A number of pundits have commented on Australia's educational decline. For example, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

>>The 2009 [PISA - Program for International Student Assessment] results released last week show a 13 points drop compared to Australia's performance in 2000. It's also the case that other international tests like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) show that our students are consistently beaten by students from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.>>

(PISA a downwards slope for our students, Online Opinion, 16 December 2010.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11382)

But why is this happening? Why are we falling behind the rest of the world?

Well, now we know the answer and, unsurprisingly, it turns out the "know-it-all" pundits were wrong.

China is the culprit.

Let me quote from a recent report in The Age:

>>A team from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development …has just come out with a fascinating little study mapping the correlation between performance on the …PISA… examination .. and the total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of gross domestic product for each participating country. …

The results indicated ''a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population,'' …This is a global pattern that holds across 65 countries that took part in the latest PISA assessment.'' Oil and PISA don't mix. As the Bible notes…'Moses arduously led the Jews for 40 years through the desert, just to bring them to the only country in the Middle East that had no oil. But Moses may have gotten it right, after all. Today, Israel has one of the most innovative economies, and its population enjoys a standard of living most of the oil-rich countries in the region are not able to offer.>>

See:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/skills-not-drills-for-survival-20120311-1us9o.html#ixzz1osJBQCvJ

And indeed, as commodity prices have risen our relative performance in education has declined.

Any why have commodities prices gone through the ceiling?

Largely because of demand from China.

QED.

It's all the fault of the Chinese.

Come now Steven.Blame it all on China.It is our own great fault that we in the West have let education slip.It is our own great fault that we have let China take over manufacturing because we are just too damned lazy to get innnovative and do something.

Israel get $ billions in aid from the USA BTW ,which is broke.The ordinary people of Israel get treated badly though not as bad s the Palistinians.Average male sperm counts have dropped by 40% since the first Gulf war due to depleted Uranium and some new nuke the USA is using.Is that caring for the Israeli people? They are getting shafted like the US people.

Steven, that is beautiful.

clearly..the topic is shopped [commisioned]..to pure/pose
or adgebnda

plus neatly puts up a bullwork
against china 'interfering'..in itan

no oil israel...[clever]..highly educated
oil means dumb..[them dumb 'towelheads'][iran]

its clever stuff steven
but it has racist overtones

have you been to them schools[and looked]
its mainly jewish tenured teachers..[much like in all proffesions]
teaching by and large eager chinese students..and the next generation of jewish leaders

the disparity if any
comes from the poor english skills
of the imported students..

[howard went big on making schools [and health]
pay their own way..so in rushed plenty
wanting our education system...

dumbing it down[while keeping the pretence
of numbers..getting higher educated up]

too clever by half

[the numbers might simply reflect
the influx]..of non native citisenry]

how many not jews
in high school is israel
what % arab...[why so low]

can you..shed any light on the topic?

In fairness guys I did tick the humour box on this one.

:-)

OUG, Arjay, Hasbeen seems to be the only one who recognises a wind-up when he sees it.

There are many examples of lazy wealth and lazy, stupid people.

Putting cultural cringe behind us and looking for our own solution, Norway can help us.

They created a smart wealth fund ( from oil revenue ) which invested carefully. For example, SAFCOL.....South Australia Fishing Co-operative was bought by them.

They also have an essentially stable population. They are not investing like us in more people, which is an investment in more pollution.

The billions that Australia spends on growth infrastucture and services, should be spent on education, health and emerging technologies.

Denmark with 5 million people,use this strategy and export all over the world.

Time to implement balanced migration ( 70,000 "out", 70,000 "in" ) and get rid of the baby bonus. ABS data shows that our birthrate is more than double our deathrate.

All the best.

Ralph
( google, Stable Population Party and Sustainable Population Australia or www.population.org )