Staying Feral

18 December 2011 at 10:10 pm Brian Lavery 2 comments

Why I Love U3A Classes

Over some years I have been U3A tutor in various subjects: web design, blogging&facebook, free radicals, existentialist movies. And I have been a participant in a number of other classes. Lately I have been teaching some computer classes at a small remedial college in Nambour, and now they would like I teach a Certificate I level class in computing to some Job Network referrals for work skills improvement. A lot of my working life I have done training and demonstrating in some form. No one ever asked me for qualification to do this. I did have a 1965 Trained Primary Teacher Certificate, but I never did schoolteaching anyway. Well, no one ever asked for a ticket until now. Suddenly I need now a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. So I have spent the past 6 hard weeks getting my “Cert IV”.

And my Cert IV is 100 percent against everything U3A stands for.

A U3A class is born when someone decides to run one. U3A tutors are asked for no evidence of qualification, either for their subject or for their teaching skills. The tutors decide and create their own subjects, their own class methods, own lesson plans or none. Students attend by free choice – because they want to learn or do what that class offers. The only “stakeholder” is the student. Tutors are unpaid: students pay close to nothing. There is no assessment to summarise the learning, beyond, say, the achievement of a choir in putting on their concert. Students get no award or certificate, to attest to either attendance or achievement level. The content of the U3A class is answerable to no one. The only measure of failure might be that the students leave the class. “Learning for the joy of learning,” as our website is currently headed.

Let me divide the world of classes and courses into several areas:

Academic schooling – primary, secondary, university – needs tertiary level trained teachers.
Non-academic “vocational” training – all TAFE courses, industry and enterprise training. Hairdressing. Mine safety. Word processing. English. Driving schools. Supermarket management. Aged care. Asian cookery. Literacy. Financial management. Making coffee. Security guards. Etc. A very broad field.
Adult “worker education” – common in the capitals, just not here on the Coast. A bit like U3A, similar leisure subjects, but run as a commercial college, in that the tutors/teachers get paid. Classes in evening for working adults.
U3A – day classes, retired students, no pay. (And no standards?)

Cert IV is the teacher training ticket now compulsory for all of #2 above. It’s compulsory, because all the courses are codified, tightly specified, and gathered into a “Qualifications Framework”, documented and administered nationally. And it’s compulsory because the target of every “unit” in the system is the certification, the verified assessment of competency in that unit. And it’s compulsory because the “stakeholder” is the industry or the employer, who wants the certificate to be a certain proof of competency.

Check out training.gov.au and training.com.au. You will find every Australian vocational course, and all recognised training organisations, all branded with the same logo. To be a trainer, the requirements are:

Trainer must have Cert IV in Training and Assessment.
Trainer must themselves hold the qualification they teach in.
Trainer’s work industry experience must be “current” (eg to within 3 years).
Training must be through a registered (and audited) training organisation.

For every “unit” (subject), the skills and knowledge and the performance criteria for judging the “learner” are documented precisely. Student competency in every point needs to be proven and documented.

Cert IV training itself covers a few training or presentation skills, of course, but its emphasis is on the assessment side, the legal side, the requirement to dot every “i”, fill out the checklist, to issue a certificate of competency that no auditor can challenge. That’s what they call quality assurance. It’s not how I define quality.

I need my Cert IV. I’ve earned my Cert IV. I’ll use my Cert IV. But I prefer the U3A way, the enthusiasm for teaching and learning (and we can always improve those) without the mania of assessment and certification.

Stay feral.

Brian Lavery

Misc none

#1 | Written by Julie Allan on 5 January 2012 @ 1:44 pm.

The world is full of con-men, tricksters and scam artists who prey on vulnerable people. If people professing to be teachers can at least show certification that they have studied, passed exams and are qualified to teach their chosen subject, then everyone’s mind can be set at rest. Has anyone seen the movie “Catch me if you Can”- these people are around.
#2 | Written by John Saint-Smith on 28 January 2012 @ 4:51 pm.

Hi Brian,
Glad to see you’re engaged in the noble art of teaching again. No doubt your formal qualification will do wonders for your ‘feral’ tendencies. Can’t say I endorse the comment(1) above. I like the U3A model too, and my only qualification for saying that is the 35 years I had as a professional teacher in ‘the system’. Before I gained my Dip Ed, I was given the privilege of teaching at an alternative high school: The Orwell Independent School, in Brisbane. The students ran it, and everyone, from year 8 to the Principal had one vote on the school council. They collected their own fees ($20 per week which had to be earned in legitimate employment by the students) and distributed them with great care and equity. The principal’s salary was the equivalent of the dole, all other teachers were volunteers. Despite its practical limitations, I was never more impressed with the motivation and maturity of the teenagers who attended. Once, during a Junior science class, the experiment ran overtime. When I suggested we stop for lunch, the students elected someone to ‘get John a hamburger’ so the rest could continue with their experiment. Funny, I never experienced that level of unqualified enthusiasm for learning again until the end of my career, and now in retirement.
Later, when I had taken a position at a conventional Brisbane high school, I used to meet my old ‘Independent School’ students from time to time to bemoan the immaturity of ordinary school students and their teachers.
Finally, in my last four years as a teacher, I was allowed to ‘go feral’ again, with a class of ‘unteachables’. Their qualifications for entry were: an identifiable personality and or learning disorder, from ADD, Asperger’s, or Anxiety, Depression, even Bipolar disorder, significant deficiencies in studies, at least one non-functional or abusive parent, and a determination not to attend normal school. Since the school didn’t care what they learned, they learned what they liked, and you know what? These school-hating feral mongrels came to love their little school, and several went on to gain TAFE and trade qualifications, while others returned to conventional classes, better equipped to deal with the bullying and pettiness of ‘the system’.
Now my Free Rads, some professional, some academic, mostly just plain folk, lap up their weekly dose of philosophy with attitude, and beg for more mental torture. Guess I couldn’t do it without a formal qualification or a regular exam. ‘Catch me if you can’? That guy could teach us a valuable lesson or two.
On a more serious note, you may be intrigued by this website:
http://treehornexpress.wordpress.com/author/treehornexpress/

It is run by an ex-director of primary education in Queensland, and is dedicated to the destruction of the pernicious NAPLAN national testing regime that threatens to derail education across the nation and send us into a spiral of ‘teaching to the test’ so that the test becomes the whole of the curriculum – to the exclusion of everything else, including the joy and spontaneity of learning. The social and political implications of this stultifying measurement of ‘literacy and numeracy’ standards are enormous, as only our American cousins can testify:

http://democracyeducationjournal.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=home

The world is indeed full of tricksters and con men, Julie, but the truly shocking thing is that the worst of them are hiding out in full view as captains of industry, entrepreneurs of commercialized education, public officials, lawyers, and politicians determined to destroy liberal democratic education, and especially us ‘feral’ teachers.

U3A Sunshine Coast

Staying Feral

Why I Love U3A Classes

Recent News Items

News by Category

Some WWW Links

Admin