The Forum > Article Comments > Education research: a nebulous miasma of jumbled words and ideas > Comments
Education research: a nebulous miasma of jumbled words and ideas : Comments
By Peter Ridd, published 7/3/2005Peter Ridd argues that we are not getting value for money from educational research.
- Pages:
-
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Page 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
-
- All
Firstly, there are many things that affect our society and politics. It is true that education is one of the big ones. But how do we measure the successes of our society? Is it really in decline?
Looking at this years Australian Institute of Crime statitics, we can see that the homicide rate for 2003 dropped 7% from the 2002 rate. The rates of many other types of crime have also dropped, but only one has risen (sexual assaults, by 1%). Even that increase might only reflect an increase in the amount that get reported, due to changes in society's attitudes. Indeed, it is well know amongst criminologist that the "explosion of crime" is simply a myth.
What else indicates the current state of play? If not hard crime stats, then what about the increase in the number of people doing voluntary work (I think QUT did the research on that), donating money (note the recent tsunami appeal) and the increases of racial and religious tolerance, and the decrease of sexist attitudes over the last few decades.
However, I don't really think that these wins for our society can be attributed soley to education. Ronald Inglehart's 'World Values Survey' research (http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/) has much more compelling arguments about why post-industrial society is changing, and it's all about the changing patterns we work and interact as we do increasing amounts of service-oriented work. I really recommend that interested people read up on it - it profoundly changed my views on our society's future.