The problem with public education is that the bureaucracy determines what is taught. This may be fine some of the time but is likely to go against the wishes of many parents a great deal of the time. The only solution is to have a fully private system with low income earners given an education grant. Home schooling would be included in such a scheme.

On the revolutionary theme, I knew (but didn't sympathise with) many International Socialists, Trotskyites, Angry Brigade bombers et al in the '60s, who believed that (their kind of) change could be brought about only with blood in the streets. They tried to hi-jack any prominent person or movement to serve their own ends, e.g seeking support from the Beatles. Indeed, when I was walking down Oxford Street with John and Yoko in protest at the gaoling of Richard Neville, the IS/Trots tried to divert the march to the Home Office in support of the IRA. John's response of course was, "Well, you say you want a revolution, we'd all love to see the plan ...." No plans from Rudd during the election campaign.

Mercuriouser and mercuriouser ... when I was in Canada and the States, I found that a Merc was a Ford Mercury rather than a well-engineered German car. Be warned. I also found the inhabitants friendly and hospitable wherever I travelled. That was in 1962 and '78, but my daughter had similar experiences during the last 14 months.

There are easy ways and hard ways to get a first class honours in education and win university medals. The easy way is to be a vitriolic defender of public education, of the unions, of outcomes-based education and anything else the education faculties deem politically correct.

The hard way is to challenge the system: to say many people believe education reforms have not been as successful as the establishment would have us think. The hard way would be to write that education had been captured by ideological warriors who will cut down and dismiss politically 'insensitive' critics: perhaps people who criticise the establishment's fixation on environmentalism, on gender, on 'sorry' and on migration and multiculturalism. In fact, I suspect it's so hard to win a medal by challenging these views that it's never happened before.

You might of heard of the saying 'the cream rises to the top'; but to continue the analogy, when the cream thinks in the 'correct way' then it gets actively pushed to the top. I wonder if Mercurious has even won some sort of scholarship to the US for some higher degree? I know its important to ensure 'right thinking' people are in leadership positions, but after reading his articles on onlineopinion for so long, I was sure he would take a teaching job in a remote indigenous school and stay there for twenty years!! What happened, I wonder?

Alas, some of us receive the benefits of public education and then teach in disadvantaged schools, while some of us just preach the benefits and then head off to do bigger and better things.

Dane, I would have thought that as an Australian you might afford some measure of praise for an education system that enables the younger generation to leave and strive for "bigger and better things", but apparently you'd rather use it to make some sort of rhetorical point. That's big of you.

Your personal speculations are both inappropriate and wildly inaccurate and I wish to correct them publicly. There is a range of family, medical, financial and personal reasons behind my decision to leave. The only reason that is pertinent to this discussion is that, contrary to your canard, I applied for several dozen schools over 7 months in what you might term "disadvantaged" areas. But since neither DET nor AMES saw fit to offer me a position, I confess that not being able to earn a living here forms part of the decision. After all, I'm not UNESCO.

Nor have I sought or been granted a scholarship. I'm doing this on my own money saved for the last 15 years, as I did with my HECS payments. You know, personal responsibility, initiative, discipline and all that, the sorts of things that you and others constantly bellow that my generation don't have? BTW I wonder how many of today's critics got their degrees without having to pay a cent?

Still, as you seem to be in on the secret about how easy it is to win honours and a medal, perhaps you'd care to demonstrate? You seem to know all about it.

I used to think the Tall Poppy syndrome was a nasty myth until I read your post.

"These thieves in the temple voice pious prayers to the secular deities of “choice” and “falling standards”, when what we really need is to bring our children together into a place that lets each learn, participate and express their identity without leaving their religion, language or culture at the front door. At stake is a socially cohesive future for this country."

Oh dear, we need God back in the classroom do we? But which god do we allow in in a multibelief nation?

In 1872 Victoria led the way with free secular education, followed by Qld in 1875. [Sir] Samuel Griffith was an architect of the Qld secular system. Edmund Barton, our first PM, knew the score too, and insisted on free secular public education.

Here in Qld we had that until 1910 when state schools ceased to be secular spaces. South Australia is no longer, if ever it was, a secular education space. No idea about the other states.

What we could do with is a return to the real 'education revolution' of the 1870s, in particular in Qld to the 1875 Education Act that started us down the path of a real 'smart state' not the number plate logo we now have, with properly funded schools, intelligent teachers, real school managers and a system not based on a hybrid jailcumfactory method of education.

Standards were never 'high', and we kid ourselves to think they were.

Schools were different, we suffered Latin, whereas none have to today. We all tipped caps and tugged forelocks and resented the coercive nature of school then, as students do today. Teaching was a path out of the working class then, as it is today.... only now teachers are less likely to get away with imposing themselves on young people.

The class system was the 'cohesive' glue no one challenged then. It remains as obvious as ever, but people no longer see it because, to a great extent, it was also sectarian and thankfully sectarianism has faded a little, except within the Liberal Party of course.

This essay is content free.

Mercurius

<i>we should all hope that Australia does not, in a revolutionary frenzy, abandon the public system of education that has served it so well for so many generations.</i>

The Australian people are already voting with their feet on the supposed transcendent “good” of public education. The flow out of the public system to the private system has been rising since the late 1970s, and today more than 40% of High School students attend non-government schools. Even Kevin Rudd has made it clear he has no romantic attatchment to the “public system of education.”

<i>KEVIN RUDD: I don’t care whether schools are government owned or non-government. What I am concerned about is the quality of education provided through those schools and their physical assets, infrastructure and the training of their teachers.</i>

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2089994.htm

<i>There is much to be done to restore public confidence in our education system</i>

What evidence do you have “public confidence” has fallen, and when did this decline begin?

<i>and the public discourse currently abounds with Cultural Revolutionaries who smash the tablets of public education without a thought for their heritage and value. These thieves in the temple voice pious prayers to the secular deities of “choice” and “falling standards”</i>

So you argue that while the public has lost confidence in the education system (presumably you mean public schools), you claim it is only “Cultural Revolutionaries” who blame “falling standards” and lack of choice. So you include people like Julia Gillard (the er, er, er Minister for Education). On choice, you include the NSW Education Minister and his recent decision to allow public principals to choose their staff? And the federal government’s commitment to continue funding private schools? And the state governments’ continued commitment to a class system of public education declining from the elite selective schools to the schools in upper-middle class suburbs to the suburban comprehensive detention centres.

OR are you suggesting that in fact standards are not falling and that “choice” is a non-issue among the confidence-less public?

And aren’t our cultural heritage and values EXACTLY what the “critics” are trying to preserve?