I came across a news article about a state initiative in
South Australia to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to be
entrepreneurial-oriented which is about being able to plan, establish and grow
one’s own business. It is said that the policy, which comes ahead of the state
election due
in March next year, aims to create an entrepreneurial curriculum that’ll be
offered through three existing high schools. According to the policy
document, the three special entry entrepreneur high schools will be supported
by entrepreneurs, business leaders, mentors and organisations that’ll
contribute to programs. Looking at the aim of this initiative in a rough
sense, it leaves me the impression that it tries to overcome the unemployment
rate and other economic constraints by emphasizing that students should be more
focused on being business-oriented like it is depicted in opposition education
spokesman David Pisoni’s statement, “The state Liberals are committed to
nurturing our next generation of job creators and business and community
leaders by fostering young entrepreneurial minds to drive wealth creation and
innovation in South Australia into the future,” .
In my view, this particular piece of state-driven initiative
comes in two different colours just as much as every coin has its flip side.
Apparently it looks appropriate in a way that the education policy is trying to
keep up with the reality-reality full of ambiguity of this ever-changing and
complex globalised market-oriented world-by directing students to be ‘armed up’
with equipments to survive through this era of globalisation but meanwhile, it
makes me think of, again, what the true meaning of education is, especially
when students are in a transition period from childhood to adulthood.
Learning how to cope with the world is one thing, and at the
same time it is arguably just as important to be given the opportunity to
nurture their individual uniqueness, their personality which will form the
foundation of whatever they will achieve when they grow up. During this set of
processes, students get to learn to recognise that everyone’s different ability
excels in different circumstances and this is where the concept of equity gets
taught. It is about appreciating everyone’s different attributes and different
abilities therefore cooperate one another by working in harmony to create a
synergy effect to make the society a better place to leave for possible maximum
number of people in our society, as its importance is also pointed out by
Ladson-Billing where she states “Not only must teachers encourage academic
success and cultural competence, they must help students to recognize,
understand, and critique current social inequities(p. 476).
Getting back to the initiative, it appears to be more of a
political propaganda rather than a kind of educational reform in its true
sense, with possibly bearing in mind of next March’s election.
Just like South Australian
Education Minister Jennifer Rankine says in an emailed response to StartupSmart that students can already study
business and enterprise related topics through a range of existing subjects.
“There is a specific subject called Business and
Enterprise in which students learn about the successful management of business
and enterprise on a local, national, and global scale,” she says.
“They gain knowledge and understanding of business
operations, develop financial and technological skills, participate in
planning, developing, and controlling business activities, and evaluate
decisions on business practices.
It looks like there is no need for any separate entrepreneurship
program for schoolies when schools can possibly strengthen the entrepreneurship
sections of even the current business related subjects.
Toward a Theory of
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
DOI: 10.3102/00028312032003465
Am Educ Res J 1995 32: 465
Gloria Ladson-Billings
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