First a historical perspective:
'Your boy has just got his HSC, and yet he has no cultural interests. He despises classical music, never reads a serious book, and seldom uses a word beyond the range of a six-year old child. And he has no manners….this generation of teenagers is inferior in almost every respect to the generation of, say, the 1930s. (William F. Broderick, “The Ugly Teenager”, The Age, 7/2/1976)

Second, some observations:
It would be interesting to interview those now studying to be teachers in ten years. I suspect their views would be very different.

I began teaching with no idea what I would be paid, but pay kept falling as responsibilities increased. Beginning teachers in Victoria would need a pay increase of more than 40 per cent to reach the relative pay scales of the past. In 1975, a beginning Victorian teacher was paid 118.8 percent of male average ordinary time earnings. That equated to $65,379 as of January last year. A beginning teacher was in fact paid $44,783 then - a relative cut of $20,596!

Beginning teachers will find their idealism in conflict with the realities of their workplaces. They will find difficult students, unsupportive principals, colleagues who sell out the profession, a distressing workload and continuous change for no good purpose. They will be exploited and abused.

It would be too much to hope that a new generation of teachers will rediscover the commitment and the willingness to fight that my generation had to making education better. We fought and won many battles, but teaching has been going backwards for many years now and most of those in it are compliant and industrially weak and naïve.

Everyone seems to have a ready opinion on contemporary education. Many are bereft of data but strongly values-based - where evidence plays no part in their thinking. Some like Kevin Donnelly make a living churning out strident anti-public education books based on a pre-determined mind set while drawing a fraudulent picture of an entire education system captured by 'left ideologues'. John Howard and Julie Bishop put taxpayers' money where their political interests lie without engaging with any evidence except that fed by like-minded ideologues. They can rely on the Donnellys of this world to give them what they want.

Thankfully, Goldstein and Hughes spare us that, and introduce us to research that shows that the evidence 'does not support the portrayal of those in the teacher education system as leftist, activist or bent on political indoctrination of the young'.

The sad thing is, however, that the so-called debate especially over 'values' in education will go on - on OLO and elsewhere without the slightest regard for the facts. I can hear the contributors sharpening their pencils even now!

I know my children love it when they get young teachers. They say that they tend to be more interesting, they speak faster, and they have more energy and often are much more capable of making the class fun. Kids learn more when the class is interesting and fun.

I say bring on the new generation.

Little red book .

Little white bull.

Have now reached the age when most of my grandkids are married with their own kids coming on.

Unlike me who had to leave a bush school early to drive a wagon team, all our kids as well as
the grandkids have had college educations, one in fact on the payroll of Oracle, Bill Gates opposition.

As one who in his retirement has spent many years not only in sport, but also in political philosophy, macro-economics and the general social sciences, is at times anxious about the way the average twenty year old male is unconcerned with the way our society looks to be entering another phase of Western colonial intrusion into the Middle East.

The grandson working for Oracle spends much of his time now in China, and am always glad to spend time with him when home, asking questions, many of them political.

And was not sure to be happy or not when he said to me after a long discussion about the present global situation.

Grandpa, I know you've got a pretty good picture of what is happening in the world, and though I fully agree with it, from my own experience I am afraid you cannot do much about it?

Does this mean that many of our well educated young people are mostly living for the day, enjoying so much all our wonderfull technological advances, yet not so sure where all this will lead to?

There is a saying about the pace of city life, that your thoughts are always well to the front of the brain, never to the rear, that precious storehouse where some say we can easily find just plain commonsense, similar to out in that lonely place called The Desert from where Prophets Come.