The best thing to come out of the smoking examples in the Year 9 literary and numeracy test is the fact that there was outrage over them in the first place. The fact that year 9 students can write to The Canberra Times and raise the issue with their parents and education authorities indicates that something is going right with our education system. It is producing students with an ability to see issues and to articulate responses to them, rather than sit unquestioning.
Moreover, the issue was tangential to the matter in hand – a serious testing of literacy and numeracy. To that extent it showed admirable lateral thinking outside the box.
The test contained a comprehension test on passages from the history of the word “”smoko” and the marketing of cigarettes in the third world. It also had numeracy questions on the area of stacked cigarette cartons and in another question students were asked to read a map of a tobacco farm.
It sounds as though the theme was too strongly put for it to rate as a subliminal persuasion exercise. Nonetheless, an intelligent student could well argue that constructing the test around the question of tobacco might carry a subtle message that smoking is an acceptable, normal activity that has a legitimate place of our culture and that that message is inappropriate given the amount of suffering, death and economic cost the habit causes. But it was fanciful to suggest that the donuts and drinks given to students afterwards amounted to reward therapy that would encourage students to smoke.
The ACT Department of Education said it had approached the Australian Council for Education Research – a private company which says it has no links with the tobacco industry – to write the questions and that the tests should revolve around themes relevant to students.
Tobacco is certainly that, but given the huge range of issues facing students, they pick a poor example and over-iced the cake.