Going Back To Basics Is Still Going Backwards
I'm not a big fan of Christopher Pyne. As far as I'm concerned, our new federal education minister has shown himself to be inept and completely out of his depth in his current portfolio. He continually implies that Australia's teachers are less competent than they should be and that our students are not receiving a proper education. The amount of political mudslinging every time he opens his mouth is just an embarrassment to any thinking person. In his interviews with that other redneck extremist lunatic, Alan Jones on 2GB, the two of them make complete asses of themselves as they bask in idiotic, inflammatory statements about Australian teachers. The thing that really ticks me off about Pyne is this phrase he continually uses... "back to basics". In adopting this phrase he poo-poos "modern teaching methods" which he considers airy-fairy, and talks about how we need to get back to a direct instruction model where students listen to a teacher talk at the...