Where has Monika been for the last ten years? I have been retired from Edith Cowan University for five years. For at least ten years before that I had to endure detailed student assessmenrts for EVERY unit I taught. DEETYA made the process even more stringent as the years rolled by. Regardless of whether the students were aware enough to pass any judgement whatsoever, university lecturers had to endure some degree of odium from the diasaffected and the incompetent.

There were endless experiments to make common evaluation tools which were to be used across the board. How stupid is that? You can't comapare oranges and apples. Nevermind, I don't have to be involved any more.

What worries me is the political implications in all of her suggestions. Even worse when the ideas are based on profound ignorance.

Alan

It is all very well to suggest academics who either do not wish to teach or who are not good teachers are employed as researchers. The problem with this is that research positions are temporay as they rely on "soft money" ie research grants to fund them. Lecturing positions are more often permanant ie tenured. This makes a huge difference with regard to income and job permanency in an age of mortgages and self-funded retirement.

It's my understanding that university salaries and progression are primarily, if not solely, based on research output rather than teaching excellence (ie publish or perish).

Unless there is a connection between teaching excellence and salaries and progression then no amount of training and evaluation is likely to improve teaching. Lecturers will, for their own sake, give emphasis to research over teaching.

Expecting others to pursue a goal without reward is doomed to fail, in my view.

I'm a little mystified by this debate as an ex chair of three school boards in Perth.

I was schooled from 10-17 by scholarship in the UK. Each of our heads of Dept at school had a minimum of a Masters Degree, some Phd. It is only in recent years that I've recognised the quality of this schooling. During the same time that I've seen our universities divorced from the English tertiary tradition of the multiple Mastered lecturer of undergaduates, and the wont to go "all the way with USA."

It is my opinion that this move have has accellerated our backslide in both the tertiary arena and in our high schools. Perhaps it has something to do with government (political) intervention. During the past four decades the politicians have also tampered with apprentices, a system that worked for a thousand years and produced the cultural structural highlight of civilisation that is Europe.

Answer seems simple to me, post HECS, if its fee-for-service, then as a student

1. one should not pay for rubbish lectures by the phd allegedly educated whom have not the intellecual breadth of the old Don, and

2. all heads of dept in high schools MUST get a Masters to gain a full increment of pay, and the govt pays their costs at university.

Jim

Mark my words, the most educated are not the best teachers or lecturers.

We want go getters who have respect out in the world, either by runs on the board or profile, and a PHD and the like is useless in determining this.

It just means they could hang out for a couple more years and had no incentive to hit the real world until later. These people are also never the brightest and rarely the best communicators.

Forget the qualifications, you either have it or you dont, give them a theory and a practical exam of the highest order and if they pass, PHD or not, let them teach.

Academia is the mark of those out of touch with society and the marketplace. Why else would they fathom a life of mediocrity, not for them being afraid to take the bull by the horns in the real world? They need to feel important and cannot risk loosing it, they research often trivial matters and dont make best use of their resources.

As for schools, the only people i know that have ever chosen teaching was those that had poor marks by comparison. No teacher ever told me how the world worked, and they do not teach you to be successful as they do not know themselves, that is where the problem lies.

I have great respect for those with best intentions at heart when teaching. I dont respect those that dont realise that every day they can effect peoples lives permanently, shape futures, and create or destroy dreams.

JanS, you appear to be suggesting that we should be continuing to employ poor teaching staff, because the job suits their life style.
You are not alone, of course, the same situation applies in our high schools.
Is it any wonder that the general public have come to consider universities as "feather beds for incompetents".
The system will have to get rid of a lot of drunks, & no hopers, with tenure, if its to reclaim the respect it once took for granted.
Hasbeen

"As for schools, the only people i know that have ever chosen teaching was those that had poor marks by comparison"

That may be your experience Realist, but I doubt it is the case. My mother is a teacher, and chose the profession despite having gained a Commonwealth Scholarship for university, which was only awarded to the top students.

Many teachers are there (at primary and high school levels at any rate) because they love teaching and helping others learn, and find it facinating.

That said, I do wish University lecturers were taught more about the art of teaching, as many of them seemed to rely on boring Talk-Straight-From-Their-Notes styles of lectures.

Realist, I think you're expecting a little much from teachers. Having done some prac teaching, I realized it was a hard way to make a living. Playground duty, lesson preparation, keeping on top of curriculum changes, marking, assessment. as well as keeping 25-30 students on track and adjudicating disputes. You needed eyes in the back of your head for miscreants playing games under the desk and generally had at least one clever dick winding you up by complaining that you didn't know about the "real world". If teaching in high school, repeat for up to 6 classes. I needed a rest at the end of it. If on top of that you also want someone who "effects [sic] peoples lives permanently, shape futures, and create or destroy dreams" you don't need a teacher, you want a saint.

Running down teachers is not going to encourage the best and brightest to join a difficult and not very well paid profession.

Yet another person that wants university staff to be good at everything (teaching, research, administration, marketing, science, etc.) all for a pay that isn't competitive with either jobs outside or other countries. This simply isn't realistic given that the situations in univerisities is now not unlike high schools, where decent staff are not possible to find in many areas. THerefore, additional regulations restricting the number of people who can work simply means a smaller pool of worse people will be available, and, in addition, it will waste more of the time of the people already there. Evidentally, the author simply isn't aware of the current marketplaket place for academic skills.

A better solution would be to allow universities to do, employ, and charge what they want, and you might find some would then want to compete on good quality teaching, and they could also pay the salaries to get really good people.

Does training maketh the teacher?
As one who has a Diploma in Education (Secondary), I prefer the word 'educator', the Latin origins meaning 'to lead out'. The heart or core of the human person is the origin of this leadership.

Moreover, is it merely the author's wish or does our current system uphold the notion of elective 'life-long learning'?
It seems that the reverse is happening. Today we are expected to be 'retrained' in instances of job dissatisfaction: to have a second chance at becoming a cog in a wheel of romantic fulfilment.

Teaching work in religious schools used to be fulfilled by many(admittedly) railroaded sisters, brothers and lay personnel. Many people have a living memory of the teacher as violent and without joy.

Yet today the system maintains its industrial-revolution standard: one conforms or faces the peril of exculsion. I see this in the expectation that one must fulfil a specific criterion before being allowed to serve young people as their educator.

As one who would love to work in primary schools, after a number of years working in high schools as a history teacher, I find that the legislation is hostile if not discouraging of such lateral application of my learning.

Ah! Oh for a little more awareness of more simple ways of finding teachers of heart!

Let us establish more mentoring links, for applying human faith in teachers' work, and assessing its fruits, rather than enforcing bureaucratic hoopla of 'outcomes' and 'criterion of behaviour'! I'm with Howard on this one.

May your Anzac Day be duely commemorative. Lest we forget.

Just a couple of observations as a university-trained high school teacher . . .

1) In order to qualify as a high school teacher, I had to go through four years of university-level teacher training. Knowledge of my subject area did not suffice - an ability to teach my subject did. And my employment hinged on proven success in prac - despite a GPA of 6.5, if I couldn't teach, I wouldn't have been given a job.

2) As I understand it, university lecturers are given their jobs as a result of research output and knowledge of their subject area. This meant that, even in my Education subjects, my lecturers who could spout constructivist theory in the most boring manner would keep their jobs even if they were poor educators.

3) Likewise, a Masters Degree (as suggested by Sapper as a minimum requirement for a HOD position) does not guarantee that one can teach OR run a department. It just means that one is (or once was) up-to-date with theory.

4) I tire of hearing that only poor achievers become teachers. I achieved an OP2 at high school and, in my year, could have enrolled in any uni course nationwide. I chose to teach.

Essentially, the only frustrating element of my job is that everyone thinks they know how to do it. We don't tell neurosurgeons how to do their jobs, but every man and his dog has an opinion on best practices in teaching. Perhaps it is a relatively easy job - but why, then, are there so many bad teachers out there?

Otokonoko, the obvious reason that there are so many bad teachers is that the pay for teachers isn't high enough for the job, thus many teachers will have more attractive options, and many people highly competent people won't become teachers to start with.

If schools are anything like universities, people also probably have to waste large proportions of time doing administrivia and fufilling government requirements thought of by bureaucrats that seem to have the very strange belief that more and more legislation and rules (which waste more and more of people's time) are the answer to the problems -- not unlike the writer of this article (a Canberra based bureaucrat).

As a junior academic in a relatively new university, with previous backgrond in high school education in addition to my academic disciplines, and many years spent in university administrations, I have a few thoughts on this subject.

Unless, and until, funding is targetted to quality education training, most universities will continue to focus on doing the things that attract income. Since they were cut adrift, finding sources of funding has become a full-time occupation. The staff time dedicated to finding funding at most universities costs a significant chunk of that income.

It is mere political rhetoric to say that universities ought to be training their own staff better. Each university I have been involved with over the past decade and a half has required their staff to complete education training as a pre-requisite to advancement and/or continued employment. They have been training their staff.

It is trite to say 'universities have the staff, they can use them' without explaining how that shoudl be funded. FedGov loves ot point at others and say 'thou must do ths for your crust', and then not provide any more money and resources to meet the new impost. University education departments are already fully occupied with teacher training and their research programmes. Where's the money for the extra staff going to come form?

Most universities have created a separate training and quality group within their administrations to address staff training and so forth. They take a hit on administration with a view to ensuring a good result on the quality audits. Unfortunately, niversities that perform poorly, for whatever reason, are punished instead of being given targetted assistance. Once on the downward spiral, how does FedGov expect them to pick up? By diverting funding from other areas.

People joke about academica living in 'Ivory Towers' divorced form reality. Sadly it is the political machinery that lives in some wierd space-time vacuum of unlimited hours and multiple use dollars.

After having studied in the UK then assisted with University teaching in Australia as a postgraduate student I conclude that there is far too much 'teaching' being done here already. I was quite stunned to find the University bookshop full of typed lecture notes for every course unit. It seems to be quite possible to pass a degree without either entering the library either in person or online.

Universities should be about providing the minimum information required for a student to do their own learning and research not spoonfeeding which seems to be the case. In some ways the best students are those whose lecturers provide the least information as they have to put in more effort. The best people to learn from are those who are enthused by their subject. It is already a problem in schools that those who know and love their subjects and can apply them in real world situations are put off teaching by having to study for years followed by a pay cut. There is a good case for staff professional development in Universities - as already occurs - but the last thing we need is teacher training.

I personally think that the problem lies within the curriculum and the way it is set up and presented and not with the teachers. Sure there are some teachers who should not be allowed to do face to face teaching during certain periods of their life, but given what many teachers have to deal with, its no wonder that they often look bad. However I don’t believe it is necessarily their fault.

When my children started school I remember sitting in a class room full of parents where we were told that every class was like a composite and that every child worked to his or her own ability. It sounded good. What they didn’t say was that they gave them all the same worksheets and books and that these books only provided them with a very small space so they are very stifled. What they also didn’t say was that the majority of the level presented to them would be at their age level not their ability level and that they would be restricted.

The system is set up so that students are boxed into grade barrels and the lids are put on tight and that doesn’t allow them to show what they know or to grow.

Teachers are no different to students they get boxed by the same methods and practices

Firstly, the idea by the author that Australia can't compete with American or European universities is blatantly untrue. Anyone who has been near the University of Melbourne recently will have seen the massive signs everywhere that it was ranked number nineteen in the world by a study done by the Guardian newspaper from the UK. Now I haven't gone into that study, but if we accept it as true and then consider the combined populations of the U.S. and Europe, then Melbourne Uni. isn't doing too badly.

As to everything else, well, there's so much to cover.

Some of my thoughts in brief:

It's not hard to sit through some lectures and then engage in a discussion in a tutorial. No, you don't get to do an activity, and yes, sometimes you just have to listen to someone who knows a lot more about a topic before you get to make a noise.

At the tertiary level, separate vocational learning from academic/self-interest learning. Then again, these days, the latter is shown decreasing levels of respect and relevance. We simply don't have a culture that really values learning.

The education faculty (at least at Melbourne Uni.) has some of the worst teaching staff in the university (it also has some really good teachers). It also has some of the people least in touch with the real world.

People often complain about the education system, but in reality, are completely hostile to the idea of having any direct responsibility for any of the usual hot issues (eg. funding or discipline). That's always someone else's problem.

We supposedly want excellence in education, yet are completely hamstrung by egalitarian ideals that actually lower the bar rather than raising it. The tall poppy syndrome, as elsewhere in our culture, rules: we'd rather have everyone reduced to the lowest common denominator rather than appear to be elitist in any way.

Shorbe, if our 'culture doesn't value learning' why not?
I would suggest that any culture that cannot learn is actually a non-culture, for culture means to grow, and in order to grow one must learn.

I suggest that learning is not and ought not to be presumed to be compatible with the status quo. For young people, the way things are is that they are seen as cogs of industry, not leaders, and hardly not learners.

After reading Isaiah Berlin, I see that there is a question of freedom at stake here. Notions of 'positive freedom' (to choose, to become, to identify with) are demanded from young people and enforced by materialistic models of relationship and work. The present English syllabus presumes this capability to chose forms of communication and to identify with characters. This is said to be intelligence, however it is really seeking to cater to industry demands for the kids to me malleable to others' needs and purposes.

At the same time, the limitations necessary for 'negative freedom' (to live free from entrapment, interference) are denied or harmed by too much aggression and neglect. Aggression such as is promoted by the teen-music fantasies and lyrics. Neglect as occurs when there is no adult presence to arrive home to, requiring and providing honest, empathetic sharing (of meal, life, thoughts, difficulties).

The limits necessary for human learning and growth characterise ordered and respectful communication in 'right relationships'. Also, they lead to the possibility of creative action.

What if kids learnt to listen to their elders, and to guide their elders to tell them what they need to know? What if they are assisted to place themselves in their own memories, and to find meaning in the places where they come from and now belong?

Perhaps then schools would not be needed so desperately as child-carrals, and they would become places of community culture and enculturation.

The question that i ask is 'are schools the best way to educate and socialise our children.

We'll always need people to impart knowledge and skills (and this could include teachers) but information technology (which includes computers) may outstrip traditional modes of instruction.

Just a thought.

Rainier: Theoretically, technology should make knowledge more accessible. Of course, back when TV came out, everyone was going to learn all sorts of stuff and be geniuses, yet how many people use it educationally? The same is probably true of computers and the internet.

Renee: The basis for the modern education system goes back to a Prussian military model designed to produce an efficient industrialised state for war, which requires a population to be smart enough to work in an advanced economy, but not so smart that they actually start asking critical questions. There's nothing new there. The classical notion of education being to enlighten the individual or as an opportunity for personal growth has always been very much on the fringe since the advent of mass education.

Yes, I'm very much in favour of developing a truly beneficial community based approach to learning that would allow the individual self-development whilst serving the immediate community. However, this would require a massive, massive shift in the culture as a whole, and that will never occur because it would also probably make us quite second rate as an international economic player, and it would also mean that parents wouldn't get free babysitters while they went off to work so they could make the minimum payments for that huge new plasma screen TV they just bought on their maxed out credit cards...

The thing is though that most people, both the politicians and businessmen and also the average people, do want the status quo. The reality is that learning is irrelevant. People want qualifications and job opportunities, not a degree in something deemed useless such as philosophy, art history or anthropology. The cultural elite in the west, are perhaps rightly maligned (though not entirely) for espousing a "let them eat cake" attitude towards education. Ultimately, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

In the ongoing quest to find great deal on eBay or even to find items you can flip, one of the interesting approaches is by looking for misspelled items. One of the most common misspellings was "labtop" for "laptop". This misspelling is so common that some people listing laptops actually use the word "labtop" in their title. Check it out :)). See http://misspelling.kiev.ua - "Misspelling or Bad Spelling"

Effective educators need to like and respect their students and have a burning desire to teach their chosen subjects. The problem for academics is summed up in a simple saying coined many years ago,

Primary teachers love their students

Secondary teachers love their subject

Tertiary academics love themselves

With respect, Woodyblues, you do oversimplify matters concerning learning and love. The 'saying coined many years ago' is cute but also highly Romantic, imagining childhood as an idyllic time and academic pursuit in adulthood as narcissist.
I prefer to question the context. Perhaps it is true that the profound discoveries of young children, in learning how to read and growing in confidence in expressing their thoughts, are expected to receive accolades. Yet if this is so for the young, why shouldn't older people be encouraged and supported in their attempts to express their thoughts also?

In a different vein, my life has been changed wholeheartedly by my students' integrity and passion to rebel. Never have I been so moved as when students have looked to me for honest sharing about myself and what I believe. Ofcourse, a teacher cannot devulge private details on request, but the very questions (and questing way in which we sought to learn together) identified that power and purpose is found within relationship.

No job security, no infinite promise of monetary or emotional fulfilment enables such discretion as is required by the young of adults in their midst. Such discretion is love. It is the commitment to be present to the concerns, wildness, feebleness and injustice of the body of students. When this is a Eucharistic body, in a prayerful school, the students, staff and parent community is shaped by the power of the Holy Spirit. Somewhere, amongst the angels and the tigers, we become one in spirit and in truth.

In any discussion we have understand the causation of the problems first then work from there. This is particularly true in health and education as political interference in these systems is the root cause of the problems.

When a politician espouses his/her education dogma, especially from the two parties Labor and Liberal that are the only ones to have governed in Australia, we should first look at how these parties have contributed to the problems. On a different thread some of us put together a list of what the parties, allegedly so concerned about education standards, had done to destroy the State system.

These were:

1. Underfund public education giving State Schools less resources and a bad name.
2. Take money from the State schools and give it to the Private Shools.
3. Allow Private schools to expel problem kids and dump them into the State system.
4. Don't give back up support to State School teachers who have medically diagnosed learning disability children in their classes
5. With no training or support expect State School teachers to deal with the added burden of allowing more disbled kids into the State system ... lessening the use of special purpose schools.
6. Undermine the teachers further by blaming them for everything that is wrong with education.
7. Never acknowledge the marking and preparation that teachers do after hours in there own time and on the weekend and definitely don't pay them for it.
8: Allow children who do not speak even a single word of English into classes with only 40 minutes of English as a Second Language help each week.
9. Place inexperienced teachers into the most difficult schools then wonder why they leave and the children fail.
10. Underfund remedial services ... so the kids with difficulties get an hour a week when they should get 5 hours a week or more...
11. Overcharge Educational facilities through other departments for services rendered bleeding funds from the system.

Pollies can plead guilty to most of the things in this list and yet unashamedly bleat ... we have the answers.

Opinionated2:

1. & 2. Why should parents who put their kids into the private system have to pay twice for education? No, people shouldn't have to be part of the state system if it isn't in line with what they want their children taught (both curriculum and "values") and they shouldn't have to fund such a system. This may seem hard to believe to the mother-state fascists, but I'm pro-choice but I don't see why someone who is pro-life should have to have morally objectionable values crammed down his or her children's throats and pay for the privilege, just because such a person falls on the wrong side of the ideological line. The modern education systems of the west are quite laden with "values". If we really live in a society where there's a separation of church and state (which I hope we do), then let's get real and stop funding all "isms" via the public purse and make everyone fund their own dogmas. As it is, we selectively do that and then penalise people who don't want to be part of it.

3. Private schools are a business and their customers expect certain things. Should people at the cinema be forced to put up with idiots carrying on, or should the cinema be allowed to eject those who can't behave themselves?

4. I agree, although I think this could be better handled in a school that specialised in such things, rather than a one-size-fits-all system.

5. Ditto.

6. You're spot on there.

7. Yeah? So no other white collar workers do unpaid overtime? The seven hour working day must suck, and the twelve weeks of holidays per year must hurt too.

8. - 10. I agree.

Shorbe,

Your comments on my points 1 & 2 - I am not saying that we shouldn't have private schools and I too am pro choice. But you don't rob Peter to pay Paul... you put enough money in to finance both so that ALL get the benefits of a good education. Both should be funded properly!

3. Private schools are a business and so are State schools, why can't people see that? The first law of business is to fund it properly - see above again. Your cinema argument doesn't really apply... as another cinema isn't forced to to take the riff raff expelled from the first cinema. State schools do have to take the expelled private school kids. Private schools should have to deal with their own problems... and solve them themselves ... not dump them into the state system.

4. I might agree (depending how it was done)that it might be better done in a school that specialised in such illneses but... they won't fund more support teachers so I doubt if they will fund other institutions ... even if the greater benefits were proven.

7. Shorbe ... many people do unpaid overtime and it is all wrong... Go stand point duty in a classroom for 7 hours a day... then get back to me on their remuneration package.

Education in all areas has been underfunded for years and is full of top heavy departments. I am not against private schools ... it is the diversion of funds from the State to the private that I am against. Fund both of them better.

As for taxpayers having choice.... that is a bit of a furfy.... most low income earners have no choice whatsoever in eductaion.

Opinionated2: Who'd pay for it though? Australians are all for a socialised system so long as someone else takes financial responsibility. I say go one way or the other, but people really do like to have a bit of a whinge in this country.

My cinema argument does hold because the patrons at one cinema are not forced to fund other cinemas. In short, I don't believe in the legitimacy of the state.

I'm also of the mind that education is wasted on most people in the west. Aside from providing free baby sitting, after grade six, I think school is largely a waste of time and people don't learn a damned thing. This might all be different if we changed the compulsory, syllabus based model, but then again, I'm not so sure. I'm more than a little cynical about human nature. Pearls before swine and all that.

As to more funding for special types of education, I don't have a problem with people throwing their own money away on a problem, just with them demanding other people also contribute.

As far as unpaid overtime goes, that's the job and people are aware of that when they apply for a job. If they don't like it, they don't have to do it. I've generally been pretty slack when it comes to doing extra, but then I've also never expected that it's my right to curry favour with the boss or get a promotion without being really conscientious.

You're also assuming that I haven't worked in education simply because I'm extremely unsympathetic to both teachers and students. Nothing will make one a misanthrope faster than being exposed to the raw horror of a classroom (William Golding, for example, was a teacher), which is why I'll quite possibly homeschool my own.

Your final sentence simply isn't true or both private schools and selective government schools (such as Melbourne High School) wouldn't have lots of kids whose parents came to this country with nothing, not even an understanding of English. It's all about an attitude that values excellence and learning.

Funding.

One thing I did gain from the three school boards on which I served was that "state" (cwlth or state) funding of non-government schools disadvantages both the ordinary and the disadvantaged, twice over.

Neither of the two non-govt schools took as their student body, the region/area social demograpic. Indeed, in one school with a nominal feed from one suburb, a suburb that had the highest level of Aboriginal residence in Perth, only one Aboriginal student was evident!

Hence, government schools servicing that suburb essentially took one hundred percent of this disadvantaged demograpic. Outcome? Less funding per student for all students in that school if the disadvantage of the Indigenous student was to be addressed.

This is repeated across the nation, without let, hindrance or input by alleged academics, certainly politicians.

Answer, well, for a start, ALL schools take their dependency demographic.

No person, teacher, politician, unionist, or academic will ever convince me that "state" funding as presently disbursed meets our allegedly egalitarian national ethos.

In spite of our constitution, we favour religion in our funding model.

For some this is a very sad outcome, for both teacher and student alike.

Sapper

A good degree holder and researcher might not be a good teacher.No doubt a teacher needs a good academic record but he/she should have personality by which he/she would be well accepted to his/her students.
His/her neurolinguistic version will have to be attractive with well developed convincing capacity.Mere educational qualifications may not serve the purpose of a teacher.

Shorbe,

The Australian Govt have been running huge surpluses. We can, at the drop of a hat, go to a war in Iraq costing 100's of millions of dollars... and yet you ask who will pay for it?

I am against the war in Iraq because of the flawed intelligence used to start it (it may be illegal under international law) and yet I don't get a say in where my money is spent.

I would far prefer our kids be educated than our soldiers fighting in a trumped up war.

Sorry Shorbe, teachers aren't informed about the unpaid overtime when they start teaching... it is just expected of them ... and of course they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they don't do their marking in their own time the kids complain because they rightly want their results. So the teachers give up their own time to benefit the kids... what rotters they are for giving their time!

Teachers are pretty special people Shorbe... and most of them take their roles very very seriously.

I still don't think your cinema argument is relevant and your last sentence is patently wrong. Of course some people manage to scrape together the funds to send their kids to private schools but most people in the low socio-economic can't afford to. It aint just attitude...it's bucks!

So which system do you prefer?.... all the way with the State system or all the way with a fully privatised system run basically by the churches?

Opinionated2: You won't get an argument out of me about the Iraq War. I was living in London at the time and marched against it because I considered it immoral, ill thought out, a massive waste of taxpayer money, and would create more problems than it solved -- all of which is proving true. I have no sympathy for many of the British people though who had a viable alternative to Blair and his cronies in the Lib. Dems. (Charles Kennedy, the leader at the time, was a strong critic of the war) yet passed on the opportunity.

No, teachers do know what their job will involve before they start. I had to do marking, lesson planning, etc. when I did my training. Along with the nice students, I also had to deal with some little rotters. I knew what the job was going to involve within the first month of my Dip. Ed. course.

Private school teachers do have to spend a lot of extra time, but state school teachers don't. The students don't get much homework at all. I have seen teachers (who are well organised) use their free lessons to do a lot of this paperwork. Also, they stockpile lesson plans and resources to streamline their jobs. An extra hour or so per day still only makes it an eight hour day.

We'll have to disagree on the cinema argument. My last sentence isn't wrong in my experience. I went to a private school that drew mainly from working class parents (and many students travelled up to an hour each way rather than attend the local state school), and we had a fair number of Greek and Vietnamese students whose parents had come to Australia with nothing (and couldn't speak English at the time), yet within their own lifetimes, those people had become middle class and their children had become doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants. Australia is, despite governments' best attempts to penalise or discourage hard work and entrepreneurialism in small business, a land of opportunity for those willing to try.

Shorbe,

It appears we are close to agreement on many of the things we have typed so that is sometimes just how it is.

I know many teachers, mainly in the State system and they do lots of work at home. Even in their free periods they are still on call to attend to students who require their services and then take mountains of marking home as well. Ask a seniors English/History teacher about marking.

I'm not really sure that as a student teacher they see the real conditions in the Education system. They see a snapshot but it is only when they are in the trenches that they see the real Education System.

Everyone has an opinion on teachers and yet from my experience they are a dedicated, hard working lot who don't get the thanks they deserve. In what other industry do you hand your treasured children over to someone to educate them and correct the mistakes we (the parents) have often caused in the kids.

Recently my daughter got an OP1 (Qld) in her HSC results and we wrote to both her High School and her Primary School teachers to thank them for their efforts in helping her to achieve those results. The Primary School was so pleased for the recognition that they placed the letter on the front page of their newsletter.

It appears that Primary School teachers very rarely get thanked for the excellent work they do, and very rarely hear how their students have progressed.

To all the teachers out their I thankyou for your hard work and wonderful efforts.

Opinionated2: Maybe the systems are radically different here, but I worked in a government school in the U.K., teaching only A level subjects (last two years) and sure there was marking and so on, but it wasn't unmanageable. I guess we're just comparing anecdotal evidence though.

Yes, being a teacher is a unique profession, but I think there are plenty of other professions that are just as special. I'm just not that inspired by most of what I've seen in the education system or most of the people I did my training with -- most were middle of the road, but hardly inspirational. I've only met a few polymaths or truly gifted teachers I think, and I've met plenty who were borderline brain dead or actually had some outrageous ideas about education. Yes, most teachers might care and they might work hard at what they do, but so do most other people out there. One thing that does make teaching strange or difficult is the poor behaviour of students, and even parents, that most other professions wouldn't have to put up with. I think that really needs to be acknowledged and sorted out.

I'm glad your daughter had a great educational experience, but dare I say that a large part of that may have been to do with your home environment and also her as a person?

A teacher is considered as back bone of a nation.But teacher is also a humanbeing;he/she has aspirations like other professionals.His/her demands should have to be given as importance as others by policy makers of the country.