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Calling All Students
Even more interesting than the RFDS, I thought, was the School of the Air, Australia’s solution to long distance education. Through the use of two-way radios, School of the Air teachers conduct classes each day with Australian children who are scattered far and wide across immense distances. There are several Schools of the Air around Australia, including one in Alice Springs, the original home of the school. This year, the Alice Springs school is teaching 130 students, some of whom live over 600 miles away.
With the help of a tutor (usually a parent), students complete their radio and written lessons and then mail their homework to their teacher on a regular basis. No, I don't think an excuse like "The dog ate my homework" works too well here in Australia, either – although "The dingo ate my homework" might.
When they’re not on the radio, teachers grade the written work and mail it back, sometimes via RFDS planes, and at least once a year, each teacher hops into a four-wheel drive vehicle and heads across the Outback to visit their students in person. In addition, all the kids come into town a few times each year to meet the other children in their radio “classroom." That's the only time during the year that some of the kids get to interact with other children, or visit a town.
I spent over an hour at the Alice Springs School of the Air, browsing through the displays and watching a fascinating video. Towards the end of the 10-minute video, they showed one of the cutest things I've seen so far in Australia: a dozen little "School of the Air" children singing Home Among the Gum Trees. Jeez, I still have goose bumps and a smile from that one.
After the cute video, I watched through a glass window as an instructor gave a foreign language lesson in Indonesian, which apparently is the most popular foreign language in Australia. It's equivalent, I guess, to learning Spanish or French in America. And speaking of cute, I bumped into a young blonde woman here visiting from, amazingly enough, my hometown of Portland, Oregon. We had even worked on some of the same transportation projects in the 1990s, amazingly enough. I would've asked for her number but she was attached at the hip to a rather large and muscular boyfriend, so I refrained. Still, it was nice (and rather strange) to hear an American accent again after having not spoken to an American in weeks.
The School of the Air is a great concept and it's a fascinating place to visit. It's also amazingly successful, with most pupils landing in the top 10% of all students nationwide, and with a large percentage eventually going on to college. For more information, their website is at www.assoa.nt.edu.au.
Above left: Inside the Visitor Center with student projects on display. Is this place cute, or what? Above center: A School of the Air teacher broadcasting a lesson in Indonesian. Above right: Some of the School of the Air students. These kids are scattered across the immense Outback.
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