It is interesting that the author mentions Geoffrey Robertson. His wife wrote a book called “Puberty Blues” which is required reading as a part of the compulsory English courses in a number of high schools across the country. However her latest book is titles “How to Murder Your Husband (and Other Household Hints”), so students will be forced to read the book “Puberty Blues”, knowing that the author is feminist and has also written a book on how to kill their father.

While it is said that public schools are important for democracy, private schools are also important for democracy, as history shows that far too many governments or political systems have taken hold the education systems and used it to brainwash the minds of young people.

So the public schools should act as a check and balance on the private schools and vice versa. After all, we don’t want children being brought up in Marxist/feminism, and believing that their father should be murdered.

Australia ranks quite low on the scale for quality of education having experienced the system first hand at the higher education level and being able to compare that with the US and UK systems. Education here is peddled off much like groceries stacked on store shelves – literally a buy one get one free deal! Couple that sort of mass merchandising with a poor system at the institution level for evaluating the quality of programs especially those for reviewing the quality of teachers and you have a recipe for long term stupidity for a significant majority. The system is nicely setup for a few here and the few like to keep quiet about it. After all, any form of parity would increase competition and that’s not a good thing. Seriously – why do you people bother? Just go to the beach and do what you’re world renowned for doing – talking a lot, being lazy, and getting drunk.

HRS is deadly.

He pounces on Mercurius Goldstein's comment that Geoffrey Robertson had made some remarks supportive of one of the themes in the new book, "The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education".

HRS is breathless to tell us that Geoffrey Robertson’s wife has written a book called “How to Murder your Husband (and other handy household hints)” [in fact it’s not “Murder” but “Kill” – but who wants to be pedantic?]

From that HRS concludes that ‘…students will be forced to read the book “Puberty Blues” [also by "Robertson’s wife"], knowing that the author is feminist and has also written a book on how to kill their father.’

As one reviewer of this work of fiction says (yes it’s a novel by Kathy Lette) ‘the book is pure chick lit for the thirty- and forty-something crowd, with a lot of laughter thrown in to counterbalance the deadly accurate reflections of nuptial life. …Not a deep or memorable book by any means, it is nevertheless a good book to throw at your husband (be it figuratively or otherwise) when the going gets tough.'

What has Kathy Lette – her comic novel or her marital connection – got to do with this OLO book review?

HRS obviously sees the connections as he slides from fiction to farce: ‘So the public schools should act as a check and balance on the private schools and vice versa. After all, we don’t want children being brought up in Marxist/feminism, and believing that their father should be murdered.’

I wish someone would throw a copy of "How to Kill your Husband" at HRS…No, better still, throw a copy of "The Stupid Country". It might be more deadly.

As someone who had a less than adequate education in the "area" schools of South Australia, often taught by teachers who had only studied a year beyond the subject matter they were teaching and with no hope of reaching university entrance standard at such schools, I feel we should welcome the increase in numbers attending private schools. Why? Because the cost to the government should decrease. Private schools are subsidising the state system. There should be more money to spend on state schools.
Unfortunately the states have abused this with a "the Coalition is subsidising private education by funding it and not state schools" argument. This is nonsense and the politics of envy and greed at work yet again. It also makes the quite unwarranted assumption that everyone who sends their child(ren) to a private school is wealthy.
If every private school in Australia was closed tomorrow and the taxpayer had to pay the full cost of educating every child then the system would collapse completely. The states know this, they also know they could not fund a reasonable level of education for all but the economics of the situation is lost on most Australians.
The idea that state schools are "on fire" is ridiculous. There are excellent state schools and bad private schools and vice versa. There are excellent schools with few facilities and bad ones with many facilities.
But, if we recognised that, there would be no book and less for the states to complain about.

pricewatcher, if you're a product of the vaunted overseas education systems, and all you can do is prattle stereotypes and insult nationalities in response to the article, perhaps the Australian system isn't so bad in comparison after all.

Ultimately, I tend to think our system is indeed far less stringent than many overseas nations, such as say, Japan.
Much of the issue is indeed culture, though I suspect our teaching system isn't so far divorced from the UK - after all, there is a strong push to poach Australian educators to teach there.

Sniff, Sniff pricewatcher.
Do I smell whingeing Pommie?