There seems to be so much mudslinging at intellect these days especially towards social studies, makes one wonder about even the dinkum native intelligence of most of these bods.

This online contributor left school at the beginning of the Great Depression to drive a wagon team, even though the student's marks according to a school inspector warranted a scholarship. In those days helping to hang onto the family farm was more important than studious intellect.

Having been particularly pleased to beat amart-arse college kids during WW2 in army education gave one incentive later to study history and international relations during retirement from the farm, graduating from Curtin University with Honours in the same topic, and given special credit from an American tutor for insightly essays.

The above case in point, is certainly not the only case, especially in the bush, and maybe it is better to grow up the tough way, without early education as many had to do during the Great Depression. Maybe such a beginning even driving a wagon team, makes one learn to think more deeply, not so much making international relations as a career with a well paid retirement, and feeling posh that they have done their bit, but to be ready to analyse and pray more in a non-religous reasoning way till their dying day with no reward, to pray that the people running our world, especially right at present, are doing it for the true good of the people of this world, rather than for the good of themselves

"Indigenising" hip-hop (LOL)! Now heres an idea, as unpopular as it might seem, how about helping ALL children to learn how to read,write and spell effectively. Until this is solved how about we consign hip-hop studies to the toilet?

Kevin,

if you don't like the projects that people are doing, then your real complaint should be with the ARC. As I'm sure you are probably aware, the ARC grant system works not unlike a Lotto, and even when you do win the prize at it never funds you long enough to do decent longitudinal studies that would be of great worth in education. Nor does it give you the type of money needed -- grants are always cut back. It isn't really surprising then that people propose projects that can be done in a timely and quickly manner that lead to some output that can be written within the limited time of the grant. This is just the way the grant system works.

I also doubt that doing yet more academic bashing is really a productive thing. As you might know, the average level B academic earns only slightly more than the average wage. Yet they are supposed to be good at science, teaching, marketing, computing, and administration. The conditions in Australian universities are also quite frankly extremely poor. Thanks to years of trading off pay rises for benefits, almost everywhere lacks all manner of support staff and the infrastructure is falling to pieces. If you think you can create a better university system and find the staff needed for the pay on offer, then I am sure everyone would love to hear it. Indeed, even if you could find the staff needed to replace the large number that are going to retire in the next 10 years, that would be a great accomplishment also. As the idiom goes, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Poor quality projects and education are just a by-product of this.

We cannot have learning in our schools without discipline or respect.In the past some schools went overboard with discipline and rightly there was a reaction against this,but now there is almost no consequences for bad behaviour.

Just recently I was speaking to a yr 10 boy who couldn't handle the discipline of his old catholic school.Casually I asked him what his new Public High School was like.Well he told me how cool the school was because the students could call their teachers by the first name and they could swear at their teachers and the teachers swore back at the students.Work was optional.Now this is not a school in the western suburbs of Sydney.No wonder parents have voted with their feet and fled the Public system.

It seems that many teachers in our Public system have become passive minders because our legal system has made it almost impossible to discipline.Many of our teachers are only there to collect the money and anticipate the the holidays.

Arjay, do you KNOW any teachers? There are several public school teachers in my family and in my group of friends, and none of them are just 'waiting for their holidays'- they are very dedicated and usually very over-worked.

Back to Mr Donnelly- it seems like another month, another whine on OLO about how terrible teachers and schools and education generally are these days, and how he'd do it all so much better. Constant Repetition.

Keep going Kevin, there are still far too many people saying that our naked academics are wearing beautiful clothes.
One day even the Australian Research Council might get embarassed.
Alternatively we could hope that our cowardly Education Minister insists on putting some people with common sense in there.
The Council of Deans won't be happy until everyone in Australia is attending University for the whole of their working lives.
I do agree with them about research on professional education, though.
How about some cost/benefit analysis?
I am sure that would demonstrate that we have far more academics than are useful.