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The Forum > Article Comments > Strong on the critical and weak on the thinking > Comments

Strong on the critical and weak on the thinking : Comments

By John Ridd, published 9/10/2006

According to many, the education establishment is out of step with children's learning needs.

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Maximus,
I half agree with you public schools do need more resources, multi-media would be a great help as a prop for some teachers. Sadly the percentages are not good for education with the federal education budget disproportionately distributed. Approx 70% of students attend public schools, federal education budget appropriates them 30% of the funding, while on the other hand the approx 30% of private school students attract approx 70% of Julie Bishop's budget, even you Maximus can see how egaletairian in nature this formula is surely.
Posted by SHONGA, Tuesday, 10 October 2006 11:22:30 AM
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Overestimating personal qualities is not synonymous to being really IT.

What sort of education resulted in importing a professional workforce from an appropriate biological backgrounds
Posted by MichaelK., Tuesday, 10 October 2006 1:23:05 PM
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Mercurius,

I wasn't talking about Christian Brethren or ferals up at Murwillambah. However, if we're going to play stereotypes, I wasn't talking about the Chardonnay socialists and latte sippers who have seized control of the educational bureaucracy either.

You needn’t believe me though. Look at the statistics and you’ll find parents are voting with their feet. They’re leaving a public system full of apparatchiks who believe their job is to foist a politically correct worldview on children. A system run by people with a smug sense of moral superiority, stupefied by the ignorance of the masses. And the masses just don’t get it when it comes to multiculturalism, refugees, immigration, and the Aboriginal holocaust. God helps us, some of them even vote liberal! Can you imagine it?

Not that I would suggest someone who calls himself after Mercury, the messenger of the Gods could come across as smug.

Your point about peer reviewed educational literature is interesting. Let me be blunt: peer reviewed garbology is still garbology; while a Professor of Physics at a first tier university is still a Professor of Physics at a first tier university. I know it seems hard to believe, but lots of people think like me, and to discount them all as religious fanatics or drugged out hippies betrays much more about you than it about me or them.
Posted by eet, Tuesday, 10 October 2006 7:30:00 PM
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Glad to see eet isn't indulging in stereotypes about the "apparatchiks who believe their job is to foist a politically correct worldview on children". I've met and worked with dozens of these "apparatchiks" and they don't believe any such thing. They're honest hard-working professionals who have a mortgage and kids and try to make ends meet, just like the parents of the kids they teach.

And glad to see eet hasn't a shred of smugness in dismissing the collective works of tens of thousands of internationally accredited education doctorates as "garbology".

And 'Mercurius' is not a reference to the Roman god Mercury. It has other, more recent uses.

Nor did I suggest people who think like eet are religious fanatics or drugged out hippies. To paraphrase Hazlitt, Eet's slowness to understand makes him/her quick to misrepresent.

I was merely making the fairly uncontroversial point that a public curriculum has to cater for families from all walks of life. A public system will of necessity represent a compromise and a diversity of views. This is the nature of public life.

But if you want your kids to grow up in a little cocoon of like-mindedness, then by all means "vote with your feet" and go private.

Of course, there's nothing 'politically correct' about private schools which promise that "if you send your boy here, we promise he'll grow up to be exactly like you" and "at <college>, we turn out a very uniform quality of girl." These are verbatim quotes to my family from principals of two private schools you HAVE head of. Anybody else feel sick?
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 10 October 2006 8:58:29 PM
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Mercurius,

Wrote, “Anybody else feel sick?”

I’ve upset you now. Was it the quip about liberal voters?

I noticed you used the third person. When you debate someone in online forums feel free to address him or her directly. I mean even if we disagree, we’re unlikely to come to blows. But maybe I wasn’t your intended audience after all?

In any case, I take back the remark about you being smug; you’re smug and conceited.
Posted by eet, Tuesday, 10 October 2006 10:20:43 PM
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In Queensland the argument about falling standards, particularly in Maths, has picked up a great deal of momentum since there has been an expectation that teachers provide students with non-exam types of assessment. It was a simple thing to prime students pre-exam. Even the harder “process” type questions that were designed to separate the better students from the pack were often only slightly different from questions practiced in class. Non-exam assessment brings up questions about “Authorship of Tasks”. This is a teacher responsibility.

The appalling bias shown by the panels entrusted to ensure quality of student work has reduced the status of non-exam assessment to little more than compliance exercises. These assessment items are treated with scorn by many a Maths panellist.

Consider the amount of conversation, assistance, guidance and drafting that is required to be awarded a university degree. Many of those who obtain these degrees then insist that their students sit exams as the major form of assessment. “How else can we ensure high standards?”
Posted by passenger, Tuesday, 10 October 2006 10:59:31 PM
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