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Malcolm Knox makes many excellent points about NAPLAN (“ Our kids aren’t failing NAPLAN. NAPLAN is failing our AutoCorrected kids ”, 16/8). One point that particularly stands out to me is the linking of the lack of relevance students place on NAPLAN to the disappearance of teacher-librarians.
As a secondary English teacher with over 20 years’ experience, I know well that for many of my students over the years, when I read the current novel aloud to them in class, for many of them it was one of the few times they had been read to outside of primary school. The relaxed and engaged effects of reading aloud on the students were consistently palpable. It was a frustration of my teaching career that there were no teacher-librarians in the school to extend this enjoyment and engagement, and that an ever-crowded curriculum demanded a pace that meant such reading aloud in class became a luxury.
My point is threefold; students treat NAPLAN with a grain of salt as it (and invariably the texts it includes) lacks tangible relevance to them; it does not capture any connection to enjoyment of literacy they may have experienced nor allow them to display this in an assessment; and, that systemic change is required to find a new junction between where students are at with literacy and how they are taught (and assessed). Rachael Pierce, Beaumaris Connect with their inspirations Malcolm Knox laments the “defunding” of state education. He is right.
Most state primary schools have no fully functioning library and no full-time teacher-librarian. They usually have no full time PE, art, music or dance/drama teachers. So where is the scope for exciting the vast array of our kids’ potential across different interests? Kids learn to read and write when they are motivated to do so; when they want to know what’s in the text.
Just watch what happens when kids start texting. Learning the 13 different sounds “ea” can make in words is unlikely to excite many five to eight-year-olds. Much of the English language (around 40 per cent) simply cannot be “sounded out” as the phonics zealots advocate.
Try sounding out “come”, “because”, “could” or the hundreds of other non-phonetic common words. We need something much better than the “silver bullet” phonics approach with the narrow NAPLAN to measure its results. Tim Mahar, Fitzroy North Tablet the wrong tool Helping my grade 5 grandson with his literacy and numeracy homework, I received an insight into his school’s use of iPads for learning.
He understood the mathematical concepts, and we talked about the methods, but using an iPad to come up with solutions and record the answers took him twice as long as it should have, and left no record of the workings that got him to the answers. This kid is a digital native, but the iPad as a maths teaching device for children seems impractical. We persevered but I was inwardly screaming for pencil and paper, despite having used spreadsheets and technology for 30 years in my working life.
The literacy homework was easier to navigate but the iPad was still a clunky and time-consuming way to learn, leaving no record of the initial passage he had to punctuate for checking. Louise Kloot, Doncaster Touch typing vastly undervalued Everyone will use a keyboard, but it is disturbing to watch primary school children using two fingers. This “hunt and peck” method will have to be unlearned if they ever aspire to touch type, which is now an essential skill.
Unlearning and relearning is much harder than learning properly from the start. There are excellent typing tutor programs in which students copy text from the screen without looking at the keyboard. Lessons alternate between speed, where you can make as many mistakes as you like, and accuracy, where the typed letter has to be correct before proceeding to the next letter.
That’s how I learnt to type. Within a few months my fingers were flying round the keyboard. Children would learn even faster.
Keyboard skills should be taught from the word go. James Goding, Princes Hill Housing confusion Kate Shaw (“ Where is outcry over public housing? ” 19/8) provides some enlightening figures surrounding the government’s plans to hand the bonanza of public land in Kew and Preston to private developers. She rightly calls out the marginal pushback about this.
However, part of the problem is the confusion, if not obfuscation, about public housing and its different progeny, social and affordable housing. The mosaic of terms and their import is a stumbling block, inviting a lack of interest. The results are clear, nonetheless – rising homelessness and growing public housing waiting lists.
All of which fosters poor health, mental, physical and social. It does not make sense economically, or for the welfare of our community. Victoria, at 2.
8 per cent, has the lowest component of social housing across Australia, and compares pitiably with many other countries. Outrage is called for, rather than outcry. Jennie Stuart, Balwyn Our data not for sale Any proposal to privatise any part of the functions of the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages should be strongly opposed (“ Labor members decry Victoria’s next privatisation plan ”, 19/8).
The provision of private information about and from individual citizens is provided to the registry for the public good and as part of our civic duty. The information, its storage and use must at all times be protected, maintained and utilised only in the public interest by entities who are guided only by public interest. Any form of private interest involvement risks jeopardising this principle and will undermine public trust and confidence in the importance, now and for the future, of this essential government function.
Jane Patrick, Brighton Prepare the ground The report “ New housing on hold as Melbourne Water fails to act on flood plans ” (18/7) raises the issue of slow approval of drainage plans for housing estates. Melbourne Water is increasingly concerned that fringe area growth and redevelopment in existing urban areas are going to double storm run-off over the long term and this is a major threat to existing urban areas further down the catchments. Major drainage system augmentation is needed but there is no money available for this.
Why is there no money? It is because the Big Build is all about transport infrastructure. This investment priority setting fails to acknowledge that the Victorian government’s aim to transform Melbourne also requires major drainage system refurbishment. The present solution seems to be to reset the flood risk extents whereby for tens of thousands of property owners insurance goes through the roof and property values fall.
This is risk shifting. Bernie O’Kane, Heidelberg More cars won’t help In Saturday’s Age, would-be Melbourne lord mayor Anthony Koutoufides was reported as saying that if elected “he would be reviewing the city’s bike lanes as he wanted to make traffic in the CBD flow better” ( 17/8 ). Koutoufides may want to have word with Robert Doyle.
Doyle originally campaigned on re-opening Swanston Street to through-traffic but by 2011 had ingested enough cold, hard facts on traffic to concede that “no city in the world wants to bring more and more cars into its heart”. Thirteen years later it is just as difficult to imagine that inducing more motor vehicle traffic is the solution for the CBD. Faith Hunter, Brunswick Scooter benefits As a 50-year-old Melbourne resident who commutes to the city for work, I want to address the recent decision to ban rental e-scooters .
I own a private e-scooter and believe it’s crucial to differentiate between private and commercial e-scooter use. Most private e-scooter owners follow the laws: they wear helmets, stick to reasonable speeds, ride solo, and stay off footpaths. They also maintain their scooters, use designated bike parking, and plan routes to avoid high-traffic areas.
The benefits include reduced travel time, better access to public transport, decreased urban congestion, and a low-cost transportation option for lower socio-economic groups. Every scooter ride means one less car on the road, reducing traffic jams and the severity of collisions. E-scooter accidents cause fewer serious injuries than cars and are comparable to bicycles.
Supporting e-scooter use benefits students, the unemployed, and refugees by providing affordable transportation and opening up opportunities. The positives outweigh the negatives, and people should not have their liberties restricted due to unreasonable fears or biases. Tony Wright, Fitzroy North Colour and movement On my way to Jeff’s Shed for a graduation ceremony, I took the wrong exit from Southern Cross Station.
Seeing the Mission to Seamen home in the distance, I confronted a bewildering network of roads with cars and trucks, nearly all belching CO2, that charged in from all directions. The chaos was overwhelming but the pedestrian lights were there and eventually I made it to the Yarra footbridge. After the ceremony we strolled along the shared path beside the river.
Brightly coloured scooters zipped around us. Suddenly, my arm was clipped by a rider. Was it a scooter? No, just one of the swarm of bicycles also on the path.
Mobility of all forms in our city is its lifeblood and all present problems. But anxiety about scooters should be put into perspective. Peter McCarthy, Mentone Less wiser than richer Many people who profess sadness at the passing of a loved animal refer to the character of the animal and its personality.
Strangely, at the passing of Black Caviar , just after giving birth, and in spite of all the professed sadness, there is a lack of any description as to the type of horse she was. We are none the wiser as to her character but we know she made a lot of money for some. Joanna Wriedt, Eaglemont Not abuse As a veterinarian, in response to the question posed by your correspondent regarding Black Caviar’s nine foals in 11 years, the answer is no, it is not equine abuse for mares to produce a foal each year, nor is it abuse to humanely euthanise a horse with acute laminitis.
The disease may indeed be caused by over-feeding, usually in ponies, but a severe form of the disease can result from retained placenta in post-foaling mares. Peter Knight, St Arnaud Proceed carefully In calling for Australia to recognise a Palestinian state, Islamic Council of Victoria President Adel Salman asks why we should be different from Spain, Ireland and Finland and other OECD countries that have done so (“ Leaders call out PM on Palestine promise ”, 19/8). The real question is why we should be different from the rest of the Western world, including our closest allies, that haven’t done so.
Recognising a Palestinian state now would be premature. It would only reward and encourage the Palestinian Authority rejectionism and Hamas terrorism that have prevented statehood until now. A Palestinian state should only be recognised once the Palestinians and Israelis have negotiated and compromised on the final status issues such as borders and security, so we know what we’re recognising, and there’s a chance recognition will lead to peace.
One also requires a negotiating partner who also wants peace and prosperity for their own people. Stephen Lazar, Elwood Rethinking the past On November 30, 1947, my mother, Evelyn, needed to convey to my father, Norman, some exciting news but he was on the throne. So she banged on the door to tell him that the United Nations General Assembly had just passed a resolution creating a Jewish state and an Arab state.
My mother wrote two pamphlets in support of the creation of the State of Israel, Whither Palestine and Israel Reborne. Soon after the state of Israel was declared in 1948 my father spoke passionately in support of the Jewish state at a meeting called by the Zionist Federation. After the Six Day War of 1967 my father edited a quarterly publication, Paths to Peace, in support of the state of Israel alongside a Palestinian state.
If my late parents had foreseen what would happen in 2023 and 2024 including the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza at more than 38,000, the number of Palestinian children who lost one or both limbs (at least 1000), many without anaesthesia, and Palestinian children subjected to malnutrition and even starvation, would they still have supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1948? I doubt it. Robin Rothfield, Brighton East The truth about objectivity Parnell Palme McGuinness writes “In a post-truth world, can we at least be honest about Raygun?” (18/8). Well, here are some truths: Postmodernists do not assert that their perception of reality should be privileged over observable, external reality.
Rather, they challenge the idea of a single, objective reality that is universally experienced, recognising instead that our understanding of reality is shaped by our subjective experiences. Postmodernists do not assert that there is no truth, but rather that our ability to individually perceive it is limited by our subjective experiences and perspectives. In academia, this has fostered a more critical and pluralistic approach, where multiple truths and perspectives are explored rather than adhering to a singular, dominant narrative.
Postmodernists do not suggest that all truths are equally valid. Rather, the validity of a truth claim is assessed based on evidence, logical coherence and context. Accordingly, some truths can be recognised as more credible or robust than others.
Raygun has already been attacked for her performance. Must she be attacked for her profession too? Yana Barton, North Balwyn Credit: Matt Golding Refugee ban Nationals leader David Littleproud on Sunday defended Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s call last week for a ban on Palestinians seeking to enter Australia, saying it was “common sense” to impose such a ban. Whatever happened to common decency? The divisive politics of this is turning some of us into a hard-hearted lot.
Nick Toovey, Beaumaris If, as your correspondent writes, those who present a risk in terms of influencing and potentially radicalising vulnerable people must be kept out of our country, where does that place the majority of Sky News presenters? Bryan Fraser, St Kilda West Births and deaths Keeping a reliable record of births, deaths and marriages within its jurisdiction is fundamental to good government, not something to be offloaded on the quiet for fiscal expediency and private profit. Representing the sell-off as a “public-private partnership” is neoliberal poppycock. Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills In terms of efficiency, perhaps Tim Pallas should just put our identity documents straight onto the dark web and reap the benefits of the best price! Joan Segrave, Healesville Gambling ads Maybe, if certain TV stations wasted less money on supporting the indefensible (Ben Roberts-Smith and Bruce Lehrmann to name but a couple) their financial situation would improve out of sight and no gambling advertising funds would be needed.
Els Woesthuis, Ballarat Central If the AFL must cut expenses to give up gambling revenues, perhaps it can stop using the blaring sound systems during the game. Manny Hemman, Lower Plenty Furthermore Too much emphasis of post-school education is on achieving tertiary qualifications. Isn’t it time that emphasis is directed to encouraging the young into the trades? Many with trade qualifications are self-employed with the associated tax advantages and indeed higher incomes.
Howard J Brownscombe, Brighton T he Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here . To submit a letter to The Age , email letters@theage.
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