the only thing i learnt from pharmacology is that killing your patients is a bad look
Alt Title: Education, Expectations, and Equality of Opportunity
Maths class.
You begin writing, scrawling really.
Chap. 5
Q1
a. 4a^3
c. 10c^6
e. 32 e^7
You eventually get into a rhythm, jotting down the answers without really thinking about the questions.
You begin to talk with your friends. Actually, no. Not with. At your friends. You don't really concentrate on what you say - words just fall out of your mouth haphazardly, as you continue to scribble down numbers and powers and parenthesis and...
Eventually, for some reason, you hit upon the topic of uni.
"Why would anyone want to do maths in uni?"
You ask.
You look up. You see your maths teacher standing in front of your row.
Fuck.
***
In a sense, this was the culmination of pre-university schooling. Its competitiveness, with its veneer of cooperation, is spread throughout the Australian school system.
Let's start with the most obvious source of competition. In New South Wales (NSW), we have the Higher School Certificate, achieved after completing Year 12, and the state-wide exams. Your final ranking (ATAR, a system which uses percentiles) is dependant on your exam marks, and your school marks.
Your exam marks are not your raw marks. Instead, they are scaled by:
1. How you performed relative to your cohort (your ranking within the cohort)
2. How your cohort performed relative to the state
3. How the state performed as a whole
Ostensibly, the scaling from 2 rewards cooperation. The line, as it goes, is that if everyone in the class does well, then everyone will be scaled higher as a result. However, despite its overtures of teamwork, we must remember that you still have to compete with your classmates. In essence, it creates a system where the mindset is: everybody (in the class) must do well, but you must do better in comparison. Of course, this is an impossibility. Within a cohort, half of its students by definition must fall below the median. For half of the cohort, that mindset will not yield rewards. For the half of the cohort above the median, the paradoxical mindset of wanting your classmates to do better, yet wishing to retain your rank arises. Psychologically, there are no winners.
So we see that within the school, the system propagates a sense of anxiety. If we use the oft quoted analogy of a gun, with the loaded chamber being genetic disposition, and the trigger being the environment, we can see one of the reasons as to why there seems to be an epidemic of poor mental health, and how not everyone is affected in the same manner.
This veneer of cooperation disappears between schools. Schools are placed in direct competition with one another - their respective rankings published in newspapers, and spread by word of mouth. Thus, schools and students must work to retain their rank. This form of education emphasises the student's ability to do well on a standardised test. It is not aimed at the development of healthy adults, but is rather more focussed on achieving 'measurable' results in the form of school rankings.
So far I have attacked the school system itself. But the greater context in which the school system exists is also to blame.
The question is, then: why do we have the HSC? why are school rankings so important?
To answer this, we must go back to that interview.
As I have talked about in earlier pieces, the importance of STEM seems to be overestimated in the minds of politicians, at the detriment of the arts. But of course, this is only reflective of a divide between 'good' and 'bad' jobs especially within middle class families.
So what is a 'good' job or degree?
Perhaps it should be thought of in the manner of supply, and demand, as overplayed as that may seem. A 'good' job would then be an occupation with high societal demand, as opposed to demand in terms of its necessity. And this demand usually comes from three sources; the degree sounding 'good' due to its difficulty or perceived difficulty; the likelihood of employment after graduating, real or perceived; and often anecdotal accounts of the job's pay.
Let's focus on the first source. If a degree is difficult, then by definition, there will be fewer teachers. Already, the supply is limited. So the required entry marks are already high. This is then exacerbated by said societal demand. So in a sense, one gets a feedback loop whereby the exclusivity of such a degree attracts more applicants - and the difficulty of entering increases the degree's reputation, generating more applicants.
Let's look at the next two sources together. The likelihood of employment and its pay creates demand, that much is true. This theoretically would create a source of tension - the increase in demand, alongside slower growth in supply should mean that we have a glut of unemployed people with popular degrees. If so, then the demand for those degrees in the first place should go down, as the last two sources are figuratively shot. That's where the HSC, or ATAR comes in then. In a similar manner to the first source, such increases in demand would result in required scores increasing, such that competition increases at a higher rate than the actual supply of jobs or degrees.
Thus, the HSC and ATAR only exist as a reflection of societal demand. If we are to look further, then we see that an economic system of competition is at the heart of this. That is, in true neoliberal fashion, the market has permeated into education - and hence education has become nothing more than a commodity.
Then we get to the next issue. Expectations.
***
You stand in the crowd, waiting for the teacher to call your name out.
It has almost been 6 years, you've gone through this process at least 20 times for this subject. And yet you still feel an odd sense of trepidation.
You assess yourself.
Heart racing, faster than usual. Good, that's your usual response.
A certain hollowness in your abdomen, a sinking feeling, really. And no sign of elevated temperatures. Good, that means you can't have done too poorly.
You know these are silly tests; more reflective of your confidence than of how you actually did; and yet you continue to check those signs as you mill about.
You try to see a pattern in how the papers are handed back.
Perhaps it's by last names.
Great, your last name starts with "z", you'll be stuck towards the end.
Are you trying to distract yourself?
Regardless, it turns out that its random.
The teacher calls out your name.
You pick up your paper, and see a sticker.
Final year of high school, and you still get scratch n' sniffs. You did well at least.
You look further down.
And you see "handwriting" written in angry red print. Just like the past 20 times.
You let out a laugh, out of relief. Heart still racing, you go join your friends.
Maybe your handwriting will be better next time.
***
Now, onto expectations.
Expectations work hand in hand with the school system. Certainly, intrinsic motivations do compel students to take part, but if one were to remove expectations in the form of the aforementioned societal demands, and external drives to do well, then the whole system will collapse.
If the system is built on each student tacitly agreeing to take part in this 'game', then a refusal to compete will obfuscate the results. Rather than an abstracted measure of relative academic 'skill' or 'ability', the scores will be more reflective of luck.
So thus, it is entirely necessary to compel students to compete.
But certainly there will be students who do not want to compete. If we hold that some of those who do not want to compete do worse than students who want to compete, then in conjunction with the aforementioned scaling by cohort, having 'uncompetitive' people in your school would drag your school ranking down.
How does the system deal with this? It creates selective schools that students test into. And this creates another lump of demand.
So, the creation of a selective school system funnels children who want to, or are told to, compete. But hang on. If a higher percentage of 'talented' or 'gifted' students enter those schools, what happens to the rest of the schools? Well, that drives down demand for those schools, increasing the number of 'uncompetitive' students. Which then results in that school ranking being maintained, creating an equilibrium where the historically top schools remain at the top.
This does not mean that the top high schools can rest on their laurels; they must compete in order to retain their position; they must push their students to perform better; and they now have a measure by which they can determine their students' performance.
For the students, they must do well, for they were deemed 'gifted' enough to be admitted into the school in the first place, because everyone in the school does well, and because the university entry requirements demand that they must do well.
Of course, it's not all doom and gloom for those students. They still have access to good teachers, and they don't have the converse demotivating factor of attending a 'worse' school.
This is not to say that those from non-selective schools cannot do well, and those from selective schools all do well, but rather that the amount of pressure placed on the average selective student to perform well may be higher*.
***
Things to write checklist:
[ ] The metallic aftertaste in the tap water
[ ] The store-bought water, boiled
[ ] The orange-red dirt, with its glass shards glistening ever so brightly
[ ] Looking up, then trying to outrun the rain clouds
[ ] The next school, at the border between New South Wales and Queensland
[ ] Playing with bionicles
[ ] Meeting a kid who was somehow shorter than you
[ ] Going back to Sydney
***
It is all very well and good, you may say, to critique the education system. But as it stands, those who have access to education have better life outcomes than those who do not - and it seems to be a major hypocrisy to complain about your education when there are millions who do not have access to education.
And that is true. Education does improve livelihoods. And it makes sense. If you have an education in health sciences, no matter how basic, you will likely avoid certain risk factors. If you have an education in mathematics, you will likely be able to make better financial decisions. If you have access to stable, continuous education, you will likely be from areas with relatively high HDIs (compared to both the wider country or the world).
The question is whether or not a competition model of education aids in these measures, or if it simply trains people to excel in doing tests. In Australia at least, education standards seem to be dropping, despite its reliance on a competitive system. And of course, what use is a student who burns out?
Thus, if the system does not work, then it would make little sense to parade the importance of equality of opportunity. Access to education does not mean that the same educational model must be propagated everywhere. And it is not as if we do not have alternatives - in Sydney, we have the Lindfield Learning Village, a new model being trialled by the government. Indeed, an universal model of education may be misguided - the multitude of environments and values necessitates numerous visions.
I have no education in, funnily enough, education. I cannot describe or propose a comprehensive alternative to our current model. But that's perfectly fine. It's not our job to propose a fully fleshed out plan. But at the very least, our duty is to point out the flaws in the current system.
*I have not discussed private schools, and I refuse to do so out of principle.
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