Malingerer, I am searching for the source of this but my wife made a comment yesterday, possibly drawn for ABC RN, that something like 46% of young people were so functionally illiterate they could barely make sense of a newspaper article.

(Aha, yesterdays ABC RN with Wally Alid (apologies for spelling?) in a morning chat with 'someone').

Putting aside the abysmal standards of journalism these days, that is pretty scary.

On a par with the 'facts' (he offers no evidence in the book, so I am taking this at face value) offered by Joe Bageant, a US author from the redneck regions of the USA (as he describes himself) in the book 'Deer hunting with Jesus' were he has something like 45 million who cannot read or write.

This is where Gillard draws her 'inspiration' from, a clapped out third world nation of God fearing rednecks who cannot read or write 'proper'.

I'd say that although the young people I meet through my children are indeed highly articulate, some far more so than their school teachers, and more thoughtful too at times, that does not represent the large, perhaps increasing, mob who have no interest in schools, little prospect of a life time of work, and doubtful values with an inability to critique their predicament or the society that has so proudly produced them.

Sadly, schools are increasingly dependent on the value of the principal, and sadly, it seems school principals are increasingly good at understanding the code words required to improve themselves but with little concept of 'education' or how to run a staffroom that encourages 'learning'.

Of course, parents play a big role here and by never requiring much from schools they have allowed machinemen to take over, encouraged by lazy point-scoring politicians who insist on meddling not resolving- as can be seen in the rush to private jails, crime bidding wars at election time and ever increasing moves to defund public education as the cheaper option to buying more votes than demanding some modicum of professionalism within teaching.