"The latest proposal is parents will be punished if their children truant from school."

This is perhaps one of the best innovations of Kevin Rudd. Education is serious business and is best left to teachers and those on the front-line -- the instructors, lecturers, professors, those that come in touch students on a daily basis.

The fewer advice the teachers have from education psychologists, "professors of education", and pedagogy "experts". the better

that's britain, all right. and oz, except we have a better climate.

"you get the government you deserve" encapsulates the notion that if people are willing to tug their forelock, the 'uppers' will give them plenty of opportunity to do so. in fact, the uppers will teach the commons from earliest days that it's right that uppers rule and commons obey.

worse, when the result is endless war, frequent economic disruption, crime, poverty and ill-health- that's not the fault of the uppers, the commons did it. or at least, it's unavoidable. so they say, and you seem to believe it.

"you get the government you deserve" means if you swallow the notion that politicians should rule you, you're a sheep, not quite human.

The Post-Modern era of schooling has only served to undermine the lower class and empower the ruling class protecting their domination of the system. Outcomes based education only means that many young people now have no understanding of many basic concepts of reading, writing and arithmatic. For those who will not go on to higher education this is a sad thing. The inability to comprehend societies basics means that they do not have the skills to better themselves or recognise exploitation. While some of the old ways are best left in the past educational basics should not be one of those which is.
For hundreds of years the standard system turned out some of history's greatest minds. Let that not be lost in this system which tries to remove failure ill-preparing students for the realities of life.

Whenever I went shopping for schools for my children, all the brochures and open days ever had to say was that they were committed to ‘excellence’. With only one notable exception, no one ever asked me if excellence was what I actually wanted for my kids – indeed, whether it’s what my kids wanted for themselves.

The one exception was a dirt-poor, independent, alternative community school, which was the only education institution I ever encountered that was more concerned about whether my kids would be happy and relaxed during the 6 hours a day they spent there. They got my business. More importantly, my kids got thousands of wonderful learning memories to take through life.

Darron C

‘For hundreds of years the standard system turned out some of history's greatest minds.’

Not necessarily. A lot of people in earlier centuries were schooled at home or barely schooled at all.

The great unadmitted truth about education is that it’s not the system that turns out great minds – it’s genetics. Kids who have been blessed with high IQs (or the equivalent, like artistic or athletic talent) have successful school careers, which mostly (but not always) translate into successful life careers. Other factors - like drive, ambition and good connections - are desirable for success, but not as essential as innate ability.

Ultimately, schools have little to do with creating academic success but love to take the credit – as any awards night in the suburbs will attest. All schools really do is create an environment of learning. If kids had any say in the matter, they would probably prefer a school to be at least a halfway decent place to spend a huge chunk of their childhood.

Darron C has it about right. If the system ain't broke don't fix it. The education system in my day worked well and allowed plenty of opportunity for minds and bodies to develop in fruitful ways. Competition, both academic and sporting was encouraged and discipline was maintained, when necessary through the appropriate use of corporal punishment.

We were taught to use our brains to both retain information and to work things out and I would say most pupils (students) who wanted to (and many who didn't particularly care) ended up pretty literate and numerate with a reasonable general knowledge. In high school there were one or two subjects that had a direct bearing on possible career paths but most were core subjects such as English, maths, science history or geography.

I would say the great majority of teachers enjoyed their job, teaching, because they were able to devote most of their time to just that and little of it in complying with the bureaucratic admin overload that they have to face today. They also were not faced with the behavioral problems that are now so prevalent in our modern society.

I could go on but basically what I am saying is that it worked and today it does not. We must be doing something wrong to have broken what was once intact.

I wonder which planet darron C lives on?

Formal mass schooling only began in the 19th century and its sole aim was to pacify the population at large---mass crowd control.

It was never ever about providing the masses with the necessary intellectual and other tools for finding about Reality, Truth and The Beautiful.

It was always only about mass indoctrination to suit the needs of the captains of industry and the system altogether. Both of which were completely indifferent to the welfare of the masses.

Meanwhile in 2008, with rare exception, everybody's primary form of "education" or en-"culturisation" is via TV and associated electronic media.

You/we become what we put our attention on and/or with what we associate.

How many hours a day does the ususal normal infant/toddler/child/adolescent spend watching (that is being propagandized by) TV etc?

TV "culture" rules OK.

Thus we have the situation described in this references.

http://www.ispeace723.org/youthepeople4.html

There is not one person in this federal government, or the last one, or the next one, or in any state government anywhere in this country with the least interest in examining the current school systems.

Those who believe schools 'work' because it looks as if functioning people come out of them could be right though.

Perhaps a broken down anti-education system, which is what we have here, is the best we can get after all?

I saw a note from soemone about 'in pursuit of excellence'. Quite so, and what rubbish it is.

In pursuit of mediocrity is about what we have, certainly in Qld, where the overall ethos within the state is one of fearing debate, discussion, ideas, and what is called 'book learning'.

I too attended school in the UK... it was a shocking system and one that Australia has emulated with its GPS schools and low grade comprehensives.

However, that said, my children seem to fare better socially and intellectually here than many of us did over there, years ago. The difference being the change in young people, less prepared to tolerate what clearly is rubbish, and this has required teachers to start to address their worst teaching practices...well, a few of them have anyway.

But the schools are woeful, with no examination by anyone within the system of what individual principals do in our schools, and very little support for any teachers wanting to underatke further study.

Our high school remains a factory-like system, with 100 teachers for 1200 students. Of that 100, many only have a 'dip' of teaching, about 9 have a Masters, and the rest haven't studied much at all since they got their B.Ed years ago.

I suspect, as with the UK system, that so little is actually learned in schools we'd find that most 'learning' actually happens after school has finished, and that we all agonise far too much over what will always be a second rate option for getting some basics into peoples heads.

In the meantime, why we tolerate such second rate excuses for schools is beyond me.

Beginning with his book The Crack In The Cosmic Egg and through to A Biology of Transcendence, the author interviewed in this reference, has spent a life time studying and investigating what we do to our children and each other in the name of "education" and "culture".

1. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP98.html

Altogether he argues that our entire "education" and child-"rearing" system is a systematic assault on our latently open-ended genetically encoded potential.

Thus we have the obese couch-potato sitting in front of the idiot box with his/her remote "control" (ha-ha), being "entertained" as the ultimate product/outcome of Western "culture".

Such a person will of course be a sucker for a moose-hunting "jesus"-loving VP candidate.

How many guns would Jesus own? How many mooses would Jesus shoot?

Read his book Evolution's End and weep.

The education system is based on rewarding those who remember best. Most internal and all external assessment(HSC) is framed to discern those who can remember from those who cannot. Rarely does problem solving through the application of 'learned' material get a guernsey. As a result eclecticism and creativity are stifled.
Throw in my observation that there has been a decrease in the 'currency' of knowledge as the rate of social dysfunction has increased.
More and more children are coming from the lower socioeconomic stratum relative to the more fortunately placed, with a greater number of these children , as each year progresses, having to cope with family dysfunction of one type or another.
A parent or parents under pressure are sending their children to school undernourished, uncivilised and unprepared for the structure and application required in most school settings.

Ho Hum

Only those who have been in the teaching field (at the front-line) for sometime would understand what Darron C is writing about.

I was born in England in 1942, and grew up on Tyneside (North East) in a poor fatherless family. My experience in school education was very different from, and much more positive than, the author's. I went to a small grammar school at age 11, then won a scholarship to London University in 1961. I've generally been regarded as innovative and not class-bound, rather than being socially conditioned at school. I don't share her assessment of UK education in that period.

So far the so called revolution seems to not exist and what we have seen is revolting. That's a revolution isn't it? The peasants are revolting!

Phillip Tang and others who speak like this:

"Only those who have been in the teaching field (at the front-line) for sometime would understand what Darron C is writing about"

are part of the problem with schools.... the failure of parents to take control being another major element.

This is not 'the Western Front', and anyone in teaching who thinks it is should retire swiftly.

Or start to address the situation within those schools in which they lurk.

It has been my experience that very few people teach for what could be regarded as the right reasons, and even fewer elevate themselves to the positions of HOD, deputy or principal with much of an idea of what they should be doing, or why.

Careerism is rampant, and reflection, a buzz word in 'Education Faculties', totally non-existent within the 'profession'.

There are, of course, individual teachers, and maybe even a principal somewhere, who stand out as 'professionals', but not many make the grade... what relief it is when your child manages to snare one though, and how stupid and incompetent the others appear, to parent and child alike-highlighting their abject failure, when this happens.

Sadly, the path from principalship is ever upwards through the ranks of rank managers towards the light of a deputy DG, or even DG, and therein lies the other half of the equation.

Having sinned constantly as a principal, there is no choice but to keep doing it and in the monoculture of education hierarchies across this widebrownland the failures of imagination and training multiply, like 'the miracle of compound interest' and there is no 'going back' or 'reform' possible....ever.

Rudd and Gillard are humouring 'the ordinary Australian' only, they are not interested in a revolution, any more than most parents or 'educators' are.

Now we have too many teachers: education chief. Anna Patty, Education Editor, The SUn-Herald November 30, 2008. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/now-we-have-too-many-teachers-education-chief/2008/11/29/1227491893110.html
Please read this article, as it merely contributes to the endless and justified criticism of those 'running' both national and state education. Myself and fellow graduate students addressed this topic close to 2 years ago, writing to a cross section of politicians (local and federal); the NSW Teachers Federation; University Heads of Schools and student bodies; journalists and more. Few responses were recieved, no person was prepared to acknowledge this issue. Now the rot is becoming public! Of course neither the Teachers Federation, the government or the tertiary institutions will admit they are complicit in enticing prospective students to 'Teach and Make a Difference'. Famous last words, and here we sit, now qualified and searching for employment to repay our HECS debts! Coutts-Trotter is unqualified to hold his position, both in terms of qualifications and professional conduct (search his history). What a mess! And the teachers are dealing with repercussions of the multitude of such organisational beureaucratic bungles daily at the chalk-face. I fear for the future in the face of such inadequacy.