Are Young Children Being Mentally Abused In Our Schools Because Of Ignorance?

Patron of the Protecting Childhood movement, Phil Cullen has advocated for years that NAPLAN and its subsequent effect on teaching and learning, would be a disaster. And it is. The top down pressure by people (especially politicians and testucrats) who do not know childhood, live in ivory towers and are detached from what a glorious childhood looks like, are causing havoc in early childhood education, especially up to 8 years of age. When people who have never taught early childhood classes, write the curriculum and have it (ignorantly) ratified by politicians, we have a recipe for disaster. And that it exactly what is happening - an age-inappropriate national curriculum which has been combined with age-inapproriate national benchmark testing regimens like NAPLAN. And it's likely to get worse, (there political moves to introduce NAPLAN style testing for Year 1s), and the love of learning will continues to die as does the love of teaching in the early years.

Phil Cullen has warned teachers, parents, politicians, testucrats and the like for years. He saw the beast coming, sounded the trumpet of warning, and continues to do so. He was president of the Queensland Association of State School Principals (primary) for 13 years. He is a highly respected leader in his field and been awarded an AM for his services to education.

Here is his most recent article on the subject where he outlines the history behind the NAPLAN madness and exposes the now burgeoning evidence that what we are doing is harmful to children's brain dopamine levels and well-being. It's a hard hitting and sobering read. Maybe it needs to be:

NAPLAN, Mental Health and Dopamine

The psychological, sociological and now neurological effects of systemic NAPLAN abuse can be very serious.

Loss of the natural, basic 'yen to learn' has serious consequences.

Much has been made of the abusive nature of NAPLAN testing. News Ltd's Guru, Joel Klein made the most of what he saw as testing's most effective modus operandi - fear and threats - [love of subject and pupil care :OUT!] .....as did the Australian, Ms. Gillard, whom he met at a Rockefeller booze-up near Wall st., New York in 2008, where, there and then, she decided that the Australian education system should be based on kleinism. He openly championed FEAR in the Learning process. ....as did Ms. Gillard, her mentor Mr. Rudd, and its later disciples Messrs Pyne and Birmingham....splendid examples of child-caring citizens.

May the outcomes of government-sponsored child abuse and the destruction of the 'yen to learn' be on their hands.

Fear of failing and losing your job are now seen as motivators of great importance in the hunt for better scores for school children when they contest standardised blanket tests that are part of a scato-meme called GERM [Geopolitical Emetic Retard Meme]. Australia adopted it, without any kind of examination and at enormous cost, and installed one of the most successful child-scare systems the world has ever seen. Called NAPLAN, it has since failed because a neurological catastrophe was inbuilt into its nerve-system, and, for suspicious reasons, it is being maintained. While the financial costs are extremely burdensome, the costs to mental health are much, much larger than any educator or testucator had ever anticipated.

Observers of the tragedy are now concerned about the dopamine effects on growing children. Neurologists, sociologists and serious educators tell us that dopamine, an organic chemical, is a neurotransmitter that sends brain signals from one set of nerve cells to another. This is very serious stuff. These messages can be quite dysfunctional during anxious moments [NAPLAN?] or periods of worry [NAPLAN test-prep?]. Outside the central nervous system, it assists in transporting some bodily operations to another. Vomiting, sleeplessness, crying, anti-social behaviour, anti-subject and anti-school feelings and other degenerative conditions are outcomes of a lack of support and encouragement at crucial times. The supply and maintenance of dopamine is central to positive learning; and fear-based, anxiety-promoted learning cuts off the supply. Encouragement plays an important role in brain and body connectiveness.

Parkinsons Disease is 'a degenerative condition ...caused by a loss of dopamine-secreting neurons in the area of the mid-brain.' ... ... 'Restless legs and ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are associated with decreased dopamine activity.' [Google : Dopamine] and there has been a startling increase in diagnosed ADHD in Australia since the introduction of NAPLAN.

Suicide in GERM countries, including Australia, as an outcome of the lack of dopamine maintenance in our young learners, is amongst us.

While social workers concerned by the present fixation on the use of digitised hand-held devices, have raised serious 'alert' signals on the lack of dopamine in the public arena, Australian 'educators' have completely ignored discussion on the nasty things that NAPLAN ,the biggest monster of all, does to children.....and we all seem to remain indifferent....cowed by political dictators and their henchmen!

Through their attitude and reactions to the NAPLAN tests, called 'failure', school children are pleading with Australian adults to treat them with humanity and help them to learn better and learn more. Why do we treat them as we do?

With the shenanigans of on-line or paper tests and the movement to 'opt-out', we can be pretty sure that 'adjustments' will be made for the 2017 tests.

WON'T SOMEONE TRY TO GET RID OF IT!!!!???? WHAT MORE EVIDENCE DO YOU WANT, Mr or Ms Politician? WHERE ARE OUR ELITE SCHOOL PRACTITIONERS?

Sadly.....with Australia's inbuilt casual indifference to child welfare, aided and abetted by the silence of the press and the open support of so-called educators' organisations, you can still lay 'London to a brick', that nothing will be done before May 9 - NAPLAN testing time!

Cold Distant Data: The Great Political Deception and Money Waster

Data collection in schools to fulfill national standardised testing requirements is a wrong education driver. The results provide cold, non relational information. It is the relationship between students, teachers and parents that requires the greatest focus and attention. Collecting national data on children, like the Australian Early Development Census, NAPLAN etc will, I believe, turn out to be one of the great deceptions and money wasters of our times. An experienced educator who "reads the child" and gets to know them, will possess more valuable information about that child than can be gleaned from any data collected via standardised national testing. When we focus on the latter, which sucks energy from the human teacher/pupil/class engagement, we go down a dehumanising path of cold statistics. The intention may be good, but in fact it has become a costly exercise that doesn't actually benefit the relationship between child, teacher and class which is the driver of learning. Our current political(forced?) obsession with standardised testing, with results being marked, collated and analysed in distant places, is a complete distraction from the main game. The main game - true human connection and relationship, where the DATA is right in front of the teacher - is being eroded, devalued, defocussed and dissolved by distant politically assigned DATA collecting educarats/testucrats. Knowing children, their qualities and abilities and how to support their next stage of faculty development IS the real game - the true living interface where learning takes place. All teachers will tell you they do not need third party data for assessment or planning. But somehow the hierarchy are managing to make them bend to their ill-conceived will. Children are the teachers' information (DATA) with which they work. We need to empower teachers in their most important and challenging of human relations activities and stop them becoming agents for distant third party number crunchers. Teaching is slowly becoming paralysed - "paralysis by analysis", by an unnecessary and unwelcome third party. But yes there are three parties where the relationship ideally needs to be good; child, parents and teachers. Parents will always be the child's first teacher. Conscious parenting and conscious teaching provide the true human space for learning to take place. Reading the child; understanding the child; knowing how to guide the child; serving the needs of the child's growth and development - this is the main game of parents and teachers! The knowledge (data) lies in the understanding relationship between them. It always has and it always will. The more our focus goes on DATA collection for the (misguided) missionary zeal of politicians, educrats and testucrats, the more it detracts from the real game of teaching. PLEASE, STOP THE PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS! It has not worked overseas in the counties we are choosing to follow - England and the US. The answer lies in supporting teachers and parents. We really need to support the human organic living needs of teachers. They need human resources and support to assist with the most human and challenging of vocations - teaching our children, where all the performance data they need is right in front of them. We need to listen to them, respect them and provide them with what they need. Ah yes, cold distant data, the great deception and money waster!