Palimpsest is right, it is the quality of the teacher. What is the use of comparing Shakespeare with Big Brother if the teacher can't explain what's interesting about either?

But using ignorant examples does not help your cause Dale.

If you must compare Big Brother with Elizabethan entertainment, then compare it to 16th and 17th century public executions - mostly unscripted, tasteless, voyeuristic garbage that achieves notoriety for people who otherwise don't deserve any.

Or, if you must compare Shakespeare to modern dramatic performances, why not well-scripted shows which comment intelligently on today's society, like The West Wing and the various works of Joss Whedon?

Yes, shows like Big Brother are cultural phenomena that will one day be studied by historians (if there are any left), but not as great art, or even mediocre art, of our era - it is not art at all.

Also, while Shakespeare's works were first and foremost performances, to say that he wouldn't understand studying drama in its written form is plain wrong. Do you think he travelled in both time and space to read and hear the foreign stories his plays were based on? He well knew you could learn from books, even though you could take that learning and transform it.

Even the Younger Pliny understood that earlier "writers" performed their works, even though all he had to look at were the written words. Are today's students so thick they can't work out that these written works of Shakespeare were performances? Again, that will probably depend on the teacher and how it is taught.

If teachers can competently explain the differences between texts, as well as similarities, then all is well. But the texts do matter. If Big Brother is being taught as some kind of comparison with Shakespeare (and why else bring them together?) then something is rotten in the state of Australia.

Mercurius,

I am not uncritical of the government school “system”, but I am a defender of its schools and an opponent of the teacher-bashers who regularly denigrate the work done in them and who hypocritically call spending around $7,000 per student in a government school “throwing money at the problem” but who remain silent on the $20,000 fees charged by some private schools, which by their reasoning should be called “shovelling huge amounts of money at the problem”. Government schools do need people to speak up because they are under regular attack. But they also need to reflect seriously on their own faults rather than play into the hands of their enemies. This means they should be unashamed about supporting high standards of discipline and of academic achievement.

Palimpsest,

Secondary schools do not get twice the funding per student of primary schools. Victorian government schools no longer even have a staffing formula. Theyare funded on a de facto voucher system. Last year, the per capita payments were $5,141 for prep to grade 2, $4,376 for grades 3-4, $4,197 for grades 5-6, $5,491 for years 7-8 and $5,821 for years 9-12. The primary average is $5,003; the secondary, $5,711. There were also base funding - $36,565 for primary schools and $340,124 for secondary schools – and special program funding. These amounts reduce in an illogical fashion with the growth in the size of the particular school once it reaches 500 students. A secondary school of 500 started with $3,195,624; a primary, with $2,538,065. In this case, a secondary school got, not 100 per cent more than a primary school, but 26 per cent, which reflects the additional costs of specialist classrooms, the need to provide elective subjects (which tend to have smaller classes than compulsory subjects) and the slightly lower teaching loads in secondary schools (reflecting both the extra work involved in teaching senior students and the historical fact that secondary teachers used to be far more willing to stand up for their profession than primary teachers).

Technology has far more to offer education than Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and nifty Graph drawing programs. If you really want to know where education is headed then read this article..

http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3210506.html

Goodbye stuffy classrooms, prison-like institutions and dusty old books. If you ask me todays schools are far too much LIKE the schools we suffered in the 'good' ol' days BUT that's all about to change and the schools of the future look FANTASTIC!

Thank you technology!

There will always be a percentage of students who will not be able to cope with learning what is deemed necessary at any time; and they are students with learning disabilities. Also, students with specific learning disabilities will also struggle. Schools in the State I reside do not have the resources to assist these students. In subjects they find difficult to comprehend (eg English or Maths ) students tend to behave badly on the basis of preferring to have a reputation as a trouble maker rather than as being a dunce. They do not appreciate that while they are struggling in one area, they are often doing well with other aspects of their education or life. That is, misbehaving students are seen to be students who need discipline; but bad behaiour is often an indication of not coping.

Whether teachers are good or bad is immaterial in relation to the learning disabled students; they will not attain National Standards. Students with specific learning difficulties are hard to assess, they cope very well in some subject areas, and they are often deemed to be lazy in the subject area they are struggling with.
The matters of learning ability will still be a feature of Home Education or learning via the Internet.

We can get very excited about people not spelling properly, but surely if the message that is being expressed is understood, that's the important matter. If somebody was to write the Prime Minister is "arogant"; that is as easily understood as to use the word "arrogant", "arrogent", "arogent" or "arragant". "Arrogant" is the correct spelling but it is possible to know what is meant when using the other spellings. Let's face it we all make errors spelling, no matter how careful we are.

Ant,

There are two problems with the 'spelling doesnt matter as long as you are understood' theory.
1. Employers can/will/do use spelling ability as a discriminator in evaluating potential employees. Those who have managed to learn to spell demonstrate their 'superior' learning ability. In business circles poor spelling IS noticed and reflects negatively on the writer.
2. a certain amount of our culture and history is preserved in our spelling. Ideally we ought to learn that history and absorb that culture through learning to spell. In losing our spelling we lose our culture.
There are also good arguments for changing to phonetic spelling, particularly for all those people trying to learn English as a second/third/fourth language.
Perhaps we should develop a phonetic spelling and allow it alongside 'correct' spelling much as the Japanese have Kanji and Hiragana.

Waterboy, it seems that you belong to the baby boomer generation. I know your right in relation to spelling being seen as a sign of intelligence by some people; but as indicated in my last post people can be very talented but have a specific learning disability in say spelling. Rote learning spelling lists does not indicate any kind of creativity or aptitude for anything in particular. Being good at spelling just means that a person has an ability to spell, nothing else.

The theme of my last post was that teachers, no matter how good, are not going to be able to be able to bring students up to National Bench marks

Young people seem to have an afinity in using technology; a lot of older people would not be able to compete in relation to the use of new technologies. Can any conclusions be drawn from this observation?