Speaking as someone with an English, Irish, Scottish, French, possibly Roman, possibly Viking and definitely Rift Valley of East Africa background, I would like to point out that animals do not have a titles office to settle land ownership or the institutions of parliament, democracy, the rule of law and the judiciary to deal with disputes and the shaping of their world. Many of them depend on the character and the laws of humanity for the good and the ill of their lives.

The broad sweep of human history is one of greater inclusiveness - the ending of slavery, votes for women, the rights of workers to organise. Tolerance is a necessary virtue. If we think of our common humanity, we are not brothers or sisters, but we are literally cousins.

Of course, there are limits to tolerance if cohesiveness is not to break down.

It is not possible for teachers to teach tolerance effectively if children do not have it from their homes.

Kerryn,
This is a familiar tory tactic, it has been used extensively in the past by "Pig Iron Bob Menzies" reds under the beds, the yellow peril etc. What Bishop and Howard are about is teaching children to be conservative, and it may have already succeeded with the lying rodent winning 4 elections since 1996. Fear is a great motivator, it seems State Labor governments have not been successful in turning out little como, pinko, marxists so far, hell the ALP are nearly as conservative as the tories anyway.

good to see you back in form shonga
as ive said in my previous post, ideology and politics should not be used by EITHER side of politics to distract from the real issue-literacy being in decline.
i'd also be very interested in your reaction to the following statement from one of my previous posts on this topic Shonga:
"While 'intellectuals' like yourself patronise and belittle the community, all the community wants from the education system is children that turn 18 with reading and writing skills that reflect the fact they've just spent 12 years being educated. Why is this too much to ask? Why should a child be asked to evaluate abstract and quite frankly bizarre philosophies when calculating the interest on a home loan, learning the language of 200 million neighbours, or reading a job application is beyond them? When statistics irrefutably show that literacy is on the decline, surely the curriculum is deserving of criticism and adjustment."

wre - I think you are confusing literacy levels with work ready skills.

I think most students can read, write and operate a calculator well enough by the end of primary school to be as literate as Australians were in 1900. Additionally most sixth graders are capable of finding information on the internet and organising it for their school projects. They may have dodgy ideas about plagiarism and the abilities of adults to detect it.

Students who leave school after 12 years schooling have survived the regimentation of the classroom and unfortunately some may have lost skills through the miasma of boredom and coolness required to gain the street cred so important to some elements. However by the end of year 12 most students have grown enough to understand sarcasm, be able to question and developed the ability to reason as well as been exposed to higher mathematics, complex science, learnt further technical skills, learnt the rudiments of another language and developed a sense of self in the community that is seperate from their identity within the family.

Then the lucky student becomes a worker and has to learn the disciplines necessary for the workplace including givens like consistent attendance times, consistent spelling and consistent mood. The worker has to know the business and increasingly workers are only hired if they have the experience to do the job. You can't train kids for the workplace in a classroom environment where the student teacher dynamics are very different to the boss worker relationship in a small business. Small businesses of less than 5 employees can't afford to spend 3 months training up an employee to become productive.

Similarly employees can't afford to undertake expensive training unless they have certainty that they will be paid a differential for their additional qualifications / certifications.

Ok, here is a view that is bound to raise the ire of many.

'Rubbish in... Rubbish out.'

Entry level requirement to get into a teaching degree is amongst the lowest. Heck, in an ironic twist of sexism, entry requirements for men to enter this area of female domination have been markedly relaxed. Of course, its much more important to maintain ideolgical fuzzy thinking social facades like eekwalatee, than ensure the high standard of participants.

Teaching is very poorly paid, considering the implications of the 'product' that teachers produce, namely... indoctina... , er l mean, educated brains. This attracts a certain type of person. Dare l say it, the one's who travel paths of least resistence.

Unfortunately, there is as much indoctrination as there is education. The education system has long been guilty of teaching what to think as opposed to teaching how to think.

Of course, thinking hurts and ultimately it is very dangerous to SOCIETY for it to be infected with independent free thinkers. Thinking leads to truth and truth above all else must be sytematically thwarted, else the foundation of a civilised society will be undermined. Most effective way to do this is the half-lie/truth. Modern schooling is very effective in that regard.

Hence, modern schooling produces what our society is built upon... correct thinking, worker bees who will not question, will not seek the truth and will merely settle for their place as a cog in the machine.

To that end, l would say that the modern eduction system is a roaring success. It feeds the status quo and thwarts all possibility of free independent thinking.

Thinking is the disease... 'education' is the cure.

Good pluck brainiacs.

Sheesh, what a load of bollocks from beginning to end - not the article, but the vast majority of the posts. People with ideological axes to grind using the schooling of our children as the wetstones against which to sharpen said axes.
Go into most schools - public or private - and you will find a bunch of mainstream people teaching main stream stuff. There will - in every school - be some really talented teachers, some pretty good ones, some adequate ones and some crap ones - just as there are in any organisation or enterprise you care to name. There will also be a range of political and sociological opinions and beliefs. Schools are simply not the way ideologues like to describe them.
The reason standards are sometimes seen to have fallen are, by and large, because once only the top 20% of kids stayed on to year 12 and went on to uni, now about double the number stay on and go into tertiary education - no wonder it looks like standards have fallen. They haven't, there are just more kids competing at a higher level and 20% of them are not as exceptional as the top 20%. The fact that they are staying on is actually a tribute to their teachers, yet due to extreme ignorance by their badly educated elders (who love to wax smug about their grasp of the 3 Rs -pity about their lack of logic) is used as a stick to beat teachers with rather than a cause of congratulation.