WELCOME
Welcome to copycatchildren.org, our aim being to disclose how our nation's education system has become so crisis driven. We aim to challenge the status quo and drive significant changes to the current model, thus, with your help, support a complete Re-Form of the system. Our kids and teachers are crying out for it
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Education is the bedrock of society but has been so manipulated and dominated by both political and religious imperatives that its purpose has been subsumed by forces beyond its control. Consequently the well being of our teachers and children has been greatly compromised.
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With the adoption of the Global Education Reform Movement three decades ago came standardisation of our nation's education system. The National Curriculum with its NAPLAN hammer to provide the data for the MySchool website to ensure Parent Choice options were maximised is a model suited to the past Industrial Revolution period. We are living in the Info/Technological Revolution and our nation's education system is found wanting.
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We would really appreciate your participation, rolling and brushing in great ideas. The new colour looks great already.
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Getting to Know Us
I began my teaching career aged seventeen after completing a Certificate of Teaching at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College, Brisbane, Queensland, in 1960, later gaining my BEd at James Cook University. I pursued a career in education for thirty eight years, from teaching in big city schools to my own one teacher school of thirteen pupils to my final large primary school of over eight hundred pupils whose learning needs were a daily rewarding challenge, excellently provided by a dedicated professional team of teachers. The term "Team" is significant for that era of child-based learning, an era destroyed by the adoption of the Global Education Reform Movement. Much more on that to explain. I was fortunate to serve in the times of our greatest Queensland educator, the late Phil Cullen, OAM, who guided the state's primary school education for almost fourteen years. I retired from school in1998 but teaching and learning has remained my lifelong passion - ancora imparo!
From around the nation our hard working dedicated team of past and practising educators is alarmed at the direction our governments have driven education policies over the past three and more decades, many to the detriment of our teachers and learners. Society as a whole has suffered greatly.
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Retired Primary School Teacher and Principal for 38 years.
Independent Education Research Professional.
National Education Review Consultant.
“Copycats, Stickybeaks and Scallywags, Our Children All” - Author
Our Vision
Copycatchildren.org is dedicated to revolutionising the education sector by providing innovative ideas and strategies to address the challenges faced by schools. Join our community to challenge the status quo and create a brighter future for the next generation. How did we get to a national education system so crisis driven with falling pupil engagement and teacher shortages in the most important sector of society, for our nation's future?
Learning to Learn, the Multiaged Way
copycatchildren.org's mission is to empower educators, parents, and students to foster a supportive learning environment based on their needs and their urgency to learn. We believe in the power of education to transform lives and shape a better tomorrow for all of society. “There’s a glass and a half of learning in every glass of a Multiage Classroom.”
Current Obstacles to a Great Education for our nation's children, our nation's future.
The history of how our nation's education model has become so crisis driven, unfit for the Info/Technological Revolution era in which we all now live. If she should lose her thirst for knowledge, her curiosity and imagination, we may have lost another teacher of the future, another brain surgeon in waiting.
Take Action and help us
create a new model to replace our nation's failed Education System.
Your active participation can drive meaningful change in education. We would much appreciate any ideas you can add to our vision for a "Better and Fairer Model" of education for ALL Australian children, for they truly are our nation's future, our nation's leaders. Join hands with us to advocate for inclusive and quality education for all, free of inequity.
"Copycats, Stickybeaks and Scallywags, Our Children All."
"Kids don't fail school, Schools fail kids".​ Author Bruce L Jones, Editor Peter Bradford, Cover Artist Trudy Brooks, PDF consultant Cheryl Goerger
"Arguably the second most important book on Australia’s education system published so far this century.”​
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Are our nation’s education settings right for the 21st century?
Why are so many of our schools operating in a crisis management mode, daily?
How did our nation become so inequitable, so unfair for so many?
Is there a better education system our nation could adopt?
Are we expecting too much of our nation’s school?
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Disillusion and Disappointment with school for so many has led to rampant
Disengagement, often resulting in Disenfranchisement , even Detached from society.
copycatchildren.org not only addresses all of those but offers a Re-Form model designed to take our nation's children into the future, into the Info/Technological Revolution in which we are all now living.​
No events at the moment
Design an Education System for the Info/Technological Revolution
Train then trust our teachers to be the professional providers of the learning of our children. Our universities have failed dismally in this role.
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Empower communities to partner in the process, for it is their children who must attend school and then go on to become the nation's leaders.
Put pupils at the centre of the model for it is their lives which will shape the future. Children have but one childhood, a fact many educators fail to acknowledge.
Learning how to swim is not unlike Learning how to Learn.
Strategies to ensure great learning every day
Why write a book or design a website about schools and education?
Maybe because education is the bedrock of every society and when it breaks down all of society breaks down also.
I believe school should be an exciting, fulfilling and rewarding time in every pupil’s childhood for they get but one childhood.
I believe that every normal child is a ‘Copycat, Stickybeak and
Scallywag’ and can fully succeed only if the conditions for learning reflect all three of those features in their search for knowledge.
I believe imagination and day-dreaming are essential elements for every child’s development and creativity. Play is the work of the child.
There is a strong belief that education can be described as a simple process; learning a set curriculum for a prescribed set of outcomes to satisfy the needs of the bodies set up to deliver that process.
I believe such is a false premise, instituted under false assumptions, to satisfy the needs of those who control our education system.
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"Learning to think so that the best decisions can be made to solve problems one faces daily should surely be the underlying reason for school."
In practice education is the most important and challenging pursuit of mankind for it requires the brain to be fully engaged, all of the time.
I believe the basic structure of schools and learning is fatally flawed to the degree now that the above are either not possible or so heavily distorted that many learners, we are told up to forty percent, find school irrelevant to their real interest in learning, so disengage from schooling, with dire social outcomes.
