Education, the catch cry for every politician. I've been listening to these cries for 4 decades now yet the standard of literacy is at it's lowest since schooling started. An apprentice in the 60's was 20 times more intelligent & competent than your average Uni graduate now. We have used up multi billions on education for what ? To get to where we're now ? The low point of literacy is in fact the high point of dumbing down intelligent young people. It's called social engineering for consumerism. Looks like they're on a roll.
A couple of my young friends were knocked back by major australian airlines because they hadn't gone through Uni. Well, now only 35 one flies an A340 & the other a B777 overseas. Their flying school mates are still waiting to step up from the Bongos
I constantly rectify Uni educated engineers' designs to actually make things work.
I left school at 14. Education has become a tool to easily get the snout into the trough rather than making a useful tool out of the Uni Grads.

I can only take it that no one knows what an arts degree or an economics degree does for you. As i thought it's an ego trip. When their finished their uni, they end up in retail or supermarkets, so i am not sure what it does for you. Uni to me is for doctors and lawyers,etc the rest is a waste of resources and tax payer funds. What this country needs is good honest workers, not more seat warmers.

Madame Poirot,

I'll stick by my statement, that:

" .... let's try to support the rights of every child, while they are still 'people of potentially anything' to give whatever they like a try - let's not pre-empt or pre-select who gets the first prize, and in this way, merely reinforce the status quo."

That includes tertiary education to the highest levels, trades to the highest levels and semi- and unskilled work, if that's what people eventually want to do. I've met some great people while fruit-picking and in factories and my last paying work was in a dairy, so I have the greatest respect for dairy workers - and I certainly loved the cows. So semi-skilled work can be genuinely satisfying, I'm certainly not denying that.

But don't exclude the formerly excluded, Indigenous people, working class, women, from opportunities that you take so much for granted that - on behalf of those 'other' people - you can spit on. With respect.

Cheers.

Joe

Dear Joe,

You presume to know me because of the way I present while posting. You presume I sit, and have always sat, in some ivory tower where (apparently) I take things for granted and (even) spit on people, while at the same time denying them opportunity.....

Your presumptions do you (and me) a disservice...sir.

With respect....

Interestingly, Joe, it seems that your parting sentence has left me feeling a tad irked.

I understand that you hold yourself aloft as a beacon and spokesman for Indigenous higher education, etc. You often ride gallantly into battle on OlO to press your agenda...and fair enough.
I do object, however, to you deliberately misconstruing, even misrepresenting both Pelican's and my comments on this subject. In your fervour to promote Indigenous higher education, you appear to be happy to select someone whom you deem a little too "hoity-toity" and flog 'em with your faux outrage.

I'm all in favour of Indigenous/working class aspiration of any kind.
In fact, although I'm not Indigenous myself, I did have occasion, courtesy of some sleight-of-hand by my pappy to be installed in an Aboriginal mission myself during my early teenage years. I spent a little while there in the same manner as the other girls. I always value it as one of the steepest learning curves of my formative years. I remember, in the afternoon after school climbing on board the bus the took all of "us" kids back to the mission - how it felt to be part of that extraordinary experience - coz I wasn't Aboriginal but I was being allowed to be part of it for a while...I never envisaged someone like you inferring that I would look down on those peers, like you just did, simply because I contend that skills and fulfillment can be found outside tertiary education.

Don't presume to know me, mate. You don't know my story.

Thank you, Poirot, but as a partial defence, I suggest that you misunderstand my words. If I could strip them back to their essentials:

"But don't exclude the formerly excluded .... from opportunities that you take so much for granted that .... you can spit on."

I apologise, I've just been re-reading Alvin Gouldner's paper on 'the New Class', of Intellectuals and Intelligentsia, on the class position and outlook of what he calls a 'flawed universal class' and I have over-interpreted your comments and those of Pelican as well.

The attitude of SOME of that new class, of ex-working-class professionals and academics, even amongst Indigenous professionals and academics, seems to be one of disdain, of 'pull up the ladder, I've made it', of closing off the opportunities which they themselves have had. I'm sorry if I seemed to attribute such an attitude to you or Pelican.

I certainly respect your experience, in fact I envy it :)

Cheers,

Joe