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The Forum > Article Comments > How schools entrench Australia's two nations > Comments

How schools entrench Australia's two nations : Comments

By Peter West, published 5/12/2016

Life for most teachers isn't that great. Children are increasingly disrespectful. Playground duty in a hot or freezing playground is tedious. And these days few teachers can get a permanent job.

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So true!
Posted by diver dan, Monday, 5 December 2016 8:17:57 AM
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Poor old teachers. Bulldust! Most teachers are Left-wing twits, more interested in brainwashing kids with global warming propaganda, sexual perversions and Marxism in general. The few good teachers are to be found in private schools. The majority of kids, unable to access private education, come out totally usesless with rare exceptions - below the level of their counterparts in Kazakhstan, according to a recent report.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 5 December 2016 10:08:53 AM
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kids who are going to State schools are certainly getting a raw deal in many instances Peter. What the blind educators fail to see is that the secular failed dogmas has created some of these zoos. They actually believe by pouring even more billions into a hopelessly flawed system that things will improve. Its as dumb as believing that the child grooming safe schools program will reduce suicide.
Posted by runner, Monday, 5 December 2016 10:16:28 AM
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Sure, teaching is real easy.
Do as the man says- go in and teach Scripture one hot Friday afternoon, or art, or anything.
See how easy it is!
And their pay is great, too.......
Posted by Waverley, Monday, 5 December 2016 10:19:39 AM
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Oh noes! A country that I'm completely ignorant of just beat us in a math test that I don't understand! Our education system must be crap and teachers are to blame. They should all quit and find real jobs, that will fix our schools.
Posted by Bugsy, Monday, 5 December 2016 10:54:55 AM
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TRIPE!

And underlines as nothing else can, that teaching is not a pay packet but a vocation for folks, with character! Not PHD's in triplicate! Kids are not laboratory rats!

What is it they say about leading a horse to water? Or indeed, making sure the camel takes enough water on board to last the entire journey.

Even dogs can be made into model well behaved pets with enough early days socialization.

And that's why we need early child care. And where all the potential bullies are turned around to become the protectors of the weak and vulnerable!

We need a very different funding model to repair the current raft of problems with teaching, and that starts by putting need front and centre and placing means tested funding in the hands or control of directing parents.

Leaving schools, with no other choice but adopt best practices, benchmarking competition to ensure their share of funding/student numbers.

Add complete regional autonomy and you deal out huge chunks of absolutely unessential costly bureaucracy, as well as reduce the risible role of homogenizing unions!

The cream will rise to the top, but only if the milk remains homogenized!

And given a best practise model is freed from the race to managed mediocrity/unionization! The best teachers, will be offered as much permanency as they want and the best conditions, we can afford!

The climate, currently beyond our control!

Industrial action Peter? And then we wonder why folks are turning off moribund unions and their, thick as two planks, control, in droves!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 5 December 2016 10:57:45 AM
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Oh god, here we go again.

In the "good old days" when kids got a real education at school, kids came out of high school at 17, & after 2 years at teachers college were in the primary school teaching kids at 19. They did a much better job than the precious twits with todays Kellogg's Corn Flakes packet top degrees, & a far too high opinion of their own importance & ability.

As a 16 year old school boy officer in the cadet core I was taking 2 platoons, 60 kids for rifle & bren gun instruction, then overseeing a platoon of 30 on the rifle range, something I doubt many of our "professional" teachers could actually do.

As a visiting council library librarian my wife would have 4 classes, up to 90 kids dumped on her, so the poor "over worked" teachers could get a break.

You got it wrong Peter. Todays teachers are over educated, over paid, but under worked. It might be different if they were actually professional, but unless we bring back in class inspection of teachers ability, & get rid of the bottom 40% of them, our kids are the ones suffering, not the teachers.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 5 December 2016 11:43:12 AM
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Bren gun instruction? Visiting Council Librarians?

Your stories from the 1940s never fail to amuse Hasbeen.

Every time you put your fingers on the keyboard the picture you paint of your irrelevant anachronistic attitudes and cluelessness to modern living becomes sharper and more detailed.

It's quite entertaining really.
Posted by Bugsy, Monday, 5 December 2016 12:19:27 PM
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Besides babysitting, what is it that teachers do that a well designed app couldn't do better?
The government spends nearly 16bln a year paying 300,000 teachers to do what could be done a whole lot better from a handful of teachers and experts in several fields.
They concentrate on keeping a 'standard' of teacher quality across the board when they could just create one single superior product.
Kids spend most of their lives in front of TV's or tablet apps anyway.
At least then, all kids would could get private school quality teaching in a digital form. Better than a nearly all female model with teachers having short teaching careers, most quitting after a few years which means more teachers are inexperienced, then we have teacher shortages as well, people in the country not getting decent teachers etc.

Whats the point?
It's all just a waste of damn money.
Half the damn kids heading into high school these days can't even read.

Its all an outdated stupid, inefficient and unproductive system.
Total waste of money better to spend the money teaching them responsibility and actual skills to help them get into work when the time comes.

Move over to a completely digital school curriculum, end all the bs - parents can view what their kids are being taught themselves (the actual lessons) and just hire teachers aides or security guards to keep em in line like the little shites deserve.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Monday, 5 December 2016 12:52:11 PM
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"Playground duty in a hot or freezing playground is tedious".

You lost me at this stage ... It is part of what being a Teacher is all about . Always has been and always will be.

They knew that when they decided to be Teachers.

It's a wonder that they haven't delegated those duties to someone else.. or have they ?

Teachers are more interested in Pay , Conditions and Progressive Social Engineering and have little regard for the Students and their parents if,once again , they are contemplating a Strike !

They are Greenies who have been in School all their lives and who have bugger all idea of the 'real' world.
Posted by Aspley, Monday, 5 December 2016 1:33:13 PM
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I don't think that things were wonderful in the good old days, if you were there.

Hardly any permanent jobs to be found sounds pretty grim, if you want to buy a house anytime soon.......
Posted by Waverley, Monday, 5 December 2016 1:56:21 PM
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WTF?

Want the same Maths and Science results and success as Singapore and other Asian nations?
It is not a big deal.
The pedagogies used in other countries to achieve outstanding results for students are well known, documented and suggested practice in the current syllabus documents.
Unfortunately, these pedagogies require most teachers, administrators and parents to rethink their own biases.
It is well known which teaching strategies are a complete waste of students time and which ones produce results.
For example, try telling primary school parents (and teachers) that every single study ever done within OCED countries shows that giving homework (to primary school children) is a complete waste of time and see the reaction that you get.
Most primary school parents that I know believe that those schools that give the most homework are the better schools.
The sad reality is that weak-willed administrators and lazy teachers are prepared to give the students a carbon copy of the parents’ own education because that is the path of least resistance.
I cannot see the situation changing any time soon.
Posted by WTF?, Monday, 5 December 2016 3:40:50 PM
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You must be a school teacher Bugsy, & rather sensitive to your own incompetence.

Just what Bugsy is irreverent about the 15 year old year 10 graduates in the 50s & 60s being able to handle the math required to do an electrical apprenticeship, & the 17 year old graduates of year 12 today, requiring a remedial math course to do the same. Even after a remedial crash course, many still can't make change for a bus ticket, without a computer to do it for them, let alone understand the concept of electrical formulae.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 5 December 2016 7:58:09 PM
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Oh you want to guess what people do for living Hasbeen? I assure you if I was a teacher, I wouldn't have time to burn on this site like all you retired codgers with inflated senses of self worth and no clue.

I am am really sorry to hear that the education system appeared to fail your kids and that they had take remedial math courses to get an electrical apprenticeship, but one of the larger indicators of academic achievement comes from parents and family environment.

Lots of other kids seem to manage it though.
Posted by Bugsy, Monday, 5 December 2016 8:36:05 PM
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Bugsy,

You show yourself to be no more than an ignorant, self-important lout, with no redeeming features and a piss-poor character.

You also show yourself to be both uneducated and untrained. There's a vast difference, but you fail on both counts.

What you don't show is any comprehension of educational values. It's the old story, "never mind the quality, feel the width". Ignorant dunce.
Posted by calwest, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 7:48:56 AM
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Get a grip, Bugsey. Oh, you already have ?

I taught for a year in the early sixties. I was no great shakes, but I got all my kids through - and in those days, there was no automatic promotion from one year to the next, the kids (and their teacher) had to earn it. I was lucky, I had only forty nine kids - one college friend had sixty two across three Grades. As well, I had the easiest Grades, IV and V, good kids, and a very bright Grade IV to boot. So compared to what others were having to do, it was a doddle. On seventeen quid a week.

How would I go with classes of twenty five, all in the one grade ? How would I cope ? And, horrors, I might have to do playground duty as well ! Yes, there was probably less paper-work back then but more marking, more inspection of kids' work: a weekly Friday morning test in Mental, Arithmetic, Spelling, Dictation and Social Studies, all to mark before the kids got back after morning recess.

But keep doing what are doing, Bugsey :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 9:25:10 AM
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I really must have struck a nerve. I reckon it must have been the codger comment.

So Joe, what you are saying is that you haven't taught since the 1960s, and even then for only a year.

Yeah, keep up the hollow sarcasm you old codger. ;)

I reckon you couldn't cope. You couldn't cope in the 60s, you wouldn't today.

BTW, What kind of questions did you ask on a 'Mental' test?
Posted by Bugsy, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 10:26:48 AM
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Hi Bugsy,

Ah youth ! So much to learn. No, I later worked in Indigenous student support, recruitment, preparation etc., for around fifteen years. The best years of my life, working with such wonderful young people.

But as a young Maoist, teaching seemed less important than joining the working class on its inevitable march to imminent power, perhaps in five years. Little did I know that the working class was marching to its own tune, on the way - through hard work - to security, comfort and dedication to the future of their kids. Of course, that browned me off for a time, until I realised that they were right.

I sincerely hope that you, as a young snot, learn from real-life experiences, that you constantly reflect on what you observe, change your views for the better, and that hopefully, by the time you are an old codger too (I hope it happens), you will also know less about the entire world than you did when you were a kid.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 12:23:32 PM
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Feel the width, someone says.
I thought the saying was

"It isn't the size of the dog in the fight- it's the size of the fight in the dog".
Not that size matters anyway. Some say.

Well we assume the teachers will go ahead with their strike, um, stopwork meeting. And the Liberals will keep favouring the wealthiest schools.
Posted by Waverley, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 12:26:18 PM
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Hi again Bugsy,

'Mental' refers to mental arithmetic: 5 x 7, 6 x 9, 9 x 8, 7 x 9 - that sort of thing. You probably don't even know what I mean :( Ask you grandparents.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 12:37:20 PM
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Oh, I love how you assume I'm a 'young snot' Joe.

So no comma then? How disappointing. I was looking forward to something Mental.

I bet it would be disappointing for you to also learn that they still do that sort of thing in schools these days. Not that your codger prejudices would allow that narrative.
Posted by Bugsy, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 1:29:31 PM
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Hi Bugsy,

Sorry, it's just that you have all the deep wisdom and the fervour of a kid who's just finished Year 12 and is about to be launched, fully-fledged, into Cultural Studies at somewhere like UTS, to show the world of his unique genius.

I certainly hope that they still teach Mental Arithmetic at school, although it's probably left until Year 12 these days, i.e. advanced maths. We certainly pushed those Grade/Class IV kids hard, they would all dissolve into little puddles on the floor if teachers tried it now. That's if teachers knew their times tables these days. Yes, of course, I forget: there would be maths specialists now.

To get BTT: of course, there is inequality across society in schooling, even within the state school systems. Some working-class secondary schools in Adelaide, I'm told, have never had a Year 12 graduate. So the divide is not so much between State vs private schooling, as between higher-quality state schools and working-class state schools. Elitism amongst state school teachers perpetuates that inequality. It would have been helpful if the author had remarked on that inequality, and what it says about the class nature and aspirations of teachers, and their relation to the working class.

You remember the working class, Bugsy ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 2:33:24 PM
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Teachers prefer students who are quiet, work without nagging and threats, and do as they're told. No wonder girls do better in any system...
Posted by Waverley, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 3:50:32 PM
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Some working-class secondary schools in Adelaide, you're told, have never had a Year 12 graduate?

Sounds like you're pretty gullible Joe. I don't suppose you were told which ones they were eh? You know, just so we can look them up and find out exactly how bad it is.

I don't think you know anything about elitism amongst state school teachers. That's your fantasy. As is what you think of the poor little dears of today, what a conceit you have over your own descendants. That's the codger coming out again.

I'm surprised you'd remember anything correctly by the sounds of it.
Posted by Bugsy, Tuesday, 6 December 2016 4:02:32 PM
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Hi Bugsy,

Smithfield Plains. I could be wrong, my information is some years out of date. It might even have had its name changed, that is usually a really big help. Maybe it's called Davoren Park now.

I don't fully understand what you mean by this:

" .... As is what you think of the poor little dears of today, what a conceit you have over your own descendants. That's the codger coming out again."

Have you been taking English classes while you are at secondary school ? You could be the poster-boy in support of compulsory logic, ethics and philosophy (LEP) to be taught in all schools: "See what happens when you miss out on LEP !"

I'm not even sure which side you're coming down on: that there IS inequality in Australia's schools; or: there ISN'T inequality in Australia's schools. You need to write a bit more coherently :)

Just suggesting: even young snots can benefit from advice :)

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 7 December 2016 9:46:41 AM
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OK, so you don't understand some of my comments, that's ok. But you are certainly conceited against the younger generations with your comments about them and the current school system seeming to coddle them.

Smithfield Plains eh? Looks like that closed down a number of years ago, so I'm not surprised that they haven't had a year 12 graduate in ages. They apparently merged with Mark Oliphant college, which currently has a 95% completion rate at year 12 and of those that finished, 98.6% of them got their SACE.

So yes, I believe your information must be out of date.

Oh, are we arguing about inequality in schools or the elitism of teachers?

I think first you have to define what you mean by 'inequality in schools'.

My position is that whatever perceived 'inequality in schools' (yet to be properly defined), would not be entrenched by the schools themselves but merely reflect the socio-economic problems of the local area. Teachers are certainly not responsible for that. Most are trying to improve their students lives, but they aren't the kids parents.
Posted by Bugsy, Wednesday, 7 December 2016 10:15:33 AM
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It's about time we started talking about fairness and equity.
West makes some useful points.
How can the posh schools pretend to be independent when they are getting so much money?

Independent, yes, when they want to be.

And see this-

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/australias-real-education-problem-is-the-equity-gap-20161206-gt5jwh.html
Posted by Waverley, Wednesday, 7 December 2016 10:41:55 AM
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Peter, I would make your title "3 Nations". One of these nations is the State School system of each separate state, the second contains the faith-based schools [Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and 'Christian] which can be, and often are, organised into a system for funding and administration, and the third contains the truly independent ( and usually expensive) private schools.
It is interesting to see the usual suspects talking about the usual stereotypes their myopic vision and dimming memory of their own time at school has left them with.
I started teaching in 1968 and retired from teaching in 2012, having taught in State, Catholic and Independent schools in New South Wales and Queensland. I was glad, in my last few years, to be able to work as a supply or casual teacher as I was able to decline work from schools where I had not been adequately supported in previous calls to that school.
Teaching is getting harder. Syllabi change with fast monotony, parents are becoming more demanding of teachers, pupils are much less respectful, principals and administrators are increasingly disclosed as powerless in enforcing reasonable behaviour and public opinion of the teacher's job has plummeted. This is much more evident in State schools which are increasingly the school of last resort in their locality.
No wonder there are so few experienced teachers, no wonder that less than 15% are still teaching in State schools after their first five years.
State schools are increasingly denied funds for essential purposes.,
Posted by Brian of Buderim, Wednesday, 7 December 2016 4:04:31 PM
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Hmm.
Methinks the schools are more complex than this.
What of the schools whose funding was taken away because of money that mysteriously vanished into consolidated faith based revenue?

Some schools seem Christian etc....
but really aren't terribly and contain many e.g. Jewish or Chinese kids who don't care much for the faith values

High time religions were taxed too. Many of the posh schools are really business aimed at pushing 'their' kids ahead of the rest
Posted by Waverley, Wednesday, 7 December 2016 5:59:43 PM
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Hi Bugsy,

Boy, didn't I get that wrong ? But for all that, it appears that the low-SES component of university entrants has barely lifted, by maybe 1 % in the past seven or eight years. It's possible that urban Indigenous people are participating at universities at a greater rate than non-Indigenous working-class kids.

So something is still going wrong with education for working- an welfare-class kids. As you suggest with the latter, some of that may be due to the quality of parental involvement, but one would think that such a factor would be built into teachers' and schools' methods of coping.

After all, those kids probably need high levels of education more than even their parents did, given that - especially in working-class areas - jobs have vanished in the past generation. God, even twenty five years ago, I used to talk with Indigenous kids in schools and point out that labouring jobs - even then - were vanishing, being automated, computerised, and now of course robotised.

Why did I suggest that often teachers are elitist ? Partly because many teachers are middle-class (or aspiring middle-class) and may not believe that working-class or welfare-class kids can (or deserve to) succeed in the higher levels of education. Even amongst Indigenous graduates, including teachers, there is sometimes a sort of 'pull up the ladder, I've made it' philosophy.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 8 December 2016 11:02:46 AM
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' Many of the posh schools are really business aimed at pushing 'their' kids ahead of the rest'

thanks to the dumbing down by secularist Waverely that is not very hard.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 8 December 2016 11:52:27 AM
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I seriously disagree with some of your ideas there Joe. Teachers are university graduates, so by definition are perceived to be 'middle class'. But I have not met one who doesn't believe that working or welfare class kids can't make it. Most are working hard to try and make sure they do. What you are perceiving to be some sort of 'keep them down' mentality is more likely to be a resignation in the fact that many are difficult to motivate for academic success. Motivation is a very tricky beast indeed. If students have a good vision of the future, they will often try to succeed to get there, but there are many factors at play there including peers, society and family influences. If they perceive that their future is crappy no matter what they do, as all their jobs are being automated and their parents are out of work and they can't afford to go to university etc. Well, then that becomes difficult doesn't it?

You say that these kids probably need higher levels of education than their parents did- absolutely they do. But then we get back to the subject of motivation. Students generally feel unmotivated to do anything they perceive as irrelevant to their lives. How do you convince a kid from these areas that poetry or calculus is relevant to them getting a job (even if it is)? You think that teachers and teaching methods should be built into teachers and schools 'methods of coping' (whatever THAT is) with a lack of parental involvement. How do you do that so it removes the parental factor or even other societal influences from making a difference to their child's education?

Please do tell us and the Education Dept in your home state what you suggest would be universally accepted and I am sure it will be advocated.
Posted by Bugsy, Thursday, 8 December 2016 11:56:43 AM
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I had a spare half hour waiting for someone in a cafe and thus read Sydney's Daily Terror.

From cover to cover it was full of attacks on lefties, lefty teachers, and many other kinds of teachers. Especially those conducting a propaganda campaign about releasing asylum seekers.
Frankly I think it's a mistake for teachers to take up their agenda in the classroom, unless it's for humanity and a better society. They are making themselves vulnerable to attack from the jackals of the press. Who of course have usually opposed any form of industrial stoppage or action. As they did in 1968 in NSW
Posted by Waverley, Thursday, 8 December 2016 12:27:18 PM
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Hi Bugsy,

You put your finger on it: as well as getting across a very solid grounding in the basics, a teacher's job is to motivate all of their kids, regardless of their home backgrounds. Easier said than done, I'll admit, but surely kids can't cop out and say, there's no point - and no teacher should allow that, if at all possible.

As well as university, there are the trades, of course, new ones all the time. In fact, I recall that some of the Indigenous students who I worked with, already had some trade qualifications, a mason, a surveyor's mate, for example. So people can go from one to the other, there should be no perceived barrier to that.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 8 December 2016 2:20:36 PM
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"Easier said than done."

Never a truer word written. Yes, it is the teachers job to motivate, and there are many methods and techniques they use to do that, but they aren't superhuman. Children are individuals and there are a myriad of factors at play.

Maybe if we put into the curriculum or legislation that all teachers in lower socio-economic areas must motivate their students at all times? Would that would work?

Once you start getting into the details about what should be in schools 'methods of coping' with various factors, you find that they are doing what they can, and generally doing it pretty well. But they have hundreds or thousands of individuals to deal with on a daily basis.

Personal attention and encouragement is highly motivating, and is sometimes given by teachers but there are only so many minutes in the day. Parental involvement and care is helpful, but sometimes not.

I am all for encouraging kids to do trades. The major problem I have seen these days is that trades are not considered attractive enough for kids that have good academic ability and can get university placements. So they attract the kids of lower ability.

This then leads to Hasbeen's syndrome of thinking that the schools are crap and not producing graduates that can do math etc. for jobs like electrical apprenticeships. When in fact, they are, but they aren't the ones applying for said apprenticeships.
Posted by Bugsy, Thursday, 8 December 2016 2:45:17 PM
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Well some Gender Equity Taskforce wants more men in teaching:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/the-workforce-gender-equality-agency-more-men-to-be-recruited-as-teachers-and-nurses/news-story/959ff2a3f227bdf8a30d84b8fbaf3061

Worth discussing, at least.....
Posted by Waverley, Saturday, 10 December 2016 10:25:16 AM
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' Well some Gender Equity Taskforce wants more men in teaching:'
hopefully they will replace some of the activist teachers whom I am sure would not of qualified for a real degree. Those activist clowns can go full time with getup. They should not be allowed to dumb down kids just because they display no inkling of commonsense.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 10 December 2016 10:55:24 AM
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I have to agree that teachers should not be forcing their opinions on kids.

One more elite school Headmaster has been condemned for failing to report abuse some years back.

Did we say these were elite schools?

http://www.smh.com.au/national/secondary-education/cranbrook-headmaster-nicholas-sampson-concedes-he-failed-to-act-in-best-interests-of-students-at-geelong-grammar-20161208-gt6n1k.html
Posted by Waverley, Sunday, 11 December 2016 5:34:09 PM
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