There is one thread that runs through these the comments and to some extent Julian Cribb's "future". We are still consumers, and at the bottom of the consumer chain is a range of resources that are all finite. If by 2050 we haven't recognized this then we are stuffed. Totally. They say the mining industry in WA is booming, but the iron ore quality (for example) is getting lesser and lesser right now. There are very few resources I can think of - if any that have infinite availability. Some can be substituted by a "solar" version e.g. biodiesel and ethanol, but others will never be such as iron, bauxite, rare earth minerals, even uranium and thorium. And as we scrape the barrels the cost rises as does the risk of recovery.

The consumer "society" will have limited things to consume so instead of passionately urging students to "produce" things, better they might follow Julian's line of thinking and focus on developing resilience both personally and in communities. If you have no fossil based diesel, you have no agriculture so what then? We still import groceries from China? Of course not - we will have reflected on this land and its vegetation, its animals and all its limitations and begun to work with that both for its benefit and ours.

*Australia has minimal chance in any niche when faced with that type of competition.*

Not really Vanna, because of course India has all sorts of problems
that we do not, like simply too many people!

Where you have a point, is that we certainly don't train enough
engineers and apprentices etc. Too many Australians are unqualified
at all, so as Pericles points out, will most likely be catering
to Chinese tourists or similar.

Our problem comes back to Affluenza/Dutch disease. We have it too
good for our own good. Asia has a history of being poor, they
still remember the realities, so are not complacent as we are.

I guess Australia will eventually need a bit of pain to learn,
for in my experience people usually don't learn the easy way,
but the hard way.

“I don’t understand it, Granpa” said Bruce a 15 year old, in 2050, “How did Australia which in 2000 hosted what is still is regarded as the best Olympics ever, and in 2010 was the richest country in the G20 in terms of income per captia, become the poor white trash of Asia in 40 years?”

His grandfather, now 75, said that it was the fault of his generation. Unfortunately in 2007 we changed governments, who immediately began to roll back economic reforms, engage in grandiose projects and impose economically devastating taxes.

The worst two taxes were the carbon tax and the mining tax. Now we all know that global warming by CO2 was a great furphy and indeed the lack of sunspot activity over the past 40 years has meant the earth is cooling. Unfortunately, this meant that all our major mining companies closed their mines moved overseas. The supposed replacement by renewable resources such as wind and solar was a joke. Wind power costs twice as much as coal and only works one day in three, while solar is six times as expensive. We all felt good as we got poor. In addition we did stupid things like ripping up our perfectly serviceable copper networks and replacing them with fibre optics. This was done to satisfy politician’s whims with no economic rationality whatsoever.

Then the US went isolationist. After the triple defeats of Vietnam, Iraq and Afgahistan, the US started to revokes its treaties and although ANZUS was the last to go in 2030, it still went.

Unfortunately Australia still had its phobia about nuclear power and the bomb. Australia with no major nuclear ally and no bomb was defenceless. In the end, just like Russia and Germany did in 1939 with Poland, India and China decided to ally and jointly invade Australia. India took the south and west, and China the north and east. So Brisbane became Brisning and Adelaide became Adelpur.
Still think of the bright side, you now live in a truly multicultural society.

Alas, vanna, you credit teachers with too much influence in the acquisition and distribution of resources. Blaming teachers for the use of imported computers is akin to blaming bank tellers for the cheap and nasty pens on offer in branches.

That said, I have absolutely no problem with our students using, for example, the MS Office package on their computers. When they go home, they use that suite on their own computers. When they go to uni, they will use that suite there, too. In many workplaces, they will use Office. What Australian-generated alternative do we have, that offers the same functionality?

Additionally, I have no problem with the fact that my current group of students is supplied with HP computers. They are good, robust, functional, cheap and do everything our students need to do with them. What Australian-made (and by that I mean MADE, not just assembled) computers can compete? And please, if you're going to go down the path (again) of blaming teachers for this, please at least try to rationalise your argument this time.

My point, as I said earlier, is that in order to innovate we need to start with what others have developed and equip our students with the skills and attitudes to make them better. Japan didn't jump to the cutting edge of technology by re-inventing the wheel. Japan took what the Americans were doing and did it better and cheaper. We need to adopt a similar mindset if we are to become the innovators Mr Cribb wants us to be.

Otokonoko
Microsoft started in a garage, and now the Australian education system swoons at its feet.

I first did computer studies over 20 years ago through a university. Every text book was imported and all software was imported. Now languages such as C++ are being taught in high schools, and I have seen the textbooks and software being used in one school, and all textbooks were still imported and all the software was still imported.

There are estimates of up to $14 billion could be spent on computers in schools, but to date the education system can’t seem to produce one textbook or computer program from that huge amount of money spent, and are just using the money to import everything.

The idea that if more funding is poured into education it improves growth or innovation was called into question in the US by this report.

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/OK_Report_2011.pdf

They found that if more money was spent, it was mostly “absorbed by university overhead.”

Similar for education in this country, such as the Grattan report which found that investing in regional universities makes no difference to regional economies.
http://www.grattan.edu.au/pub_page/086_report_regional_development.html

So extra money being poured into education can simply go nowhere.

That goes back to my simply idea, that each class in every school is required to produce something useful each and every year as a class project.

It could be anything from a better way of telling the time, to producing a better watch.

The students are then engaged in innovation from Grade 1, and one year we may even get a textbook written in Australia on a computer programming language (after the $14 billion spent on computers in schools)

You know what, vanna? I agree.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your previous posts have given me the impression that you're a Queenslander. You may remember a little under a decade ago an ambitious project called 'New Basics'. It was flawed in design and even more flawed in its implementation, and never got beyond the trial period in a select few schools. It was met with a resounding 'boo' and 'hiss' from the public and, like the now-defunct critical literacy focus, savagely attacked in the media. Our curriculum developers, never ones to exhibit any staying power, enacted a full-scale retreat rather than trying to rationalise their program or responding to feeedback by improving it. Such is the history of curriculum in Queensland - always retreating from the cutting edge.

The point of New Basics was to apply knowledge rather than simply acquire it. Students engaged in multidisciplinary 'rich tasks', drawing on each Key Learning Area to complete parts of the project. Say a group of Year 7 students was checking water quality in a nearby catchment. Their science skills would be used to test water, identify contaminants, conduct line transects along riverbanks, etc. Their maths focus would be largely statistical, as they develop and use maths skills to interpret their data. Their English focus would be on communicating their data - presentations, submissions to newspapers, scientific reports, brochures ... hell, even songs and poetry if they saw the need. Social sciences identify the human causes of poor water quality and so on. Ultimately, they would produce something useful - affordable home testing kits, filtration devices, the list goes on. While it isn't perfect, it is a starting point for innovation as students identify problems, find solutions and market them. After a few years of such programs, higher levels of innovation are possible as skills develop. Sadly, such new ideas take a couple of years to polish, and the QSA seldom waits a couple of years before shelving ideas.