Brenton says

The Rowe Report on the teaching of reading diminishes the significance of the cultures and communities of young people by treating these dimensions as ‘background’ which they can surmount through schooling. It expects teachers to view their students as an undifferentiated mass, except with regard to the scores they achieve on standardised tests. Teachers’ relationships with students (surely a vital ingredient in any learning) will be compromised by drilling and skilling and testing that will make it difficult – if not impossible – for them to respond to the needs of the young people in their care.

Young people only figure in the report as a ‘resource’ for Australia’s ‘social and economic prosperity’. The panacea for the social and economic challenges that Australia currently faces is phonics instruction. The absurdity of this proposition exposes the kind of ideological work which this report is doing.

So my response to recent media coverage by Caroline Milburn (/Age/, 15 May) and Justine Ferrari (/Australian/, 10 May) about the Federal Government’s decision to introduce a reading voucher program as an interim response to Rowe’s ‘inquiry’, and the concerns which have been voiced with respect to how the system should be administered, is to wonder: Why is this scheme being implemented at all? The report out of which this recommendation arises is a caricature of any kind of inquiry, and it would be better if this initiative, along with the rest of the report, were scrapped.

Associate Professor Brenton Doecke
Faculty of Education
Monash University, Vic.