stickybeaks and Scallywags, Our Children All: Kids Don't Fail School, Schools Fail Kids

By Bruce L Jones

Inspired by all the wonderful professional teachers who worked tirelessly in creating inspirational learning environments in our schools for the thousands of Copycats, Stickybeaks and Scallywags who enjoyed learning with them so much. I enjoyed learning with them too. As so often was said,

“It was more fun than the pictures.”
and we all agreed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369490372

Bruce L Jones

Bruce began his teaching career aged seventeen after completing a Certificate of Teaching at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College, Brisbane, Queensland in 1960. Having spent three years teaching in large schools in Brisbane he was transferred as Head Teacher to a one teacher school with thirteen pupils from grade one to grade eight, five of them riding horses to school, the nightsoil to bury each Friday afternoon. A steep learning curve in understanding how children best learn commenced at that point. He was an outstanding educator who always put the needs of his pupils before the needs of the establishment. Throughout his long career he has been passionate about educational reform and never afraid to do things differently if he felt these changes would benefit the long term development of his pupils. He was heavily influenced by many of the great educators of the twentieth century and strove to implement child centred learning based on real life outcomes in all of his schools, with some success.

Book preview

Copycats,

Stickybeaks and

Scallywags,

Our Children All

Kids don’t fail school, Schools fail kids

Bruce L Jones

Edited by Peter Bradford

Cheryl Goerger, PDF consultant

Trudy Brooks, Cover artist

Copyright © 2023 by Bruce L Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/29/2023

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Inspired by all

the wonderful professional teachers who worked tirelessly in creating inspirational learning environments in our schools for the thousands of copycats, stickybeaks, and scallywags who enjoyed learning with them so much. I enjoyed learning with them too. As so often was said,

‘It was more fun than the pictures,’

and we all agreed.

Dedicated to the memories of Phil Cullen (1928–2018) and Terry Ball (1951–2019)

To Phil, whose inspiration to look to the needs of each child as the starting point for their learning success was paramount, for his humour and stories of school, for being Queensland’s DoPE (state director of Primary Education, Qld, May 1975–February 1989—or thirteen years, ten months), and for his Treehorn Express, battling to rid our nation of NAPLAN.

And to my best mate Terry Ball, lifelong friend and educator, adventurer, paddler, and sailor, always game to ‘give it a go’ when I needed him the most, and he called me Skipper.

The Multi-Age Association of Queensland (MAAQ) and ‘Free to Learn’ are his legacy.

‘It’s sad being alone. Thank you for all the great times

we shared, and talking about kids.’

‘Ancora imparo.’

‘I am still learning.’

Contents

Biography of Bruce L. Jones

A Word before We Begin

Acknowledgements

Foreword: This Book Is about Schools, Where Most Kids Have to Go to Learn

Introduction

Section 1 Steady as She Goes

Why School?

Alternative Models to Graded Classrooms

Does Education Suffer from Boiling Frog Syndrome?

Effective Learning and Teaching

The Inbuilt Failure Factors of Our Current Education System

School Culture with the Current Model, 1850–2021

Poverty and Social Justice

Inhibiting Effects of Poverty

Phil’s Zone of Silence

Let’s look at a few instances

Section 2 Full Steam Ahead

The Goal of Education—Jean Piaget

Why Self-Actualised Learning?

The Advantages of Multi-Age Classrooms

Disadvantages of Multi-Age Classroom Structures and the Challenges to Overcome

It’s All about the Teachers

Wright’s Model of Teacher Development Stages

Mazlow’s Stages of Levels of Learners

The Education Digestion Model, Diagrams 1 to 4

An Action Model for Teachers to Get Started

Basic Teacher Strategies for Creating a Multi-Age Learning Environment

Imagine Learning Maths in This Multi-Age Classroom

For Further Information

Section 3 Time for a New Fit-out, Skipper

Can We Imagine an Alternative Model for Education?

The Proposed Educational Model for Our Nation’s Future

The Puberty Curriculum

The Nineteen Modules of the Puberty Curriculum

Summary Comments

Treehorn—a Child’s Representative

Appendices

Included Screens

Bibliography

Bibliography for Understanding the Origins and Management of Inequity

Biography of Bruce L. Jones

Bruce began his teaching career aged seventeen after completing a certificate of teaching at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College, Brisbane, Queensland, in 1960. Having spent three years teaching in large schools in Brisbane, he was transferred as head teacher to a one-teacher school with thirteen pupils from grade one to grade eight, five riding horses to school and the night soil to bury each Friday afternoon. A steep learning curve in understanding how children best learn commenced at that point.

He was an outstanding educator who always put the needs of his students before the needs of the establishment. Throughout his long career, he has been passionate about educational reform and never afraid to do things differently if he felt these changes would benefit the long-term development of his pupils. He was heavily influenced by many of the great educators of the twentieth century and strove to implement child-centred learning based on real-life outcomes in all of his schools, with some success.

From that tiny Class 6 bush school to his last Band 10 large primary school, several themes dominated his career, and these are the essence of his book. He realised that children learn best if they are considered above all as being copycats, stickybeaks, and scallywags, and learning to learn is their natural state.

His lifelong belief that children taught in chronologically age-based single classrooms seriously hampers the success of many is thoroughly addressed.

He argues that Australian governments, for their own political advantage since the days of Prime Minister Bob Menzies, have pursued the privatisation of the nation’s education system. Using the catch cry ‘Parent Choice’, this move to privatise is the root cause of the great inequity Australia now suffers, with the ever-widening gulf between those of means and those without.

In the third section of the book, Bruce has proposed a complete reform of the nation’s education system. Reform in this context means to start again with a well-researched plan to end many of the nation’s woes and shortcomings. By addressing the triple scourge of governments’ mishandling of the education agenda through its Inertia, Ignorance, and Inequity (he labels it the Quicksand of Inertia, Ignorance, and Inequality, or QIII), his revolutionary model for schools is all inclusive, even frightening!

He promoted close relationships with his schools’ communities, being instrumental in establishing many civic and educational enterprises including a swimming pool and caravan park, a market grounds and sports fields, a tagged fishing competition, and annual festival, as well as an Education Centre for the professional development of teachers and an Outdoor Environmental Education Centre for all children of far north Queensland.

Unlike the words of Bernard Shaw, ‘He who can does, he who can’t teaches,’ Bruce preferred, ‘Those who can teach are priceless and those who can’t shouldn’t’—words proven true by the many fine teachers with whom he worked.

In each of his schools, his guitar strumming and desire to have all kids enjoy and love music and drama and to sing enough songs for a long bus trip or around a campfire late into a starry, starry night were paramount. School concerts in all of his schools were integral to showcasing the incredible creativity of children, given the opportunity to get on a stage and show off their talents. Adventure camps by canoe and sleeping under a sheet of plastic presented a challenge his pupils relished. In almost every school, his pupils dug a fish pond, and in every case, those who followed filled them in.

His keen interest and promotion of professional development for teachers together with his deep commitment to environmental outdoor education, all within a multi-age classroom structure, created learning environments which challenged his pupils and enhanced their quest for success, as well as supported the freedom his teachers felt to focus on the love of learning for their pupils.

His schools reflected the adventure and risk taking that all pupils thrive upon including flying foxes, climbing trees, stilt walking on two-metre-high stilts, and torch-led night walks to handle three-metre-long amethystine pythons.

‘Kids can do so much if you trust them and loosen the reins to watch them run’ was his firm belief, and remains so. ‘Kids don’t fail school—schools fail kids.’ Ancora imparo—Still, I am learning.

His lifelong belief that children taught in chronologically age-based single classrooms seriously hampers the success of many is thoroughly addressed in the following pages.

A Word before We Begin

The pages following are heavily based upon my personal experiences as a teacher and principal in Queensland State Schools from 1960 to 1998, resulting in the examples given being weighted towards that state’s education system, Education Queensland. The references to the national education system under the auspices of the Federal Education Ministers encompass all states of the Commonwealth. All schoolchildren and their teachers face the same challenges to their learning and teaching as described in the following pages. It is now up to the parents of those children, through their elected law makers, to reform our nation’s education.

The greatest challenge ahead is to convince all those who currently decide what it is that our children should learn and how and when they should learn it, to take the control from their hands and put it firmly in the hands of the teaching profession from the very beginning. Strategies for such a change are fully explained in section 3. How to convince our governments that an investment in our children is an investment in our future is yours and mine to pursue. To continue on the current educational pathway driven by forces alien to the welfare of our children is a gross mismanagement of our nation’s future that we can witness all about us every day.

The format of this book may seem slightly unconventional as you would expect with such a radical assessment of the current situation in our schools and such a broad-ranging strategy for reforming our nation’s education system. As well as the usual text with references to the sixty-three appendices and a broad bibliography, it also references ‘screens’, which are interspersed at the end of each ‘section’. Together, they can be used as a standalone slideshow presentation available from my website with the eighty-four included screens and a further fifty-two not included herein. Also, there are many references to internet sources that can be accessed similarly to save typing into your computer, together with a comprehensive index.

The antiquated and mainly unchallenged classroom structure of children grouped in chronologically age-determined classes is within itself detrimental to the success of up to 40 per cent of its cohort. For their own political advantage, governments have pursued the privatisation of our nation’s education system through ‘Parent Choice’, knowingly creating and exacerbating the inequity that afflicts our nation. The inability of educators to construct a vision for our nation’s children to both address the needs of its learners and recognise the impact of the current techno-revolution is apparent to all.

The reform of our nation’s education system for all of its children, each to his/her greatest potential, would result in a great health benefit for all its children, the overall health of our nation. Inequity divides our people and prevents our teachers from achieving that goal.

Can we do better? We must try to do better.

No to NAPLAN?

According to a new State of the Schools survey conducted by the Australian Education Union, NAPLAN (National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy) impacts teachers’ workload and students’ stress and is not useful or effective enough to warrant this. In fact, many school principals and teachers are finding NAPLAN outdated.

The survey of public school teachers, principals, and education support staff found 73 per cent of principals say the NAPLAN increases teacher workloads; 86 per cent of principals say that it contributes to students’ stress and anxiety, and 59 per cent of principals say it makes no difference to student outcomes.

The survey also showed that 62 per cent of teachers say that NAPLAN is an ineffective diagnostic tool for teachers.

AEU Federal President Careena Haythorpe said that NAPLAN is not fit for purpose in our schools.

‘It does not properly assess student outcomes and achievements, nor does it account for the hard work teachers undertake to cater for varying student needs and ensure high-quality teaching and learning happens in schools.’

Careena Haythorpe has called for a new national assessment system with a comprehensive program of classroom-based and teacher-led assessments along with sample-based testing.

‘The union and its members must be consulted to develop a framework that puts the needs of students, teachers, and parents at the centre of assessment.’

(Source to be verified)

NPLAAN has gevin our crhediln a new rosean to lvoe lerainng and scueecd for all tiher leivs.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the following persons and organisations who have assisted me with their inclusions in the compilation of this book on our nation’s current education system, with a few hopefully helpful suggestions to commence the reform of said system, the most important in any nation’s culture and future. Sadly, some are no longer with us to comment on their contribution.

~ Bruce L. Jones

Alan Cockerill

Alan Tudge

Albert Einstein

Alex Proimos

Alfie Kahn

Annastacia Palaszczuk

Anne Summers

Barbara Riegel

Benjamin Franklin

Bob Hawke

Brisbane Independent School

Brown and Craig of Linn County

Chuck Salter, ‘16 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher’

Correna Haythorpe

David Zyngier (DOGS)

Diane E. McLellan

Doug of Victor Primary, NY

Dryden and Vos

Education Week—USA

Edward de Bono

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Explorer Academy

Facebook

Florence Parry—Treehorn

Frederick J. Moffitt—Thus a Child Learns

Gayle Greene

George Bernard Shaw

George H. Reavis—Animal School

Ginger Whiting

Glenn Fahey

Goodlad and Anderson

Gordon Stokes

Jae Weatherall

James Norbery

Jean Piaget

Jim Grant and Char Forsten, ‘If you’re riding a horse and it dies, get off.’

Joan Dalton

Joel Klein

John Carrick

John Dewey

John Goodlad

John Howard

John Marsden

John S. Taylor

Joshua T. Dickerson

Judith Brett

Julia Gillard

Kati Haycock

Les Treichel

Marion Leir

Martin Greyford

Mazlow

Michelangelo

Natasha Bita

Neil Postman

Newman and Wehlage

Nicola Forrest

Nikki Gemmell

Pasi Sahlberg

Patti Smith

Peter Hutton

Peter Ellyard

Peter Garrett

Peter O’Brien

Peter Senge

Phil Cullen

Phillip Adams

Professor Colin Power

Professor Fiona Stanley

Professor Wade Davis

Project Aristotle

Quentin Jones

Rhiannon Down

Richard Fidler

Rob Harris

Rupert Murdoch

School of Total Education

Sir Alec Clegg

Sir Christopher Bell

Sir Ken Robinson

Steve Jobs

Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon

Sue Curewitz Arthen

The Guardian

The Smith Family

The Sunday Mail

Thomas Edison

Thomas Sergiovanni

V. A. Sukhomlinsky

Wright

Foreword

This Book Is about Schools, Where Most Kids Have to Go to Learn

Each child has but one childhood, that precious period from birth to puberty, free of the pressures and responsibilities of working and providing for others, safe in the nurturing arms of a loving and caring family of adults whose prime aim is to provide the best opportunities for their offspring, to prepare them for a wonderful and fulfilling life ahead. Many are not so fortunate. For a major portion of their childhood, children attend school compulsorily. School is seen by the agencies responsible for those compulsory years of tuition, usually the nation’s governments or heavily subsidised private or religious providers, as the necessary structure to educate their young in literacy and numeracy fundamentals and impress upon them the social norms that a society relies upon to function; its culture, its history, and its plans and dreams for its future.

To enhance their academic development, school should be an exciting, fulfilling, and rewarding time in every pupil’s childhood and should provide a sense of adventure for the most part. Learning, when led by the learner, is indeed an exciting adventure. School should embrace an environment in which the imagination of every child can blossom and bloom to its greatest potential. The aim of every school in our nation should be to inspire our children to explore and extend their imaginations to levels we once never thought possible, with dreams to fulfil their futures. Most have quite a different aim, which we shall explore.

To maximise the potential of every learner’s success, it is essential that we develop a deep understanding of who this childhood learner really is. Put simply, every child by nature is a copycat, a stickybeak, and a scallywag and can fully succeed only if the conditions for learning can accommodate all three of those intertwined and innate qualities. Kids are complicated. The greater we can develop their imagination and daydreaming, their pushing and pulling of their real world and their managing of their own paths of discovery, the greater will be each child’s overall development, creativity, and success in life.

In essence, education is a simple process: learning to think so that the best decisions can be made to solve the problems one faces as one travels through life. Learning to make the best choices along life’s way is essential for living a happy and successful life. The very best place to make all those mistakes is at school, for there they can always be addressed and learnt from. Education is the most complex aspect of childhood yet seemingly presented as a simple linear progression of learning tasks, grade by grade, regularly monitored, and data reliant. This basic structure of schools and learning is flawed to the degree now that the true needs of our children are either not possible or so heavily distorted that many, we are told up to 40 per cent, find school irrelevant to their real interest in learning. As a result, many simply disengage from schooling, often with dire social outcomes.

The so-called equity, the Australian ideal of fairness and impartiality, has been stripped from our nation’s education system in the push to privatisation, ‘Parent Choice’, which has resulted in our nation tearing itself apart as the wedge between the haves and have-nots is driven more deeply every day. The resulting social costs caused by the poverty these policies create far outweigh the benefits they supposedly provide. It is my contention that the bigger the organisation, the more determined it is to resist change to protect its established culture. I use the metaphor of the Quicksand of Inertia, Ignorance, and Inequity, the QIII, which seemingly takes on board innovations and change for a time, but eventually reverts to the tried and trusted policies of the past, drowning all those who try, thus keeping education firmly rooted in a time that has passed us by, a time of graded learning according to chronological age with results and rewards based on narrow academic markers. The QIII equates to the bureaucracy in most situations.

The Australian education system, driven by a national curriculum and monitored by the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, NAPLAN, has put its control almost solely in the hands of the Federal Minister of Education and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA. The privatisation of the system by advocating ‘Parent Choice’, heavily subsidised through the powerful influence and lobbying of the private and faith-based sectors, has had dire consequences for a large number of Australian school children and their families. All of the above, within a rigid chronological-aged classroom system, grade by grade, subject restricted, and further constrained by the feminisation of the workforce, currently 84 per cent in primary schools and 68 per cent in secondary schools across the country, has resulted in an education system whose purpose and relevance to the children for whom it was established seem rather distant, with technology and its many social media platforms having an often negative influence on the youth of our nation.

The single most important lesson that I learnt in my fifty years of schooling, beginning school at five years of age and finishing on my fifty fifth birthday, was that chronological age has little relationship with stages of development or the mental age of young learners. As a result, age-based grades mitigate against one’s innate urgency to learn, supressing the most able in our classrooms and frustrating those who are less able throughout their school lives. That may be as high as 40 per cent in a grade classroom.

On behalf of parents considering fee-paying ‘Parent Choice’ for their child’s education, Independent Schools Australia, ISA (then ISCA), conducted a survey in 2008 that showed that among the most important factors influencing parents’ choice were educational excellence, good teachers, a supportive caring environment, good facilities and education philosophy—what parents want above all is for children to have a well-rounded education with a strong emphasis on learning life skills. Surely, that should be a given for all Australian children in every school across the nation. One must ask, ‘Why is that not possible?’

Continuing to do what we have always done will ensure we will always get the same or similar results. ‘If it’s not broken, don’t bother fixing it.’ But who decides if it’s broken? Learning in grade-based, same-aged classrooms has dominated school structures for the past 170 years, and many more to come it would seem. These structures can no longer manage the problems the world is facing today, but we persist. Can you recall the lesson of the analgesic powder company Bex? Using its catchy slogan, ‘Stressful Day? What you need is a cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down,’ sales rocketed. When suffering from headaches, users of the analgesic powders, APC, aspirin, phenacetin, and codeine took the medication in ever-increasing quantities to overcome the pains that the APCs themselves had begun to cause. To overcome the further effects of more headaches, more of the medication was consumed, causing greater headaches, so more of the medication was taken again. Eventually, one’s kidneys failed, and so ended the headaches. Likewise, our schools continue to do more and more of the same to ensure better results in NAPLAN are ‘just around the corner’.

When our nation witnesses the decline in the safety of our schools, the steady departure of many of our finest teachers from the classroom, a heightened disdain for schooling, even stalled and declining standards, and seemingly ever-increasing education budgets, do our principals, our education departmental leaders, our ministers of education, our premiers, even our federal ministers take time to reflect and earnestly ask, ‘Why?’ The previous federal education minister Alan Tudge had flagged an impending review of the teacher education sector, arguing ‘further reform is necessary to reverse declining academic outcomes (over the past twenty years) and return the nation to the top of the global rankings by 2030 … focused on boosting teacher quality, creating a more rigorous school curriculum and safeguarding NAPLAN from ‘those who call for less accountability’" (Rebecca Urban National Education Correspondent, The Australian [appendix 1]). Another new minister, another review, and no change of direction anticipated. More rigour, more NAPLAN, and more misery for our children with no future vision for our nation through them. Our learners deserve so much more as they disengage from the most important pursuit in life—to learn how to learn. One might conclude that the Bex syndrome partnered with the QIII are indeed lethal tools our leaders use to prove they are worthy of another term in office to fix things up, again and again, and then again, all over again.

All nations use their education systems to define their culture, to create their future. They rely on their teachers to carry out that role for them. Teachers, the most vital role in any society’s structure, yet treated like throwaway fast-food wrappings, must find a voice. Finding the most suitable candidates and then training them for that role in Australia is now the responsibility of our universities, more often than not wrestling with government funding priorities for short-term political gain. Long-term commitment to our country’s future is sadly wanting at the very least. The role of teacher colleges in the past has never been properly addressed with the current arrangements. The political control of a nation’s education system based on the need to retain political power at all cost is anathema to its most vulnerable, its children, its future. Teachers have no voice in such matters.

‘If one were to search for the best way to unite