Now we're teaching on autopilot

Sarah is a pre-service English teacher about to graduate. Like all pre-service English teachers she is developing a complex web of knowledge and skills, something she will continue to develop throughout her career.

Earlier this year, Sarah had a disquieting teaching experience. She taught the latest in "direct phonics" lessons to a group of secondary school students in Melbourne who were deemed to need remedial help.

The lesson was completely scripted for Sarah. In a foretaste of what is in store for students in the centralised curriculum model currently described by neoconservative politicians and media pundits, it was a one-size-fits-all lesson that could be taught anywhere across the nation, at any time.

In one 35-minute period of "teaching", every word that Sarah spoke, the precise time at which she delivered these words, and even the hand signals to accompany the words, were all tightly scripted.

When Sarah talked with me (her English education lecturer) some time after this experience, she had mixed emotions. After an exhausting week of planning, teaching, marking, staff meetings, in-service activities and much more, this scripted curriculum seemed a welcome relief. "I didn't have to think," she said.

She laughed, although it was clear she was still ambivalent about the experience. Then she asked: "But what sort of teaching is it when I'm not required to think?"

Indeed. At a time when neo-conservative commentators and politicians are touting the benefits of an efficient, centrally controlled curriculum, where decision making at the local level is taken out of the hands of teachers and schools, Sarah's story should give us cause to reflect.

Parents might well ask: Is this the sort of curriculum we want for our children? Do we want our children taught by a teacher who is not required to think?

In 2005, Professor Alan Reid (University of South Australia) published a report for the Federal Government, Rethinking national curriculum collaboration: towards an Australian curriculum. This report makes interesting reading in the light of recent debates about a national curriculum. Professor Reid's vision of a collaborative national curriculum, which still recognises the value of teachers' local knowledge, is a long way from the efficiency models being proposed.

Despite platitudes from politicians about teachers being "national treasures", it is clear the push for a restrictive national curriculum comes, in part, from a profound lack of respect for teacher professionalism. In short, teachers are not to be trusted.

As a teacher educator, I work with English teachers-to-be and practising English teachers across Australia. My knowledge of these teachers just does not square with the attacks on the teaching profession that have been launched by conservative politicians and commentators as justification for an efficient, restrictive national curriculum.

There is Natalie, an early-career English teacher, whose year 11 class is studying William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Building on the multi-modal texts (words and illustrations) that Blake originally published, Natalie's students have just submitted their own large-scale hypertexts. These hypertexts include interconnected biographical, analytical and creative texts that they developed in response to Blake's poetry.

Then there is Jessica, a pre-service English teacher whom I visited on a teaching round earlier this year. Jessica's year 8 students were engaged in work that combined the study of English with the study of history, visual arts and technology.

They were learning about World War I narratives, contemporary peace initiatives and more, through a critical study of picture storybooks and online texts. They eventually produced their own informed, imaginative PowerPoint presentations, which brought together historical and literary knowledge, human empathy, quirky humour and an earnest hope for a better future.

Whatever merits there might be in a national curriculum, it is clear that an efficient and restrictive centralised curriculum would not allow for curriculum initiatives by the likes of Natalie and Jessica. It's worth challenging the cool "commonsense" logic of an efficient national curriculum with stories like these that speak to the professionalism of teachers and the diversity of human experience.

I welcome any debate about a national curriculum that articulates shared principles and values, and that responds to concerns about teacher professionalism. I trust that such a curriculum will allow teachers to flexibly demonstrate their accountability vis-à-vis national frameworks and principles.

I also trust that teachers will be respected sufficiently to allow them to think critically and creatively about their teaching and their students' learning.

In the US, the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) policy from 2001 introduced a powerful and worrying model of centralised curriculum control. In this model, teachers were given little room for creativity at the local level. NCLB gave schools across the country no choice other than to commit to the sorts of phonics programs that I described above.

Five years later, groups such as the Carnegie Corporation, Northwest Evaluation Association (pdf 104KB), the RAND Corporation, as well as the National Council for Teachers of English, are reporting outcomes of the NCLB centralised reading curriculum as "abysmal".

According to the reports, American students are learning to sound out words fluently. The centralised testing regimes that are established to measure the learning in the centralised curriculum are showing that. According to these tests, the curriculum is working. However, other forms of assessment are revealing that students do not understand what they are reading.

As the evidence grows, the US is poised to do a U-turn on the centrally driven curriculum for the teaching of reading. The dangers of rigid centralisation are becoming all too clear.

As a parent, as much as an educator and researcher, I want teachers to have some scope to develop curriculum. I shudder at the prospect of a national curriculum that turns teachers into robotic implementers of an impersonal set of edicts.