Why is it that education in Australia is so lack-lustre? There are so many concepts that were so illogical to me, when a student. For starters: progressing to the next grade without having at least passed all subjects.

I was used to the idea that certain subjects were mandatory to pass: like the native language and maths. I was made to repeat form 2/year 9 overseas. because I failed two subjects, neither of which were mandatory subjects. Here I was put in form 6 because of my age skipping a grade!

There seems to be an obsession with age and not with achievement. With total disregard that the maturation of our brains is not linked to our chronological age. There is this peculiar idea that expecting a certain standard of achievement from our children is harmful. Why on Earth is that?

Kathryn, good on your mum. Isn't it sad though that a succesful educational outcome is so dependent on the level of engagement of your parents.

Anansi... it is hard to know 'the complete' answer for that question but I suspect it has a lot to do with our nation being a primary producer, food-rocks, and little else.

This requires little or no intellectual activity, indeed, thinking beyond these parameters threatens the ever increasing expansion of mining.

'Book learning' only has to extend to understanding the John Deere tractor manual... nothing else really matters.

Also, years of tariffs and protection, years of being a dumping ground for products, as we still are, mean there is little need for thinking 'what next', because 'next' always comes from outside, with no development needed.

And, as Horne tried to point out in 'The Lucky Country', before every goose in the nation took his title for the complete opposite of what he was saying, our leaders have never had to struggle to make a point.

Also, Australia is a highly compliant, aquiescent, nation, built on bulldust, unquestioned myth, and laziness, at least in the intellectual sphere.

Just read the newspapers, watch TV, listen to your neighbours, your fellow parents at P&C meetings.... observe how quickly parents 'bought prestige' without inspecting the promised outcomes of 'private' schools rather than starting to demand something better/different from the state schools.... in such observations can be seen the reasons for our shoddy education system.

Even at the 'academic' level, where one might expect a little intellectual rigour, to say nothing of vigour, there is little on offer. A handful of academics speak up every now and then but the vast majority hide in their bunkers doing nothing, saying nothing, being traitors to their role and supporting, willingly, the same as the boof-headed sports woman-bonker that our community praises every night on TV, until OUTRAGE.... one is exposed for 'crossing the Rubicon'.... and then the very TV programs that endorse, support, perpetuate, reify all this rubbish... turns their backs on it.

A token 'feminist' is wheeled out... creating 'training programs' for boofs... life continues as normal.

Australia.... we sow our own seeds of despair and unimagination.

The answer, 'they' do say, lies in the soil.

Blue Cross, that's so depressing.

From years of working in the medical field, I know that Australians have nothing to be ashamed of, for such a small population, for all the innovative thinking and inventions that we have contributed.

The sad thing is that Australians are largely ignorant of this. We may carry on about a cricketer of days gone by, or the skills of a footballer, but know nothing about what contributions fellow Australians have made to the world at large or Australian society as a whole.

What I find hard to understand is why there is this preoccupation in this young nation with 'working class' and 'professional/intellectual class'. It is wholly manufactured and artificial.

Here we are once again, lamenting the mediocre state of our education system, yet publically we sneer, scoff and belittle academia and intellectual discourse. Yet the irony is, that more and more parents are being sucked into paying through the nose for an education for their children that shoudl be the right of any child in this wealthy nation for just that, academic success.

Unless and untill the brightest of our children start choosing to go into teaching, into education our education system will remain peopled by a few bright increasingly discouraged passionate souls amid a sea of mediocre wannabees who couldn't cut it anywhere else.

At the moment, the comment is: teaching? Why would you want to do that? You could do......

"The sad thing is that Australians are largely ignorant of this. We may carry on about a cricketer of days gone by, or the skills of a footballer, but know nothing about what contributions fellow Australians have made to the world at large or Australian society as a whole."
Anansi, you have in a nutshell!

Anansi said "Unless and untill the brightest of our children start choosing to go into teaching, into education our education system will remain peopled by a few bright increasingly discouraged passionate souls amid a sea of mediocre wannabees who couldn't cut it anywhere else."

One of my children, who got an OP1, tells me he'd consider doing teaching, and being a maths science teacher, if it were not for the people who are already working in the system, and the structure and mentality of Ed Qld management.

Of course, the OP score is not an intelligence test and most students who work diligently can achieve a reasonable one, also, the cut off for uni' entrance is a market indicator only. That is, few people want to be teachers so the entrance score is low and there must be a lot of places, whereas to do medicine or dentistry the score is OP1 because the demand is high and the places few.

Unfortunately, this market based approach undermines any notion of 'the national interest', as with all market based solutions.

The QTU campaign to receive higher pay on the basis 'pay peanuts and you get monkeys' is a load of... nonsense too, because EQ is overrun with monkeys already. Far better to start lifting the job from being a low-end 'tradie' task to a high end 'professional' one by addressing the structure of the career.

I'd be opting for a 35-38 hour week, overtime, 4 weeks annual leave, and time-in-lieu arrangements to rebuild the 'long school holidays' teachers get now, so all those extra curricula tasks teachers do, getting the school play going, taking students to museums, running the debating club, all count as 'time worked' and are no longer regarded as being 'part of the vocation'.

I'd add in, sabatticals, payment for higher degrees, professional development expenses paid direct to individuals, taxed of course, and remove that from the grubby hand of principal control, and at least here in Qld, put an end to the massive casualisation of teaching where harldy anyone gets a full time gig.

I should add that despite my mother's ability to voice her concerns, it made little impact. I was eventually removed from the class permanently and went without English tuition for the rest of year 12. Not too sure what the school was hoping to achieve from that course of action; but I'm not too sure about what this school was trying to achieve in the broader picture either. Education was evidently not its primary concern.

Fortunately for me I had learnt to read well early, and was raised in an environment where one was forced to think critically. Consequently, the fact that I failed most of high school (yet continued to progress each year - again, uncertain of why ...) seems to have little impact on my later career options. If anything, I have had more academic success (later on) than any of my peers who were forced to sit through the various 'teachings' the school had on offer. Oh the irony!

Anansi, you raise a good point re: chronological age and school level. I find it quite bizarre. School is the only time in one's life where progression is determined almost exclusively by age. This in the face of enormous evidence that shows it to not be suitable model given differing developmental needs.

As for the teaching, when I wanted to be a secondary teacher (may go back to it later) I received the same response: 'But you could do so many other things?'. Not a nice reflection of community perceptions of school teaching.