About once every couple of years a story comes out in the news stream about a former pupil suing a school for some failure to achieve a particular goal.
The Age has come out with the latest manifestation of the
frustrated expectations in private education racket.
There are a few things that strike me about the shape of this story.
The big issue is what schools are there to do. Are they simply a funnel for people to get into a university course of their own selection? Or do they exist to promote a broader ideal of what it is to be part of a learned (and learning) community?
Given the overwhelmingly utilitarian character of education in Australia -- let's face it, practically all education here is directed at specific productivity-driven ends; attempting a more liberal style of education is simply heading off into airy-fairy irrelevance -- suing a private school for failing to get someone into a high-profile law course is probably an eminently sensible and obvious thing to do. The idea that teachers might want to teach the basics of good written English demonstrates that schools have yet to fall in with the ideological climate of the times, especially when maths is a higher-ranked subject in obtaining a university entrance score.
The problem I have with the focus on maths in this argument is that the law is all about language, and the interpretation of texts. Michael Kirby has written about changes in the hermeneutic outlook of the Bench in his days as a student and young lawyer in NSW, and how these changes have transformed the practice of law in Australia over half a century or so.
Another things that strikes me is that the reporter doesn't state whether the young lady attempted year 12 at Geelong Grammar School. All we're told is that she moved to Sydney to carry on secondary studies at TAFE -- which somehow required round-the-clock support from her mother, who gave away a lucrative business to make sure the student got through. There was clearly some success on this front, resulting in admission to a double-degree at the University of Sydney. Thank goodness Melbourne University isn't in that racket any more.
What struck me most of all was the self-defeating effort that goes into these actions. VCAT is a low-ranking court, and my guess is that the young lady has not been able to persuade a lawyer to act on her behalf. I hope she intends to become a marine biologist or an advertising creative, because if she were to end up with an adverse finding while representing herself, it would be a serious drag on any would-be solicitor's
resume.
I keep coming back to the question of what education is for. It would be too much to expect VCAT to say something that would really the set the world alight, more's the pity.
