Very soon, unless the EU parliament can be persuaded otherwise, our ability to share on-line will be severely limited: Four million Europeans' signatures opposing Article 13 have been delivered to the European Parliament
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It’s not often we are able to celebrate what’s right in Australia’s education system. But yesterday’s student presence at Parliament house and Friday’s protests where more than 15,OOO Australian students skipped class to demand greater action on climate change should be cause for celebration.
Far from being concerned about an afternoon off school, parents should feel satisfied schools and teachers are doing their job. Participation in these protests meets many of the key goals of our current education system, including students’ capacity to engage in, and strengthen, democracy. Rather than proof of a flawed education system, politically active and engaged students are evidence many aspects of our education system are working well.
Students want action on climate change
Protests called out the federal government’s lack of action on climate change during the protests. Wednesday’s parliament house rally specifically targeted the Adani coal mine project. Students were also seeking an audience with the prime minister to have their concerns heard.
The government’s response to these protests has been, at best, dismissive. Students’ actions have not been recognised as a genuine attempt to engage in robust democratic debate about climate change. Before Friday’s walk-out, Scott Morrison relegated students to the confines of their classrooms, “what we want”, he argued, “is more learning in schools and less activism”.
The students are right: activism is learning.Lukas Coch/AAP
Other members of government have been equally off-hand. Senator James McGrath was more concerned with a spelling error on a single student’s placard than the basis of their grievance. Resources minister Matt Canavan deemed protests as nothing more than a quick ticket “to the dole queue”.
The government’s response is both misinformed and misdirected. Beyond the obvious lack of recognition of political protest as a fundamental pillar of democracy, and means to political change, it also demonstrates a lack of recognition of the goals of Australian schooling, as outlined in our Melbourne Declaration.
The Melbourne Declaration and the role of education
The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australiansis a document signed by all Australian education ministers which outlines the mandated knowledge, skills and values of schooling for the period 2009-2018. The declaration is a national road map for education and a statement of intent by both federal and state governments, across partisan lines.
The declaration outlines two key goals:
Australian schooling promotes both equity and excellence
all young Australians become: successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens
It’s the first goal that gathers public attention as excellence and equity, in the form of measurable academic outcomes, dominates public discussion (think NAPLAN, My School, and PISA). More often than not, we’re told it’s here we’re getting things wrong.
In the second goal, the declaration attends to the broad purpose and significance of education. That is, the democratic purpose of education, as an avenue for students’ successful participation in civil society. If events of the last week are anything to go by, our students are all over goal two.
Students at a rally demanding action on climate change in Sydney, Friday, November 30, 2018.Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Sustainability is a stated priority in the Australian curriculum. Beyond understanding sustainable patterns of living and impacts of climate change, students are expected to develop skills to inform and persuade others to take action. Through these protests, relevant sections of the Melbourne Declaration read like a tick-list of student achievement. Students have demonstrated:
the ability to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence
creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness
the ability to to plan activities independently, collaborate, work in teams and communicate ideas
enterprise and initiative to use their creative abilities
preparation for their roles as community members
the ability to embrace opportunities and make rational and informed decisions about their own lives
a commitment to participate in Australia’s civic life
ability to work for the common good, to sustain and improve natural and social environments
their place as responsible global and local citizens.
The Melbourne Declaration is a recognition that education is more than a classroom test and more than measurable results. This is not to suggest the much lauded 3R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) are not important in education - they are. Rather, it’s an understanding that education and learning is also, and importantly, social, and sometimes immeasurable in nature and practice.
Australian students’ activities over the past week evidence their knowledge and capabilities in an education system valuing both economic and democratic functions of education.
Rather than dismiss students’ actions as ill-informed or misdirected, or deny their capacity to effectively participate in democratic processes, we should recognise their learning and achievements. Let’s celebrate this achievement in Australian education, and encourage their capacity as active and informed citizens within our democracy.
Australian students understand progress happens when individuals join together to demand change. Politicians, take heed.
Bring home the bacon or the bagels? Meat-based idioms could be replaced by animal friendly versions ( Shutterstock / DronG )
Phrases such as "bringing home the bacon" and "flogging a dead horse" will be phased out as awareness of veganism grows, an academic has claimed.
An academic claims the the rise in veganism could cause idioms involving meat and dairy products or animal cruelty to be replaced by more "animal friendly" versions.
Common phrases such as "flogging a dead horse" or "more than one way to skin a cat" have been used in English speech and literature for centuries.
But, Shareena Hamzah, a researcher at Swansea University, predicts this will change as conversation grows around veganissues, animal cruelty, and the impact of a high demand for meat on the environment.
Animal rights charity Peta already advocates cruelty-free verbal swaps for use in schools.
For instance, they recommend “bring home the bacon” be swapped with “bring home the bagels” or “put all your eggs in one basket” be swapped with “put all your berries in one bowl.”
In an article published on The Conversation, Dr Hazmah wrote it was unlikely meat-based phrases would be cut from language altogether and using meat-based phrases more sparingly could have the effect of heightening their impact.
"Metaphors involving meat could gain an increased intensity if the killing of animals for food becomes less socially acceptable," she said.
“The image of “killing two birds with one stone” is, if anything, made more powerful by the animal friendly alternative of "feeding two birds with one scone".
She wrote language takes a long time to change so common use of vegan-friendly phrases could be a while away.
“Who is to say that even those who choose a vegan or vegetarian diet even want to do away with the meaty descriptions?” she wrote.
Hannah Jenkins speaks English in the morning and German in the afternoon. It's not a routine she chose to adopt - but something her brain requires her to do. It all started with a cycling accident.
Her partner Andrew Wilde was halfway up a mountain in the US state of Montana when he received a baffling text from Hannah.
He understood only two words - "dog" and "hospital" - but knew instinctively something was wrong.
The text was in German, a language Hannah had grown up with, but Andrew didn't really understand. They only ever communicated in English.
Hannah had stayed at home in the UK, running the dog-training business she'd set up in Wokingham, Berkshire, while Andrew had gone to the US to train for an international shooting competition.
He called Hannah's mobile number, but got no response. With growing unease, he started to phone hospitals around Berkshire but couldn't get any information. He knew he needed to get home.
He made his way to the airport, unsure of what would be waiting for him when he returned.
What he didn't expect to find, was a different Hannah to the one he'd kissed goodbye days earlier.
Hannah had been cycling through a park near their home the day before she sent the text to Andrew.
She'd rounded a familiar corner and collided with another cyclist.
She remembers little, but paramedics have since filled her in - the other cyclist saw her lying motionless and bleeding on the ground and called emergency services.
He waited for help to arrive, told them he'd been cycling no faster than 32km/h (20mph), then left, without giving any more information.
An air ambulance was called for Hannah, who had been identified from items in her wallet.
Hannah eventually came to on a busy ward in the Royal Berkshire Hospital with no idea where she was, what had happened or why, in her mind, no-one spoke English.
"I couldn't understand anything," she says. "I felt as though I'd woken up in a foreign country and I couldn't understand why people weren't speaking to me in a way that I could understand."
Doctors tended to her in this unfamiliar language. Finally she recognised what she thought was "name" and "date of birth" - and recited that to anyone who approached. It seemed like the right thing to do.
The doctors were puzzled as Hannah's documents all pointed to the fact she lived and worked in the UK. They knew she was called Hannah Jenkins, and yet she didn't understand or respond to English.
They contacted her next of kin, her sister Margaret, who asked to speak to Hannah.
As Hannah sat in her hospital bed she chatted away on the phone, relieved that she was finally able to communicate with someone.
This bemused doctors, because previously she had only uttered the odd, indecipherable word.
Hannah had so many questions for Margaret, one of them being why the doctors weren't speaking to her in English.
"They are, Hannah," her sister replied.
The crash, it seemed, had knocked Hannah's knowledge of English clear out of her mind.
But she was left with the German that she had learnt as a child - the language that she defaulted to when speaking to her sister.
"The doctors didn't know I could speak German," Hannah explains. "It wasn't until they spoke to my sister that they realised."
The sisters were brought up in the UK speaking German and English, by polyglot parents. Their Austrian mother spoke four languages and their father, a language teacher from Wales, spoke seven.
"German was my first oral language," says Hannah. "It was a rule we had in my house - that when we speak to my family it's always in German, just to keep the language fresh in our heads.
"I couldn't get my head around the fact that in the hospital they were speaking English. My brain had lost my ability to understand that."
Hannah was experiencing something called secondary language loss, according to consultant neurosurgeon Colin Shieff, who is also trustee of brain injury charity Headway.
"Our brains are very sensitive and anything that has the ability to disturb the computer in any way can potentially impact upon the words coming out," he says.
"There is no algorithm that would follow that a specific injury will invariably result in the loss of German nouns or English grammar, but we do lose those bits."
He says the skills learned in childhood are those most likely to be retained - the ability to say "yes" or "no" or even to repeat a nursery rhyme. He says "something that's been ingrained for ever" - is more likely to remain intact and those skills learned later, are the first to go.
Why did Hannah lose her speech?
Image copyrightSPL
Many parts of the brain are involved in speech and language, in particular the frontal and temporal lobes
An injury in these areas will affect speech in some way - from remembering vocabulary, to the construction of fluent speech, and for some people, communication will be permanently affected
Occasionally, someone who was fluent in two languages before an injury may lose one language entirely, but retain the other
Information from the brain injury charity, Headway
The physical impact of the crash was minimal - a bruised leg and a sore shoulder - so Hannah was discharged within days.
But via her sister, who acted as her translator, she learnt that her brain injury was significant and would take years, rather than months, to improve.
She went home and waited for Andrew.
"I was listening to the radio a lot," she says. "I don't know how much I understood, but when my partner came that's when I learned how badly the language was affected."
The couple had been together for eight years, but now Hannah couldn't understand Andrew - and his school German only got him so far.
They devised hand signals and their own version of sign language. As time went on, Hannah's written English improved quicker than the speaking.
"When the communication really broke, we did resort to writing stuff down and texting or emailing each other, even though we were in the same room," she says.
"My relationship with Andrew has been affected because you can't not talk to each other just because you're tired or under pressure.
"Having that patience for the situation is always a little bit of a struggle. But I certainly couldn't have done it without him."
Andrew took an 18-month sabbatical from his job to support Hannah. Slowly she regained much of her English language, but it's something that even now, three years on, has not returned completely.
It has now become her second language.
"I'm fine in the mornings, but by the afternoon the fatigue really kicks in and I switch in my mind to thinking in German.
"I'll write little notes to myself in German, and I just sort of almost power down that part of my brain that deals with communication, so that in the evening when my partner's back I can communicate again."
The couple also had to come to terms with the fact that Hannah's personality would be likely to change as a result of the crash. She was told she "might not be the same person post-accident".
"I think that's the hardest part to get your head around," she says. "It's almost like you have to go through a bereavement process to say goodbye to the old you, before you can get to know the new you.
"But there is that level of resentment there to start with. I was fighting that quite a lot and saying, 'No, I'm still me, don't be silly, this is who I always am'."
Hannah has recognised a few "subtle changes" in her personality - she's not as patient as she once was - something that led her to close her business.
"I forgot so much of the theory behind it, my reactions are a lot slower and I don't have the subtlety of language that you need when you have to tell people that this isn't the right dog for them."
She has taken up photography and art, something she studied at university, and has thrown herself into a new sport to improve her focus - shooting.
"Shooting has been described as skilled meditation, and I think that is very true because you have to focus completely on what you're doing. If your brain goes off and ruminates or meanders then your shots do the same.
"To start with I could only do it for about 20 minutes, and now I'm up to about an hour-and-a-half."
The crash on an October afternoon in 2015 altered Hannah's life, language and personality, but it is something to which she has learned to adapt.
"Mentally I have to see that this is me now," she says. "I'm happy in my own skin again. So there's no reason why I can't just run with life as I am now."
