Page 10 - Journal 2018B FINAL

3. Tertiary education has been much discussed of late, and I do not intend to say much about
it here. A growing proportion of the youth of all nations will seek tertiary education in the future. Since all men are not born with equal gifts for scholarship or abstract thought, only a fraction
of these will be able to profit from study at a university. It is most important that the existing snobbery, which makes the university the only respectable avenue of tertiary education, should be broken down. There should be technical colleges of the highest repute, to which those with
‘more practical abilities should go for vocational training as engineer-s and applied scientists computing and data processing experts, factory managers, accountants, and so on. Because their skills are less abstract than those of the more academic students, they are no less real, and they may be more immediately useful, socially.
There will be others who wish for a broader, more general education than is available at a university or technical college. These, who will be school teachers, business men and women, clergymen, or just those who wish to be well fitted for life
in an age of greater leisure, should be able to obtain general degrees from colleges which place greater emphasis upon undergraduate education in the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences, the fine arts, and so on. The value of the graduates of such institutions to any community
is so obvious, (and the universities, obsessed with honours and post-graduate courses fail so dismally to produce them) that they may well become the largest group of graduates from any tertiary institution.
4. Continuing education throughout life has become essential. Specialists in every occupation need continuous refresher courses to keep them abreast of new discoveries, new practices, and new concepts. The enquiring minds of the general population need continual refreshment by contact with those who generate new ideas, they want
to be kept informed of progress of knowledge
in every field, and they wish to heighten their experience of the delights of poetry, literature and music. For these there must be provided classes, lectures, films, libraries, and television programs to satisfy every taste. Entertainment has its place in every life, but too much of such ephemeral titillation of the senses palls. The demand for intellectual substitutes for pure entertainment
is bound to grow rapidly, and some means for satisfying this must be found. Experience suggests that it will never be provided by commercial interests. Possibly the universities and other tertiary institutions which we have discussed, could undertake the task.
A copy of the full speech given by Sir Mark is available for download from the Journal page of the SASTA website.
Science at Tumby Bay Area School
What is going on in some of our regional schools? With this question in mind, we contacted some of the schools located on Eyre Peninsula. Here, Andrew Stanley, a senior science teacher shares some of the happenings at Tumby Bay Area School.
Tumby Bay Area School is an R-12 school with approximately 220 students located on the east coast of Eyre Peninsula.
We have been working hard to promote STEM in our middle school over recent years. This has mainly been a collaboration of the Science and Design and Technology faculties. We have offered specific STEM programs and facilitated STEM learning through Project Based Learning (PBL) in recent years. We have also competed in the University of Newcastle Science and Engineering Challenge in recent years. Our students have reflected positively on this experience and it has allowed some of our less ‘academic’ but more ‘hands-on’ students to enjoy success. In 2017 we also won a Maker Projects grant to purchase a laser cutter to support STEM learning and we are currently looking to introduce a range of resources and equipment (Blue bots, Spheros, Makey Makey, Little bits, robotics) across the entire school to further promote and develop STEM learning.
In the senior school we have focused on offering the ‘traditional’ Science subjects with Stage 1 and 2 Biology, Physics and Chemistry all being offered and classes running regularly. Typically we’ve had over 50% of Stage 1 students doing at least one Science subject and about 25% of Stage 2 students doing a Science subject. To make this possible with small numbers we have also regularly offered these subjects to other schools through the local delivery model. This has led to the development of a lot of Flipped Classroom resources (e.g. http://bit.ly/2yHJ89F) which are valuable for students both here at Tumby and at other sites.
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