Save Creative Writing in TAFE

 

I'm reluctant to intrude but as the person who wrote the course I am troubled that there seems to be a lot of mistruth being disseminated and alarming some very well-meaning people. I'm also very troubled that nobody seems to have read the course. People seem to be taking the charges at face value without too much enquiry. I can only address a few of the charges in this space but here goes.

Re-accreditation process - it took a year. Not hasty.

Eliminate creative genres. Not true. If you examine the old course ( still posted on the Training Support Network site under Curriculum. Download the Executive Summary and see what you are defending) you will see that it didn't have explicit poetry units either. In TAFE courses teachers are asked to contextualise which means using material and topics suitable for their student's ambitions. We write things very generally to allow teachers free rein. Teachers can focus on whatever they care to nominate - Poetry. Novels, Short Stories whatever - under the general writing units. I just had another look at what we said could be covered under one unit - 120 hours of Refine Writing Skills. We said that writing could include but wasn't limited to (in alpahebetical order) :

Adaptations

Comedy writing

Commissioned pieces

Corporate writing

Education texts

Freelance work

Histories

Journalism

Non- fiction

Novels

Playwriting

Poetry

Press releases

Public relation pieces

Scientific/technical writing

Screenwriting

Short stories

Writing for digital media

Writing for the web

We also said that techniques might include but not be limited to :

First person narration, third person naration, historic, academic, stream of consiousness, post-modern , creative, poetic, descriptive, pastoral, heroic, rhetorical, declamaotory and so on.

A quick addition of hours gives me at least 210 hours of teacher time using general writing units which can be dedicated to novel writing without even using my creative skills to apply other units to the problem. That's teacher time by the way - not the amount of time you would spend writing your novel . That's 210 hours at a minimum in which you could talk about your novel with your teacher. At 5 hours a week of feedback you could do this for 42 weeks which should be enough to complete A Suitable Boy.  Of course, it's not that simple but let's get it firmly locked in that hours are about teachers in the classroom time not student writing time.

In the rest of the course you could  be learning about working as  a freelance writer. or desktop publishing or writing for the web which we put in to help broaden your skills. What about learning how to access funding for your project or how to edit so you can work at a publisher's ? All part of the new course.

Go through the new course document which doesn't seem to have been made available by our petitioners. It is around and it can be compared to the old course which might calm things a bit. Always handy to know what you are attacking rather than go on somebody's word for it.  I'll talk to people and see about getting the two courses posted side by side in an easily accessible place.

Moreover, teachers can add new units as electives whenever they like providing they have support from the writing, publishing and editing industry. The Steering Committee was fully informed about this and the teacher network has been shown how to do it. Very easy to write. We publish guides on how to do it.

Limited course duration. The new Diploma is 100 hours longer than the old Diploma.

The Certificate IV is no longer a pre-requisite. Quite true. It never really was.  Making things a pre-requisite locks people into enrolments and forces able people to do a year of unnnecessary study. There is still nothing to stop somebody doing both the Certificate IV and the Diploma if they want. Absolutely nothing. By the way not everybody who did the old Diploma did the Certificate IV. Many came in at Diploma level. We made the entry criteria much broader  to assist access and equity so people weren't forced to do two years where they only wanted one.

Electives are exactly what is said - you choose to do them. We expanded the range to include such things as writing song lyrics, writing for electronic media, writing scripts, writing persuasive copy, writing for children. There's a lot more. We added an editing unit where previously none had existed giving us some pause for thought when we wondered what had happened before in a course called writing and editing. What we did do was open the course up to people who didn't necessarily want to write a novel without taking away from the people who did. Basically we wanted to help people try to make a living at writing.

There are problems for the course teachers but they are outside the curriculum. They have problems with the government's new funding scheme which will force people who have higher qualifications pay for doing lower qualifications. Lots of people who come into professional writing come in after a degree. Now it may wind up costing them quite a lot. In other courses this resulted in massive drops in enrolment.  I think it's a very misguided system but it's not got anything to do with the course document we wrote.

I'll get out of your way now but I think before anybody starts signing petitions or making accusations it would be a very good idea to have very long hard look at the actual document under discussion.

 

Melbourne is a unique city of culture and artistic expression. The proposed changes to the Prof Writing courses in TAFE are undercutting our future writers of tomorrow. Who will write the next great Australian novel, play, and movie scripts? I implore those who read this to consider how the proposed changes will impact the character of our city. If you hamstring the education of writers our grass roots culture and artistic brilliance will be nothing but a fable we tell our kids.

 

Edit:

 

Dear David,

I know you're well meaning but I believe your central premise is incorrect. You're idea of a bandaid elective being an effective method of being effectively trained how to write is ridiculous. OK we have 5 people who want to write a novel, 5 people who want to write scripts, and 5 people who want to learn journalism.

Where do we find one individual human being who can competently teach all three of these topics to three different groups of students? Those are three completely different streams of writing with their own individual mindsets, craft, and lesson plans. Two thirds of the year isn't going to apply to two thirds of the class. So why turn up?

Secondly, assuming we've found this magical Great Teacher of Everything. How can anybody learn anything of value about the craft of writing short story, comedic writing, script writing or anything inside of a term and a bit, or if we divide the class into study groups with only part of the teachers attention? It takes 2 full years of short story 1 and 2 to learn how to write a decent short story. It takes 2 full years of scriptwriting and then screen writing to learn how to write a proper script. And it takes a lifetime to learn how to write a great novel.

Please, give these ideas a lot more consideration. As we learn in actually doing the proper amount of training in this course: criticism isn't a personal attack, writers give honest feedback to encourage each other to do better. Which takes longer than a split year to learn 5 hours a week.

Regards,

Cemil Bilici.

Okay, David, here's a question for you. Under the new structure, can I enrol for a subject that is Novel Writing, consists entirely of students wanting to learn novel writing, with a teacher who is only teaching novel writing? For a whole year? And preferably for a second year to do a more advanced Novel subject?

It's no good to me if people in the class are working on different projects. Much of the value in novel writing classes is in workshopping each others' chapters and learning from others who are doing the same thing as you. It's absolutely useless if everyone is working on different things.

And yes, I do understand that it's 'teachers in the classroom' time. Now in my fourth year of working on my first novel, I am under no delusions that one can be whipped up in 210 hours of writing time. I wish! It's a long, slow process. Ultimately rewarding, but you just can't rush it.

As soon as I can I'll get the course documents up for you. Have you seen them yet or are you proceeding on what you are being told ? When you see the documents you'll find that there isn't a unit called Novel Writing in the existing course. You may be familiar with a subject called Novel Writing which was created by a College out of a Unit or Units. The answer to you both is that yes - you can have those things depending on how the TAFE Institute wants to structure things and how many people enrol and want to do that subject. The problem that isn't very clear to people is that it's not the course structure that causes difficulty. It's how the training organisation chooses to deliver it and how many students they have. Obviously if only one student wants to do a particular unit or subject the college will not be able to provide it. If 40 enrol they can provide a range of subjects under the general unit heading of Refine Writing Skills or combine units to make the hours longer. We encourage this in providers (it's called holistic delivery if you want the jargon)

The course is Professional Writing and Editing. It has to cover lots of things because there are many different types of writers. Each TAFE institute can choose what to focus on. Don't imagine that we are saying that each TAFE must provide all the electives. They have the freedom to choose to deliver only those for which they have students and teachers.

As I mentioned before we made the course 100 hours longer to help people have more time. Can I also point out again that if teachers want to create a range of electives called Poetry, Novel Writing and Lyrical Analysis they can. They could create 300 hours of units if they want to entirely devoted to Creative Writing Genres if they can get industry support for these ideas. We have given them every encouragement to do so. We worked on this course document for a year and finally ran out of time and money but it's basically always a work in progress and at this point it's over to the teachers to develop it to suit their student's needs. It would take a writer who knew what they were doing about a day to write a unit. Several weeks to ratify it with other stakeholders but it's not hard.

My advice to you is to get familiar with the old and new course documents and approach the colleges to develop units and subjects.

Margaret - courses are written in hours. The Diploma has a maximum of 740 hours - about a year. If you want two years - enrol in the Certificate IV first but its level may be too low for you. If that's not appropriate there is no shortage of Creative Writing courses including degrees. Both Deakin and RMIT run degrees in creative writing.

Where have you buried the poets?
their fine, slim cadavers
stacked neatly in the moonlight.
I saw them as we entered
but now they’ve vanished
and with them the risk
of rebel words
of revelry, and serious hauntings

Where have you buried the poets?
Was it deep in the gold mine,
in coffins made of lead
or other deadly metals?
Did you bury them in concrete
flooded by waters, pumped there to drown
their posthumous words
that tendency to sing like Orpheus
long after the fact
of each bureaucratic execution.

Where have you buried the poets?
Homer and Sappho, Ovid and Shakespeare,
Goethe and Dickinson, Eliot and Stein -
so many bodies in the mine shaft rotting -
Mallarme, Neruda, Zukofsky - silenced now
by men and women with
cardboard for brains
and hearts that never miss a beat.

Where did you bury them?
those
wizards, those
witches of the bleeding heart
made momentarily visible
(in all its aching dignity)
against the stark backdrop of universe
where …?

We are working on getting you access to the new course. Perhaps Dr Gary could post it for us. I can give you the links to the old course which everyone is so staunchly defending. Go to http://trainingsupport.otte.vic.gov.au/curriculum and type in Professional Writing under Keywords. You may be asked to identify whatt sort of person you are. This is for data.Just click Other.

You will than be able to view the current course . I recommend the Executive Summary which is succinct and covers all the major points. You can also download the whole thing if you like.

You may be surprised to find that :

1. There's no mention of a Novel or Poetry Writing Unit or anything like it and the electives look pretty drab. As I've been trying to explain it's up to the colleges to turn the structure into subjects and provide your teaching material.

2. You'll also note that it's only a maximum of 650 hours long - one year. It has never been a two year course. It's two years if you approach it by doing the Certificate IV as well. You can still do this. Nobody is doing away with the Certificate IV.

Well at least you will be a little better informed now. I'll see what I can do to get you the new course structure. It's too long to type out but here's the new core :

Manage projects
Develop and apply creative arts industry knowledge
Provide services on a freelance basis
Write extended stories
Write non-fiction
Refine writing skills
Refine editing skills

A smart and creative teacher can use most of these to focus on your writing. In the other two you learn about the practical world of getting published, working with other creative people, networking, industry contacts, the appropriate fees to charge and so on. We anticipated that teachers would use this opportunity to bring in working publishers and editors to help you.

After that you have 300 hours devoted to whatever type of writing you would like. We've given you 14 specific choices ranging from Write for children to Write song lyrics but if your teachers want to develop others and include them they are welcome.

Oh and we also provided units on desk-top publishing for people who want to publish themselves. At the back of our thinking was the desire to see a course where students could have contact with all the aspects of professional writing or if they wanted to they could use the range of units to work on a major work from a variety of angles. You can start a novel under projects or bring it with you, , continue your chapters under extended stories, refine it under writing skills and prepare it for publication under editing. That's just an example. The course is as flexible as the teachers wish to make it.

Good luck

#16: Amra Pajalic - Save Creative Writing in TAFE 

 I too did this course, starting in 1997. I now have had the confidence to complete my BA, majoring in Literature and Philosophy, am about to begin honours and am a published poet with over 200 performances under my professional writing belt. I also teach creative writing to children and adults, and am inspired to share my craft with numerous community organisations. The creative arts honed and moulded into clear imaginative and accessible communication by my Tafe PWE education is an invaluable life and career skills store, rather than a fomulaic contained goverment structure intent on dollar outcomes. Writers are more than what is seen or measured. Writers are nurturers and are nurtured by the active support systems and tangible skills that develop their craft through the current Tafe PWE course. I now teach within the Tafe PWE course and see the progressive holistic outcomes through the necessarily creative productive process (as much as being a productive outcome, myself!). PWE is creativity. Creativity feeds skill. Creative skill teaches us to listen, to express, to imagine, to understand. What hope have we got if the future of our writing, nay, our communicative community in this country is reduced to strangling possibilities? We may as well strangle each individual voice, each choice, each opportunity for effective vocational growth, if we demoralise our core communication tool - language professed through Professional Writing and Editing. 

David is misleading people when he states above that the creative units weren’t in the old course – they were explicitly linked to a large 340 hour unit called REFINE WRITINGS which broke down into three SPECIALISATION units as listed below. The specialisations HAD TO BE REPORTED as such on student results sheets. This is not the case with the much smaller unit he alludes to in the new course - the new 112 hour Refine Writing etc. unit (a generic catch=all non-specialist unit by anyone’s reading) DOES NOT require reporting of the specific disciplines studied and – if we do the maths that’s 200+ hours lost PLUS a specific title . It has not gone unnoticed also that cultural context units like Myths and Symbols for Writers and Literature for Writers have vanished – how to be original when one doesn’t understand the history of writing???

Best of luck to the students, coordinators and teachers affected by this kind of dodging of responsibility – the new Diploma is obviously seriously flawed and needs to be fixed. David, however, did try to fix some blatant flaws in the old course – but unfortunately at the expense of creating new problems.

Here follows an extract from the old course document re: the specialisation component in that course – HALF THE COURSE!

Extract Direct from the old Diploma Course document 21675VIC

*The writing unit, VBP 553 Refine writing and editing techniques, in the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing does not specify any particular style or genre of writing because this would result in the addition of numerous units of competency to the course without any actual change to the structure.

However the course structure states that the assessee must nominate the area of specialisations in which he or she is to be assessed.

It is essential that the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing fully describe the specialisations in which individuals achieve competence in writing. There is, for example, a big difference between writing a novel and writing the magazine for a corporation. To address this requirement, the qualification and Statements of Attainment must clearly state the appropriate specialisations. This information should be recorded either on the qualification/Statement of Attainment or an accompanying transcript.
The assessee must complete a minimum of three (3) specialisations.
The following lists the main specialisations which will apply.

Specialisations:
• Novel, Popular Fiction, Writing for Younger Children, Writing for Older Children, Writing for Young Adults, Short Story, Public Relations, Corporate Writing, Non Fiction, Journalism, Scientific/Technical, Histories, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Comedy Writing, Adaptations, Poetry, Education, Myths and Symbols, Literary Non-fiction, Photography for Writers, Writing for the web, Editing , Desktop publishing, Writing for digital media, Small Press publishing

This is tedious. I'm not misleading people. There aren't any units of competency called Novel Writing etc in the existing course. There are 'specialisations' which is what I'm talking about when I talk about teachers contextualising or creating subjects from units. If you scroll back you can see we used a similar list in Refine Writing.

If we are going to talk about curriculum design at least let's use terms accurately. Units of competency describe the competencies which have to be assessed. As to how the unit is delivered this is up to the teacher. We've removed the reporting requirement.

We broke the 340 hour unit down because it's unfair to students. If a student fails to complete the full 340 hours it can be difficult for them to get credit for completed studies. We break down units to make obtaining credit easier. Units are about assessment not about delivery. All unit hours are nominal. You can combine units to your heart's content as long as you can make sure you are assessing people on the competencies expressed in the units and report on this. Don't muddle units with teaching material. They are assessment guides. I repeat delivery is up to the teacher.

I can only wearily repeat there aren't any Cultural Context units in the current course document and I would point out that I don't think they've existed for at least ten years. I must say it's been that long since I heard the term.

If you want to write a Myth and Symbol unit and assess students on their knowledge of mythology or Jungian archetypes you can. I think it's a bit doctrinaire myself but go ahead. Nobody will stop you. Just make sure it's supported by industry (industry are publishers and editors, employers etc) ie that there's an industry need and that they're properly written in competency based terms. And talk about it as much as you like in class. You can use Myths and Symbols in any number of units. Go for it.

Another example of the way education is going in Aus. Having done aspects of this course, all I can say is , what a stupid idea to stop creative courses at this level. I found it an amazing course and improved my writing skills immensely.

The horrific new fee hikes in the TAFE system will preclude me from the screenwriting module I want to attend however, even more unfairly I will be unable to do the interactive digital media course I applied for even though
a)my teaching qualification is no longer enough
(b)I am trying to retrain and obtain new employment
(c)my experience makes me an ideal candidate.

...for doing something about this disgraceful decision. We all need to get behind it. What next? they will phase out everything creative if we don't top them.

I am totally in agreement with the aims of this petition

#34: David Trembath - Last words before getting on with my life 

What an interesting yet somewhat alarming debate- like many others I too am a graduate of Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE [Dip PW&E 2002] what an amazing course it was & could still be.

However the big issue that seems to have been given little attention is under the new training curricula will the proposed new courses enable graduates to articulate into Arts degrees at university level?

I believe this question needs to be urgently addressed  - the TAFE pathway has allowed a significant number of students to gain access to university - Bendigo campus of LaTrobe being a case in point.  Many of these students have built on the expertise gained during the TAFE Diploma & continued on to  postgraduate studies in Arts at both Masters & PhD level.

As others have indicated the Dip PW&E has provided grounding for students, many of whom were unable to participate in higher education through financial or other disadvantage the means by which they too are able to achieve their full potential. 

Will current articulation ageements between TAFE & the university sector continue or do negitiations need to be reviewed to ensure that in future students are not denied the advantages others have enjoyed. 

David are you able to respond please?

As an older person who completed this course in 2004 at NMIT, it was invaluable to me and helped me to become a much better writer and editor. I have used the skills learned to earn income and will continue to do so for a few year's yet, I hope. There was no way I was going to head off to university to undertake a demanding degree course that was not necessary for me to gain the knowledge I needed. The TAFE based course was definitely something I felt I could handle (psychologically). The work, however, was still demanding and helped me produce excellent results.

There really is no need to have courses feed directly into industry. There MUST be courses available that people can undertake that will enable them to gain skills they can use outside of industry.

All I have ever wanted to do with my life, was to write. When I left secondary school over 30 years ago, there were no courses anywhere that could cater for someone wanting to write creatively. When I found the PWE it was like a dream come true. I would really hate to see it killed just because dollars get in the way.

#26: David Trembath - Some facts 

Just to address a couple of David Trembath's points. His statement that he 'wrote the course' is only true in a very limited context. The process was more about putting together an anthology of units from existing Commonwealth Training Packages. Some 90% of the units in the new Diploma have been cherry-picked and, as one Teaching Centre Manager so aptly put it, 'cobbled together' from areas such as Business Services, Music, Visual Arts, Public Sector, Information and Communications, Screen and Media. But never Writing.

So when David states, 'We worked on this course document for a year and finally ran out of time and money', you'd have to wonder what the money was spent on. We have it from writing co ordinators on the Steering Committee that when they complained about the lack of specialised\elective writing units they were told to 'go away and write them yourselves'; that there was no money for the writing of these units. Given a ridiculously short turnaround time, one co ordinator did so -- unpaid and in her own time.

And if, as he states, new units are relatively easy to write, then why didn't he do it? He was, after all the course writer. His simplictic notion that they can easily be added later is, to all of us who know the mechanics of this, way way off the mark. They needed to be written; should have been written as advised by the Steering Committee while the course was being developed.

And given the accreditation doesn't expire on the existing course until June 2011, with most TAFEs not effecting it until 2012, why was time an issue? Surely the crucial thing was to come up with a course that worked; for every stakeholder. One that met the expectations of the writing & editing industries and prospective students, and just as importantly one that TAFE providers, through their writing & editing departments, can viably structure into class groups and subjects (dirty word I know, but that's what prospective students come to us to enrol in). David is correct, when at the previous to last re accreditation the course went from its (beautiful to manage) curriculum-based form to a training package, the notion that we were providing and teaching 'subjects' was displaced by terms such as 'skills' and 'elements of competency' etc. Creative methods were employed that saw the competencies and their elements judiciously placed into the existing subjects/modules. And everything went on exactly as it had for the previous twenty years. 

But this newly written course, especially with its lack of elective specialisations and overly presciptive core units, makes it a logistical nightmare. And Cemil Bilici's example (see Discussion Thread earlier) of trying to run a Manage Project class with students doing a plethora of genres, is salient. There could be no productive workshopping in such a class. And managing a novel project requires different knowledge (read: teaching and resources) than managing a desktop publishing project; than managing an editing anthology project, and so on.
As Cemil says, if you are managing your novel, you don't want to sit through what would be for you, meaningless tutorials on how to manage a public relations writing project.

And when David says, 'A quick addition of hours gives me at least 210 hours of teacher time using general writing units which can be dedicated to novel writing without even using my creative skills to apply other units to the problem...' he forgets to mention that these 'hours' (from general writing units) cannot be used again. So if novel were all you wanted to study, fine, but what if you also want to study short story, journalism and poetry? Where will you get those hours?

He then tells us with wonderful understatement: 'Of course, it's not that simple...' And he is right.

Gary Smith

I commend and thank the people who have initiated this petition. Creative writing needs to be encouraged, with expansive perspectives, not cut back and further subjugated to the already nearly mono-chromatic business/vocational/rationalist orientation of post-secondary education. We hear a lot about diversity but in practice, there is increasingly a one-size-fits-all model imposed. It is not good for the society or for individuals; people flourish and brains function best when all faculties are able to be developed in balance.

I am afraid that the initial mistake has been the rush to write out some kind of limited objectives that superficially represent employability in a narrow sense.
It feels like revisiting behavioural objectives from twenty years ago or more (and they did not work either in the TAFE system).
Why extract a course that has worked well and enhanced students skills in the broadest sense and has been a pathway to Universities and/or workplace employment?
I have seen private providers of so called skills based curricula that are a fraud on the taxpayer, so I hope this is not the intention. TAFE courses should not be undermined in this way.

b'h

In order for someone to express themselves well and with clarity, they must be competent and clear thinkers. They also have to have good reading and comprehension skills. A good reader has to be able to understand what they are reading on several levels. They understand bias and how writers are able to manipulate and influence their readers.
A good writer is a critical reader by default.
Take away the intellectuals and the creative people who think outside the square, what have you got? People who follow the party line in a dumbed down society. Then anyone who thinks 'outside the square' or voices an opinion that is contrary to party lines is deemed the 'enemy radical' and a target to be labelled a 'deviant'.
The creative writing course gives people a voice, the means to express it and the skills to make a living in doing something necessary for the artistic and creative sector of society. Let's not lose our minds, our individuality and the diversity of opinions and creative talents. Let's not lose our critical mirrors on the world we live in for tomorrow's generations.

#34: David Trembath - Last words before getting on with my life 

B'H

 

With all due respect, I recently completed the Myths and Symbols course and found it very informative, although I did want a bit more on the Asiatic myths and symbols. The lecturer has an extensive knowledge of her subject matter and was able to deliver interesting material from a wide range of sources in a variety of ways. You do not seem to know what you are talking about when you glibly state:

"If you want to write a Myth and Symbol unit and assess students on their knowledge of mythology or Jungian archetypes you can. I think it's a bit doctrinaire myself but go ahead. Nobody will stop you. Just make sure it's supported by industry (industry are publishers and editors, employers etc) ie that there's an industry need and that they're properly written in competency based terms. And talk about it as much as you like in class. You can use Myths and Symbols in any number of units. Go for it."

Knowledge and a depth of understanding what myths and symbols entail and how those myths and symbols impact on our understanding and perspective on the world around us, involve more than just being able to read mythology and have a basic knowledge of Jungian archetypes. Sounds like you need to take the course. It might expand the narrow confines of your present thinking somewhat to have taken such a course. However there are people who cannot cope with too much creative thinking and depth of knowledge. It is scary. However you have to allow that not all people want their minds chained by reason:

 

Earth was not: nor globes of attractionThe will of the Immortal expandedOr contracted his all flexible senses.Death was not, but eternal life sprung. 
Laws of peace, of love, of unity;Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.Let each chuse one habitation:His ancient infinite mansion:One command, one joy, one desire,One curse, one weight, one measureOne King, one God, one Law.
And a roof, vast petrific around,On all sides He fram'd: like a womb;...Like a human heart strugling & beatingThe vast world of Urizen appear'd.
In chains of the mind locked up,Like fetters of ice shrinking together,Disorganiz'd, rent from Eternity.Los beat on his fetters of ironsoul sicken'd! he curs'dBoth sons & daughters: for he sawThat no flesh nor spirit could keepHis iron laws one moment.

 

Blake's poetry like all good poems can be read on many levels. Blake may have spoken against organised religion of which we have many varieties in today's world. Conformity and consumerism are religions of a sort and so is materialism and businessism. People like William Blake are very scary people. We would not want too many of them roaming around now, would we?

When I read your comment:

"If we are going to talk about curriculum design at least let's use terms accurately. Units of competency describe the competencies which have to be assessed. As to how the unit is delivered this is up to the teacher. We've removed the reporting requirement." 

I do not wish to appear rude, but it sounds like you swallowed some sort of curriculum manual and are having a bit of a problem with elimination of said manual. 

Let's say you are teaching a unit on Screen Writing - I would first want to write up what the goals and outcomes for the students are. That should include a selection of competencies as well as how those competencies are assessed. I would have thought that competencies and assessment criteria go hand in hand. But then who am I to know and what do I know. I only taught in Australia and Israel for 18 years at a number of institutions and secondary schools reasonably successfully I might add.

Then getting back to the unit, you would look at a variety of texts in order to deconstruct  them for students so they can compose their own texts for assessment which should be able to give any lecturer an idea of how well they have understood the textual analysis. It is not rocket science,  but it requires thought and the development of perceptual skills which go beyond a hastily constructed unit for skilling in order to obtain employment at a basic entry level. Employers relish having graduates that are highly skilled with a good background knowledge. They do not want graduates that they have to undertake to train on the job. That is why these two or three day intensive technology courses might be good money spinners for an institution, but really do not give the required depth of knowledge needed for competent use of software in a workplace situation that a semester course in the same might. 

Well you might be weary. If I had to stand for false ideas and values, I would be weary too. 

This is not an attack on PWE alone, it is an attack on creative thinking right across the full spectrum of education in Australia.

The aim of creative writing is to open the writers mind to ideas and possibilities within a single thought or stream of thinking.

I firmly believe that anyone can be taught to write, but the desire to create cannot be taught, it has to come from within the writers imagination.

Let the writer explore the realms of creativity.

Let the teacher open the possibilities to the writer.

This course is where I discovered that I could actually write and it's where I
acquired the tools and knowledge to do just that.
I now have a career in writing books for children and I wouldn't have done it without Box Hill TAFE and the wonderful Professional Writing and Editing Course.

Corinne Fenton (pen-name)

Does the country really want to spend money on simply training people? Surely education will bring more benefits? The proposed changes to the course reduce it to low level training. It is hard to imagine that any good journalists, editors, story writers, copy writers or novelists could come out of such a course. The country will be poorer for it.

For some curious reason, our race to the bottom of the standards pool, has us now eradicating creativity and imagination. Writing is a skill and what is writing if not creative?

The things that make life worth living, are under threat and are making this country, one to be avoided. I have just returned from overseas and for these reasons, students are opting to study in many other countries and considering Australia to be a last resort. Our standards are so low and our imagination so little.
Deborah Coulthard