Teaching is Not a Lost Art

Engine Room, and Bridge.

As you will find this website describes, the ‘ship’ SCECGS Redlands remained afloat after 1973 only owing to the strenuous, unyielding effort of a handful of determined parents supported by their families, and the selfless resolve of the remaining academic and administrative staff. Teachers and administrators stayed, parents negotiated, the ship ‘righted’ and then came the 1980s.

Fortunately, the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s are now recognisable as famously defined slices of time when optimism was, as ever possible and was as ever should be, embraced. Teaching – some 52 million (all school Grades) teachers recognised globally - had continued to be a vital profession, an exemplary service rendered to the very young and sequentially to the early adult.

As always in teaching, wide-ranging controversy persisted because of the unarguable centrality of schooling enmeshed with the generality of school experiences in developed communities; everyone had been to school, therefore everyone knew what school should be and should do. Moreover, owing to the social upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s teaching moved from being a daily, altruistic, skills-driven model profession to one more given to social ‘movements’ and to theories of reform.

Among many changes, rote learning as part of the daily schoolroom was minimised; more fluid, perhaps ‘creative’ teaching methods measurably changed the schoolroom. For the teacher, globally, times were often disconcerting. “What exactly are we doing, and why?” became a common chorus.

Reasons were definable. Just as other countries had done, after the 1960s Australia struggled with contests of the era, with political variation - though with less overt anguish than France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Without too much pretence schools and teachers remained places and providers of calm, evidence of stability for the child and young adult, deliberate, steady. The daily welcome at the gate was intended to be as it can only be, genuine.

The burning question of quality beyond the gate, though, remained: careful measures of learning and teaching ‘performance’ were fragmentary at best. Compliance with the ‘handbook of curriculum and ‘instruction’, an improvement in teaching context, was reduced. Education reform ‘movements’, centring on what schools – therefore teachers – offered were moving into areas beyond the political and fanciful, were starting to address the ‘what’ and ‘how’ within the gates.

Work done by Fullan and Hargreaves (1981 and 2016) in Canada and the United States, discussed by them at conferences in Australia, remains even in 2020 indicative. Other ‘researchers’ and ‘reformers’ proliferated.

Alleged ‘traditions’ of curriculum and pedagogy were being reviewed, often in company of a desirable objective to reform ‘ghettos’ in which education had been reduced to a struggle. The times were complex while the school day had to remain coherent. The philosophy underlying education provision changed focus, intended to be for the better: a United States political doctrine ‘No Child Left Behind’ took centre stage accompanied by the Charter School movement. To many it seemed often that politics in education had replaced both policy and crucial productivity. It seemed often that essential ‘mental building’ provided by consistent teaching ‘from the ground up’ had been lost entirely. Teaching became different, difficult and too often desperate, never lost.

What then of the teachers at the gate? Among many commentators of similar opinion,

Jacques Barzun (France/USA 1907 – 2012) considered that Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

During the reconstruction of SCECGS Redlands from 1973/75 onwards the teaching ‘art’ remained true, consistent, influential. Practising professionals noted the work of Hargreaves and Fullan who among many argued for momentum in teaching, refreshment in schools. They were heard:

Among the many purposes of schooling, four stand out to us as having special moral value: to love and care, to serve, to empower and, of course, to learn.

Faced with very difficult leadership decisions, some people at Redlands actually led. Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005), a management commentator of the era described as teacher, management specialist, and philosopher with particular influence in theories of leadership, famously argued that:

Management is doing the right things; leadership is doing things right.

Drucker captured some of the personal in a man or woman’s choosing to teach, if sometimes accidentally:

Teaching is the only major occupation...for which we have not developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the naturals, the ones who somehow know how to teach.

Had SCEGGS (sic) Redlands then, SCECGS Redlands now not counted among the severely reduced teaching and administrative staff after 1975 a number of teachers who knew ‘how to teach’, a few administrators who knew how to keep systems operating in support of teaching and learning the school site would have had to be abandoned; the school would have been unable to meet its financial obligations, thus the school and its raison d’etre killed.

Now it has become clear in retrospect that one essential characteristic of teaching and its companion administration, both in abundance at SCECGS Redlands during the very dark times from 1973 until 1980, was determined loyalty blended with an altruistic insistence on ensuring classes continued to be available. This fuelled reconstruction. It was one large, essential ingredient.

Despite daily doubts examined elsewhere on this website teaching continued no matter the circumstances. Example was set. Children and young adults retained ‘their’ school. For the record: it was never less than difficult, day by challenging day.

Therefore in this case study by website, examining and in part explaining the reconstruction that enabled SCECGS Redlands from March 1980 onwards, the teachers and administrators who stayed and those who joined Redlands over years must, in honour, be recognised. Staff lists can be found in Archives of Lux Magazine produced at the close of each year, and in Speech Night Handbook of Proceedings both of which offer carefully published records of all employed adults who made Redlands available to each enrolled child.

In 1981, SCECGS Redlands was still a small school from Kindergarten to Year 12 inclusive, affected by the collapse of enrolments in the late 1970s. By 2002/03 Redlands had increased by multiples, with application levels remaining high.

In 1981 all principal leaders at Redlands were female, with some recently appointed male teachers having been welcomed in 1979 and 1980, especially when the school declared itself to be co-educational. The first boys for decades joined, and concomitant new demands were made on the curriculum, daily work and on pastoral care provided by the teaching staff.

In 1981 there was one male administrative staff member.

It was accepted then as now in 2020 that gender (sex) proportionality of active, classroom teaching staff working with the student community was always, as now, a key ‘metric’ to allow effective daily teaching, to reflect the wider national and global professional teaching community, to respect both genders, to ensure as far as rationally possible that all children enjoyed ‘role models’ among their teachers and of both genders. From a morale standpoint, in parallel with good teaching able to be delivered, ‘discipline’ had to be a notable feature of each school day, gender neutral but gender aware.

Equal opportunity of employment became overt policy at SCECGS Redlands in the 1980s, needing however a careful watch on ‘gender balance’ in the Common Room, reflecting the Australian community.

However, some tides affecting teacher recruitment globally became obvious in Australia, on a micro level in Sydney.

Some useful context. In 1980, across the world 53% of primary school teachers were female (47% males). By 2016 that had risen to 67% (33% male) (OECD Data).

In Australia in 1980 male teachers comprised 30% of primary school staff, whereas in 2018 that proportion had dropped to 15%.

More widely, in Australia 2019, 71.35% of teachers Early Childhood to Year 12 were female. In primary schools, just 18.1% of teachers Australia-wide were male; in secondary schools 39.2%. (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Projections suggest (OECD and others) that by 2050 there may be nil male teachers globally: the teaching profession will be entirely female.

A reduction in male teachers training for and remaining in the classrooms of the world started to impact on SCECGS Redlands from the early 1980s. In no sense was this in itself a local crisis: the active issue was proportionality merged with quality in services being offered in a ‘family school’ by policy, with an increasing proportion of boys being enrolled. The need for men and women both to teach boys and girls alike was key, but attracting applicants of equal merit, no matter gender, was the predominant consideration. Constant checking needed.

As the decades passed, it was possible to amortise the issue. In particular it was the policy of the School Board to ensure that all staff employed were remunerated well. The Redlands Scale of supplementary financial benefits assisted greatly to ensure that to teach at Redlands could well mean ‘escaping’ ludicrous ‘pay scales’ mandated by State and Union bargaining. In the period 1981 to 2002/03 median salaries in all branches of SCECGS Redlands’

operations deliberately exceeded those of scales applied across the profession.

Bold as this measure is, it identifies the intention of the School Board to remunerate school ‘services’ in accordance with the capacity of the school to pay, and of parents to meet School Fees with regular, usually annual, increases.

Why was this important beyond the simple matter of seeking to retain excellent staff? A very large concern was obvious at that time about the status of teachers in general as in Australia. What was acutely concerning then remains so now:

Alia Wong, The Atlantic 20 February 2019:

“…Unlike in many other countries, in the United States, teaching has long been seen as a relatively low-status profession. In 2018, a survey of people in roughly three dozen countries asked respondents to rank 14 different professions—including teaching, medicine, law, social work, and website engineering—by each career’s perceived social status. On the one hand, survey participants in the United States gave teachers a middling ranking, and tended to liken them to librarians; respondents in countries such as China and Malaysia, on the other hand, put teachers in first place, analogizing them to doctors.

This cultural disregard for teaching has a gendered consequence: The status of a given career tends to correlate with the share of men in that profession—higher status equals more men, generally speaking. And that has its own consequence: Research has found that employers place less value on work done by women than on that done by men. These trends reinforce each other in perpetuity.

Within a given field, the more prestigious positions attract more men. Notably, close to half of all principals today, including two-thirds of those serving high schools, are men, as are more than three-quarters of school-district superintendents. Additionally, nine in 10 elementary-school educators are women, according to Ingersoll’s study, compared with six in 10 of their high-school counterparts. Prekindergarten in particular is heavily dominated by women, perhaps because younger kids might be dismissed as requiring little more than “Wheels on the Bus” sing-alongs.”

While Wong’s extracted contemporary comments relate directly to the United States, they capture the ‘mood’ of teacher employment in that period 1980 to 2002/03 as well in Australia.

In independent schools parent cohorts of school generations can fall into the error of destructive, pernicious propensity to regard teachers of their children, as ‘servants’ or – Wong’s phrase – ‘of low status’. The effect of such an attitude is always broken communication between home and school, in diminished formal education of the child, in poor educational outcomes for the child and therefore in lower life accomplishment expectancy. The matter is of supreme importance.

Antidotes to demeaning attitudes on the part of one or more parents must, plainly, be found. Management and leadership in schools as in schooling must work actively against such attitudes. As in any profession or vocation, contempt breeds contempt, depression begets depression.

‘As if by magic’, though as always through high quality teaching in all its manifestations, the educational and social tenor of SCECGS Redlands to 2002/03 was elegant, usually mutually respectful between teachers and parents, attentive to the needs of the children for whom the school and its adult community came together; sine qua non. Co-education and co-gender staff appointment policies underpinned a developed positive climate. Results planned for were achieved by beneficial interaction of home and school. Nothing was ever simple but much contributed to calm progress and measurable success in accordance with the right purposes of schools, schooling and teaching.

Here then, a salute to hundreds of professional teachers, administrators and tradespeople (see separate records for individual names) who made SCECGS Redlands, deftly governed by the School Board of Directors what it became: essentially bankrupt in 1980 but continuing to teach; successful by all measures in 2002/03, well resourced, well-staffed throughout, continuing to teach.

Among the positive influences SCECGS Redlands provided in the wider world of education in that same era was the competitive appointment by application of members of staff who found senior appointments elsewhere in their chosen profession. Some of those who moved outwards in diaspora, taking the tone of SCECGS Redlands with them, were:

1. Ms Amanda Bell, to Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, to be Head of School, subsequently at Women’s College, University of Sydney.

2. Mr Christopher Brangwin AM, to International Baccalaureate Organisation, and AAIBS. See biography.

3. Mr. Scott Campbell, to Junior School, United World College Singapore, to be Principal.

4. Mr. Andrew Coote, to Ravenswood School to be Head of Junior School, then Innaburra School, to be Head of Junior School.

5. Ms. Julie Gillick, to Queenwood to be Deputy Head, then to Frensham as Head of School.

6. Mr Max Hector, Redlands’ Foundation, to be CEO Australian College of Physical Education, Sydney Olympic Park.

7. Mr Clayton Jones, to Girton Grammar School, Bendigo, to be Headmaster.

8. Rev Stephen Lee, to PLC Albany WA as Head of School, after PLC / MLC Peppermint Grove Perth WA. Founding Acting Principal Northstone School WA (2016) (SCEA WA). Left SCEA June 2016.

9. Ms Sue Pike, to Singapore Australian International School, as Head of Junior School.

10.Ms Jenny Pollock to St Luke’s School Dee Why, to be Deputy Head,

Curriculum.

11.Ms Melissa Robbins, to Catherine Cook School, Chicago USA, from

Redlands’ English Department, to be Principal.

12.Mr. Phil Roberts, to Mount Sinai School, to be Principal.

13.Ms Maureen Robinson, from Ireland, to be Head of Jewish Elementary School Los Angeles.

14.Mr Anthony Ronaldson, to Cranbrook School to be Head of Department, English.

15.Mr Andrew Rostron, to Snowy Mountains Grammar School, to be Headmaster.

16. Mrs. Ros Scouller, to Meriden to be Head of Junior School, 1983.

17.Mr Craig Seawright, to St Catherine’s School Waverley to be Head of Department, Science then similarly to Sydney Grammar School, Darlinghurst NSW.

18. Ms Gill Shanny, to Kesser Torah, Dover Heights, to be Head of K to 12.

.

19. Mr. Stuart Walker, to New York UN International School, to be Head of School.

20. Mr Craig Wannan, to St George Christian School and then to be Head, Wyong Community Christian School, NSW.

21. Mr Tim Watson, to Northern Beaches Christian School, to be Head of School.

22. Ms Jenny Williams, to All Saints School, Bathurst NSW to be Head of School, and then to Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, Auckland NZ, to be Head of School. Retired 2017.

Let this brief note stand as respectful acknowledgement of the generosity of all who worked with the children of Redlands, in communion with their families, over so many years and in such numbers. Let it also stand as a statement of admiration for all adults who chose to keep SCECGS Redlands ‘alive’, kept teaching and administering, kept the school pastoral care responsibility alert, carried on the ‘mission’ in other places to the benefit of thousands: just continued.

Unmatchable.

PJ Cornish

October 2020