While on some levels this may seem a good piece, Don still seems to be falling into the trap that going to university should be the goal for everyone..
There is two ideas here that often get mixed up.
1). A Childs opportunities should not be dependant on his/her parents income. This is a cultural principle that many of us subscribe to.
2). Any child can be anything thing they want to be. This is often confused with the first point when used as a positive affirmation of the principle. Unfortunately this myths is well and truly been discredited.

I believe we need to change our education systems so that anybody regardless of their social economic status can attain whatever level of education they are able. I further believe that people should not be judged on what level they attain.

I think Don says much what you say Kenny. Do you think that the best society allows everyone to float to their own level?

What I think Don has said is not that university is for everyone, but that in the perfect society it would be. It doesn't matter to me what somebody chooses to do with themselves, but everyone, having had the same oppurtunities by age 5 would be capable of doing well at uni, if that's what they want.

Even if you wanted to be a plumber, there is nothing wrong with going to uni and doing an aprenticeship, uni then apprenticeship or the other way around. Education as Don puts it should be more focused on the general well-rounding and balancing of the individual, an enriching experience, whether one chooses to make a vocation out of it or not.

Don had me on the edge my seat for three quarters of this article. Then it finished, and I was left wondering what else Don is advocating apart from abolition of parental choice. Pardon me? Abolition of parental choice, in this, the era of choice? I would have thought the opposite - let's give real parental choice to ALL parents regardless of class and social status.

Vern Hughes

And how would you do that, Vern? How do you give every parent in Australia real choice and still manage to fund it?
A friend of mine was once working on the School's Commission and a woman from a particular ethnic and religious group presented an argument why her small group of parents should be funded to set up a school. When it was pointed out that a number of such schools existed already nearby, she shed a tear and said "Yes, but not from my village." How much choice is enough?

As Don points out, we must get over the idea that education is about parents and remember it is about a country maximising the potential of the next generation, all of them, not just those with rich parents, middle class parents or concerned parents.
Sometimes choice bewilders and bedevils people. I work in advertising, and we are seeing how too much choice is actually counterproductive. It paralyses people and renders them so anxious they refuse to decide. I think we will soon see a similar response in parents. Already the most fraught discussion parents have with one another is the which-school-are-you-sending-precious-to, one.

It’s good to see Don is still writing and driven by the progressive principles that kept me enjoying his pieces decades ago. And again I find myself agreeing with his general thrust. He points out that we won’t get far with improving the schools “until Australians understand that they are - all of them - capable of many different careers, creative pastimes and sports, and that capability applies to the newly born as well.”

Let me suggest a possible first step for changing the understanding and attitude of the people. If we take Gardner’s multiple intelligences and give the theory far more research and discussion in the national public forum, while also showing how limited and limiting the IQ theory is, there might be some progress in the average parent’s understanding. Inevitably there will be a big political aspect to this, and there will be extremely vigorous reaction by the old guard in academia, the educational bureaucracies and government.

I can’t yet provide a blueprint for action, but, as Don apparently already realises, Gardner’s psychological theories are a good starting point.

On this point, people may be interested in reading one of my articles published in OLO sometime ago. [http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2192 ] It called for a national enquiry into the nature of intelligence, and rests heavily on the contrast between IQ theory and Gardner’s multiple intelligences.

This discussion is worth perpetuating, both here and elsewhere.

Interesting article – the significance of “nurture” as a facilitator to “learning”, I believe, cannot be underestimated. Disruptive children do not learn because they tend to lack the sense of “personal security” (which would allow them to listen peacefully) that comes from parental nurturing (ask Lenin – he did the experiment and found his “socialist commune children”, lacking the love relationship with natural parents, produced at best the mediocre).

The purpose of education is, largely, to empower individuals to evaluate circumstances and construct resolutions to challenges for themselves and thus to become self-sufficient. Some things may well benefit from academic learning, if there is, as is suggested, 8 ½ “kinds of intelligence” we should attempt to allow children to be assessed and “streamed” into the kinds of "intelligence" which best suits them as "individuals" and not assessed on a single measure. This is similar to certain issues facing the assessment of commercial undertakings – “triple bottom line” type measurement – instead of simple “profit performance”

A good society will might people to float to their own level and a better society will simply embrace the individual regardless of where they float within it.

Having said all that let us never forget – if you want to employ a philosopher or a CEO, you are likely to be trampled to death in the stampede of applicants – but just try finding a plumber. We can still sleep whilst planning to find a leader but not many can sleep in earshot of a dripping tap.

Like Vern I was a bit dismayed with denying parental choice – education is not isolated from the common realities of life and “choice” and “competition” are what drive “performance” … except where some shooting star turned into a deadbeat but had first secured academic tenure for life and the rest of us end up paying for their insular security.

In my reading of Don's Article I see no reference to denying parents choice as claimed by some of the comments - rather he is advocating choice by suggesting we need to give parents the wherewithall to have a choice.

Similarly nowhere does he argue that people should all go to University. What he does argue is that the evidence is pretty overwhelming that people given the opportunity can and will do all sorts of amazing things - including being a good plumber.

Don, I agree with the need to fundamentally re-examine education. But I don't think eliminating parental choice is part of the solution.

Currently we have an illusion of choice. Most of the private schools (especially the "elite" ones) are based on the principles Don disparages. They're well-resourced, but the same paradigm.

There's a lot of heat generated in 'debates' about public vs private education, but there's no serious discussion of why our education system ignores so much hard data (from Gardner and many others) and trots out the same old approaches that were rubbish when we and our parents were at school.

Our university entry system is a joke. One number, from a fairly arbitrary exam system. How can this measure the suitability of a would-be student? It's certainly convenient for the unis.

How can we get good education at universities that reward "research" over teaching quality? What makes us think our universities are any good at teaching when the majority are not even attempting to measure teaching quality?

There are too many critical issues that we're not even permitted to debate. They're given. Tenure is strenuously defended to "protect academic freedom". How's that work when tenure is granted by those in power to those who share their views. How can public school teachers challenge the orthodoxy when their employment choice is "work for us or...". How can we get bad teachers out of the system when we aren't even allowed to criticise them? How can we pretend they're all "dedicated, hardworking etc" when most of us can name one or more sadistic bastards who taught us X years ago?

I think we need a public debate that genuinely considers the issues - without making ANY elements of the status quo sacrosanct. This needs a lot of time, a lot of thought, and a willingness to accept that our education system should be MUCH better. But every time the topic comes up, we get sidetracked into issues like public vs private; government funding; teachers' wages; school league tables; "better" HSCs - or student unions.

There is a second article on this subject, a continuation of the first. It is at New Matilda but not yet on Online Opinion. When it has been up for a week I will respond to all those who have posted comments on either or both, whom I thank.

My continuation piece has not made it to Online Opinion (but then I don't know why the first one did). Here, anyway, are my responses. Kenny rather misrepresented me, and was corrected by Penekiko and Col Rouge for doing so. Most importantly, I do not think that 'any child can be anything that they want to be'. Only one of us can win Wimbledon, because that is the way we have constructed tennis. I would like to see thousands of highly competent tennis players and hundreds of competent orchestras, rather than a single triumphant Davis Cup team or the world's best orchestra. I want lots of 'winners'.

Rather, I think that any child has the capacity to be very good at anything that interests him or her, provided that the child receives the necessary amounts of encouragement and preparation, and is sufficiently motivated to continue.

What I contest is the notion that some children have some kind of 'natural ability' that others lack. I am not wholly sure of this, since some children can draw, even at quite young ages, in a mature and realistic way that others simply can't match. But I also know that any adult can be taught to do the same later on (see the book Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain).

Vern Hughes wants parents to have a choice. On the whole, I don't make parental choice the discriminator, because only a few parents have the ability to make the effective choice to send their boy to, say, Sydney Grammar. Why? To do so costs around $25,000 a year. No disposable 25 grand, no choice. Others have pointed this out to him.

Crabby and David Glover want an enquiry into education. On the whole, I think a widely ventilated public debate is better. Any enquiry set up now will perpetuate the status quo.

My chief moral point is that governments in a democratic society have a duty of care for the whole society. To recognise that every child has great ability is both morally sound and businesslike in the long run.

Another nurture nature article. If you believe in nurture Don's your man but if you believe in nature then this is nonsense. As parents my wife and I worked very hard to give our children every advantage that we could. During the prime family raising years our total focus was on our children. We did not care about the education of other children, we were totally focussed on ensuring maximum benefit for our own children. I suspect that we were not alone. For Don's world to work you have to change people like me and judging by the forty per cent of Victorians who send their children to private schools it is going to be an uphill battle.

We were winners--our children won scholarships and made it in to the top five percent. This of course makes us proud because it meant that had access to a scarce commodity, a university education that would result in a money paying career.

Was I selfish as a parent, absolutely, one hundred percent. I am also not going to share my superannuation with the third world and I am setting up a trust fund to make sure that if I am lucky enough to have grandchildren then they too can have a running start at gaining access to a money paying career through attending a private school.

How do you change me, well the short answer is you can't. The instinct to seek advantage for one's children is far far too strong. Humanity has already experimented with changing society, the lessons of the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Nazi Germany and China should stand as vivid lesson of how dangerous it is for intellectuals to postulate on what should be instead of what is. Don't mess with parental choice.

Mate have you read Machiavelli's The Prince? Because it doesn't look like you have. Sorry about the mate bit.

Arguably if you were both wealthy enough and intelligent, you would instead choose to send your kids to victorian state schools where they could get a real education, without being baby sat and spend your money on paying their hecs fees upfront. Or if you really wanted them to succeed in life, allow them to pay their own university way. The best thing for children, which you've said is what all parents want, isn't having things handed to them on a silver platter.

Statistics are that university places are filled with a disproportional number of private school kids, but that they drop out and fail at a disproportional rate. On the other hand the more real education given to state school kids makes them more independent and street-wise.

Of course this is all very personal given that I don't know which private school you sent your kids too. But let me have a stab, to which private school with harbour views did you send your children to? the wiseness of your choice is about which school they went to, not so much whether it was private or state.

Long live Mark Latham our lord and saviour, it won't be long until irish catholics start taking down statues of mary and replacing them with mark!

I understand where JB1 is coming from, and there are many like him (her). I'm not 100% on the side of nurture, if only because I have five children of my own (who all went to State schools), and I can see the differences produced by sibling order and almost indefinables like 'spirit'. But I ask JB1 to consider the alternative: what if I'm right, and it's say 10% nature and 90% nurture? By not taking that into account we keep on reproducing a society in which there are only a few winners (JB1 is proud to be producing a couple) and a lot of losers through no fault of their own. Some of them take to drugs and then to crime. There is a huge amount of resentment. We pay such a lot to remedy the consequences of bad nurturing after the event. Why not think a bit harder about how to prevent the bad nurture in the first place? I know it is hard, and it requires an imaginative leap. But once you've made it, a lot of good policy follows.