An opinion article appeared in The Sydney
Morning Herald a couple of days ago asking the question, ‘Do we put too much
pressure on Students?’. The article continues with various people in different
stages of the educational journey commenting on their perspective of the
pressure placed on students doing the HSC. Before critically thinking about
this issue I find it important to define the perceived “we” in the question.
Does Society put too much pressure on Students to do well in the HSC and
what is the cause of this.
Society is shaped through growing modern therapeutic
culture (Neitz & Battani, 2003), where the individual is focused in
self-awareness and self-reliance. The discourse of Individual fulfillment is
important to the therapeutic culture and
“Individual fulfillment is increasingly integrated through economic
independencies rather than social ones.” (p.25) It is the marketization of the
education system, which has created this image of stable economic gain. As a
modern society our identity is shaped by our need of consumption, and our
culture is cultivated through material possessions. The privatization of the
schooling system and the monetary value placed on education, enters education
into the market place and makes it a possession to be controlled by the
culturally elite, through Bordieu’s belief that “culture is power (2007 p.22).
And in the words of Neitz et all, our “therapeutic culture…has been carried by
the cultural elite”. The cultural elite, the community that consumes the
expensive education becomes the cultural capitalists, due also to their
economic power. It seems that the quality of education is based upon the
economic value it can produce for the individual.
This
helps to answer the question of the Why Society places so much pressure on
Students for the HSC. Through the marketization of education, the quality of
education is measured by its economic gain for the individual through
employment. Kip McGrath disagrees with the HSC being an indicator of an
individual’s sense of fulfillment, “Unfortunately, society
uses HSC results to decide students' futures, and continues to argue, “It cannot measure how
successfully a student has been prepared for higher education or adulthood”
(2012). The commodification of education detracts from social objective of
education as a tool for cultural and moral development but focuses on the
outcome of education as economic gain. I believe that the signifier of the HSC
as the gateway to economic gain is out-dated and the value of education should
be seen more in terms of personal growth, which would take the onus of the
quality of one’s HSC.
Resources:
Sandstrum, S et al.
(2012) Do we put too much pressure on
Students, The Canberra Time.
Wadham B, Pudsey J, Boyd R (2007), Culture and Education, Pearson Education
Australia, pp. 1-33
Hall, R Neitz M, Battani M. (2003) Sociology on Culture, New York,
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 20-30
Hall, R Neitz M, Battani M. (2003) Sociology on Culture, New York,
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, pp. 20-30
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