13 December 2010
October 21, 2010 VADEA EBULLETIN Vol. 8
Vol. 1 Issue 1
Face to face feedback with the BOS will start in Term
4, with Primary School teachers. Term 1 2011 the
BOS will conduct face to face sessions with
VADEA CoPresident, Karen Profilio accepts a Certificate of
Secondary Arts teachers.
Appreciation from the Professional Teachers Council, awarded However, it is important that you complete the
by NSW Minister for Education Verity Firth, 30 November 2010. online feedback now.
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13 December 2010 VADEA EBULLETIN Vol. 8
The Eighth of December
BEFORE AFTER
Radio National Breakfast, 7 December 2010 MEDIA RELEASE
NSW Education Minister on National Curriculum National Curriculum another Labor Mess
“The new Victorian government is reticent, “…now final consideration has been moved to
Western Australia says it won't sign until there October 2011, meaning the curriculum itself
is a more complete package and NSW wants won’t even begin implementation until January
more consultation.” 2012 at the earliest,” Mr Pyne said
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/308 http://www.scribd.com/full/45119368?access_key=k
6418.htm ey1rprumzwvzy55w45afpd
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 8 December 2010 THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD,12 December 2010
States Ready To Block Curriculum Dog Ate Her Homework on Education
“The NSW Education Minister, Verity Firth, said “We refuse to seek inspiration from the countries
yesterday that she was unwilling to compromise beating us academically and instead look to
on quality and implement an inferior struggling US systems.”
curriculum.” http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/dogate
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/states herhomeworkoneducation2010121118tgx.html
readytoblockcurriculum2010120718ogd.html
THE AUSTRALIAN, 9 December 2010
THE HERALD SUN, 8 December 2010 Syllabus Not Ready But Set To Be Taught
Curriculum Not Ready For Schools “Students will start learning the national
By Christopher Pyne curriculum next year even though the first four
“The curriculum drafters have received 26,000 subjects will not be finalised until October.”
submissions highlighting areas of concern http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national
within the draft curriculum with complaints affairs/syllabusnotreadybutsettobe
about the content and the design.” taught/storyfn59niix1225967905204
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad
application/curriculumnotreadyforschools/story THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, 9 December 2010
fn6bn88w1225967230184 Curriculum Delayed Till 2013
"The NSW Liberals and Nationals will not allow
THE WEST AUSTRALIAN, 7 December 2010 any national curriculum to dumb down NSW
The Australian Curriculum Must be Delayed: Union education standards," Opposition Leader Barry
“The national school curriculum's development O'Farrell
has been rushed and its rollout must be http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/national
delayed by a year” curriculumfailstest/storyfn6bmg6l1225967915624
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/
/national/8463466/rushedcurriculummustbe THE AGE, 9 December 2010
delayedunion/ National Curriculum A Step Closer
“…ministers stopped short of giving final
THE AUSTRALIAN, 7 December 2010 approval, ordering further adjustments to be
Still Problems With National School’s Curriculum Says completed by next October.”
NSW Government http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/nation
“The NSW Government says it will refuse to roll alcurriculumastepcloser2010120818prp.html
out a substandard national school’s curriculum”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking
news/stillproblemswithnationalschools
curriculumsaysnswgovernment/storyfn3dxity
1225966854966
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13 December 2010 VADEA EBULLETIN Vol. 8
An Outstanding Article
Response to The Arts Draft Shape Paper
Amanda Weate
MArtEd(Hons)
The Draft Shape Paper for the Arts for the Australian Curriculum has been released for consultation.
Amanda Weate, former Head of the School of Art Education, University of NSW, College of Fine Arts and
an active and respected participant in curriculum development at state and national levels for over 30
years, laments the loss of the rigour and knowledge in the proposed curriculum framework for visual arts
and the Arts subjects as a whole. She warns that the lessons of history have not been heeded in this
document and we are about to return the future to the past.
What a thoroughly depressing proposal this is. Deeply disappointing. Deeply flawed.
The problems begin from the initial decision by ACARA to proceed with an amalgamated arts
approach rather than develop curriculum for each of the arts subjects. This fundamental conception of a
generic arts curriculum is unsustainable and, unbowed by the history of failure, the Draft Shape Paper
blunders on to propose, a battery of supposed 'processes' in an effort to find 'common ground'. It is nigh on
impossible to find any recognisable visual arts concepts amongst this minestrone. Assertions made
defending these process terms such as apprehending and comprehending can be found in the recent art
education literature is mischievous at best. They do not have such currency.
The proposed architecture of the arts is psychologistic, that is the arts are understood by feelings
and a sensory experience. This is now a discredited approach to art education, gutting visual arts content
to be replaced by 'activity'. The values of the visual arts are not found in the 'doing' of generating, realising,
responding and associated 'language': such as manipulating, arranging, extemporising, playing, directing,
forming, crafting. This bank of activities is so general in character they apply to virtually all and any human
activity. They do not assist the student or the teacher and trivialise the knowledge and practice that
comprises an arts performance: a Sutherland aria; a Frank Gehry museum; an Emily Kam Ngwarray; a
Tarantino film or Olivier's Hamlet.
In the absence of art educational research and with good intention, the 1957 Wyndham Scheme
called for the teacher to primarily be a guide to the child in his development ... Art teaching should provide
for activity and experience (39) 1 . Little did the authors know this directive would persist, zombie like, for
over 50 years. Heavily influenced by Herbert Read who had attended an art education conference in
Melbourne in 1956, and Lowenfeld's ideas about creativity, this view has now been overturned by the
authoritative, research driven curriculum in NSW. The Shape proposal could have been written twenty,
thirty years ago. It promotes a failed arts project and art teachers and students in NSW have moved on
long ago. At least visual arts could be recognised in its own right and separated from its twin as visual and
performing arts. It is so disappointing to think that we again have to prosecute the same case as that of the
previous attempts at National Curriculum in 1993. Ignorant of this history, the proposal currently before us
seems to have reprised the worst parts of 1993.
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13 December 2010 VADEA EBULLETIN Vol. 8
It is not a new argument to ask why the arts must subscribe to the lowest common denominator whilst other
fields are encouraged to strive for excellence. The sophisticated and knowledgeable works exhibited annually as
Operation Art and ARTEXPRESS belie the proposed School Art Style 2 showing the achievement of students from
schools across the state of NSW. Joanna Mendelssohn writing in the Griffith Review last year explains: Over the
past three decades, the teaching of visual arts in New South Wales has diverged from the rest of the country to
become an international leader in linking cognitive development to visual understanding. She goes on to account for
this 'perfect storm': a shortage of qualified staff; an artist who was a teacher and arranged for his students to be
exhibited in commercial galleries; an innovative head of art in a teachers college who was not prepared to see the
discipline downgraded; a group of education scholars who were able to apply their passion to creating an art
curriculum and an annual exhibition of student’s art that became a high profile media event (2009 193) 3 .
Why would or should schools in NSW surrender the current curriculum in visual arts for an arts curriculum
which so undermines the visual arts? The NSW syllabus, supported by theoretical and empirical research, is
recognised as ground breaking. It is incumbent on ACARA to promote this curriculum as world class. Alas no, the
revival of an integrated arts approach, complete with a thesaurus of ‘doing’ words appears to have persuaded
ACARA. This is such a turgid document, reading through it is a chore; no spark of creativity, recognition or
enthusiasm is engendered. Rather it is an endless stream of activity, replacing busy work with achievement, without
any hint of assistance regarding how to know what is good.
There is no utility in this proposal. No sense of how art works in the world. No mention of the value base that
informs the arts with different objects of meaning. Generalist teachers will not be supported by this arcane content
less proposal, falsely asserting an easier way. Students in visual arts and in the arts as a whole will be sold short.
No awareness of the traditions and knowledges of the five arts; they have histories as things in themselves and this
history funds a lot of the content. The history of the subjects cannot be wiped clean disregarding the teachers,
facilities and traditions that support them.
Take last weekend's SMH Spectrum. An intelligent or educated layperson would be the anticipated market
for this newspaper. No mention of apprehending or comprehending here. There are articles on each of the following
discrete topics: The Australia Ballet's next production; the forthcoming Annie Leibovitz photography exhibition; the
upcoming Chekov, Uncle Vanya; Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral; Sculpture by the Sea; reviews of two films, The
Messenger and Gainsbourg. Not one of these articles, nor the object under discussion, requires an arts process to
come into existence. They are all in their own unique way rich with content arising from the values of the discipline.
Understanding them occurs from a set of relationships that constitute a practice. In the case of the visual arts this
network comprises the relationships of the audience, the maker/artist, the world and the thing made/artwork.
It is such a pity that yet again 'the arts' has played to a flattening of their content base, accepted the status of
participation rather than achievement and colluded in their own disadvantage. I urge ACARA to rethink the terms on
which this proposal is based and look to the circumstances by which visual arts and music are offered with a
mandatory 100 hours, and a discrete curriculum of proven excellence, in NSW.
2. Arthur Efland the doyen of art education curricula identified, in 1976, the School Art Style, as a pleasing, brightly coloured form of visual art
production that institutionlised the disadvantage of art as recreational or therapeutic activity in The School Art Style: A Functional Analysis
in Studies in Art Education, 17, 2, 3744, W inter 76
3. Joanna Mendelssohn 2009 Synergy and Serendipity in Essentially Creative, Griffith Review 23, 192 198.
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13 December 2010 VADEA EBULLETIN Vol. 8
Educational Unions and Parents Response to AC
NSW/ACT Independent Education Union Australian Educational Union
What's Happening With The National Curriculum? Response to the Draft National Curriculum
The NSW/ACT IEU has produced a News Extra As part of the Australian Curriculum Coalition,
which addresses many of the concerns and the AEU and other stakeholders have written to
questions members have about the progress Minister Garrett about the National Curriculum,
and implementation of the national curriculum. expressing concerns about the process of
http://news.ieu.asn.au/newsex.email.pdf development, work to date, conceptual
framework and structural issues of the first
drafts, assessment and reporting issues, and
NSW Teachers Federation implementation issues.
http://www.aeuact.asn.au/documents/AustralianCurr
Firth Says She Won't Sign iculumCoalitioncommonviewontheAustralianCurricu
Hopefully there will now be consultation with lum.pdf
teachers and the numerous serious
shortcomings in the draft national curriculum Australian Parents Council
documents will be addressed.
http://www.nswtf.org.au/edu_online/146/pres.html The NSW Joint Parent Forum supports the new
Australian Curriculum but has some concerns
Today’s decision by the Federal, State and about its implementation as it is currently
Territory Education Ministers to extend the proposed
timeline for the development and finalisation of http://www.austparents.edu.au/nswschoolparents
the National Curriculum until October 2011 is expressconcernsabouttheaustraliancurriculum
welcome and is a win for commonsense.
http://www.scribd.com/full/45119467?access_key=
keyvy7hjteog1nmhhn9is1
BUMPER ISSUE
I am planning on developing a special Bumper Issue for our last Ebulletin, Monday 20/12/2010. The plan
for this issue is to circulate any articles, letters or any type of response that you have developed in regards to the
National Curriculum and particularly the ACARA Draft Arts Shape Paper. The aim for this issue is to inform and
generate discussion. The hope is our members would then be able to use these responses as a guide or as
templates for their own future articles.
As our readership for this EBulletin is over 800 contacts, this would be a great chance to share our
knowledge and resources.
Please if you have anything you would like to share, feel free to email me;
nicholas.phillipson@spc.nsw.edu.au
Website; http://vadea.org.au/wordpress/
Email; contact.vadea@gmail.com
Blog; http://vadea.blogspot.com/
Twitter; https://twitter.com/VADEA_NSW
Facebook; http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=121728261192109
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