Thanks for the list of authors & book titles Ducky, the titles make them sound like a good list to avoid.

In fact they sound like the very people who have turned our education from one turning out useful cannon fodder into one turning out totally useless academics & bureaucrats.

This bit of cannon fodder managed to use the old education, to a have a productive life, with sufficient earnings to be able to do everything I ever wanted to do.

This included voluntary cannon fodder, flying jets off aircraft carriers, developing manufacturing techniques, sailing my yacht around the pacific, or breeding horses.

It was remarkable how much they taught us cannon fodder, back in the day. I was recently reminded that at while still in primary school I could draw a map of Oz, with state boundaries, rivers & harbors, most cities, & the distances between them, & I was not a good geography student by any means. I was reminded of this, when a young biology teacher asked if it would take all day to drive from Brisbane to Cairns. She's a BSc for gods sake, & can't read a map.

A few years back I was asked by a youngish arts graduate if I would take him & his motorbike out to the reef from the Whitsundays. He wanted to ride his trail bike up the reef to Townsville. What do they teach them at Uni today, it certainly can't be to read?

A revolution usually includes lining much of the old guard management up against a wall, & getting messy. This might be going a little too far with education, but mind you, only a very little too far. Yep, much better turning out useful cannon fodder, than the sheep of today.

Hi tomb,

The words we use are the tools we use to think with. These "special" words you use constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous "buzz words".

Your comments are founded on a socialized (moral and value laden) fabric, whilst these can be of certain value to issues, they are relevant only after critical analysis and not as a substitute.

Critical thinking is defined as "the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion" and "disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence".

Tomb, your were never educated, you were “conditioned” and regardless of what you think you learned, the outcome tells us you have very little between the ears.

Let’s start with taking out of your post, all those things that are “buzz words”, “rhetoric” and “thought terminating clichés”.

We need to “assess the transition from teaching to learning”?
“sharing ideas and resources”?
“assessing ideas based on what the idea is not who said it or how old they are or their formal qualifications”?
“abolish the distinction between primary secondary and tertiary eductaion (sic) (its spelt “education” Tomb) ?
“then go lateral with people being able to study ideas on different levels” “this would see 50 year olds and 7 year olds study the same ideas”.?
“there should not be a distinction between learning to listen and learning to speak”. ?
No difference between “learning to hold a knife and fork and Pythagoras's theorem”.? “one cannot stop learning even if it's a football team's new strategy”. WTF?

What a load of old cobblers Tomb. It concerns me that you actually believe you “said something” significant.

If you (or your friends) disagree with my assertions, you can always offer an explanation.

Spinning round in your head is a CD packed with rhetoric, buzz words and clichés. You string these together thinking they have some intellectual merit however, when you remove these there is absolutely no content in your post whatsoever.

after scraping through high school (largely due to being good at sport) I now see one of my boys in med school and a daughter with a couple of degrees and honours in languauges. The kids were home schooled for a number of years (despite having to fight the education department). They were taught to think and read. Soon as they reentered the chaos and indoctrination of school they saw how broken the system was. The more money poured into the system the more its seems to be broken. The system has pushed out the vast majority of male role models needed by boys.

Education is just learning. We call it education in order to formalise teaching. Think it is better to talk about the transition from education to learning rather than bickering about different types of redundant education platforms. What is relevant and what is the best way to learn it. Can we isolate learning from reality? We are trying to move forward to a more relevant and inclusive learning environment that excludes no one. Work and learning and leisure need to converge