inspiring achievement
Sidney Myer
Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ...
Education for the 21st Century
presented by
Dr George Otero
4 September 2012
Mount Gambier, South Australia
Acknowledgements
The Sidney Myer Rural Lecture series has been established through a generous
grant by the Sidney Myer Fund, and is an initiative of the Sidney Myer Chair of
Rural Education and Communities.
The four Sidney Myer Rural Lectures are designed to engage and inform
individuals, communities and the wider public about the issues, opportunities and
importance of rural areas for the future of Australia.
Vibrant, productive rural communities are integral to global sustainability.
Population growth and an increasing preference for urban living linked with the
challenges of food security, water supply, energy sufficiency, environmental health
and territorial security inform and reinforce this position.
Professor John Halsey
Sidney Myer Chair of
Rural Education and Communities
School of Education, Flinders University
P +61 8 8201 5638
F +61 8 8201 3184
E [email protected]
Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
As an international educational consultant, Dr George
Otero has worked extensively with students, teachers,
administrators, community leaders, and policy makers
in the public and private sectors in Australia, England,
Canada and the United States.
He offers expertise in the areas of relational learning,
community schools, leadership development, student
engagement, rural revitalisation, and family, school and
community partnerships.
Dr Otero pioneered the concept of interdependencies
between schools, learners and communities to achieve
relationships resulting in higher achievement, increased
well-being and better life chances for all children and
young people.
George obtained his Doctorate in global multi-cultural
education from the University of Northern Colorado.
Since 1999, he has worked extensively in Australia and
brings his experiences of effective School, Family and
Community initiatives with a clear understanding and
appreciation for South Australia and
its many effective and innovative
education approaches.
3
Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
Foreword by Professor John Halsey
This, the second lecture in
the series, was presented
in Mount Gambier, South
Australia, in collaboration
with the City of Mount
Gambier on Tuesday,
4 September 2012. A workshop was held the
following day to explore and
further some of the ideas
and conversations from the
lecture.
When Dr George Otero lectures or conducts a seminar, what
participants will receive is always a surprise.
The content, of course, is set within a broad framework,
however something extra naturally unfolds. In fact, the
presentation becomes an invitation for us to play, to explore
and to start a conversation. George creates a space for us
to see what might emerge because we all are people with
knowledge who communicate, work and live together. Things
are tipped upside down and inside out as relationships and
relational approaches are placed right at the heart, so that we
can re-think, re-conceptualise and re-imagine what education
might be in, with and for a community.
In this lecture there is such an invitation – an opportunity to
hopefully challenge our thinking and for ideas to arise which
may disrupt, disturb as well as affirm.
As the Sidney Myer Chair of Rural Education and Communities
and on behalf of Flinders University I would like to formally
thank Dr George Otero for presenting the second Sidney Myer
Rural Lecture, Rural Communities…. Education for the 21st
Century.
I trust that the journey Dr Otero will launch us on proves to be
productive and fertile.
The Importance of Story
Every life is a story and every story makes for equity, because
if you value every story then no story can be better than
another, just different places in the story-line. Story brings
us out. Story privileges the person, the unique, and our
humanity, but not our concepts or our roles. One woman I
met in the hallway said: “I just have to tell somebody this
story! I had a five year old come up to me today who told me
‘I want to learn how to play the trombone’. Out of nowhere!”
A connection is made through a story and the teacher
attends to the need. In a nutshell, this is how learning really
happens.
As a way of introduction, I’d like to share a small part of my
story, in particular how I got to be here with you tonight.
4
I used to live in this magnificent place in Taos, New Mexico.
It once was owned by Dennis Hopper who fell in love with
the place whilst filming the movie Easy Rider nearby. We
bought this house from him and for 20 years ran a multicultural learning centre where we let people find their way
together, educationally. We sold it in 1996 and from that
time I started to come to Australia. In 2001, I came to Mount
Gambier with Susan Chambers-Otero for a two-day seminar
on leadership for learning, and 11 years later I can see how
much is happening with partnerships, how strong these are
and how citizens here are getting better together.
Rural, the A-Team
A significant shift in the understanding of learning and
how learning happens is taking place right now across
the world. Understanding that relationships are the key to
learning, rural communities now see they have the primary
resource needed to provide an effective education for their
children. Seeing relationships as central to learning, biases
rural contexts in a positive way. This changes the game for
rural communities. No longer do we find that rural is the
‘B-team’, lacking in critical educational resources.
In fact, rural is now the ‘A-team’ because rural communities
have all they need to become the driving force for learning.
An ideal conclusion to tonight’s presentation is for all of us
to understand why the privilege has changed from urbancentric to rural communities when it comes to educating
the young. I trust that this assertion makes sense because
it is delightful to see the tables turned in terms of where
we should look for educational leadership and change in
the 21st century. Across the globe, from country to country,
what really matters in education has been recognised.
Perhaps this is not yet well reflected in the arena of politics,
however confusion is part of change.
We are positively moving forward regardless, understanding that improving relationships lies at the heart
of any strategy to improve educational outcomes for our
children.
What is the current situation in education and why has
rural become more privileged? Urban environments in
the past have implied that organisations, places which
we want to call schools, and corporations actually provide
educational services. It is a corporate mentality, better
known as ‘economic rationalism’. We used to talk about
education in this way, fuelled by organisational approaches
resulting in the establishment of a whole bunch of
services. However, organisations do not educate our kids,
communities and families do.
Last month I attended a lecture in Melbourne by Dr Bruce
Perry, a noted brain scientist and medical researcher, who
spoke to teachers and social workers about the myths
we hold about what produces success in education. Perry
stated that in the United States his team examined who
applied to top universities in America and who among
the applicants turned out to be most successful. It was
discovered that a significant number of the successful
students were home schooled! They were not trained in a
prep school but in a home and its surrounding community.
This story and a growing body of research around the
world confirm that social, personal and community
contextual factors play a larger part in determining a child’s achievement, well-being and life chances than do the school or other organisations and services (West-Burnham, Farrar, Otero, 2007). The factors which determine a child’s achievement, wellbeing, and
increase of life chances are now known, and the quality of our relationships hold the key to educational success.
5
Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
Rural Privileges Relationships
If the medical profession knew as much as we collectively
know about educational success they’d be giddy with joy!
We know what works and we know it privileges the rural,
because rural privileges relationships, and people and
communities do the educating.
There is nothing negative about organisations, but what
I am trying to say is what rural knows is people make us
work. It is people and relationships that make the City
Council work. Do you remember the story I told 10 years
ago? “Rural is great! There is good news and there is bad
news. The good news is everybody knows everybody, and
the bad news is everybody knows everybody!” That is now
important news! In rural contexts we know we have to find
a way to make our relationships work. There is a real shift
here, because the research wasn’t available 11 years ago.
This has happened in the last decade.
Rural privileges the relational and the evidence supporting
this is overwhelming. Relationally, rural was removed from
a global society that became urban focused resulting in
people being disconnected. The lovely thing about living
in a rural community is that we have to spend time with
people who may bore us! In turn, we learn how to cope.
6
We also know that this privilege works in education.
Rural means local. Rural doesn’t mean not-urban, rural
means local, and local is connected and when we build
foundations on this connectedness it results in better
education, achievement, life chances, and more wellbeing.
Relationships work better when they happen face-to-face.
The best way to learn something is to teach it one-on-one,
be it mentoring or apprenticeships. Inter-generational
learning always works better. New immigrants are a good
example of this. One urban school thought they were pretty
fancy until it was discovered that if newly immigrated
Chinese mums learnt English in the same classroom as
their kids, these kids learnt English much faster. I can
give you numerous examples of where personal, personcentred, face-to-face and one-on-one is the way we’ve
known how learning always works. I know that too. I have
two daughters and I couldn’t use the same approach
with both of them. They were stubbornly themselves. You
have any like that? So, how did we forget that? When did
we start thinking young people were just students? This
thinking is very strange, but it happened with the mindset
of privileging organisations, and organisations disconnect.
What is our educational and moral purpose?
The question “What is our educational and moral purpose?”
we personally, or our community, have to contemplate on a
daily basis and the answer can’t come from what has been
posted on school walls. Those values are nice, but are these what we are living every day?
Kids see what we live every day.
There is a lovely quote that demonstrates
the power of this: “kids learn what they live”.
For example, if they live with mistrust
they stop trusting. So we have
to ask this question.
Some people I’ve been working with lately say “the purpose of
a school is to help a family and a community educate a child”.
Some have changed it back to the one of “it takes a village,
takes a community to educate a child”, and then have added
“and without children who are educated we don’t
have a community”.
These sentiments tie us
together and make us
dependent on each other.
Sounds like a rural
community to me!
It has been asked in Australia.
Don Edgar, a well-known
Australian sociologist, wrote
a great book called “The
Patchwork Nation”.
In it, he anticipated this
insight I am sharing with you (Edgar, 2001).
His new book “The New Child” documents
further evidence of what is happening to our
children in a disconnected society (Edgar, 2008), and his book
“A War on Work” (2005), looked at work patterns which are keeping us separated from each other,
dividing families and communities and require more services than we can ever fund, because we have
forgotten how to be together. Edgar (2001) says: “The purpose of a school is to help a family educate a
child”.
You may like to give this statement a number between 1 and 10, 10 meaning that you completely agree.
You may also like to revise it a little bit. Somewhere within that range is where the purpose of schools are,
where the privilege from urban and global has changed to rural because those who educate our young
are family, community and school, and rural does this best.
7
Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
The variables which influence a child’s achievement,
well-being and life chances
Achievement, well-being and life
chances cannot be separated. They are
tied together. We know the factors that
determine them. We know there are social
factors, and personal factors. Each young
person, each human being is different.
We know there is always a school, whether it is at home or somewhere else; one room or 100.
All communities have had a place to
educate the young. We also know there
are some factors such as gender, disability
and ethnicity or race which are influential
regardless of circumstance or environment,
and therefore we cannot explore them in
the same way.
Ethnicity is undeniable, because it is the
most pervasive factor. I am a New Mexican,
I will always be a New Mexican.
About four weeks into a trip I will start
to dream of red chilli. Ethnicity is so
important.
Honouring ethnicity within transition
programs for people who are new to a
country makes a difference, because if
they can’t be who they are, then there is
no way we can educate them.
(West-Burnham, Farrar & Otero, 2007).
8
We can think of numerous social factors which influence a
child’s achievement, life chances and well-being. It is good to
think of a few. For example, generational poverty which is one
of the biggest social factors. Generational poverty is like an
extra kick in the rear, because with generational poverty you
think that it is your ethnicity and it isn’t, it is only a situation.
Generational poverty does not define you, it is just your
situation. Yet, it has a devastating impact on achievement,
wellbeing, and life-chances.
The impact of school is 20% regardless of whether it is a
private school, such as Geelong Grammar at $30,000 a
year, or a state primary school right here in Mount Gambier.
This doesn’t sound like it is a good deal! When a school
emphasises community, connectedness, humanity and
relationships, and spiritual dimensions of living, they are
successful with a greater number of children and young
people.
When a community and its schools work together, especially
in what seem to be difficult social and demographic contexts,
education happens in many new ways. Interventions do
not happen just at school, these happen in a community
which loves and cares for people by providing a multitude
of educational options in partnership. I work with schools
in Victoria and in New Mexico which know that these social
factors are crucial to success.
Appearance is one example of a personal factor which
influences a child’s achievement, life chances and well-being.
My grand-daughter has just started high school. In the US
high school starts at Year 9. For 3 weeks, she negotiated to
have her hair dyed red. There were long discussions around
“what it would say about who you are”, and, “what do you do
if you don’t like it after a few weeks?” How many people think
she got to dye her hair? This is how it works. You never learn
to drive a car till you wreck your father’s car! We know that
how we look and present ourselves to others are personal
factors that make a difference in our learning.
The schools collaborated to bring school and community
together to provide the resources, experiences and
opportunities which will ensure that every child experiences
educational success.
Social factors, personal factors and school each have a
percentage bearing on a child’s achievement, life chances and
well-being. As detailed in the book “Schools and Communities
- Working Together to Transform Children’s Lives”, the impact
is 40% social, 40% personal and 20% school (West-Burnham,
Farrar & Otero, 2007).
One school decided these factors were so important, they
collaborated and hired a teacher to work directly with parents
on the development index. Five years later these kids came
into school and cruised through, because the parents had
been partnering with the kids. All the parents needed was
some support and help. Why wait till kids get to school?
Figure 1: Variables influencing a child’s achievement, life chances and well-being
Gender,
disability,
ethnicity
Social
• Family
• Social Capital
• Social Class
• Poverty
• Resilience
• Readiness
• Motivation
• Ability
Personal
School
(West-Burnham, Farrar & Otero, 2007)
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Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
What are the underpinning beliefs about family,
schools and communities?
What do we think are the underpinning beliefs about
family, school and communities? That the organisation
can fix it; that the right reading material will do it; that if
they all sit still for 4 or 5 hours a day, they’ll learn more;
that winning is better than losing; that making mistakes
is not the best way to learn? The underpinning beliefs
are vast and prejudiced against rural communities and
relationships. Community always works because it is
social capital. In rural areas we honesty have to believe
we depend upon each other. The South Africans call
this ‘Ubuntu’, because of who we are together. In rural
communities we understand that, and we know that we
are only as good as our neighbours. We have to use that
knowledge. The kids know it for they feel it. Kids feel the
interdependence and connection to the land and the
animals, and if the animals aren’t healthy how can the
community be happy? They know climate is a problem.
This depth of building social capital is now rich research.
Here is a story: Kimba. You know where Kimba is? Used
to be my favourite town because it has the big Galah,
but today we went through Kingston SE and who can
compete with that big Lobster? I’ve 42 pictures as a
result! In Kimba everyone chips in to help. Volunteerism
is one of the key factors of social capital. Kimba has the
highest percentage of people volunteering every day. The
school makes a powerful contribution to this through
the annual year 6/7 ‘The Station Trip’- which started in
1968 - within the Gawler Ranges. In addition, the year 9
history course, run in partnership with the local historical
society, is another very important social capital building
community. They have a strong community where people
feel safe. This social capital is dynamite!
Building social capital is the way forward. Relationships
are social capital. Social capital is the combined strength
and power of community members. It is the trust and
reciprocity that develops over time and binds the whole
group together.
Strong social capital means that people know each other,
look out for each other and come together for social and
emotional support.
This is measurable. We constantly measure it.
So you get the sense of the power of social capital, in
particular the power of relationships. It is why relationships matter and these relationships can be built. Listen
to the stories.
10
Rural communities have it, and instead of thinking we
need another organisation or new curriculum standards,
we need to talk about how we use social capital to
educate the young. Standards are necessary, but not
sufficient. We want our kids to do not only good work
but ‘good works’! A ‘good works’ is something that serves
you and you learn but somebody else benefits from
it too. That’s what we need in a community, not just
individual achievement. Communities which have high
social capital, have high educational outcomes. Rural
communities are rich in social capital. Building, bridging
and linking this social capital becomes educational
improvement strategy number one.
We are contagious beings. Take the story of quitting
smoking. If you are around people who don’t smoke, you
have a better chance of not smoking.
Do you recall what used to be said were the barriers
to education success and opportunity? Money was
considered a barrier and the need to prepare for school.
In New York city people pay $4000 for their 4 year olds
to learn how to pass entrance exams. Now so many
New York children pass this exam, that parents pay an
additional $4000 for their children to be taught how to
pass the interviews, because there are more now who
pass the exam and the interview determines it. This is no
joke, this is happening.
Lack of motivation is a personal factor, for example if
there seems to be no future for kids when they leave
school. Why would anyone want to go to school if it’s
irrelevant? John came up with a great term today, “there
was a whiff of irrelevance”. Walk into a Year 8 classroom
and you may be able to notice a “whiff of irrelevance”
moving around, that is students who cannot connect
education to what they want to do with the rest of their
lives. In rural places, we now know that we can connect
education with a future, for this is the heart land.
Everything they do, they do because they are citizens
now. Community service, mentoring and service learning
programs work to connect young people to other adults
and to make a real contribution to the community.
Gladwell describes high social capital. Rural communities
and their schools can build this social capital.
Achievement, wellbeing, life chances- there is tonnes
around us because every day it is seen and felt. This is
something we can trust. There is high social capital when
you know who it is in your neighbourhood you never
want to talk to again! We know that non-school factors
matter.
The whole purpose of the lecture is to say “let’s get off
this game that doesn’t work anyway”. It’s not the 21st
century educational model.
Rural education is the 21st century education model,
because it is based on people, families, relationships and
communities, and the school coordinates and helps serve
all of that.
Malcolm Gladwell (2008) in his book “Outliers: the story
of success” mentions that people living in the rural Italian
township of Rossetta live a long time. They don’t have
heart attacks and they are not rich. He looked at the way
in which people visited one another, stopped to chat
or cooked for one another in their backyards. Extended
family clans underpinned the town’s social structure
with many homes having three generations live under
one roof. Grandparents commanded great respect, and
people there lived longer.
11
Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
Why are relationships the key to educational success?
How do we expand, improve and build new relationships
to educate better?
What is the path forward? Now that we can privilege
relationships, communities, families, and the rural
context, the way forward is working together to build
and sustain:
• Effective families
• Effective communities
• Effective classrooms
Educational success is built on the existence of
effective families, effective communities, and effective
classrooms. Current efforts at reform usually only focus
on effective classrooms which is good and necessary, but
it is not sufficient. Why would we only attack one thing
that matters?
The bottom line of an effective family is unconditional
love. Effective families exhibit warmth and firmness.
They set some boundaries, because if mum and dad
don’t, don’t expect the teacher and the church to do
it. How do we support each other in doing that? This
model is about effectiveness, caring, helping each other,
supporting the growth and development of each human
being.
What makes an effective community? The social capital,
that is connections, trusting each other, working
together, or not liking someone but knowing you depend
on them. Buy something from their store anyway, and
saying hello to Uncle Tom even though you hope it only
happens once a year. It’s like the porcupine story where
we get closer and then the quills hit us, then we move
apart and we again move closer. We need to be warm
because it is cold, and here we find this amazing dance
called ‘living in community’. We live in a rich network of interdependence. Mobilising this community for
learning is essential.
12
The third element is effective classrooms. We now know
what makes an effective classroom. It is the quality
of the relationship between the student, the young
person and the adult who is in the room with them. It
also means it is effective if there are other adults there.
We also know it is more effective if they are not in the
classroom all the time.
Professor John Hattie is famous for his research with
the main focus being classrooms. In his book, “Visible
Learning”, he confirms the importance of what happens
relationally between student and teacher (Hattie, 2009).
We, however, in the 21st century need to move beyond
classroom effectiveness alone. Part of what Hattie
researched are the major components which make
an effective student-teacher relationship and are the
highest pay-off in achievement: warmth, empathy and
non-directive teaching (Hattie, 2009).
In other words, empathetic caring teachers and a system
which allows children to choose and manage their own
learning make for the best teaching and learning in the
classroom.
Getting a whole school community working together can
bring all three elements together. How hard can this be?
The biggest bridge then is to get parents, communities
and schools working together and speaking the same
language.
Natural Pedagogies
How do we create a language that allows us all to take
responsibility? We create a language by re-introducing
what all communities have used forever, natural ways of
learning.
There are six natural ways of learning. The first one is play.
If you are not playing and if kids don’t see you playing, then they end up not being interested in the future
because they think “that’s what we’ll be like when we get older”. So engaging in play is a good idea.
The biggest natural way of learning is playing games.
Critchley (2009) in her article ‘Board families have a win’
published in the Herald Sun, reported on research done in
Australia by OMD Insights with 125 families, which looked
at the type of effects playing board games together as
a family had on children. Results showed an increase in
sportsmanship, literacy, numeracy, social skills, enjoyment
of each other’s company, taking turns and cooperation
with siblings, within the families who played a board game
for one hour for four weeks. No school is going to offer that
guarantee. Playing a game for just 1 hour a week could
make that difference.
Another natural way is story. Story-narrative is the way to
all learning, for it is how you teach everything.
At some schools in Geelong where kids don’t read at home
or to each other, they read to dogs. Their reading scores go
up and stay up, in fact the scores up 2 levels and dogs just
love to be read to! What a resource! Another example is
telling a personal story, for example, of what your grandma
did, or when you did something and it worked. Then you
tell another story and so it goes on. Story telling is how
humans learn, and have always done. So, why have we
given up on these natural ways?
Then there is art which is the best in the world, for it is
huge, and dialogue, that is, real discussion. Currently
across Australia philosophy is taught to 5 and 6 years olds.
Children that age can do this, they can think together.
The last natural pedagogy is ceremony, presentations, and
celebrations. These six natural ways are a natural part of
life, so what parent can’t do that and what community
doesn’t do this already? What school isn’t a better school in
the community with these ways?
I hope that this picture of the future of learning, challenges
you to find ways of working better together, especially in
the rural context.
Thank you for your time.
References
Critchley, C. (2009). ‘Board families have a win’. Herald Sun, 19 August, p. 27.
Edgar, D. (2001). The Patchwork Nation: Re-thinking government, re-building community. Harper Collins, Australia.
Edgar, D. (2005). The War Over Work: The future of work and family. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Edgar, D., Edgar, P. (2008). The New Child: In search of smarter grown-ups. Wilkinson Publishing, Melbourne.
Department of Education and Child Development (2012). Children and young people are at the centre of everything we do. Retrieve from: www.decd.sa.gov.au/aboutdept/files/links/Directions_for_the_new_dep.pdf Retrieved 4 September 2012.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little Brown and Company, New York.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge, Oxon, USA.
Perry, B.D. (2012). Australian Speaking Tour, 6-24 August, Melbourne. Retrieve from: www.cvent.com/events/dr-bruce-perry-speakingtour-2012/custom-39-68f74a15d2b34f00a150f9eae6be9191.aspx. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
Richtel, M. (2011). ‘A Silicon Valley school that doesn’t compute’. New York Times, 22 October. Retrieve from: www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/
technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
West-Burnham, J., Farrar, M., Otero, G. (2007). Schools and Communities: working together to transform children’s lives. Continuum Press, USA.
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Sidney Myer Rural Lecture 2
Rural Communities ... Education for the 21st Century
Questions and Answers
On electronic media being able to be used to
build social capital
Yes, electronic media is wonderful. I certainly carry it all
around but never use them! Let me tell you how it works.
Matt Richtel (2011) in his article ‘A Silicon Valley School
That Doesn’t Compute’ published in the New York Times,
reports that “some parents and educators have a message:
computers and schools don’t mix”. In the Silicon Valleythe world’s leading hub for high-tech innovation and
development- some parents have sent their kids to a Waldorf
school. At this school only one new rule was instigated- no
technology, because everyone already had all the available
technology. What the kids weren’t getting was face-to-face
interaction. The philosophy of the school focuses on physical
activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. These
parents believe that relationships support learning better
On how to engage with families whose
experiences of schools, and education, were
very poor
I am so glad you asked that. John had a hand in how to do
this when he came over to New Mexico and worked with
us. We started ‘Discovery Conversations’ by going into
communities and instead of telling people, we got them
together in a circle and we asked them not “what do you
think about your school”, but “what do you love about your
community? What do you want more of here? What makes
you stay here?”
14
than technology. Parents in Silicon Valley knew what they
needed their school to do. You too can decide what you need
yours to do.
Here’s another example. Most of us feel our children watch
TV too much. Yet, if you interact with your kids around what
they are watching, the television can be a source for learning.
The technology isn’t the key to learning, it is what we do
with that technology, and how it informs our discussions
and interactions. We just have to get smart. Why ignore ways
that make life easier? We use them on our farms, we use
them in our kitchens. If we use the technology to enhance
our relationships and the kids are motivated and its relevant,
use it. Nowadays, kids can put together presentations that
would twist our brains and they can do it on concepts that
can be way above our heads. Let’s use this technology to
enhance their learning. You can see what I mean.
Out of these conversations, people generated ideas and felt
powerful as families, because they experienced a strength
base to it. We now have taken this into schools. In low SEScommunities, or any community, we get together 8 parents,
8 students and 8 staff. We spend just 1 hour together,
talking, getting to know each other, talking about what we
love about the community and school and what we want
for our kids this next term. It is that easy, because families
are ready to play. They just don’t want to go to any more
meetings! That is where we should start, because if families
don’t feel effective, you are playing a deficit game anyway,
right, you are just babysitting. If we work together, we can
do this.
About teachers and educators
having empathy when
everyone comes from very
different places
About ways in which
government, in particular
federal government, can be
involved
Yes, I can tell you how that works.
You have to be yourself, able to stop
punishing yourself and judging yourself.
You can’t be empathetic till you are free
from your own assumptions- we’ve
gotta do this, we’ve gotta cover this,
what will happen if we don’t teach
that? How can you be empathetic
when you are under your own terror
regime? What develops empathy more
than anything else? Just go into a prep
classroom for 10 minutes. They walk in,
their lives could be a mess, and they just
look at you and tell you the truth, like
‘you smell bad’! They are so amazing.
Does that help a little bit?
Local government like this City can
sponsor and support community
groups to get together to work for kids.
Tonight’s meeting is sponsored by the
City.
The document “Children And Young
People Are At The Centre Of Everything
We Do” has just been made available
by the new Department of Education
and Child Development. The new
department of education is not
just education. It is health, youth
development, and every other service.
It says that if achievement, wellbeing,
and life chances are tied together, we
have to form partnerships with effective
families, communities and schools
to do that. It is the most innovative,
progressive vision of education I have
seen anywhere in the world, and in the
next 18 months you all are going to
do that. That is what governments do.
They set policy, set out vision, and then
they let people work on it, and they get
out of the way. If you haven’t seen this
document, let me say it is good and
pretty impressive.
On [the need for rural
communities to be better
supported / recognised]
I like this question. Here’s why. See,
when I came eleven years ago to
Mount Gambier, rural communities
survived based on the quality of their
relationships. I’ll use an example from
my country. I come from New Mexico.
Of 50 states, New Mexico is 8% native
American and more that 40% Hispanic.
New Mexico is a rural state, much like
South Australia in so many ways. The
strength of New Mexicans is found
in their culture, their history, their
relationship to the landscape and their
dedication to creating a positive future
for their children. Each community
is unique and has sustained their
community. For example, Taos Pueblo
has been continuously occupied as a
community for more than a thousand
years! As mentioned in the lecture, the
dominant society has not valued the
knowledge and practices of these folks.
Rural communities have struggled to
maintain their vitality in a consumer
society. They often can’t compete in a
competitive, impersonal economy. What
they do have is each other and rich
interdependent relationships to each
other and with their environment.
All I am trying to suggest is that we
stop for a minute and look at what
we already have, not at what we don’t
have. We have all the resources we
need to educate every kid every day to
success. What do kids see as something
possible to celebrate as a citizen? In
South Australia there are a number of
projects, for example, the Pitchie Ritchie
railroad and student involvement from
the Quorn Area School, and on the
river at Mypolonga people come by the
Primary School shop which sells jams
and other products sourced locally and
organised by the kids. Every day they
feel like a contributing member of their
community. You don’t think that builds
a future? So, we just deceived ourselves
with the wrong story line, because it has
already been happening. Indigenous
communities have been doing it for
50,000 years. Someone just told them it
wasn’t the right way.
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