Dear RANIER
Immorality and hypocrisy of Christian values ?

Care to elaborate ? Are you making a distinction between 'Church' values as you have experienced them and Biblical Values ?

Seems to me you are just hiding behind a pack of perceived hypocrites mate.
Further, your so called moral compass seems to be simply reactionary.

Before you start ripping into all the flawed Christians and flawed Churches, you might re-examine scripture and review the bit about beams and specks.. because we (the evil Christians) are not telling you that ur this or that or the other thing bad, but we are saying you need to turn to Christ as do ALL men and women. So, you come back with 'but you are a pack of immoral hypocrites' when the reality is we say ALL men are sinners. We don't point at you as the 'bad' guy and us as the 'good' guys. No.. we say mankind was meant to have a relationship with our Creator, to be filled with His Spirit, renewed in mind heart and body, and to walk in daily fellowship with Him.

If you are not at that point now, them we call on you and all who read these words to turn 'from' the self filled life and 'to' the Christ filled life.

To all of us.....
Lets re-capture that moral compass, in our inner beings.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Rom 12:9-1

Rainier,
I see that being an English teacher has certainly made a big difference in you.

You have now called people everything from “whores” to “wan-ker”. What an magnificent command of the English language you have, and such a high level of self-expression and general morality.

The important issue is how, or why does the education system allow teachers such as yourself to remain in that system. It means to me that the education system now has the most minimal of standards.

Bring on the Chaplains. I don’t think they can make the education system any worse.

Chris C
I am suggesting that you study the techniques that industry has found useful in identifying risks. I have seen a system in one school that was refined to such an extent that it was possible to accurately predict the most likely OP score of a grade 12 student from their marks in their first exams in grade 8. If their exam results were low in those first exams, then other steps were then undertaken to help increase the student's marks. The school did not want their students to get low marks. That is risk identification and risk control.

So far as safety committees are concerned, they should only act as watchdogs. The risk identification and risk control is carried out by everyone in that organisation, and not just someone on a safety committee.

Not having safety as the first item on the agenda of a general type meeting, is a very good indication that risk management is not a part of the general philosophy of that organisation, and I certainly would not like to work in that organisation.

As a former student & parent with three children ( two in different selective schools- one in opportunity class ) It is my assessment that while there are some, perhaps many, quality teachers out there. There are strong currents in the education system which seek equality of outcome -regardless of the different talents & efforts of the students. They don’t always prevail, but they are always there contending for the upper hand& in some cul-de-sacs dominate.

All too often it is more acceptable to have a class of mediocre students that a mixed bag of stars & failures.

Re Rainer:
Considering his unmatchable ability to always lower the moral & intellectual standard of a discussion he must be in line for some sort of forum 2006 award - maybe someone should mention it to GrahamY.

Horus,
I think the term quality infers that something is well above average or exceptional, and to have quality, then there must be some type of quality control system, which again comes back to risk management.

I have heard of teachers say that quality teaching is being carried out, but if I mention risk management to those same teachers, then they seem to have no idea of what I am talking about, so their quality control is suspect and their risk management approach is suspect also.

A quality teacher should be able to lift a student’s marks. If a student starts the year getting C’s, then a quality teacher should be able to identify what is wrong with the student and should be able to lift the student’s marks to B’s or higher, and they could use a variety of teaching methods to do that. That would be quality teaching.

However student marks are not increasing in time, and in areas such as literacy, the student’s marks have actually declined in the last 30 years. So unfortunately, I don’t think there is much quality teaching being carried out.

"However student marks are not increasing in time, and in areas such as literacy, the student’s marks have actually declined in the last 30 years. So unfortunately, I don’t think there is much quality teaching being carried out."

Yes, we've read this broken record statement about 60 times now.

Can't you go beyond these flat earth comments?

C'mon HRS, just try, you can do it! Believe in yourself! We are here to support you! We believe in you! You're the best!

HRS,

You persist in claiming that education should be run according to the terminology of your own industry, whatever that is. I persist in saying that it should not. For education to adopt your industry's terminology and way of thinking would be as silly as the reverse. I have never heard anyone in industry say that the first agenda item at their meetings is the principal's report, and I do not claim it should be or say I wouldn't work there because it isn't. I expect each field to run according its own purpose and nature.

You cannot run all schools from the one-teacher primary school with 10 pupils to the 150-teacher P-12 school with 2,500 pupils in the same way, but I will give you some insight into how my school works. It is a secondary college with some 1200 pupils and about 95 teachers (about 10 fewer than it should have, thanks to the previous Liberal Government).

There is a regular staff meeting. It has reports from the principal, the assistant principals, the curriculum committee, the health and safety person and so on, plus agenda items listed by staff members. It does not discuss individual students because that is not its role. It does discuss data such as AIM results, VCE results, staff opinion surveys, student opinion surveys. There is a lot of data for the school and like schools for comparison. There is a strategic plan guiding the school over a four-year period.

There are regular faculty meetings; e.g., English, Humanities, Arts, etc. They discuss their particular educational programs and other matters related to the overall curriculum.

There are regular sub-school meetings. They discuss matters of discipline and welfare and, sometimes, individual students.

There are various committees. The curriculum committee discusses the school's curriculum. The management advisory committee discusses staffing, working conditions, timetabling and the like. There are others, both ongoing and specific purpose, each with a particular role.

It's not that schools cannot learn from industry, but most of the ideas forced on schools from industry are rubbish: e.g., performance plans, annual reviews, bonuses, etc.