Nelson's Cheap Shot At Teachers

by Matt Price - Sunday Telegraph

Brendan Nelson can't help himself. Nobody would argue with the Education Minister's push to improve literacy.

In itself, the recently announced national reading inquiry is an unambiguously good thing.

But Nelson can rarely resist taking cheap shots at teachers and schools to reap political gain.

Announcing the federal inquiry aimed at finding out what's being taught in our primary schools, he made several extraordinary claims about the uselessness of Australian teachers.

Nelson cited studies showing half the final-year graduates and early career teachers "don't know what a syllable is". He also declared that "three-quarters apparently can't identify the sounds in a word".

Both these claims were insulting and wrong.

The minister's source was complex research by Queensland University of Technology special education lecturer Ruth Fielding-Barnsley. The QUT study reveals that, as you'd expect, almost every teacher understands what a syllable is and is capable of breaking words into their separate parts.

To press his peculiar case that teachers are sub-standard, Nelson used responses to this multiple-choice question: A pronounceable group of letters containing a vowel is a: (a) phoneme; (b) grapheme; (c) syllable; (d) morpheme.

Fielding-Barnsley found 53 per cent of respondents knew the answer; that rose to 76 per cent when restricted to teachers involved in reading programs.

(The answer is syllable – although, as someone who makes a living from reading and writing, I had to triple-check).

Nor is there evidence that teachers can't identify sounds in a word. Nelson has twisted the response to another difficult question to provide more ammunition for teacher-bashing.

Rather inconveniently, the reading inquiry coincides with a global survey revealing Australian students to be among the best in the world at reading, maths and science.

This shouldn't be cause for complacency. The more we know about reading skills and early-childhood education, the less chance there is of our youngsters slipping through the literacy net.

But Nelson seems perversely intent on highlighting the worst cases of neglect to smear the teaching profession.

Because the states run schools and employ teachers, he isn't burdened by making decisions at the coalface of education.

He can run a populist and misleading line, leaving others to deal with the backlash.

Nelson has many good instincts and intentions on schools. Pushing for plain-language reports and uniform school terms and admission ages is sensible and long overdue.

But bagging teachers and highlighting the negatives in education is counter-productive and probably self-fulfilling. Schools and teachers vary in quality, but overwhelmingly they are under-appreciated, under-funded forces for good.

Imagine Communications Minister Helen Coonan running around highlighting the many mobile phone dead zones in this vast land – Telstra would never be privatised. Or Tony Abbott trawling through the public hospital system searching for frustrated patients.

It's easy – sometimes useful – to focus on negative outcomes, but surely one of an education minister's chief tasks is to support teachers, not drag them down with strident, misguided criticism.

Mark Latham was on the right track to improved literacy when he encouraged parents to buy books and read to their children.

The best teacher is no substitute for an engaged mum or dad, and the reading inquiry could do worse than suggest a bipartisan approach to bedtime stories.

While Brendan Nelson wallows in the negative, I prefer Tony Abbott's summary of modern life.

"We live in a very affluent, safe and comparatively cohesive society," the Health Minister told Radio National before departing on holidays.

"Almost never before in the history of the world has there been a happier country than contemporary Australia.

"We are an extraordinarily happy and successful society, yet . . . there is all sorts of human agony people have to deal with.

"Obviously you can never give enough support to people in (difficult) situations. All we can do is our best."

Sensible words, and something for us all to reflect on over the Christmas break.