The changes to classroom practices in the 1960s were quite profound. Primary children were treated more as pupils. Apart from the unscrewing of desks, allowing children to talk to each other, teaching from the pupil’s frame of reference and evaluating only to help a pupil improve performance, structured materials and programmed learning kits became a regular part of the school scene. Based on the belief of doing, experiencing and understanding, the Gattegno approach to the use of Cuisenaire coloured rods in the lower classes and New Maths for all pupils were introduced system wide in the early 1960s. The coloured rods and Multi-based Arithmetic Blocks were supplied; and many schools purchased other kinds of structured material and kits of various kinds. For instance, a Aussie-made kit called Individual Mathematics Program [IMP] was a popular programmed learning device.
Science trolleys and science material were also supplied. Primary pupils, for the first time, actually performed hands-on experiments. Beyond the school, enquiry-based science was becoming universally popular. For instance, Professor Sumner-Miller, a Canada-born professor at the University of Sydney, conducted a popular TV show on ABC TV from 1963 to 1986, that excited the whole family by encouraging people to ask ‘Why is it so ?” more often than they had done in the past. There was more excitement in science projects than there had ever been. In more recent times Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki has re-invigorated interest in science through radio and TV presentations.
The use of the School Reader as a teaching tool diminished in this period and its place was taken by the forms of programmed learning from reading kits. A firm called Science Research Associates [SRA] produced reading kits, suitable for various school levels. The kits judged a pupil’s level of reading and endeavoured to enhance reading ability by offering special challenges. The popularity of reading and spelling kits grew.
The kits were almost teacher-proof; and the role of the teacher became more of a corrector and enhancer of someone else’s ideas. The use of the kits demanded more time than usual; and the every-day curriculum was starting to become very crowded with increasing attention to topics that had never previously occupied much of the school day. The re-sorting of time to cater for the curriculum newcomers to the school day and the expansion of the role of previously-titled “frilly” subjects [Art, Music, Phys.Ed. etc.] threatened the progress envisioned for basic skills through programmed instruction. Kits disappeared.
Skill’s Grim Progress
[Tune: "Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City"]
Everything’s up to date in Queensland schools now -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go.
They’ve got those little coloured rods as playthings for the tots -
It’s Cuisenaire from whom all blessings flow [OH]
Everything’s up to date in mathematics -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go:
The kids do operations far beyond their parents’ ken,
Commuting and distributing the same as grown-up men;
You’ll even get some Grade 2 pupils counting up to ten -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go,
They’ve gone about as far as they can go!
Everything’s up to date in Queensland schools now -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go.
They’ve got these modern Spelling Labs, the very latest thing,
And all the teachers reckon they’re good-oh [OH]
Everything’s up to date in teaching spelling -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go;
This used to be a subject where our kids were no great shakes;
It only goes to show the diff”rence programmed learning makes -
They now can spell four-letter words with only two mistakes -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go,
They’ve gone about as far as they can go!
Everything’s up to date in Queensland schools now -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go.
They’ve got some dandy trolleys for experimental fun,
To stage a Julius Sumner Miller show [OH]
Everything’s up to date in science teaching -
They’ve gone about as far as they can go:
We cannot doubt that Isaac Newton’s spirit still survives;
The bright flame of inquiry has lit up the youngsters’ lives!
And won’t they have a blow-out when the bottled gas arrives -
They’ll go about as far as they can go,
They’ll go about as far as they can go!
