“Historically, the education debate has focused on issues such as more money, smaller classes and more teachers, as shown by debates in these pages during the past 12 months. Equally important is the cultural significance of education, something the prime minister clearly understands.”

This is correct.

There are areas of boy’s education in particular that have gone backwards over a 30 year period. But 30 years ago, it was quite common to have a class size of 30 or more students, and there was no such thing as teacher aids.

So what is the reason for this backwards decline over that 30 year period?

Ah - another dishup from Kevin.

Same suet of vague ideas and throwaway lines about curriculum influences (by people he likely doesn't talk to), the same brave, defiant and insubstantial gestures in the general direction of “the left”

And most notably, a complete disregard for the practicalities of and implications of the rollout of $90 millions' worth of Chaplaincy grants.

Has Kevin seriously examined the concerns of the Independent Education Union of Australia?
I can read no evidence that he understands their concerns, that he sees anything of their point. Or perhaps their worries weren't leftist enough to merit his view.

Or is he just too busy, fixing his gimlet eye on his "moral compass"?

Sir Vivor,

I’ve talked to teachers. I’ve lived with a number of teachers.

Why is this so?

“While girls’performance in literacy results has remained relatively stable over the past 25 years, overall, boys’results have fallen to a significant degree.

Between 1975 and 1995 the proportion of 14-year-old male students who demonstrated mastery on reading tests declined from 70% to 66%, while the corresponding proportion of female students changed little, from 73% to 74%. From 1975 to 1998, the mean score for male students in reading comprehension decreased significantly, from 50.2 to 49.0. The results of female students did not change significantly during the same period (rising from 51.1 in 1975 to 51.3 in 1998).”

http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/publications_resources/profiles/educating_boys.htm

So why has there been a backward decline in 50% of the students, and why should parents continue to listen to teachers and their excuses?

Any answers?

I find it somewhat fascinating, that when people talk of education going backwards, they fail to mention the new skills students learn today.

Tell me... were IT skills taught to students 30 years ago? Did students know how to use microsoft word, or powerpoint?

What about mathematics? Did slide rules assist students in triggonometry? Did the students learn triggonometry in senior high school?

We hear about how students learned latin back then, and yes, I'll admit that literacy may not be taught as well today as it has been in the past.

But don't ignore the vast amounts of information that have been learned in the last three decades, and must also be taught to students.

And in regard to the whole chaplain thing... I still have yet to see a decent explanation as to why psychologists or councillors couldn't have been offered instead without all this kerfuffle. It would have made sense, and it wouldn't have been blatant politicking, which leads me to believe that that's really all this has been.

Some wit long ago defined a fool as one who comes to believe his own propaganda, and Kevin Donnelly once again demonstrates the truth of that definition with yet another vacuous straw-man piece recycled from The Australian.

A long-serving Liberal Party apparatchik, Mr Donnelly keeps serving up the hypocritical cant about values: John Howard right, Labor Party, teachers and teacher unions wrong. And wrong for at least four decades now, according to Kev (notwithstanding Liberal Party dominance of the political scene for most of that time).

For Kev, it all began with “the progressive education movement of the 1960s and '70s, the belief is that children should be left to their own devices and that adults should not impose a strong moral framework”. (I wonder how many students of that era remember those halcyon days?) Then came the “self-esteem movement of the '80s and '90s, when education was reduced to therapy on the basis that nobody failed, compounded the problem as lessons focused on what was immediately entertaining and relevant to the world of the student.” (Oh bliss! Yet why did I fail Year 11 Maths?)

And, unless I’m misreading Kev’s rant about post-moderism in education, the rotten state of education continues into this century despite 10 years of John Winston Howard’s wisdom.

I especially loved Kev’s quoting Pope John Paul II’s concern for “the lack of confidence in truth”. You see, I’d just finished reading about how the PM and Alexander Downer sparked Australia's biggest biological terror scare last year when they exaggerated test results to claim white powder sent to the Indonesian embassy in Canberra was a "biological agent" when they were explicitly told that it was nothing of the sort. It was shown to be flour.

The irony is so cute - on the day that the latest of the litany of Howard’s lies is publicly exposed our Kev is regurgitating our PM’s concern for the enduring truth to be taught in our schools.

This isnt about values and schools - this is another position paper propagating contempt for educators and in turn those he sees as being on the left

Our education system is responsible for churning out world leaders in science, the yarts and business - most of them have sound values one would assume - we punch above our weight in these matters - the US is awash with Australian educated CEO's -

all this in spite of Donelly's assumption that for years education at all levels is a cpative of the left - well if it is, it is doing a pretty god job in spite of that - or more to the point because of that - or maybe those who decry the public institutions reckon all the success stories come from home schooling or the private system - I dont think so.

The broader debate on values is a weak attempt to create an arbitrary point of difference between us and them - the them usually being marginalised migrant or refugee groups who are here already or want to come here -

this essayist has been duped into being part of that - and is having a ideological dig at the unions et al along the way.

I am surprised to see the matter raised again - Howard, Costello and Nelson dropped it from their script a good while ago when it failed to gain traction with the people at large -

Until rececntly this country didnt have a problem with values.