I can empathise with Peter; I was educated by the Nuns and Brothers. They beat me and the brothers beat me with passion; I was an ugly child so I was spared the buggering.

Peter is right. Many kids don't want to learn. For many there is no point. A good HSC/VCE result for many of them amounts to nothing; more and more are denied entrance to universties. For others the costs is prohibitive. We have engineered a very un certain future for them. Education was once a ticket to prosperity and some security. Not so any more

Ours was the last generation where it was likely for children to end up being better off than our parents. A good education was likely to lead to employment and or further educational opportunities. KIds now know that equation now no longer holds water for many of them. Very early on they have been taught that animal cunning based on self interest is the way of the future. If anything that will be the legacy of the Howard years.

It is all too easy for Nelson to spruik about values and the competetive nature of life - kids no all to well how competetive things are - and they know values - they're the things the community used to have; they where the things that saw Nelson et al get a free education and one augmented by the public health system that allowed him to practice his craft as both a student and a young doctor on willing patients at no charge to him. Values under pinned policy decision rather than ideology and revenge. Values were those things that saw Ministers resign when they stuffed up and restrained Prime Ministers from lying. For young kids these days values are a remnant of yesteryear.

Education is an investment; It was once an investment measured in effort and now it is simply measured in cash. And many sensible kids will not pour too much energy or shrinking amounts of cash into an investment that offers highly questionable returns.

Peter West has marred an otherwise excellent and accurate piece by referring to an “informed critique” from Henry Reynolds on “wars” between aborigines and whites. He apparently has not read Keith Windschuttle’s “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History."

In the Golden Age the academic and pundit precursors of Dr West or Steve Biddulph complained that children didn't want or learn - or merely weren't taught - the eternal verities. They were disrespectful, they didn't look up to their dads, didnt wear clean underpants or do the right things by their mum, didnt study hard, weren't intellectually adventurous, didn't value non-vocational knowledge, were soft ....

As to where have all the seminars gone, gone like flowers every one ... look around you! My generation is busy with newsgroups and blogs and F2F conversation ... it's possible to be politically engaged or curious without attending a seminar. The word 'seminar' smells because it often means sitting in a stuffy room being hit over the head with incomprehensive pronouncements by Virilio or Derrida or Spivak or Negri. 40 years ago tenured totalitarians such as Queenie Leavis sucked the marrow out of Eng Lit - and education. If Dr West's students aren't fazed by the thought of his classes being cancelled, perhaps that's a response to woolly ahistorical thinking rather than a failure on their part

Yes, education and parenting has changed in the last fifty years and it's clear that both are failing society. What is needed is an option that does - and is - producing results. I suggest home education, or as it's also known, homeschooling.

Homeschooling can be whatever you, the parent, wants it to be. Often you start out with one idea, and then after a little bit of research on the topic, you realise just how vast the educational world is. You can chose from a plethora of approaches and methods and the range of resources is simply staggering.

You get out of it what you put in. For those of us that like control, home education is paradise. We only have ourselves to blame if our children don't learn what we teach them. We only have ourselves to blame if discipline becomes a problem. And if our children fail? Then we're accoutable to them for a life time. That is one powerful motivator to do well! In this way quality is slowly, but surely, built into the educational programs in homeschools.

Homeschoolers are reclaiming the concept of "family". Children and parents spending time together - at the dinner table, in the evening, on weekends. Parents playing with their children, learning with their children, sharing interests and hobbies. Community begin with strong families. Parents are sacrificing income to ensure that their children receive a quality education and a great start to life. They sacrifice careers, knowing that childhood lasts a couple of decades and that this kind of full-time parenting will enrich their own lives immeasurably.

It's not the solution to the ailing education system, but it offers a real choice for parents disatisfied with what their taxdollars are buying.

Beverley
http://homeschoolaustralia.beverleypaine.com
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If your tutes suck Peter, of course people will want to go home. They're also going to want to go home because they've probably had to work all night and need a rest. Did you have to work all night when you were at uni Peter? Oh that's right, the shops weren't even open on Sunday.

As for the whole poorer foreign students work harder because they have greater respect, give me a break. Education affords them huge status and guarantees of high income and fantastic lifestyle on their return. My university degree gets me laugh from my builder/carpenter mates and even my 17 year old sister; who earns more than I do - she didn't even complete her year 10 certificate.

It's really rather pathetic when people start returning to "lack of respect" line of argument to explain the problem (and there always is one) with today's youth.

Uni's boring because people know they're there because they're inevitably going to have to get a job. These prospects are no longer something to look forward to, the sacrifices of studying to work are outweighing any benefits and the benefits just aren't good enough to look forward to.

I finish uni at the end of the year. Basically the next 10 years of my life will be working for no reason but to buy a house. I don't need the money for anything else besides food, drink and clothing. Anyone with any type of job and any type of income can afford those things. The only difference is that I'll be able to buy a house 5 years before someone else. Big deal - and I say that because what's 5 years when we're talking decades anyway.

Really Peter, what part of uni is there to be enthusiastic about? All it does is bring you closer to the inevitable.

Good on you Peter !
Most of what you preach evidently soared over the heads of your detractors i.e forum poachers.Tis a crying shame because Brenden Nelson for all his claim to fame through the Educational portfolio will eventually end up in 'nowheresville'. His penchant for putting his size 10's in his proverbial facial oriface is one of his many failings, but then it's excusable. He is part of the pro-Bush jaggernaut JH's team. Yes, the mealy mouthed Vanstone, Bronwyn Bishop, Jackie Kelly, and mss Coonan, all with secular agendas focussed on earning brownie points every chance they face the Press council or media outlets, but with particular emphasis for the Top job, numero uno, the LODGE..says it all.
It's all so disquienting for us hoi palloi. The frantic, maddening, no hold-barred quest to topple all contenders, just to preen, prance and pout, as your Nation's PM. C'est la vie.
Meanwhile,the children of today have never had it easier. Totally dysfunctional, they have to be taught how to tie their shoe laces, board the bus, buy coke in a Supermarket ad finitum. As for the Ed Sys, why would you put in the hard yakka, when we have dumb-wits like Shane Warne being remunerated $10,000 a game, and all the ass he can accomodate with a vocab that stretches beyond a 4 letter profanity ?? Can you blame kid's aspirations when AFL, NBL, and NFL clubs furiously vie with each other to secretly commission top players well beyond the salary cap, and with mangified contracts that even Russel Crowe only dreams about ?
As for our Asian new comer's, all the Education and University status wont get them past the New Frontier of Federalism. They make smart Doctors, surgeons, and nurses, but where it counts in the real World, their futures are limited.The proliferation of Resturants, Estate Agencies, and suburban corner stores only proves my point.

If what you say is true Peter-and I have no reason to doubt it- then a number of interesting questions can be examined.

What is the cause of children behaving this way (imitation from adults, problems with identity, not enough discipline, do they merely reflect values that society at large holds, pot smoking parents, loss of religion, decline of the nation state, TV, food, machinations of the Congress for Cultural Freedom etc)

Are there periods in history where similar declines took place and if declines did take place then there must have been other periods where learning gained in value (the renaissance comes to mind).

Also your description of kids today is subjective, as it initially must be but I wonder how we could measure decline and what insights it might give us.

It might be true, it might not but all anecdotal. Seems to be confused about who to blame. Parents with permissive attitudes to childrens' behaviour or progressive education. It is perhaps a plausible position that if the children have the attitude the author suggests then the good old ways would not work any more than they really worked for most children when I was a child.

I'm probably not much younger than you Peter, I went to an excellent co-ed state school in the 70s, and I don't remember many kids being all that interested in school work back then. Those that were went to Uni, those that weren't got a job and both groups, 30 years later, have done well. What was exciting about school back then was all the stuff you question now. We were challenging accepted wisdom and the world seemed to be opening up, certainly for girls, and it was thrilling.
My daughters now attend an excellent co-ed state school and they and their contemporaries seem about as interested in school work as we were back then. The difference is, they look at the future much more grimly than we did. They need to train for a job, not learn (as I did) about a subject they love. No wonder they don't value an education the way some of us did back then. It has become a device for getting into the middle class, not the way to gain a well stocked mind. They see a world of work, we looked forward to a life. That's what we need to change, not a return to the pompous, self important verities of the past.
By the way, enough with the propaganda about left wing public school teachers. With two exclusively public school educated kids in years 9 and 12, they have been exposed to all sorts of opinions and attitudes. That's what differentiates a public school education from a private one, they get exposed to all sorts of beliefs, not just the Catholic one, or the Anglican one, or the Jewish one or the rich one, or even the left or the right one. I suspect just as many of their teachers are conservative as progressive, but its true most public school teachers don't like the current Fed Govt, but that's not bias, they don't like the (Labor) State Govt either.

Peter West makes some interesting claims here.

If students are more questioning of traditional histories and discourses, I wonder if this isn't a product of understanding, not ignorance, as Peter claims. Even if you don't subscribe to the social justice model Peter describes (as one might surmise from Peter's tone, there are those who see it as a kind of "leftist" ideology), it is hard to deny that women and minorities have been excluded from the historical discourses commonly available in school curricula.

Secondly, the idea that a student at high school level shouldn't be able to study for the joy of knowledge (naive, I know) or that vocational education and rote-learning is the only way to make children smarter seems to me one of the fundamental issues impeding a stronger sense of community and social justice. While we may want our children to be equipped for careers, surely we also want them equipped for life, to build a broader understanding of the world in which we live and the history that has shaped our society. As parents, we should also feel engaged enough with our children's education to actively engage in this dialogue.

You're right Peter, you can't "fast-foward" an education, but you can learn to be curious, to love learning, to question the knowledge presented to you in a way that is constructive. The best teachers (and there are thousands and thousands of them), in partnership with parents, espouse these values. George W. Bush claimed that "teachers are the only people teaching our children": this couldn't be further from the truth.

None of this of course, changes the fact that many university students are now juggling study, work (often low-paid) and sometimes families with the "traditional" activities of studenthood - student activism, vigorous debate, sport and (gasp!) social lives. University life has been bred in some students' minds as another responsibility that is not joyous but necessary and perhaps it's not unreasonable for those students to feel grudging about this.

On the whole a very prudent article. There is absolutely no doubt the education system in this country is an absolute mess-we should start there (rather than with the faults of generation y) to evaluate the shocking state of affairs.

Firstly the system wraps kids in cotton wool. No substantive learning until they are six (perish the thought of learning a foreign language before your teens), no phonetics (only picture association), and no vocational learning before year 12!

The left has pedalled the idea that all Australians should be university educated. Then they wonder why it is that young men who are good with their hands, and have energy to burn become resentful or run off the tracks. From personal experience many of my best friends were labelled rat bags at school only to become competent builders, mechanics, and miners-without blowing $30,000.00 in HECS fees.In fact I remember on more than one occasion students being excluded from year 12 meetings solely because they were not enrolled for tertiary study.

I've just spent 5years at university doing a law degree/ arts degree only to find that in a paractical sense I am less prepared for a law firm than I was before hand. While I was at university I spent 10 times (no exaggeration) more time being taught the feminist/indigenous/socialist critique of law rather than drafting a pleading or writing an advice. Now I'm enrolled in a post graduate course to teach me the fundamentals of practicing!

Is it any wonder that generation y thinks school a waste of time, and expects their working life to be one giant cake walk in which massive salaries are handed out regardless of performance, commitment, and respect for your superiors?

Peter,
Yes, education is not the same anymore but neither are the social and conditions that surround education provision.

Yes, kids tend to rote learn standardized responses (one liners) to every challenge to their knowledge about the world around them. It’s from what watching 2 hour condensed stories about life and the universe in cinemas etcetera. Life is for them is a string of one-liners.

My youngest son comes home from school with loads and loads of homework and assignments and I sometimes wonder if this is compensating for the lack of meaningful classroom dialogue and learning. They are usually very well thought out and interesting assignments but I do question if this sophistication is just all show.

He likes one of his 6 teachers, the rest he despises (and may I suggest for good reason)

The sense of custom and tradition that many private schools foster as part of their school culture can only be sustained if they balance this against the external cultures that kids are immersed in outside of school hours.

In the 1960s this was easy to do. Today its a different story.

Yes, I'm not saying anything new, but I don't feel its irrelevant.

If we did an audit of what kids needed before they entered university (the final frontier) then I don't think we'd come up with 12 years of schooling, dressed in ridiculously stupid uniforms, five days a week, hundreds of assignments and exams all while their hormones are doing backflips every few months.

The cultures of youth are distinctly out of sync with traditional modes of schooling. But I don't think they are irreconcilable.

We just havn't caught up with the world we created for them.

There is also a genetic component to the dumbing down of our culture.Sure the Asian students are highly motivated but they are also been derived from a larger gene pool and we are seeing the top 5%.They come from a more competitive and harsher environment.Notice how also our culture saves all babies at all costs.In the past they died and stronger off spring were conceived.It was not uncommon in the past to lose two or three babies before one survived.We no longer have survival of the fittest.We have to expect some deterioration in the genetic pool.

Notice how the geniuses of the past seem so few today by comparision, or is it we no longer value intellect as opposed to the Hollywood glamour?

I disagree with ANATURALLEARNER who in the opening para says that education and parenting has failed society and then promotes home learning as the solution. Since when has a problem been the solution. How can failed parenting suddenly produce results by home education. The very fabric of progression is determined by the teaching standards. Just take third world countrie as an example. Everyone of them has had a home learning base for centuries as part of their culture and rightly or wrongly they see their future in educating their kids and are in many cases working hard to achieve improvements in this area as a means for improvement in their quality of life. Do we want to return to that kind of system that would see us lag behind our competitors, I would suggest not, we have come a long way past that. The system we have may not be perfect and sure it has problems but tweaking those problems rather than returning to the past is the better form of valour and it's for our kids to decide not us, it's their turn let's give them a chance as we ourselves had ours