From left, Elizabeth Jose from the Monash Faculty of Business and Economics, Beaconhills College headmaster Tony Sheumack, and Monash University community projects officer David Allman.DO playschool and kindergarten children in the Shire of Cardinia and the City of Casey see pictures and draw pictures of their older brothers and sisters going off to university?
This thought crossed my mind at the Berwick campus of Monash University business breakfast meeting on Friday 11 November.
Discussion at one stage involved the comparatively low university acceptance rates of students from the southeast region compared with other areas.
Do our primary school principals steer thinking among their students to seeing beyond secondary college and do secondary college principals promote a culture of aiming for the third level of education?
Then is it important that we develop this culture of high learning and high achievement or should young people in this developing region think as much about a work ethic that involves trades and service industries such as retail as much as a high academic pathway?
Academic brilliance comes mostly from having a good memory and not necessarily from a practical thought process so have we placed academic qualifications on some jobs too high?
The City of Casey has a culture of providing life long learning through its neighbourhood centres so that people who may have missed out during their early schooling can learn skills needed for various occupations.
So all is not lost if your school days weren’t so good. Monash pro vice-chancellor Professor Phillip Steele, during his talk to guests at the breakfast, provided some frank material for thought about the challenges that the Berwick campus of Monash and perhaps other campuses faced.
He said one of the reasons that the Berwick campus had trouble enrolling students from the southeast was that the general academic level of students in the area was too low for the Monash entrance point.
Wow — are we a population of dumbbells or are we following a culture that because our parents were farmers, tradespeople and the like, that is our lot?
Nevertheless, things are changing and that is why we have the university at Berwick.
When we fought so hard to have the campus established at Berwick one of the strongest points in the argument was the low level of secondary college students in the region going on to university.
Prof Steele has put a different slant on the debate by suggesting that they simply couldn’t qualify and that there was no culture of going on to uni.
Despite the hype about the importance of getting to university we are in dire need of more tradespeople and this community suffers immensely from the closure of technical schools several years ago.
Young people need the choice as they begin secondary schooling of taking an academic pathway or technical learning.
The present system puts them in an unenviable situation.
If they fail to make it to university, in many cases after being pushed unwillingly along the academic pathway, it is too late to go back to an apprenticeship.
They perhaps could have chosen a trade where they very likely would have been less stressed and happier with a hands-on life style and less book learning.
