During the early years of the Early Education Reform Group, the local ABC contacted the group and asked them to provide a speaker to talk about child development and school readiness. Lil Gwyther as the Publicity Officer for EERG took on this task, and the first interview was conducted by 612 ABC in January 1983, to coincide with the start of the school year. The interview had so much feedback from listeners that a regular weekly slot was arranged for Lil to speak on various topics about early childhood. Most of the sessions were taped on cassette, so the quality of the digitised versions presented here varies somewhat - but is quite adequate to listen to. ABC radio presenters Janine Walker and Blair Edmunds conducted most of the interviews.
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
When the Australian education system was hoodwinked into copying the New York testing-based system in 2008, it did not know what it was letting itself in for...
Put simply, this scheme was based on tests of those parts of the school curriculum that are easy to test. It had no legitimate educational, learning nor teaching basis beyond the ancient British Grammar School cum Gradgrind bang-crash-wallop gathering of data in a way that is sometimes described as 'instruction'...
There was no protection for the full holistic curriculum, the life-sustaining, aesthetic, creative, mental and physical-based subjects...
This video demonstrates the importance of entering into children's play and extending their learning through thoughtful, open ended questioning.