Firstly, and again, apologies for the longish silence. World and economic affairs are looking increasingly unpleasant that I have reduced my consumption of news. And it is reading and watching news that makes me think and prompts me to write.
I don't want this Stack to become a downward cycle venting channel so though it better to remain silent than to fan the flames.
Thank you also to those who have reached out to check in on me. It's nice to know that there are those interested in The World According to Spart.
That all said, and secondly, sometimes material emerges that just cannot be allowed to go through to the keeper. And such material emerged this week in the letters pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Here is a link to the letters page for readers to read themselves. This page seems to be focused on school funding and Gonski and blah blah. But here is the relevant, offending and offensive sentence:
Between the powerful religious schools lobby groups effectively rendering Gonski reforms ineffectual, politicians being too scared to take on these powerful lobby groups and John Howard deciding parental choice rather than student needs should drive the Australian education system, we are in one unholy mess.
The emphasis is mine but to highlight it even further, here it is again that because apparently
.... John Howard decid(ed)ing parental choice rather than student needs should drive the Australian education system
My usual throat clearing. I think that John Howard's prime ministership should be considered in 2 parts. From 1996 to 2001 - Part 1, and from 2001 to 2007 - Part 2.
In Part 1, Howard was exceptional. Reforming. Visionary. Brave.
In Part 2, Howard was abysmal. Profligate. Narcissistic. Solipsistic. Garbage.
The net result of Parts 1 and 2, in my humble option, was a to leave weaker, poorer, and more unstable Australia. Vulnerable to the 16 years of garbage government that followed and continues. It should never be forgotten that it was John Howard who talked Malcolm Turnbull out of leaving Parliament in 2009 when he was planning to quit following his removal from the office of leader of the opposition by the party room.
That throat clearing done, the suggestion by the SMH letter writer that, in education, Howard was wrong to prioritise parental choice over student need (whatever that may be) is firstly not supported by evidence, but secondly a most disgusting and totalitarian view. A view that some party, the state, bureaucrats, social workers, busy bodies, as a general rule know better what is in a child's interest than do the parents.
This is the basis of the current contemporary school Heisman strategy, whereby the views and values of parents/guardians should be secondary, tertiary, to the views and values of the current educational industrial complex. This same complex that has overseen generational and irreparable declines in student outcomes as a result of turning schools from factories for knowledge transfer into madrasas of indoctrination.
As a parent of sons who attend one of those uppity private independent schools against which this SMH letter writer rails, I can assure readers that this indoctrination is not limited to the state school system. This is in large part because the views of parents and guardians are secondary to the views of the high priests of educational industrial complex.
The only solution this educational and civilisational decline is to change the system to one where the parents and students are the actual customers of the schools and universities rather than the current system where unions, teacher, academics and bureaucrats are the key customers. Experimenting, indoctrinating and inculcating our children.
My toes curl when our beloved political overlords say that are allocation money to education and/or to schools. The only solution is to allocate the money to the children, students and parents. Whether through a voucher system or whatever.
I don’t want meddlers or middlemen tell me that I am wrong in the values and knowledge I wish to transfer to my children.
And unless, we the people, the governed recognise that:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
then this insanity and downward cycle will continue.
John Howard deciding parental choice rather than student needs should drive the Australian education system.
Yeah right.
Welcome back Sparty!
As a NO volunteer I was asked by several groups of school children (mid primary to mid high school) why I was voting NO. After I explained that I was voting NO to a change in the constitution, I asked them if they knew what the constitution was. None of them knew! But like my 12 yo granddaughter, I am sure they knew that voting NO meant that I was being mean to aboriginal people.