Gamer is not the new black.

I just designed a game. Another game actually. It only needs two packs of cards to play. It's purpose is partly to teach maths enjoyably. It’s also combative and competitive and despite being equal in wins and losses against my partner I like to brag that I am the ultimate victor to our six year old daughter.

I also have shelves of toy soldiers. I've designed my own races to play in other war game systems with and I've even made my own spaghetti-western themed skirmish game. (At this point I suspect the geek level has reached a sufficient point that about two thirds of people have stopped reading.) I probably come up with about three or four rules systems a year although many are just simple experiments.

I have boxes of professionally made board games too. A bunch of local guys and me get together once in a blue moon to play those games. I don't always win but when I do my victory dance is the most spectacular.

But for all this I'm not "a gamer". Not that is if you accept the dominant definition of the term. A gamer is an identity which has become entirely defined as people who play computer games. Even more narrowly a gamer identity tends to orientate itself around playing a few major video game titles which are heavily marketed as AAA games. You rock  Minesweeper? You’re still not quite a “Gamer”.

AAA games are the major game studios big releases and they generally look as diverse as action block-busters in movies. In fact due to cross-overs between movies and games you could argue we are facing a profoundly consistent aesthetic – lots of shiny metal, cartoonish physiques, frenetic action and editing, and burning objects in rainy landscapes; in 2005 the head of Bethsheda games joked that “We also believe that everything is cooler on fire." Sometimes art just imitates art.

None of this is new however. In the past we have had the noir aesthetic swing into fashion affecting films and books (and in its later revival computer games as well). Once upon a time the Western was so dominant as to be inescapable in toys, films, books, and magazines. Nowadays it is more likely to be the superhero or the soldier. I imagine American First Nations are feeling a little relieved for the shift.

What frustrates me as a person who plays games but who isn’t quite “a gamer” isn’t particularly the aesthetic narrowness of what is being served up as “gamer culture”. There are some awesome exceptions and as I’ve mentioned these trends will come and go. Computer games probably have more creative diversity than television as a platfrom anyway. Likewise the sexism and sexualisation that tends to go with the narrow aesthetic is not my greatest concern either. Once again this is nothing we didn’t see with film noir or other heavily stylized genres; although the near nude suit of female armour in gaming may look like a new aesthetic low its actually classic fantasy fiction fare.

I’m happy to support critiques of these depictions (more critical consumers may lead to better products) but equally I don’t think we can change these kinds of aesthetic choices by fiat. That’s a dangerous path as censorship often has very little grasp of nuance. For example Pin up Betty Page’s fuller figure is celebrated by some women as an alternative to modern ideas of beauty. I think such a choice can be criticized but no-one can deny there’s a conversation to be had with decent arguments on both sides about the meaning of that image.

Probably the one area of stylistic art choices that I do get my rage on about is the world of comic books. The early Marvel comics I loved had a great range of artistic styles and a super character would only have a supermodel or body builders proportions if there was some sort of relevance to their powers. Then when I got older the art changed; almost every male character was given over the top muscles and virtually every female character had bazooka boobs with a micro waist. Rob Lieffeld’s art is probably some of the worst examples of this.

For a long time I gave up on Marvel in disgust. It may be that the pendulum is swinging back. The Runaways for example, now several years old is a return to diverse body shapes as well as an awesome read. A quick peruse over Marvel’s latest work suggest there are a range of softer touches in play across their major titles. Not everything has to have muscles popping out of muscles it seems anymore.

I mention all these aesthetic concerns because they’ve been getting a fair bit of airplay lately as part of an online debate about misogyny in video gaming. I want to put these concerns to one side to focus on an only slightly related issue. Also I am deliberately avoiding mentioning the hashtag that shall not be named. As that “movement” purports to be about journalistic ethics it can perhaps ignore this post about gamer culture.

What has gotten my goat lately about “gamer culture” is the idea that gamer – specifically meaning the consumers of video games and almost exclusively AAA games – is a viable political identity that others must respect. “Gamer” according to some pundits is like being gay or black and when Gamers are bullied then this is equal to something like racism or homophobia.

In the worst examples of this sort of Gamer pride any criticism at all of gamer culture is seen as bullying. This means anything that can be said about “gamers” has to be overwhelmingly positive or it is treated as hate speech. There is a call out for “gamers” to band together against these slurs and instead talk up their community.

I see this as the penultimate expression of political exhaustion. We are all cast as consumers in the modern public sphere. A Gamer is after all a type of customer. You become a gamer by shopping, consuming and promoting products. Sure the consumption of games can be both social and intellectual but so too can any consumption. A Gamer is just like a sports fan, a coffee-holic, or a cinephile. These are identities which can be a great basis to locate friends but once they get political tend to become spectacularly naff.

Under consumer culture only certain classes in society can take up political identities related to experiencing targetted oppression ie. identities of gender, race, physical ability or sexuality for example. This is similar to how we define refugee. A refugee is not generally technically someone fleeing one country for a better life in another. Legally they must have very narrow and specific reasons for their oppression. They must be being persecuted in the particular. But this misses the way in which consumer culture leaves us all deprived.

Just as for a refugee living in a war torn country is bad generally (even if you specifically have no reason to be targeted) many people feel generally alienated and disempowered in consumer cultures without a clear relationship between that feeling and a category of oppression. Even people who occupy clear categories of oppression while fully knowing how those oppressions are real still feel malaise unrelated to that oppression. Women hate their oppression based on gender but many doubt that eliminating that alone will bring them full humanity for example.

Frustrated by any meaningful way to collectivize this diffuse disempowerment and alienation of consumer culture we ironically take up consumer identities instead. As mentioned earlier the position of an oppressed identity is the only legitimized way to talk about oppression. Subsequently especially for people without access to other political identities it makes sense to occupy the available consumer positions society offers to express any unhappiness.

My strong suspicion is that these consumer identities will not satisfy. The oppression they talk about is largely manufactured or superficial. For example when someone ignorantly declares all Manga is that big eyed screaming school girl stuff ( really only a portion of shōjo manga) a die-hard Manga fan is not oppressed; they can go out and buy the same over-priced box sets as before. A political identity which distracts people with false claims of oppressions keeps their energy from their real problems.

Additionally to maintain a consumer identity like Gamer a person has to keep consuming and to justify doing so will often confuse consumption with a creative act. Games are particularly pernicious in this regard. The choices they give players within their worlds feel like creativity but with perhaps the exception of sandlot games like Minecraft there is mostly linear progression and by any comparison to real life in- game choices are profoundly narrow and forced. In the final analysis the impact of a gamers life is blunted, redirected down the mazes of someone else’s creation (exactly why no gaming character plays computer games in a game). This doesn’t matter so much if gaming is understood as recreation or even mental exercise. It is only when being a gamer is given a political meaning that the identity becomes poisonous.

I believe our unnamable malaise is the replacement of genuine creativity (including politics) with consumption in consumer society. Hence I feel when we embrace consumer identities like Gamer we actually immerse ourselves in more of what makes us unhappy. Then to articulate something of that dislocation we bury ourselves deeper into these identities. It’s a cycle only broken by personal collapse and as people fall out of it exhausted and unsatisfied more people are taken up into it.

I recognize I've made sweeping statements that might be wrong. Raver for example is an identity centered around music (and truly garish fashion) which developed something of a philosophy in the values of PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity and Respect). I never saw it having much impact beyond its own world though due to how easily it was preyed upon by businesses. Punk is a more viable political movement which could be argued also originates as a consumer identity although Punks’ strong DIY attitude may be the reason it escapes being purely consumptive.  Maybe gamer has some potential to morph into something more constructive. A part of this would be leaving the AAA games behind and supporting more indie ventures and ultimately self-made games.

Even then I don’t see Gamer as anything other than a dead end politically. Like all the other political identities which ultimately rely on consumption I think they cannot recreate the citizenry and full humanity we are missing. We can’t buy ourselves what we need. We have to figure out how to actively create a society we can flourish in instead.

“You cannot assume all students can read”:

An exploration of the issue of significantly low literacy among middle high school students.

Recently I completed my first practicum requirement for my Graduate Diploma of Education. While there I received feedback from my mentor that “You cannot assume all students can read.” 

Given the class I was teaching was year ten I was unnerved by this advice. With a class of twenty or more students I was not merely assuming, I was relying on my students’ fluency with spoken and written English. Such an assumption however is not justified;
“Australian surveys have indicated that 10 to 16 per cent of students are perceived by their teachers to have learning difficulties and have support needs, particularly in literacy, that go beyond those normally addressed by classroom teachers.” (LDA, 2014)

This essay hopes to explore a constructive response to students with significantly low literacy in middle high school. I am defining significantly low literacy as about six years below what is expected for a student’s educational level, so for a year nine student that would be a literacy level typical of middle primary at best.

Literacy is not a single easily grouped set of skills. The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority takes a very broad definition;
“Literacy encompasses the knowledge and skills students need to access, understand, analyze and evaluate information, make meaning, express thoughts and emotions, present ideas and opinions, interact with others and participate in activities at school and in their lives beyond school.” (ACARA, 2013)

Significantly low literacy can therefore have different meanings. A student with autism may be more likely to struggle with comprehension but a near perfect level of reading accuracy (Brock, 2010). Another student may have no difficulty with comprehending what they need to write but struggle with actually producing written work (typical of a child with dyslexia). (SPELD, 2014)   

Definitions of literacy are also contested and political. Different measurements of literacy can emphasize (or overlook) oral as compared to written language or creativity and confidence compared with accuracy and retention. The motivation for teaching literacy may be pragmatically related to employment in one context and focused on developing emotional intelligence and self-reflection in another;

“For instance, ‘information literacy’ broadly refers to the ability to access and use a variety of information sources to solve an information need. Yet, it can also be defined as the development of a complex set of critical skills that allow people to express, explore, question, communicate and understand the flow of ideas among individuals and groups in quickly changing technological environments.”(UNESCO, 2005)

Yet for students these different skills and learning attitudes are not interchangeable. Hence by one standard a student may have high literacy while by another they may be struggling.

The explanations for significantly low literacy are equally varied.  A student who experienced significant absenteeism in their primary years or simply changed schools a number of times may have missed crucial stages in learning to read, particularly as different schools can teach literacy using different systems. Longitudinal research in the UK suggests “an absence of half a year between the ages of 7- and 11-years-of-age resulted in a reduction of 0.7 of a year and 1 year in reading and mathematics test scores respectively” (Carroll, 2010) That’s a dramatic amplification of effect.

It’s worth noting that a student who finds reading at their expected level difficult for a very long time may develop ways to compensate and cover for low literacy. If their school disruption is related to something that is stigmatized such as being in a number of foster placements then the student will have an added incentive to hide their low literacy.

Another possible explanation for significantly low literacy could be recent migration from a non-English speaking country. In some cases, where the reason for migration is to seek asylum, severe school disruption will probably overlap with the student’s unfamiliarity with English. Students in this situation can also make errors such as mis-gendering pronouns if their native tongue lacks such distinctions, errors which a native English speaker won’t often make even if their literacy is generally very poor, but which in this case is not indicative of a disability of any sort.

Autism Spectrum Disorders can, but also may not, coincide with a range of communication difficulties. The research into literacy issues for autistic children is fascinating in terms of theories of impairment to semantic memory (Brock, 2010). The predictive value of such research however is confounded by the wide spectrum of ability under the diagnosis of autism. A 2012 ABS report indicated that 5% of people with a diagnosis of autism who attended mainstream schools experienced no educational difficulties and less than half reported specific difficulties with communication. (ABS, 2012) It is best not to assume that every child with an autism diagnosis will have issues with literacy or the same issues.

Dyslexia literally means “trouble with words” specifically the written word. Students with dyslexia can be capable of comprehending language that is spoken to them, which they could not read themselves. Dyslexia Australia stresses that dyslexia is often concurrent with considerable creative and imaginative talent and this organisation prefers to call it a gift rather than a disability. The Australian Dyslexia Association Inc. (a separate body) also emphasizes that people with dyslexia are not generally poor learners but “different learners” (ADA, 2014) Reflecting this, while a proportion of students with autism will be eligible for an aid, dyslexia alone may not qualify a person for an aid in Victorian schools. The proportion of students with dyslexia in Victorian schools is difficult to assess given that dyslexia is subsumed under a broader category of learning difficulties in ABS statistics. This should be improved by the federally funded National Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) launched in 2013 although there remains confusion at a school level as to whether to include mild cases of dyslexia when reporting disability. (CDA, 2014)

The majority of students with significantly low literacy should have these matters identified well before Year 10. Provided they are in the Victorian school system they will, face a mandatory testing of English, the English Online Interview (State of Victoria, 2014) in Prep. This can also be offered by schools in Grade 1 and 2. Schools only have to have students complete the test and enter the details online for a centralised diagnostic assessment of individuals or classes or schools. If students results show a disparity between their abilities and AusVELS standards the Reading Recovery program is available in many schools to assist. Unfortunately This program is no longer receiving targeted funding since 2011 due to Victorian government budget cuts resulting in its closure in some schools (Topfield, 2011).

The Department of Education provides psychologists who can provide some diagnostic testing for students with persistent literacy problems, not aided by Reading Recovery. Such testing requires a school referral and parental consent both of which are not always forthcoming.  The most exhaustive testing for Victorian students however will cost an additional $1200 of a student carers’ own money and is administered by Speld Victoria. (SPELD Vic, 2014) This puts it out of many families financial reach. Subsequently it is entirely possible that in year nine or ten a student with significantly low literacy may not have a fully supported explanation for their literacy level.

This is a shame because the adaptations required for a students low literacy are vastly different depending on the cause. If a student has dyslexia for example then making a provision for a take-home test to give them more time to read it may be sufficient, while an oral test would be even better. Those provisions are not equally appropriate for some one whose literacy is due to an intellectual disability or a historical neglect of their schooling.  The last of these would benefit from remedial classes while a child with an intellectual disability may require a completely different rubric.

Given that students with high absenteeism and those transferring to Victorian schools are even more likely not to be properly assessed, teachers, in a team with the schools welfare worker and any aids that work with the young person, need to develop their own awareness of their students’ literacy levels. Diagnostic assessment is crucial. Some students will attempt to avoid such assessment and will hide their inability if a class culture tolerates not handing in written work to the teacher. That has to be watched for.

Once the best possible assessment has been made of a students literacy then different interventions can be trialed. Online checklists for possible accommodations are an excellent resource to find solutions for students who have low literacy but fail to qualify for direct assistance. One is re-produced by the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Community Resource Centre (FAS-CRC, 2014) understandably because Fetal Alcohol Syndrome often produces an intellectual impairment too subtle to qualify a person for aide funding. This checklist includes simple suggestions like allowing a child to have copies of the class texts at home where a parent can support them or seating them closer to the teacher.

Lastly any attempt to address significantly low literacy needs to recognize that student engagement and hope are as relevant here as they are for teaching any subject. Students will usually require confidence that they will overcome their low literacy (including by adaptation) before they will try. Any understanding of the causes of a student’s low literacy is only an adjunct to a positive teaching relationship with that individual person.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2012) 4428.0 - Autism in Australia (2012) last updated 4 June 2014 viewed at http://www.abs.gov.au/ on 16^th June 2014
 

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), (January 2013), General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum, viewed at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/literacy/introduction/introduction on 16^th June 2014

The Australian Dyslexia Association Inc. (ADA), (2014), Dyslexia in Australia, viewed at http://dyslexiaassociation.org.au on 16^th June 2014

Brock, J. (2010) Language comprehension in autism, viewed at http://crackingtheenigma.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/language-comprehension-in-autism.html on 16^th June 2014

CDA, 2014, Children with Disability Australia Submission to the Senate Select Committee on School Funding Inquiry and report on the development and implementation of national school funding arrangements and school reform viewed at http://www.cda.org.au/ on 16^th June 2014

FAS, 504 Accommodation Checklist, viewed at http://www.come-over.to/FAS/IDEA504.htm on 16^th June 2014

H.C.M. (Tim) Carroll, (April 2010), The Effect of Pupil Absenteeism on Literacy and Numeracy in the Primary School, School Psychology International  vol. 31 no. 2 pp. 115-130

Learning Difficulties Australia (LDA) (2014), Learning Difficulties, Disabilities, and Dyslexia, viewed at https://www.ldaustralia.org/disabilities-and-dyslexia.html on 16^th June 2014

State of Victoria (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development), Last updated May 2014, English Online Interview, viewed at http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/assessment/ on 16^th June 2014 Last Update: 14 May 2014 Last Update: 14 May 2014  Last Update: 14 May 2014

SPELD-SA, 2014, Frequently Asked Questions About Dyslexia, viewed at http://www.speld-sa.org.au/ on 16^th June 2014

SPELD Victoria Inc., 2014, Assessments, viewed at http://www.speldvic.org.au/assessments/assessments on 16^th June 2014

Topsfield, J. (2011), Northern suburbs schools hit hard by Reading Recovery cuts, Sydney Morning Herald, November 26, 2011 

UNESCO, (2006) Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Chapter 6: Understandings Of Literacy, pp147-159

Aboriginal History and Culture in Australian Schools

This is an essay I completed for my Grad. Dip in Secondary Education. I'm including it here with an apology for its wordiness (oh academia why are you so obtuse?) because I think its issues need a good airing.


As a student teacher I have made it a priority to incorporate Aboriginal historical and cultural content into my classes. The rewards of doing so are not just better student engagement particularly from Aboriginal kids and their friends. We have also attained a better treatment of the subject at hand. Discussing traditional owners as stakeholders, the conflicts over Australian sovereignty including the massacres of the 1800s, the treatment of Aboriginal servicemen in WW2  and on many more occasions, our classes are real and honest and useful. To use a possibly unfashionable term, we have come closer to the truth of things by raising Aboriginal perspectives. 

As dull as official curriculum documents are I'm really glad they currently contain encouragement and protection for teachers who incorporate Aboriginal history and culture in their teaching. This essay will bring you up to speed on how we got here.
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Australian curriculum development has a distinctly partisan political nature. Nowhere is this more evident than in the inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives in the development of a national curriculum. Progress has been made primarily under Labor governments and subsequently halted under Liberal governments, though not necessarily gone backwards. 
In the early years of the Rudd Labor Government, Australia was also represented at the Victorian level by the Bracks-Brumby Labor governments. This period of early 2000's was a time of acknowledging a significance to Aboriginal culture and its importance in education that in the previous Howard years was viewed as contentious. It created the opportunity to revisit the goals of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy published in 1989 by the Hawke Labor Government.

The only driver of policy change to emerge in the Howard Liberal years was The National Report on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991). This report made recommendations for increased Aboriginal involvement in teacher training. (Kelly, C., 2013) It may be that over time this led to a shift in graduate teacher attitudes which played a role in later pushes for change from within education faculties and bureaucracies. That push required a changed government to be in place to respond.

Under Rudd-Labor, the Victorian Essential Learning Standards were published in 2005. They proposed a three part approach to education in which subject knowledge along traditional disciplinary lines (ie. History or Mathematics), personal and social development, and interdisciplinary capacities such as critical thinking and creativity were each given equal priority. These ideas would later become expressed slightly differently by the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and their publication in 2008 of the Melbourne Declaration. (Howes, D, 2012) (Ministerial Council on Education Training and Youth Affairs, 2008)

In the Melbourne Declaration, a statement by every Education minister in Australia at the time, we have nothing as detailed as the cross curriculum priorities to follow but we see their early seeds. Asian languages are given special mention, and sustainability is elsewhere described as a core value. Indigenous cultures are specifically mentioned with the objective that students will “recognise the value of Indigenous cultures and possess the knowledge, skills and understanding to contribute to, and benefit from, reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.” (Ministerial Council on Education Training and Youth Affairs, 2008)

Achieving this objective began poorly. In 2009 over two hundred Aboriginal leaders and academics wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Julia Gillard complaining that Aboriginal perspectives were inadequately represented in the draft national curriculum. (Ferrari, J. 2009) The letter noted that the draft curriculum “relegates Indigenous peoples and their knowledges to the category of historical artifacts in the History course” and that this and other aspects reflected “institutional racism.” (Statement on Inclusion, 2009) Cosigning the letter were “University of South Australia education professor Peter Buckskin, head of the Stronger Smarter Institute Chris Sarra, University of Technology Sydney law professor Larissa Behrendt, Canberra University education lecturer Kaye Price and president of the NSW Aboriginal Educational Consultative Group Cindy Berwick.” (Ferrari, J. 2009)

About this time other indirect drivers for curricular improvement emerged with the Closing the Gap funding in 2009 and the Review of Australian Directions in Indigenous Education completed in 2008. Both of these were primarily concerned with educational outcomes for Aboriginal students (ACARA, 2013). The connection between the inclusion of Aboriginal history, culture and perspectives into the curriculum and Aboriginal engagement with schooling is well established and provides one reason for this direction. When the National Report on Schooling in Australia reviews large numbers of raw data such as student retention rates this connection has a powerful significance. 

A more basic rationale for cross curricular inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives is simply national gratitude for the privilege of hosting the worlds oldest continuous culture with all the academic fruit that bears. Aboriginal science, for example their sophisticated land management and meteorological systems, is increasingly being recognised outside of Aboriginal communities for its understanding of the Australian context. Ray Norris, the Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Department of Astronomy & Space Science, is also a Professor with the Department of Indigenous Studies (Warawara) at Macquarie Uni who argues that Aboriginal traditional knowledge can often be the best demonstration of the empirical nature of science. For example while European science was denying the connection Aboriginal communities had observed and charted the relationship between phases of the moon and tides. (Norris R, 2014)

From a humanities (my own methods) perspective, understanding Aboriginal history, struggle and survival is critical for understanding Australia now. For one thing sovereignty in Australia is a contested matter and there are many sound legal challenges to our nations legitimacy. Aboriginal people never conceded sovereignty, nor was any war upon them declared by the British. Rather than a treaty or a surrender, Terra Nullius is the legal basis of our nation and it was declared a legal fiction in 1992. This might not affect teachers of other disciplines but it is a huge consideration for teaching humanities which must admit the lack of integrity in our legal system. It's a dilemma graduates of an Australian humanities curriculum need to understand.

There are other ways in which Aboriginal and British settler interactions in the past were formative of current Australia. The right to testify in court even if you didn't believe in an afterlife was won so that Aboriginal Australians could be witnesses. In fighting for that right arguments were made that a court had no legitimacy to try a person who couldn't testify within it. We have here the genesis of a liberal-democratic concept of the citizen – first being articulated in relation to Aboriginal people – that the law is justified only when it offers protection in return for obedience. It should be considered impossible to teach humanities without discussing historical cases like these somewhere betweens years eight to ten.

From September 2013 there has no longer been a Labor Federal government in power in Australia. There is some basis for hope regarding the continued inclusion of Aboriginal histories and cultures in a National curriculum. In December 2013 the Department of Education launched a commitment to develop a Reconciliation Action Plan to be completed by June 2014. The Plan has yet to be shared publicly but the preceding information contains positive statements. (Paul, L. 2013) There is also a yet to be shared Review of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) a strong developer of Aboriginal Inclusion in the National Curriculum. The Terms of Reference for the review however should if adhered to lead to an expansion of AIATSIS' role. (Department of Education, 2013)

On the other hand the Abbott government has shown itself to be fiercely proud of the Howard social agenda including the privileging of Australia's Anglo-Saxon and Christian heritage. Criticisms of the national curriculum by the new Education Minister Christopher Pyne while in opposition singled out cross curriculum priorities and Aboriginal histories and cultures in particular. In fact the cross curricular attention to Aboriginal science and the Aboriginal experience of settlement was described as an “overemphasis.” with a clear preference for more detail to be given to British traditions and a positive treatment of Australia's Anglo-Saxon heritage. The Howard era term, “the black – arm band view of history” by which progress on reconciliation was resisted was also revived. (Pyne, C., 2010). The appointment of Kevin Donnolly to a review of the National curriculum may foreshadow what changes will come. Donnolly has stated that ''The fact that the national curriculum stipulates that every subject must be interpreted through a prism involving indigenous, Asian and sustainability perspectives needs to be revisited,'' (Smith, A., 2014) and is a long standing advocate for an essentially whiter history curriculum. (Jabour, B, 2014)

The future of Aboriginal Histories and Cultures as a cross curricular priority may ultimately rest on a contest of political will. On the one side the Minister seems openly opposed and in that regard has the support of their party. On the other side a great many institutions such as ACARA, AIATSIS, Reconciliation Australia, and many others, having worked hard to achieve it's inclusion won't be content to let it disappear. Fortunately if reducing Aboriginal histories and cultures place in the curriculum will require adroit political management, the Abbott government is not evidencing that capability so far. Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

References.

ACARA, (2013), National Report on Schooling, Part 7: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, Viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national_report_on_schooling_2009/aboriginal_and_torres_strait_islander_education/aboriginal_and_torres_strait_islander_education1.html

Department of Education (2013) Review of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Viewed on 04/08/2014 at https://education.gov.au/review-australian-institute-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-studies-aiatsis

Pyne, C., (2010) Transcript- Doorstop -1- March -2010 (Webpage) Posted on March 3, 2010, Viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.pyneonline.com.au/media/transcripts/transcript-doorstop-1-march-2010

Jabour, B, (2014) History wars: the men behind the national school curriculum review, The Guardian (Newspaper), Australian edition, January 10th viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/the-men-behind-the-school-curriculum-review

Smith, A, (2014,) Aboriginal history ''crucial'' for national curriculum, says schools submission, Sydney Morning Herald (Newspaper), March 28 viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/aboriginal-history-crucial-for-national-curriculum-says-schools-submission-20140327-35lqw.html#ixzz39TNm6B5a

Paul, L., Secretary Dep. Of Education (2013) Statement of Comittment to Develop a Reconciliation Action Plan (letter) viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/education_statement_of_commitment.pdf

Ministerial Council on Education Training and Youth Affairs, (2008) Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians, December, Viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/National_Declaration_on_the_Educational_Goals_for_Young_Australians.pdf

Norris, R., 2014, Aboriginal people – how to misunderstand their science, The Conversation, 21 April 2014, viewed at http://theconversation.com/aboriginal-people-how-to-misunderstand-their-science-23835 on 04/08/2014

Kelly, C., (2013), Reconstructing the Australian story: Learning and Teaching for Reconciliation

School of Education, College of Design & Social Context, RMIT

Statement on Inclusion (letter), 2009, viewed at http://www.whatsworking.com.au/what-could-work/statement-on-inclusion/ on 04/08/2014

Ferrari J., (2009), Aboriginal leaders seek role in national curriculum

The Australian (Newspaper) October 26

Howes D, 2012, Ausvels: A Principled And Pragmatic Curriculum Framework, Primarily English, Volume 1, Number 2, pp 3-10 viewed on 04/08/2014 at http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/documents/auscurric/articles/ausvels_principled_and_pragmatic_curric_framework.pdf

Teaching Technology

The following is an email I circulated around my Humanities class in the Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary). It's been a very long time between blog posts and this course and a new baby is why. I wrote this email in response to a class in which the benefits of technology in education were massively overstated; QR codes for goodness sake, as if the insertion of a technological hurdle makes for investigative learning. 

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As humanities teachers we should be aware that technology has underpinned huge social changes - the telescope, the printing press etc. These changes have not just been in terms of what is produceable - ie. the printed book - but in how they are produced, in the structure of work. Technology - the tools we use to do our jobs - will always shape our jobs and shape the economy around our jobs. Technology shapes how teaching (and optimistically education) is produced by teachers.

Increasingly our schools in Australia are reliant on technological products which have only one producer and lock schools into propriety systems. This is called vendor lock-in. Unlike an I-pad, a pencil is made by a million different companies and is usable with paper made by a million other different companies. There is very little (intrinsic) vendor lock in with pencil and paper.

The high rate of vendor-lock in our schools and wider society by tech companies is a direct consequence of a deliberate business model in which consumers or end users are the ultimate product. We are encouraged to see ourselves as masters of our environment and "creatives" but our work is saved in a format we can't understand and only retrievable with our owners continued support. We are no longer sold to like some historical free agency walking past a hypothetical shop front. We are obtained. 

The impact this has on our teaching is profound and subtle. Once upon a time an art course required students to gain a deep knowledge of their tools - where was pigment both currently and historically obtained, how was paint mixed. We can still benefit from this kind of history (as this piece on chalk shows) But without it we are only questionably in any kind of control of our art - or other disciplines.

The tech company business model discourages a deep appreciation of their tools.They want us drunk on the manufactured fantasy that we are all maestros and geniuses the moment we open their program. 

(Note: This is a long video but well worth watching to understand how we have been conned.)

Somehow the universality of their product only enhances our uniqueness! How convenient? Surely a program exists that will make us amazing and unique and interesting teachers too. Let us shop for it. It's harder to sustain that giddy thinking looking at the innards of your devices with confusion so they tend to focus us on the screen and the pretty colours.

The fantasy is also ruptured by any awareness that these new tools are produced in ways that contradict their supposed purpose- they are produced in ways that look like an extreme version of the sort of teaching they are supposed to banish. Below is a benign (and possibly sanitised) demonstration of the process of making I-pads; I'm not trying to turn anyone's guts with images of terrible working conditions. This is approved imagery. Yet still what are the educational philosophies involved in these tasks? Constructivism? Humanism? 

If forcing a class of Australian high school students to watch this video for its full 7 mins would be terrible teaching, what kind of teaching relies on people of a similar age to make these products all day? Is that an unfair question? Does it matter that unlike pen and paper many of these ICT educational tools have no local or ethical producers? I don't think you can use products made by slaves to meaningfully teach about the ethics of slavery. This may not be anything as extreme as that example, but surely as humanities teachers we can't ignore our tools means of production; their history.

In the context of these questions why is the use of Information and Communication Technologies one of the key aspects not only of our national curriculum but of the rubrics for our own courses' assessments? How is it that other criteria like addressing diverse learning styles fails to make it onto rubrics? And why is ICT simply using (consuming) technological products - not necessarily understanding or critiquing them?

This kind of questioning is not a luddites position. It can't be dismissed as technophobia. Too many serious tech writers and thinkers raise the same doubts. (Douglas Rushkoff below is a personal favourite. )

The answer is not no tech. Slate and chalk is a form of technology. Shoes and books are too. We are tool using creatures. The point is to make technology transparent, to engage critically with it, conscious that we are the generation that was sold the fantasy of purchasable creativity boosters. We need to slap ourselves out of that. Then we can dig deeper, pull our technology apart, meet their makers (not just their marketers) to ultimately encourage a relationship with our tools that isn't wittingly naive.

Pinocchio's Easter

When I was created

By the swathe of a carving knife.
my creator loved me so much

that the blue fairy gave me life

But once I could walk
I kicked my creator in the knee
I ran away laughing
So he came looking for me

He took on the Leviathan to find me
So how could he fall ill?
A tower of a Father
Broken by a chill

My rebellion broke then too
How could it not, in his weakness
When he had loved me most of all
in my worst insolence

He is my Father now twice over

I owe him twice my life
No less because he can
no longer grip a carving knife

For he is more than what he can do

As we are more than just his toys
From learning this I have become
A real live boy.

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This poem has been my first post for a while. I am distracted by both a return to university to study to be a secondary school teacher and a return in another way. My partner and I are having our second child due this week. 

There are many post worthy topics in my head however. For example the recent Noah movie raised fascinating moral questions about humanities collective guilt towards the environment; Is collective guilt a useful notion? Is our human collective survival anything that might matter to you?

I also finally obtained and finished a William Stringfellow book "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land" and it warrants a review. I'm going to try and finish Walter Winks "Unmasking the Powers: The invisible forces" next. Being a uni-student gives me access to all this.

Then there are some of the interesting issues raised in my course. Technology in education is a big one.

But don't expect much from me soon. With my first teaching rounds and my second baby I will be happily busy.  

Yes, this is the title: The Virtue in Stating the Obvious.

A writer doesn’t want to communicate the obvious. Readers experience such writing as a “point being laboured”, with all the painful and drawn out connotations of labouring and none of the positive associations from reclaimed feminist narratives of birth. Encountering the obvious in an essay is not sharing in the all-in-good-time emergence of an idea but rather having a band-aid being removed by nothing more than time. You just want to rip that sucker off.

This affects our discussion of a lot of problems in the world that might just have apparent causes. It encourages a style of analysis which is more sophisticated than necessary.  That style tends to muddy and confuse issues by attaching them to conflicts that are removed from what concerned us in the first place. I find that offensive because it takes something beautiful – a person’s concern about the world – and clouds its vision. It usually blunts the persons drive to act on their concern too.

This blog has previously championed naivety as a virtue of theology. Here I want to champion the same spirit as an intellectual virtue in the doing of history.  If you experience an outrage over something in the world then rather than substitute some larger concern for the immediate issue I propose staying with what initially bothered you. There will be allies and actions in that location that make more sense than in some broader dissociated cause.

Example 1. The Holocaust as political hand grenade.
We are disgusted by the Nazi Holocaust of WW2 in which approximately six million Jews were killed. Approximately five million non-Jewish victims were also targeted due to ethnicity, disability, sexuality or just refusal to publicly endorse the Nazi regime.

The T-4 program was actually a program of forced euthanasia
 for the mentally and physically disabled not cheaper health care.

Clearly nobody wants this tragedy to be the fruit of their philosophy and so it is often allocated to the other side in a range of debates. Creationists have described Nazism as an outworking of Darwinism. People against the state– in its control over guns or its perceived coziness with or opposition to religion or even bizarrely in its broadening of public health insurance – have linked these things to the Holocaust. 

Captain Obvious says however that the Holocaust is outrageous because it involved the unjustified mass murder of people for aspects like race, disability and sexuality or for dissenting from their government. These things can all be opposed far more directly than suggested by either Creationists or the Tea Party’s analysis.

You don’t have to support Biblicism. You don’t have to support the Republicans party. You don’t have to give a damn either way about God or guns or lower taxes. You can just get directly involved in anti-racist, disability rights, gay liberation and other civil rights movements. Heck why not just be involved in opposing genocide. Amnesty international will be happy to have you.

Example 2. The Abuse of Women
Sexism especially gets my goat as a father of a daughter and lover of a woman. That ranges from the belittling and objectifying of women found in “lingerie sports” all the way to the brutal murdering of women in supposed honour killings. It also includes the spiritual damage caused by teaching submission for women under men in many philosophies. It includes the narrowing of girl’s play by companies like Lego. I could go on.

The outrage I feel at this treatment of women is spontaneous rather than rational. Such treatment assaults what we know of women’s depth and worth either because we are women or we know them. That spontaneous insight and resultant fury is a huge temptation for other agendas to co-opt.

Atheist movements popularly attach our revulsion at sexism to their opposition to religion. They do this by focusing on those abuses of women that find some religious justification. To the sorrow of feminists in those religions they don’t have to look so hard.  Meanwhile some religious people identify the exploitation of women in the sex industry as a symptom of godlessness. Their work in rescuing people from sex-trafficking is inspiring but they ignore the sexism of their own spokespeople and in their own churches. They also make an unnecessary requirement of their own religion as part of the solution. 

Captain Obvious says you don’t have to either be an atheist or accept Jesus as the son of God to act on your initial insightful response to the abuse of women. You can simply engage with feminism, an entire movement which centres itself on the principle that women are of equal depth and worth to men. That was the principle that undergirded your outrage and its perfectly fine to stop your analysis there.

Just like with the simplistic assessment of the Holocaust this simplistic assessment of sexism doesn’t leave you with nothing to do. There’s a whole range of actions that can be taken directly on the abuse of women. Support the White Ribbon Campaign or a Reclaim the Night March. Challenge how power and authority is shared around you (and by you). Support women’s sport. Alliances around those actions might include people of religious faith and atheists but only those of both opposed to sexism.

On the other hand if you allow yourself to fall for a more sophisticated analysis – that the real problem is something larger than your initial concern – then you are likely to find yourself in alliances with at least some people who simply don’t care about sexism towards women.  Then your effort for your concern may be undone by those “allies”. Such betrayals are common; the prosecution of the Iraq War revealed that when gender issues are used disingenuously by others for their agendas then those issues will be the first to be traded away.

When our response to something like racism or sexism just stays with the topic of racism or sexism it can get denigrated as naive. Such denigration is often allowed to stand because there isn’t a lot to say against it. It’s hard to stand up for the apparent. This post has risked being boring in order to do so.  Sexism or genocide are not necessarily other than exactly that. Such crimes can be opposed directly.

If our analysis is too narrow we will discover that when opposing sexism and genocide we find a common foe for all; a common principle to injustice. This wont however need to be justified by sophisticated arguments. It will be apparent from experience. In fact the more arguments needed the less likely a common foe is real; the more likely it is an attempt to co-opt you.

Captain Obvious says our common foe will probably be something very unsophisticated; like the desire to hurt other people and the excuses to permit it. Let's hope we're naive enough not to try and make more of it. 

The story of our world.

In my last post I asked for submissions of origin stories. The goal is to publish ones which don't contradict our observations of the world and which respond to what we do see. A part of that is the values that matter to us. It's my contention that the Adam and Eve story doesn't meet these requirements - at least as well as it might. That leaves us with a challenge in cultures that have predominantly used that story to understand the meaning of their humanity.

Here is my draft. Enjoy.

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Rascetane vatre by Vangel Naumovski

The Zippidydooda was completely sovereign over everything in the greater world, from the slightest breeze across a planets plains to the movement of constellations. Everything in the greater world was a precise demonstration of the Zippidydooda’s wishes. 

Like a child artist the Zippidydooda made amazing creations. They worked on the grandest of scales and the tiniest. But the creatures they created were merely automatons – complex and marvelous but still machines.

Out of curiosity the Zippidydooda withdrew its control from one corner of this greater world. They sealed this corner off from the controlled universe and allowed a portion of the stuff of the greater world within it to do what it willed. Thus our world came into being. But our world did little but blob about.

The Zippidydooda then took a portion of its own mind, energy with will but without any consciousness, and added it to our world. Their playfulness was now reflected in our world. Subsequently a variety of energy emerged. And from that variety of energy matter emerged. And from that matter came different forms. And one of those forms was life.

But the Zippidydooda was concerned with what they had done. What had they lost of themselves and would it be returned the same? That concern entered our world which is why although we love change we fear we cannot bear it.

The life in our world was not as fantastic as what the Zippidydooda could create when it employed its will elsewhere. The life in our world was still small and simple and looked set to remain so. The Zippidydooda was tempted to intervene. And because they were still playful and young they did. The Zippidydooda caused sex.

Immediately afterwards they regretted their intervention for it was born of impatience. The Zippidydooda was coming to respect the freedom of this world but they were still eager for excitement. This is why in our world sex is so fraught with conflicting emotions even today. It speaks to our natures playfulness but carries the weight of changing others.

With sex in the world life exploded in variety. This included beings of diverse intelligences. That many of those beings loved others of those beings astounded the Zippidydooda. The Zippidydooda watched and learnt. The Zippidydood was humbled by what they saw. Until one day they realized something truly amazing; they had fallen in love with this world. That was our gift to our creator.

Their love was still young when the Zippidydooda intervened in our world again. The saw our own hearts break at death or the collapse of endeavors. Unable to merely watch when beings in this world suffered, the Zipidydooda gave us hope. This way no defeat could be total.

Immediately afterwards they doubted their decision for they saw that it could lead us into danger again and again. This is why we will always believe in a better future. This is also why we are able to see that sometimes our hope is our folly.

Finally the time came for the Zippidydooda to renew themselves. This would enable their existence to continue but meant that all they had created would be wiped clean. The Zippidydooda had done this before countless times. This time however was different. This time the Zippidydooda was in love.

A choice had to be made; to renew and start creating again in its eternal cycle, or not to renew and to allow our world to continue for a long time but not ever. The Zippidydooda knew it could make a copy of our world but such a copy would never be free from design. Or they could hope our world re-emerged by chance. But the Zippidydooda did not just love the idea of our world. It loved it in particularity.

Thus the Zippidydooda did not renew itself and passed into its own great silence. Our world will know its own decay as all worlds must but its end will be millennia later than it could have been. This was our creators final gift to us.

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In summary;

We (this universe) are special because we are free.
We are playful to our core.
We are conflicted over change, sex and hope.
We have taught love to our creator and been loved by them in return.
We owe our existence to that love.