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The Forum > Article Comments > This is not a drill, stupid > Comments

This is not a drill, stupid : Comments

By Mercurius Goldstein, published 7/8/2007

Book review of 'The Stupid Country': are we trashing the education system that helped build Australian democracy?

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Frank Gol
A very violent posting from you.

Maybe you have read Katthy Lette already, and now you want to throw things and kill.

The article is on democracy, and to maintain democracy, there has to be checks and balances structured into the system. Education is very important in democracy, but if given a chance, education systems can be manipulated by those who may want to throw things and kill.

So to avoid that, parents should have a choice as to where they send their children.

For example :- If parents form a belief that a school wants to teach their children to throw things and kill, or the school wants to teach their children to be Marxist or feminist, then the parents should be able to put their children in another school. That would be an imporatant part of democracy.
Posted by HRS, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 2:44:36 PM
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Hrs, a 'hard-hitting' posting I would have thought rather than 'violent'. Sticks and stones may broke your bones, but words...

Now give us again the connection between Kathy Lette's comic novel and a review of education text, "The Stupid Country".

Pat Barker's novel, "Border Crossing" (also a set text) wasn't at all about asylum seekers you know. But the violence is strong! What do they say about book titles and content?

You say: "...if given a chance, education systems can be manipulated by those who may want to throw things and kill." Can you give one single piece of evidence that any part of the Australian education system is in any danger - or ever has been - of being "manipulated by those who may want to throw things and kill". Of course you can't. It's a figment of your very infertile imagination.

Can you give me one single snippet of evidence of any school in Australia where parents have formed "...a belief that a school wants to teach their children to throw things and kill?

Can you name any school in Australia which "...wants to teach their children to be Marxist or feminist"?

Now why don't you go back to the article - or better still read the book under review - and respond to the issues raised rather than taking off on some weird side track?
Posted by FrankGol, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 8:21:26 PM
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Communicat, every one of your misconceptions about funding for state and private schools are comprehensively refuted in a single chapter of the book (Ch.7, pp.114-140).

The authors can explain it better than I, but in summary, if every private school in Australia were closed tomorrow, then public schools would be awash with funds, because they are funded based on the number of enrolments at their school.

Every time a child drops out of a public school, that school loses per-head funding for that child. However, as you can imagine, the marginal cost decrease in a school's running costs is basically nil, yet the school loses approx $8K-$11K per year, depending on the school's individual circumstances. That's about 15% of one teacher's salary the school loses for a single child's lost enrolment. Lose seven children, lose a whole teacher's salary...

Conversely, if the school enrols one extra child, they get about $8K-$11K extra funding that year, but the school's marginal running cost increase is basically nil. Gain seven children, you can afford a new teacher...

At around $8K-$11K in funds per child, I can promise you public schools would welcome back every single enrolment with open arms.

Also, taxpayer costs wouldn't increase substantially, since the money's allocated now - taxpayers already fund an estimated $8K per annum for each "private" enrolment, based on DEST and State govt. figures. And the states have to fund state schools out of GST revenue, which wouldn't increase - so the bucket of taxpayer money involved won't change. Indeed, as public school enrolments have dropped, State governments have been closing schools and re-allocating the money elsewhere - so sure they'd have to switch it back to schools, but the overall tax take doesn't change.

Plus, many private schools currently make free or next-to-free use of state bureaucracies for their external examination marking and curriculum services. Switching those students to public schools wouldn't increase the cost of those services - they're already payed for by the taxpayer.

However if you'd prefer your opinions to remain untrammelled by facts, feel free to ignore this post, and the book.
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 10:10:45 PM
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Inspired by HRS' helpful exposé of the pernicious and obvious links between Puberty Blues (1979) and Geoffery Robertson's speech (2006), I have followed the entire web of conspiracy, and can now advise that our current school curriculum was written by Kevin Bacon, the Illuminati, the Wiccan Womyns' Basket-weaving Collective, and the Islington branch of the Australian Communist Party (now defunct).

As for the bizarre meditation on schools that teach people "to throw things and kill", I am in truth investigating reports of a prestigious Sydney independent Christian school at which a senior member of the school executive warned the assembly that France's new President Sarkozy is an 'Antichrist', because he is Catholic.

It's good to see such rational checks and balances in place against our Marxist public schools, yes?

HRS, I was taught about economic rationalism and free market economics in Year 11 at a public school, in the same year as the Berlin Wall fell. Perhaps you didn't get the memo, but the cold war ended a generation ago, the Reds aren't under the bed, and the horse you are flogging is long dead.
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 10:30:20 PM
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If Mercurius & others interested in education in a "democracy" want opinions to be "trammeled" by facts, and students to be invited to consider the evidence and form their own responses, they should present the following facts to their colleagues and students.

Note that they have been submitted to numerous reporters and editors, most recently to Sam North & his Fairfax colleagues after Paul Sheehan’s candid observation that “the media's grip on the political debate is never relaxed”. To ask why that grip is still not relaxed, call the SMH on 02 9282 2833 & ask for Sam or the newsdesk.

The following undisputed facts are a few that electors must grasp and understand for change of Commonwealth MPs to be democratic and lawful.

On 5 February 2003, uncertainty as to the meaning of “vote for”, as it refers to the conduct of elections held under the Commonwealth Electoral Act, was agreed without dispute or objection before five of the seven Justices of the High Court of Australia. http://www.austlii.edu.au//cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/other/hca/transcripts/1998/S126/2.html?query=S126/1998

The above uncertainty was in answer to whether voters can be compelled to “vote for” candidates that they do not wish to “vote for” and is still unsettled despite several subsequent attempts to get appropriate officials, including the parliament, court officers and judges to deal with it.

In 1920, after official errors made him uncertain that a majority of intending voters would have “voted for” Edwin Kerby, High Court Justice Isaacs voided Kerby’s 1919 election. http://www.austlii.edu.au//cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/cases/cth/HCA/1920/35.html?query=Kean%20v%20Kerby

In his reasons for the above judgment, Justice Isaacs disclosed his understanding of “vote for” by his use of “or” in “evidence as to the intention of those electors to vote for the one or the other candidate”. His “those” were electors disenfranchised by what he called “a great number of official errors”
Posted by Humble Hack, Tuesday, 7 August 2007 11:18:04 PM
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One of the annoying thing after a well-considered article is the trail of blog responses which stray further and further from the essential purpose of the article, as people saddle up their hobby horses to enter the fray, any fray.

Notwithstanding the merits or otherwise of "The Stupid Country", Mercurius' review is a gem - so very well crafted. The analogy with the fire is terrific and Mercurius is spot on when he refers to to people shouting "fire".

One could argue that there are just as many making artificial smoke which has successfully managed to obscure the real issues.

So all power to your pen, Mercurius.
Posted by bunyip, Wednesday, 8 August 2007 10:22:54 AM
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