University teaching standards and school curriculum under fire

0:00Students at the University of Melbourne are slamming the institution for still using videos produced during the COVID era instead of prioritising in-person teaching. Jordy's this afternoon, on the debrief, he's been OSHAE from the Nightly In-Purth and Annabelle Brett from Mix FM on the Sunshine Coast. Good afternoon to both of you. Then we hear allegations about these taped videos at University and everything. We know specifically for this degree, it costs the average student around $14,000 for domestic students and $56,000 for international students for this degree. And they're teaching with taped videos that are more than five years old. This is not on. Yeah, look, if you're paying that sort of money, your expectations are that you're not just going to be watching some old vids. The university had left lying around since the COVID era. Like I think the reality is probably a lot of this course material might not have changed much over the past couple of years and universities have for the longest time used, I guess, material

1:05that hasn't been updated. Like I don't think anybody thinks 70-year-old Professor Bloggs is starting his lectures from scratch every year, not just recycling the same one he's been given since 2004. The bigger issue for me is the university pleading poor as the excuse. Like this is the same university that just last year was paying its former vice-chancellor, $1.5 million, twice as much as the PM as an annual salary. So they find money for their top executives, surely they can find some money to update their course material. Great points there Ben. Do you agree, Annabel? Because as Ben just mentioned, it's the inequity, right? We know the university system is broken, but you cannot pay your top execs that type of money and then force students to watch pre-recorded videos. Yeah, it's unforgivable. I mean, I am all for rolling out the VCR in the last couple of weeks a term. Fair game. But this is very different. I mean, it's not exclusive to Melbourne University by any means. It's happening all across the country. I just can't believe that students that are learning things like medicine are getting

2:06six-year-old material. It makes me think that maybe every time I ask chat GPT what this rash is, it's not that irresponsible because they have more up to date information. Such a big issue for so many universities and students paying so much for their degrees at the moment. Moving on this afternoon, a retired teacher is warning a reduction in structured PE classes in schools, is increasing behavioral problems and could cause a fitness crisis with reports some schools only allocate 30 minutes a week. Ben, do you think this is too far? Do you think PE should be compulsory in schools? Yeah, I think so. Like, my mum is a recently retired teacher. So I'm very familiar with this kind of back in my day, complaints from teachers who remember the golden age. Look, my daughter is in year nine. I don't think the PE that she does in her school is that much different to what I did when I was in high school. So I think there's probably some variation from school to school, PE teacher to PE teacher. My bigger concern is what is happening with changes to things like maths and English.

3:07Online modules in place of in-person teaching in front of a classroom. And in the case of English, my daughter got an assignment, it mentioned Citizen Kane. The actual assignment instructions confused Citizen Kane with an episode of The Simpsons that spoofed Citizen Kane. So I think we've got bigger problems than just PE. We have got massive problems. Annabel, great point there by Ben, you know, where the focus right now is on PE. But what about students that actually don't like physical education? You know, it doesn't suit them. Should they be forced into doing PE? I do think there is a little bit of negativity towards PE that always has been. It's about so much more than physical movement and education. It's about teamwork, it's leadership. I think that sort of stuff, those skills that you learn in PE at school are transferrable. Maybe it's not the easiest for everyone or it doesn't suit them on it. They're not naturally brilliant at sport. I don't think that matters. It's about pushing them out of their comfort zone to try something different in order to learn new skills. That being said too, if we could up the PE and make everybody compulsorily a play rugby

4:10union, we might be able to get a little bit more skill in that set across the country wouldn't be against it. Oh, that's a debate for another day, A.B. Finally this morning, this afternoon, rather, there are calls for old dials, beloved children's classic, The Twits. To be removed from primary school classrooms across the country with critics saying it features animal cruelty and also domestic violence and anti-bid bias. Ben, you were just talking earlier about your serious issues with a lot of the curriculums in schools. Does this go too far? Well, look, roll dial was unapologetically anti-semitic. But there's probably a limit to how far I'm willing to go to defend the bloke. He was a bit problematic, but his books are obviously classics, but we live in a world where the Michael Jackson movie just broke the record from highest-grossing musical biopic of all time, and that reshot the ending to remove any trace of abuse allegations. So look, roll dial, having a crack at people with bids. What is the deal with that anyway? What are those men trying to hide? That's what I'd ask. A.B. Are you outraged by this?

5:13It's like something that someone who can't grow one very well would say, just partly. I get a little bit hurt, Tash, when it's that, oh, we have to cancel this old piece of literature, I think, sometimes they're overreacting. But anti-bid material, I'm not into that, that needs to be cancelled immediately. I will say, though, as someone who read the tweets at a young age, it's a really great piece of literature to promote divorce and red flags. Cool. OK, we all can take something away from that. Ben and Annabelle, we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you.