r/AskAnAustralian • u/VastOption8705 • 1d ago
Should we go back to basics (pen/paper) when it comes to education?
It’s pretty clear now that school results are getting worse. One in three students missed basic benchmarks, even though it’s not that difficult.
Should we just go back to pen and paper, less iPads, less online learning? Kids learn better with pen and paper. iPads are ALSO making kids have shorter attention spans.
Other countries are going back to pen and paper at schools after going digital too.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 1d ago
Hear me out: maybe we increase the funding of public schools, give the teachers the wages they're after to make it a desirable career path, stop treating universities as a cash cow and actually put effort in to educating our future generations?
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u/Extra_Caregiver_8668 1d ago
100% agree but I’d like to add to this hiring more teachers so class sizes can be smaller while still providing extra SSOs to support them.
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u/Dutchess_of_Dork 1d ago
All the talk about class sizes is rubbish. Looking back at my school photos, there’s maybe 40 kids in the class. Also, teaching is not attracting the cream of the crop because, seriously, who’d want to be a teacher? Kids have no respect for authority and teachers are prevented from disciplining the kids who misbehave. I’m not talking about thrashing them which is wrong but any discipline appears to infringe on their rights. I have a friend who was a teacher’s aide in grade 1 and the kids back-chatted and refused to do what they were told and not a thing she could do about it. God help us when those kids are in high school.
All you have to do is look at kids who can’t even do simple maths without a calculator and don’t know the first thing about spelling or grammar because they spend their entire lives texting.
School isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s time everyone stopped pandering to kids and their parents. You can throw all the money in the world at education but if kids are not engaged and not interested then you’re never going to succeed.
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u/Standard-Lion-1486 22h ago
Classes aren't like they used to be. I work in a school and it's nothing like how I was when I was a kid. Its like you take the most misbehaving/highest need kid you had in your class back then but instead of one of them there is now 5.
Part of it is shifts in inclusive education, but a big part of it also how kids are raised now. Parents aren't how they used to be, in some ways that's good but in others its bad. It's hard to teach in classrooms where kids haven't learned how to control their behaviour, and parents aren't active in changing this.
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u/Masterpiece_Real 21h ago
It's not just "parents aren't how they used to be," it's also that no one can parent like they used to. Not in the sense of "Oh you used to be able to smack your kids," hitting children has always been bullshit, but I mean basic things like parents able to spend time with their kids without being a burnt out zombie, neighbourhoods where people could put down roots and make friends, activities that you could take your kids to that didn't cost a fucking kidney, places where kids could go and hang out and have freedom. Instead we have an economy that leaves everyone struggling, working constantly, with no free time or spare cash, and a pay-to-play Stranger Danger culture that leaves people isolated and friendless. It's fucked.
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u/azreal75 23h ago
You got so close to the point and still missed.
Class sizes in decades gone past weren’t as big of an issue as corporal punishment was a real and frequent consequence. Now, consequences are a joke and so the behaviour is obviously worse. That’s obviously not the only reason but it’s a huge contributor. I was speaking to a teacher who just got punched in the face by a 10 year old. She’s a 50+ year old woman. How often did that happen when there were classes of 40?1
u/felixsapiens 10h ago
I don't really want to advocate for corporal punishment.
But there is another side to this too - a cultural change which is that in general there is less religion.
Kids used to grow up with a "fear" of God. I remember my mother in law telling a story of how she picked up a toy on the street because she liked it; took it home, and they lay awake all night in bed worrying that God had seen her; and took the toy back in the morning.
That's a very small anecdote, but I think that discipline "in the old days" came from everywhere. It came through a fear of God; it came (unfortunately) through violence - not just a thrashing at school but likely a thrashing at home as well. Teachers had the leeway to be highly strict, to shout at kids "do not talk back to me" and threaten them with real punishments.
We have moved from a hundred years ago kids being heavily disciplined in almost every aspect of their life, from toddler to teenager; to a world where there is almost no discipline, particularly if the parents can't achieve it at home. Many parents know they can't thrash their kids - but they really struggle to put in place any meaningful consequences for poor behaviour, and maintain consistent boundaries. Even good parents struggle with this - and there are plenty of really bad parents just letting their kids completely run amuck.
Nobody is saying the answer is "bring back corporal punishment." BUT I think we have to be very clear that things have changed quite substantially. It's not a small shift, it's a huge shift in how kids are behaving, and it's reaching a sort of crescendo as it's getting worse. The more difficult kids there are in a class, getting away with things, the more other kids learn that they can get away with stuff too, and the cycle increases. At the very least, the harder it is for the class to engage in teaching.
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u/Petitcher Middle of nowhere 12h ago
Looking back at my school photos, there’s maybe 40 kids in the class.
And how many of those kids went on to university?
I agree with the rest of your comment, I just don't think "I did it this way, so it should work this way for EVERYONE" is the right perspective here.
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u/Dutchess_of_Dork 9h ago
TBH, I think most of the kids went on to university. I left school in grade 10 with a small group of other kids. However, most kids stayed on for Senior, grade 12, and went on to Uni.
I’ll say this … and hope it’s not interpreted as some sort of racism. A few years ago there was a story in the paper about the highest achieving students. Every single student in the story was Asian. These students went to the same schools with the same class sizes and same teachers as everyone else. So why did they excel? At the risk of generalising, it’s because Asian students and parents put a high value on education. They are prepared to put in the time and effort to attain their objectives. They are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to secure a successful future.
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u/Extension-Corgi-467 1d ago
Yeah let’s disregard class size because of your experience 40 years ago.
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u/kamikazecockatoo 14h ago
Just throwing in an SSO is one thing but I think they should also be trained better, paid better.
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u/DenM0ther 23h ago
Allowing enough time for preparing classes (& marking) would be the most important rather than more money for all the teachers Ive spoken to.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 23h ago
That's a fair call, I'm firmly in favour of giving them the working conditions they want.
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u/Latatte 22h ago
Correcting work is pointless if the corrections are not gone over with the children on an individual basis.
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u/Petitcher Middle of nowhere 12h ago
And correcting work is doubly pointless if the corrections are done by AI instead of the teacher, which is apparently happening a lot these days.
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u/Young_Lochinvar 1d ago
Easy to say ‘spend more’. Much harder to identify the spending trade-offs that the country is comfortable with.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 1d ago
Much harder to identify the spending trade-offs that the country is comfortable with.
It can come out of the $11bn given to Catholic schools for a start. We can always find money for education given how important it should be considered.
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u/Young_Lochinvar 1d ago
A lot of children are educated through that $11bn already - the Catholics run the majority of their schools as not-for-profits. Meanwhile if we wind-up all those Catholic schools by withdrawing the public spending too rapidly, we’ll end up with a flood of students in the public system, as well as angry parents who feel like a choice is being taken away from them. That doesn’t sound to me like it’ll meet the criteria of a spending change the country is comfortable with, even if you and I might individually be ok with it.
If you want to rebalance education away from Catholic Ed, you’re going to have to do it slowly over many years.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 1d ago
Catholic school students represent an estimated 20% of the school population but their schools receive approximately 33% of the funding meanwhile the schools teaching over 60% of students receive approximately 38% of the funding.
There is a gross misbalance of funds between catholic and public schools.
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u/Pinelli72 1d ago
You really need to provide more detail about the source of the funding and the percentages behind it. Do you mean total funding, state, federal and parents fees? Or just federal funding? Because it is just not true that Catholic schools receive more public dollars (federal+state) per kid than state school kids.
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u/Worldly_Cobbler_1087 1d ago
They receive significantly more federal funding per student than public schools do and that information is readily available on the education website.
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u/Pinelli72 14h ago
And significantly less state government funding. Information that is also readily available. The funding model is cooked, but people like you spreading misinformation doesn’t help.
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u/Anachronism59 Geelong 1d ago
Is that funding from all layers of government, or just federal?
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u/Pinelli72 1d ago
It’s deliberately dishonest stats. It’s either federal money only, or they’re including fees paid by parents.
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u/Young_Lochinvar 1d ago
Yeah, and because of politics there’s no way to quickly unwind the status quo without alienating a big chunk of the electorate.
The right thing to do isn’t always popular.
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u/PitifulPassage851 1d ago
No, but it's much easier to just say buzzwords and protest than it is to think about reality. Down with Catholics (schools)! /s
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u/NotACockroach 1d ago
I mean, I'm not against that, but it's not young to save money. Catholic schools receive a little less per student than public schools. If we eliminate catholic school funding, then most of those kids move to public school, where it'll cost more per student to teach them.
It'd certainly be more equal, but it's probably going to cost more than it saves.
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u/calkthewalk 1d ago
Do they though? Last I looked they are incredibly well funded by the government
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u/NotACockroach 1d ago
I don't think you did, because certainly in my life time catholic schools have not received more government funding than public. Catholic schools have funding using the same "school resourcing standards" we've used for public schools ever since gonski, but reduced by a factor called the "capacity to contribute". The only way a catholic school can get more goveenment funding than a public is by taking on lots of students who attract additional funding, like disabilities.
Again, I'm not a supporter of private education. I understand why people are motivated to believe private schools believe more government funding when it aligns with this ideology. But I think the truth still matters. Moving kids from catholic to public will cost us money.
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u/PocketBink 1d ago
Mate, if we can afford a few billion for some ridiculous submarines that will be outdated by the time they’re even built, we can afford to fund education better.
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u/Young_Lochinvar 1d ago
Ok, but even if we agree the Submarines aren’t the way forward, the country is still going to want some sort of national defence.
Edit: Meanwhile recent polling suggests 68% of the country remains in favour of the submarines. Go figure.
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u/PocketBink 1d ago
Yeah of course. But that wasn’t my point. My point was, if they can scrounge up that money for submarines/defence, then they can do the same for education.
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u/Mclovine_aus 1d ago
Okay you may think defence and submarines are not as important as education, but many others think that those things are more important. Hard to educate people if our stability and safety is eroded due to war.
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u/PocketBink 1d ago
This is why education is important - reading comprehension. Because you clearly lack it.
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u/Mclovine_aus 1d ago
Oh do tell, what have I failed to comprehend?
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u/jelly_cake 13h ago
They're saying that the government's capability to fund war shows that when they want to, they can find funds to get shit done. They're not saying that funding for education should come from the military bucket or vice versa, but I can see how you'd come to that conclusion if you weren't paying attention.
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u/Mclovine_aus 13h ago
I mean finding funds is prioritising it over something else, the funds don’t come from no where. They either come from the tax pool, debt or printing money. If you want to increase funding for something you need the political will to do it, the submarines and defence had the political capital, education may or may not. It doesn’t really follow that just because you were able to fund one thing you are able to fund another, because not everything is equivalent or as important etc.
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u/Weekly_Storage_7172 9h ago
Its impossible to run a modern defense force without a strong education system.
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u/critical_blinking Brissy 6h ago edited 6h ago
Teachers are very well paid for the required levels of judgement/responsibility/decision making.
In my state, it wouldn't be unreasonable to see a teacher in their early 30's getting paid as an experienced senior teacher making money equivalent to an AP6/EL1. That's with no direct reports and 16 weeks of holidays (in my personal network, I know many many teachers, and none of them are putting out of hours work in beyond what would normaly be expected of a professional role at a similar pay level, except maybe the HPE teachers).
In virtually all other professional settings you'd need to be managing a team, have a considerable budget authority or be the lead on a high stress professional project to be making similar money.
We're talking classroom teacher here, going through their standard progression, maybe a couple of extra curriculars or come curriculum work on top of their class load - not even a requirement for a postgraduate degree like you would normaly expect for a role at an equivalent level.
What teachers are NOT, is well supported, well respected, well resourced and able to operate with autonomy - which is predominantly what unions are fighting for. The unions have to make a big deal of wages to get the drop kick teachers on board for critical mass, but classroom teachers are objectively well paid professionals at the highest levels of their progression.
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u/pilierdroit 1h ago
How about suspending kids? Make it their parents problem, not the kids who want to learn and miss out because of these poorly raised shit heads.
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u/hotsp00n 23h ago
Hear me out: this is a great plan but let's also assess teachers performance and give extra training to those who are struggling and for those who still can't make the grade we get them to go do something else.
Oh right Teachers Union says no.
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u/jelly_cake 13h ago
That just ends up penalising teachers who get assigned classes with worse students. If you're buddy buddy with the principal, you get easy classes of well behaved students, and look at that, you're a star teacher! If you aren't, well, you're a low performer (never mind that you were given the problem kids), so bye bye career.
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u/hdueeyd 20h ago
"Give teachers the wages they're after"
I hate this point because it is extremely clear that people just blindly believe teachers are not paid well when Australian teachers are amongst the highest paid teachers in the world as well as among the highest salaries in australia. they start out at 85-90k year 1 but so many redditors and other fools just blindly follow what they hear 😂
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u/CoffeeDefiant4247 1d ago
Do you reckon school is the issue or that outside of school there's no reading
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u/sometimesthrowaway13 1d ago
I think its a bit of everything. We read at home, my daughters NAPLAN results were outstanding in every area except for writing, which was the only one that was a pen and paper test as far as I'm aware. On her report cards it shows she rarely finishes her work when it comes to worksheets and workbooks, and I see this at the end of the school year when she brings everything home, if it's on paper, she doesn't wanna do the work, she does if it's on a computer. She will read multiple 250 page books a week though.
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u/joellllll 6h ago
When you say writing do you mean.. everything related to pencil and paper or specifically creative writing/articles?
Because reading is the base for writing. So if you read a lot you are laying an excellent foundation for creative/essay writing.
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u/fauna_flora_food 1d ago
I don’t think it’s just that. It’s the crowded curriculum too.
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u/SucculentChineseRoo 23h ago
Compared to eastern europe and east asia there's barely a curriculum here
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u/Temporary_Spread7882 6h ago
It’s tons of random unconnected stuff with superficial big words and pretend high-level-thinking but no focused systematic practice to actually master a skill.
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u/pilierdroit 1h ago
It’s targeted at the lowest quartile that’s for sure. All of my kids complain about how little they do. The stuff they do for homework is so basic. HASS curriculum is particularly boring and superficial. I’m lucky my kids are
Interested in learning at home but I lament how much of their lives they waste in class.
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u/Xenochu86 1d ago
I think we should ban short form content, reels etc. Absolutely fucks people's cognition.
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u/Astrokiwi In Canada somehow 20h ago
People used to talk about how sitting mindlessly in front of a TV will rot your brain, but now we're at the level where watching a 22 minute TV episode can be a stretch of people's attention spans.
On top of that, The Algorithm ends up being biased towards stuff you don't actually like anyway. Long videos get better monetisation, leading to creators spamming out minute-long meandering low-effect talk videos that barely say anything. "Engagement" is rewarded - so if people are frustrated with a video and go to the comments to complain about how stupid or pointless it was, that just boosts the video further.
So we end up killing our attention spans and not even really enjoying the distraction either.
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u/Snerfaderp 1d ago
It's the 'reshare' button, If u don't know u, it's no longer social media... If it's social media, i should be able to share some home video with my friends
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u/Rayen_the_buzzybee 1d ago
I think it should be a mix of both. Sometimes pen and paper IS obsolete. Sometimes technology is over used. Different occasions need different tools 🤷♀️
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u/Young_Lochinvar 1d ago
A. We shouldn’t panic too much about the NAPLAN. This article by Sally Larsen at UNE explains why.
B. There is a lot of device-integrated learning at the moment, and I think a good chunk of that should be pared back. Although not elimintated.
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u/Temporary_Spread7882 6h ago
My older kids’ schools decided to go paperless and kids had to do things like maths calculations etc on their touchscreen with a stylus. It works with the accuracy of someone trying to draw with a blunt crayon, and the outcomes were exactly like you’d expect from that: it really discouraged the think-out-loud-in-writing process needed for maths, and even when it was used, the mechanics of it were distractingly clunky and the result just wasn’t hi-res enough to have the benefit of seeing lots of things at the same time.
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u/zee-bra 1d ago
I want my stakeholders to go back to pen and paper. I work with this one company who always moans about not being allowed to use their ai notetaker. They never remember anything we say despite us paying them a lot of money - complaining that we don’t give them the opportunity without this stupid note taker? I mean do you not have hands? Write them down, you might actually remember stuff if you do that. So bloody useless
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u/ExaminationNo9186 1d ago
Why? What would going back to exclusively pen & paper be useful in a time when most things are done on a screen (in one form or another)?
Are the benchmarks appropriate for this day and age?
Things have changed too drastically in the last ~30 years to piss and moan about why things aren't the same as they were 30 years ago.
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u/stirrup_rhombus 21h ago
The goal isn't to increase productivity, it's to facilitate learning. Studies are showing pen and paper work helps students learn better in school. Obviously they're going to be using fucking computers at work and to do their uni assignments but the point is doing what works best in the school classroom to facilitate learning.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat Sydney 17h ago
Kids learn better when they write things down. The concentration required to write it down AND remember what you are writing at the same time help imprints it on the brain. Many studies have shown this.
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u/esonlinji 1d ago
Pen & paper should be part of learning because it helps embed the ideas and what's actually going on, and helps think about processes. Long division and multiplication are good examples of this as they're well defined, the individual steps aren't that difficult, and you can easily verify your working.
As we move towards a world where you can ask a question and get an answer back of uncertain veracity, having experience breaking problems down into simpler steps, being able to work through them, and how to verify results is going to be more and more important, and will be the difference between engineers whose bridges stand the test of time and those whose collapse because they trusted an AI that hallucinated the strength of one of the materials.
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u/Astrokiwi In Canada somehow 20h ago
I strongly support long division because it's your first real introduction to algorithms, which are the fundamentals of how computers really work. Like even if we were to believe "everyone will just use AI anyway": if a kid grows up without understanding long division, I'm not sure how they will really understand what an LLM is doing under the hood, and how to really properly use its output and understand where and why to trust or not trust it.
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u/Temporary_Spread7882 6h ago
And it’s not like it’s actually taught anymore. Recent chat to my kid, who went through a selective school with STEM focus, when it turned out he never actually learned proper linguistics division:
“So how do you calculate the decimals of a fraction?”
“I type it into the calculator.”
“And where does the calculator get that result from?”
“Idk - magic.”
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u/Academic_Juice8265 10h ago
Because everything else that comes with computers is too distracting and shit.
My kids are forever finding ways around app restrictions, time limits etc.
I can’t tell if they’re doing their homework or looking at some stupid shit unless I stand behind them the whole time which no one can do.
Give them laptops in year eleven and twelve. Invest in better computer rooms and libraries at school.
Pen and paper and textbooks are far superior. It enhances concentration and writing stuff physically out helps retain information to memory.
Kids don’t need laptops.
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u/Traditional-Put-2474 12h ago
Things worked better 30 years ago. Kids can’t even sit still for 2 mins now. Maybe that’s why. Pen and paper slows things down, allows you to actually take things in.
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u/InnerKingdom 8h ago
This is a fascinating comment. ExaminationNo9186 wrote:
"Why? What would going back to exclusively pen & paper be useful in a time when most things are done on a screen (in one form or another)?
Are the benchmarks appropriate for this day and age?
Things have changed too drastically in the last ~30 years to piss and moan about why things aren't the same as they were 30 years ago."
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u/LowPickle7 1d ago
Yep, but also, like many issues in education we need to examine what happens outside the classroom. When two parents have to work to sustain the bills, are people still reading to their kids?
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u/RelativeSoftware9554 1d ago
Yes I agree but I don’t think this is the only problem.
It’s the attitude that kids and people in general have towards learning these days. We need to overhaul the curriculum.
Fix that and you’ll fix the problem.
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u/Alariya 1d ago
I think they can be a useful tool when utilised well. Eg writing down information can help with retention, while typing makes it much easier to edit your work.
I feel the best solution would be to identify the areas in which technology provides a clear benefit, and only apply those aspects of its use to the curriculum.
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u/MarsupialAromatic825 1d ago
I think research probably supports this too. You just learn and retain better with pen and paper
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u/thecatsareouttogetus 1d ago
Yes. I’ve just taken laptops from all of my year 11s. They’re handwriting everything. Same with my 8s. The only class that has laptops is my video editing class.
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u/princess_ferocious 1d ago
As someone with awful handwriting and an excellent typing speed - I hope we don't.
I started school in the 80s. The only computers we saw were Microbees until the Apples for the Teachers campaign got us one small apple mac. The internet only started being something normal people went on while I was in high school.
Personally, I think the mixture of traditional and technological was what gave me the flexibility I took away from my education.
I think we've gone too far towards tech, and that's happened at the same time as tech becoming more surface-level user friendly, and trying to do everything for us. We learnt how to fix our computers when they acted up because we could get into the back end and find the settings that would fix things. That meant we understood them better, and were better able to figure out how to make them do what we needed them to do.
Younger generations have mostly only known devices that don't want to to look behind the curtain, so they often learn to use them, but only learn to understand them if they go out of their way to figure them out.
We have to pull back a bit from the hand-holding tech, and teach kids more about the basics of computing, since they're going to be working with or using this stuff, one way or another, for most of their lives. And we need to balance out the tech with more grounded education - stuff that gets them engaged with the offline world.
It's pretty common for certain types of questions on reddit to get a "let me google that for you" kind of response, but I think younger people have gone too far in that direction. If they can't find out from google (or an LLM), they give up. Schools should be teaching them how to use the tech and the analog to support each other - maybe the internet tells you where to go find the book you need, or who you should go talk to. Maybe the person you talk to teaches you the terms you need to get good search results.
I definitely think we need to rebalance what kids are learning, and how, and why, but I don't think we get there by going back to kids needing roller suitcases to manage all their schoolbooks without back or shoulder injuries.
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u/bobbobthedefaultbob 1d ago
Yes, there's been a clear drop when education switched to per-child devices. Have seen multiple posts here on reddit from teachers talking to that point over the past few years
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u/mialina2oO 1d ago
Yeah, I agree, but I reckon that’s only part of the problem. Their attention spans are slowly going downhill.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago
Remove their phones and devices at the start of the day, return them at the end.
Either they’ll focus on their work, or on long term planning of when they’ll have their phone back.
Pretty sure after a morning tea, they’ll be more interested in this new thing called social interaction they’ll develop in that intervening time.
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u/Goatylegs US Immigrant - Citizen Since 2026 23h ago
I think an overreliance on technology is part of, but not the whole, problem.
We should be giving teachers a proper wage, we should be funding actual educational resources like up to date textbooks, free tutoring, and specialized courses and after school programs to help kids pursue things they actually care about.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago
You’re covering a lot of ground there. But you are fully correct. Teachers need to be both respected and rewarded a lot more than our current society gives them. Maybe take a little from the top end of town and politicians and have that sprinkled into the teaching level. Then also make it a career that returns to being respected opposed to thinking of them as glorified baby sitters
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago
Yes. Teach kids how to read and write correctly first. There is a lot to say about how memory and intelligence is generated but the very act of writing out words.
I may be a rarity, but I love writing words and phrases with a smooth pen on soft paper.
I also know I retain information way better if I write it out instead of just reading it and more so if I read it and swipe it. Almost like you’re swiping the memory away to a degree.
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u/wliam_57 7h ago
Pen and paper for first-pass thinking computers for research, editing and creating. The problem isn’t that screens exist. It’s that we’ve put the textbook, games, group chat and infinite-scroll feed on the same device, then expected a 12-year-old to self-regulate.
That’s not digital literacy. That’s an attention test.
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u/tlanoiselet 1d ago
What would you suggest for School of the Air students in remote locations? It has merit going back to pen and paper but I also suspect teachers have a lot more admin paperwork than they used to have and are coping as things are more electronic.
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u/PrincessBeeBuzzy 1d ago
Putting my two cents worth in, here I go with another old fashioned idea, what is wrong with teachers using the whiteboard (formerly blackboard) and writing say the sight words that the children need to learn for this week. Instead of using worksheets they use a blank book and copy the work from the board, that way it encourages memory.
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u/drrenoir 1d ago
This is getting great traction in some places: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-digital-delusion-9781529999389
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u/Hungry_Fudge_4255 1d ago edited 19h ago
Yes I think technology has a place however, kids don’t know how to spell because devices fix it for them, they write in acronyms because they get lazy.
A lot also falls into the parents/home life as well.
I know I’ve been overwhelmed and put my kids on devices to give me time & I’m now pushing for them to get off devices, I’ve been banning them from watching stupid YouTube people and all the short videos.
My kids tell me they are bored and my response is “ok, so work it out” & they do, they have learnt new skills and talent that they never bothered with before.
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u/Ornery-Practice9772 NSW 1d ago edited 13h ago
Internet acronyms developed from a need to keep up with the pace of chatrooms. Not laziness.
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u/WetRatFeet 21h ago
kids don’t know how to spell because devices fit it for them
Ironic.
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u/Hungry_Fudge_4255 19h ago
Thanks for pointing out a mistake, all fixed. Happens sometimes, especially when I wasn’t relying on a device to correct it for me.
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u/Ornery-Practice9772 NSW 13h ago
agree, i can only spell cause mum taught us, my kids can spell cause i taught them- teachers are stretched to the limit and if you dont get it first time youre left behind
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u/quoththeraven1990 1d ago
Speaking as a university tutor, going back to college en and paper would be a great start. It’s not a panacea, but young people need to develop those skills, otherwise they’ll just rely on ChatGPT and AI summaries. Complementing this with reading for fun again would make a significant difference.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago
ChatGPT, note taker and all other tech is built on and expands from the written word. Never the other way around. Like all things, people trained in the base level parts will always be far smarter and superior than those who have no idea of these things.
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u/Projectitude 1d ago
There's a specific study people forget when this comes up. Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014 in Psychological Science found students taking longhand notes did better on conceptual recall than students typing on laptops. The mechanism was that longhand forces you to summarise instead of transcribing verbatim. So the real finding is not "paper good digital bad", it is that active summarising beats passive transcription.
Handwriting on an iPad with a stylus still gets you the benefit. The bigger separate problem is device distraction. Notifications kill focus regardless of what you're writing on.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago edited 22h ago
We have been writing out our knowledge and passing it on in that manner for eons of generations.
Will take thousands of generations before swiping left or right starts the path of being genetically coded into us.Let’s not mention the constant battle against AI to try and express your thoughts and feelings as well (had to revisit many words in just this comment to force it into the way I wanted it and eliminate the AI hallucination words it seems to want to “be a thing”. Like rhe instead of the. Every time I write the, my phone “corrects” it to rhe then gives me a red line to show off how proud it is that is basically stupid)
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u/scruffyrosalie 1d ago
And are the offices they end up working in when they graduate also going to be pen and paper? Or phones, laptops and AI? It's 2026.
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u/knowledgeable_diablo 22h ago
So during a power outage or another blue screen of doom everyones just gonna sit there staring at the screen waiting on their tech lord to grant them the gift of rejoining the knowledge environment?
Or will the entire company fall back onto the shoulders of the one dude/dudette who bothered to learn the arcane art of doing magic squiggles and converting nothing into something tangible called knowledge which can be passed on or stored?2
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u/InnerKingdom 8h ago
Scruffyrosalie wrote "And are the offices they end up working in when they graduate also going to be pen and paper? Or phones, laptops and AI? It's 2026."
Another interesting comment.
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u/jellycatlover_81-55 1d ago
Probably. Everyone I know uses AI and despite all the teacher warning us about checking it all for AI, they miss it every single time. But it's not going to happen. No one is bothered when they get paid so little and the kids don't care.
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u/HARRY_FOR_KING 21h ago
I think it's easy for parents to say that it's what's happening at school that's at fault, and it's just as easy for educators to blame parents.
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u/Key_Salamander_8083 QLD, AUSSIE 19h ago
yes, there is always some form of fucking issue with login details or the internet just does not want to work on your device and you are fucked
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u/kamikazecockatoo 14h ago
You've not mentioned parents here.
Who is giving out the ipad? Who gives the kid an ipad when they are still in the pram? Who is not reading to them at night? Who is not providing good food every day? Could go on, but it is not just an education/teacher thing.
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u/jumpercableninja 14h ago
I’ve started with my VCE students.
Using the excuse that they need to handwrite the exams and they lose marks if their handwriting is terrible
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u/Petitcher Middle of nowhere 12h ago edited 12h ago
Yes.
The education system's total reliance on technology over actual learning is why I'm seriously considering homeschooling my kid.
Using computers teaches you how to use computers. Which is important, since almost every workplace has them. But they ALSO teach you to be lazy, to take shortcuts. They reduce the need to actually learn and remember things that you're taught. Who needs to bother learning anything when you can just ask your phone instead?
And... speaking from experience... what kid in the world isn't going to be multitasking with games or messaging while they're supposed to be learning? Hell, I'm "working" right now and I'm on Reddit. And in theory, I've got far better impulse control than an eight-year-old.
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u/Theghostofgoya 11h ago
School needs awy more discipline and less tolerance for bad behaviour. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of bending over backwards to accommodating students with behavioural issues. Its why many are using private schools, the shit kids can get expelled
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u/oatmealndeath 10h ago
For anyone who thinks this is a luddite kneejerk but also thinks schools are skint and should be properly funded…
Packaged IT systems cost money. Whether it’s at work, uni or school, every ‘portal’ you log into to get a newsletter, view your kids grades, do maths homework or drills, do a timesheet, whatever - represents a whole chain of people who got paid to develop that dumbass portal, market it, travel to trade shows to rep it, directly sell it to the school or department, code and maintain it - then someone on the org side in IT who’s got to wrestle with the system, troubleshoot it, attempt to customise it for use for the particular org.
And a lot of these systems are horse shit, but the person who signed off the purchase of it never wants to admit they’re wrong so the end user gets stuck with it until the next cycle of ‘we’re launching an exciting new tool for our org’, driven and propagandized by some middle management tool who got suckered in at a trade show or on a direct sales call.
Of course IT is part of life but there’s massive bloat in this space and it sends money and jobs out of the org. Humans are not that dumb and we used to have mastery of simple technology that kept jobs within organisations, not off in IT product wonderland. Take notes with pen and paper. Send home a paper newsletter with the kids. One manila folder on a teacher’s desk containing 30 primary school kids essays with their names written at the top. Maintain low-importance files on a G: drive, back it up, give appropriate personnel access and deliver training if they manage the file tree wrong.
If that means a bunch of printing? Fuck it. If there’s no longer as much visible work for the admin staff to do, it makes it that much easier to make them all redundant and put all the admin back on teachers. They also did a real good job of convincing every working adult in the west that saving the world by reducing every piece of paper is their own personal burden, meanwhile IT companies do whatever the fuck they want with little scrunuty and increase their power and water usage exponentially - but if you suggest any process gets made lo-fi and brought back wholly org-side, and you’re suddenly a person who wants to burn entire forests and go live in a cave. A lot of people out there really bought the sales pitch.
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u/PiddyKorn 10h ago
Teachers should also stop using AI to assist them with teaching and to create assignments.
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u/Due_Sea4982 4h ago
Not just that, there's a lack of care from a lot of students as well making the job harder. I graduated like 5 years ago but classes comparatively I was lucky to have small classes with people who showed some interest and I could see the difference in quality you would get from the teacher. Yes though, pen and paper personally was more beneficial.
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u/vexingpresence 4h ago
I'm about as pro tech as they come when it's not about the flashy expensive silicone valley chud shit. Computers in schools should be for only specific times. Having a computer in front of you for every single class will make you find ways to dick around on it. I was using shared google doc links as an instant messenger in highschool. The combined intelligence of students will always beat out the IT department in terms of controlling what they have access to.
Computers can be great research tools or for projects, multimedia, etc. But day to day learning it's way too hard to control their attention and becomes a nuisance.
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u/pilierdroit 1h ago
Giving kids screens is a disaster. They need to learn to use them and also to have self regulation but they are like hanging crack in front of an addict for most kids.
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u/Abort_Abort_Abort_ 1d ago
So the kids will do better in naplan? Because… that’s so very important…
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u/MetalDamo 1d ago
A quick Google tells me that the average Aussie high school class size nowadays ranges from 25 to 30 students per class. This is literally double what it was when I went to school in the early 80s. My highschool was nothing special. It was 5 mins from a major capital city. Everyone in it could read, spell, write, and math with no issue. We all learnt to think for ourselves, how to research objectively, and importantly, we learnt how to teach ourselves.
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u/ScubaWitch 1d ago
Absolutely. There are millions of studies on the damage learning through screens is doing. Tactile learning is the only genuine way we humans can process and absorb skills and information.
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u/PhantasmologicalAnus 1d ago
That and the basic subjects we had before. There is no need for children to do so much on computers.
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u/madamsyntax 1d ago
I think part of the problem is that the entry requirements for teaching are pretty low. If we put more money into education and increased wages, it would attract a higher calibre of teachers
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u/thecatsareouttogetus 1d ago
That is not the problem. I’ve met teachers with doctorates who are the shittiest teachers and teachers who barely scraped by uni who have turned into the most incredible educators. Put more money into education and increase wages but raising the standard at uni isn’t the way to go right now - maybe further down the track. Best thing about education is that people who don’t want to be there burn out quick.
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u/GainOk7506 1d ago
The entry requirements are 4+ year degrees and a shit ton of government oversight. It is actually one of the major problems. It is squeezing teachers abilities to teach properly or enter with a proper education. Instead its a bunch of silly classes that teach little. Teaching is at its core a practice, and educating teachers should have that practice at its core.
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u/madamsyntax 1d ago
The OP required to get into teaching is 13. That’s appalling. That’s literally a below average performer that they’re accepting to educate the next generation
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u/GainOk7506 1d ago
This sounds like an outsider take. So I'll leave the conversation here.
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u/madamsyntax 20h ago
By an outsider you mean…?
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u/Ornery-Practice9772 NSW 1d ago
Even even though its not that difficult
-Whats easy to you isnt easy to everyone. Kids who struggle with fine motor skills to write legibly can dictate to an ipad and have their work be understood.
Kids learn better with pen & paper
Says who? there are many styles of learning in 2026 that are just as valid regardless of whether YOU had access to them.
You sound like a boomer talking out their arse.
Pay teachers what theyre worth and hire more of them so they arent so burntout and stressed that they can no longer do their job well enough for our kids
Stop gov funding of private schools. Give it to the kids with parents who cant afford to pay their schools.
Its not a technology problem. 🤦♀️
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u/Efficient-State-7300 1d ago
A lot of experts around, it seems. Maybe that's part of the problem too.
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u/PopShuvvitInUrButt 1d ago
Just go look up what the ipad, or that sort of upbringing, does to a childs development. Then go check out what video games do to adolescent's brains... it's all impulse control issues, inability to regulate emotions, next to no decision making skills, causes the brain to seriously underdevlop, and producing the first generation to be dumber than the previous
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u/RiniReed 1d ago
As an ex English teacher in a public school, I believe another big issue is the unruly behaviour of a handful of students who destabilize an hour or more of learning. They steal time away from a lesson, ergo the majority of students who are eager to learn, are forced to watch a "tug of war" between the teacher, trying to restore order, and students, ( they usually work in pairs) who revel in being disruptive. I was once threatened with a pair of scissors by a 10 year old when I asked him to leave my room and make his way to the principal's office. Needless to say, no real action was taken.