So, Howard tells us that eucation is bieng overrun with "progressive" curriculum?

[Random_Australian]

And that we should avoid "learning fads"?

Another fine example of Howard Logic - not only do we improve services by keeping them the same, but also critical thinking is now "progressive" (and bad).

Take THAT, people with PhD's in education! You can keeping your fancy learning and your actual data, Mr Magic Howard has already got us covered!

As the old Red Dwarf quote goes: "WAKE UP YOU SON OF A BASTARD'S BASTARD'S BASTARD!"

Sorry about venting, but that particular quote got under my skin.

But seriously, what do my fellow DU'ers thinking about our standards of education?

[hot_ice72]

1. Slowly becoming one of the worst education systems in the developed world

Our education system is terrible. Or to put it optimistically, there is a lot of room for improvement.

Public education has teaching quality well below what it could be. If Australia could get public education to be as respectable as public health, our country would be in excellent shape.

We've got a terrible divide between public and private education. And with private education still getting large funding from the government, the idea of education being affordable and available to all is a concept slowly escaping Australia.

Hopefully Rudd's proposals will stimulate more spending on education from the Howard government. Or maybe i'll be voting labor come federal election. Deciding who's the lesser evil in Australian politics would be a full time occupation.

[Esra Star]

2. Hey, Hot Ice, welcome to DU. You are about one of twenty

Australians on this site.
Education always tends to go down the toilet when the regressives are in power.
They just burn off social capital, bank the pittance they get for it and
then trumpet that they are building the bank account.
They don't usually see the great cost of the folly.
When the progressives are back, it will take time to sort the mess.
So as you probably know education is the most important thing.
It is the only way enough people can actually see what the hell is going on.
I'll stop now,
Cheers

[hot_ice72]

3. So many issues, so little action

Hi Esra, thanks for the welcome. Once i discovered this site i couldn't help but get involved.

It's truly unfortunate education has fallen into the background. With the current issues of global warming and our water shortage, as long as parties pretend to be focusing on those issues they can forgo making promises on education.

It will be interesting to see what Rudd proposes to do, so far to my knowledge he's just began pointing out Howard's shortcomings. As long as he keeps pushing the issue we might one day see some improvements.

[Esra Star]

4. The issues Kevin Rudd will be emphasising are the ones

to help him win the next election.
Media will just report contentious views as usual.
Unfortunately our democratic system works this way.

[Matilda]

5. Of course, our universities are also full of dangerous left-wing

radicals too, don't forget.

This man just wants to reshape Australia in his own image - get them
when they're young, fill their minds with images of British colonial
history, then send the rich ones off to universities staffed by right-
wing idealogues and the rest to work in the factories of big
corporations.

It's not so far from the truth - the university lecturers who began
their tenure during the sixties and seventies when freedom of thought
was still part of our culture are now retiring and those who are taking
their place often don't have tenure and are therefore vulnerable if they
don't toe the correct political line.

Let's not even talk about vice-chancellors on fat salaries who have
never, ever said a word against Howard and his policies, but are content
to play his game. Education in its true sense is not their game, but
making money is.

What Howard has done to this country is pure evil, and I wonder how
many people realise that voting him out won't be enough to rid us of
his influence, because he has put in place in the judiciary and in our
education system people and practices to carry out his ideas for many
years into the future.

[Djinn]

6. I remember my primary school days well

we'd all sit around reciting phrases from our Little Red Book of Gough quotations and then after lunch we'd all toil in the schools collective farm :rofl:

I went to a state school in a fairly leftie/hippie type area, here's some things I was never taught about in school:

* Indigenous massacres in the early days on European settlement
* Stolen Generation
* Blackbirding
* W.A.P

If Howard has such a problem with people being taught about the less glorious moments of our past then he shopuld stop trying to gain political milage from the Anzacs - he wasn't there it had nothing to do with him after all.

[Esra Star]

7. I'm from Qld and we were taught about blackbirding.

Townsville is named after Robert Townes, probably the biggest noise in bringing in
the labourers.
I do remember that some settlers thought it was open season on natives.
I think that the removed children thing was sold as their chance at a life.
WAP beats me though.

[Djinn]

8. How much did you learn

about Bjelke's police state, gerrymandering, corruption and attacks on civil rights? The point being we should have learnt all those things because they are our history but conservatives still insist that telling the truth is "black arm" banding.

The removed children "thing" was a systematic attempt to rid the country of it's indigenous poulation. "Full blood" people would "die out" it was assumed and there was a need to whiten up the "half castes". it doesn't really matter how it was sold - Iraq was sold on WMD's - literally ripping children from the arms of their parents who love and care for them does not provide a life.

This went on by the way until the mid seventies, a friend of mine was taken along with her sister because her aunt (who was caring for them while their parents worked) had the temerity to enquire about government assistance. She and her sister were placed in the foster care of good white Christians, the good christian foster father raped her for several years and the good christian foster mother ignored it while getting tanked on cooking sherry.

Her other siblings who weren't stolen grew up surrounded by loving family and are much more stable adults now than my friend (who has a serious alcohol problem) and her sister (who killed herself last year)

I'm sure it wasn't intended but describing this period in our history as "the removed children thing" is a rather offensive understatement.

The welfare and the policeman
Said you've got to understand
We'll give to them what you can't give
Teach them how to really live.
Teach them how to live they said
Humiliated them instead
Taught them that and taught them this
And others taught them prejudice.
You took the children away
The children away
Breaking their mothers heart
Tearing us all apart
Took them away

One dark day on Framlingham
Come and didn't give a damn
My mother cried go get their dad
He came running, fighting mad
Mother's tears were falling down
Dad shaped up and stood his ground.
He said you touch my kids and you fight me
And they took us from our family.
Took us away
They took us away
Snatched from our mother's breast
Said this was for the best
Took us away.

Can you imagine what that does to a community? especially one to whom familial connections are deep and important particularly after they were forcibly removed from their lands and herded onto missions. Can you imagine how that creates generations of dysfunction, can you imagine what that does to any cautious trust indigenous people may have once had for authorities?

Can you imagine screaming, desperately trying to grasp your children to your body, and then see them dragged away from you by police, possibly never to see them again. Honestly I don't think most Australians have any idea just what this entailed. Possibly because they'd internalised the "doing what's best" lies and their schooling had never corrected that falsehood.

[Esra Star]

9. I stand by what I said about the stolen generation. Further,

there has never been a "systematic attempt to rid the country of the indigenous population".
In fact Gov Phillip's instructions from George III was to co-operate with the "native
population". As far as I know he was diligent in this.
Subsequent authorities may not have done well in this.
Yes I think the child removal policy was wrong.

I don't think Bjelke's police state is a secret.
That unfortunate situation goes back to 1922 when Qld decided to have no house of review.
The Assembly is in total control. It was only a matter of time before a
dictator took control. If you look closely you can see it's still happening.
As a point of interest the gerrymander was introduced by a Labor government all thos
years ago. It was an attempt at fairness for citizens far from Brisbane.
In todays world I think everybody understands one vote one value.

[Djinn]

10. You can stand by whatever you like

you would however be completely and utterly wrong. Look into who it was that actually had "custody" of ALL "half caste" kids - hint it wasn't their parents.

It is utterly wrong to suggest there was not a systematic attempt to rid the country of the indigenous population - you need to educate yourself because you are happilly spouting Howard government propaganda (I think only Andrew Bolt and Keith Windschuttle hold the view publically that this wasn't systematic - nice company to be in) you could start with Amnesty Int or HREOC or Robert Manne's work.

[Esra Star]

11. Please, not Andrew Dolt. When that guy comes on TV, I have to

physically be restrained from changing the channel.
I think he is just a potstirrer though.
He probably is proud to have all ABC tragics think he is a prick.
I am going to see what Robert Mann has to say on the stolen generation.
The documents are probably in the public domain by now.