19 November

Lots of press this week about the stress of the HSC, and how it doesn’t matter how well you go, there are always pathways to what you want to do. All true, but aren’t we sending the wrong message about education? To me the implicit message many kids and parents get from this sort of story (and having been a teacher, I know this to be true) is that school is a complete waste of time, and don’t bother trying in the HSC because you’ll be fine either way. The message I think we SHOULD be sending is, yes the ATAR isn’t the be all and end all, but you should work bloody hard and try to do as well as you can. Challenge yourself, change your horizons. Like we’d say to a sportsperson, go hard, you may not win, but see how far you can go. The minute education gives up challenging and confronting people, it’s over. I see most of these stories as a symptom of how little Australia cares about education. Other countries would look on at this ‘it doesn’t matter’ attitude and scratch their heads. You only grow and mature in life through challenges, and learning to cope with them. The HSC used to be one rite of passage between adolescence and adulthood, one of the biggest learnings from it was how to cope with the challenge. Let’s not take that away, otherwise we'll just keep creating more kidults.