The Accidental Political Tirade
Jan. 23rd, 2002 03:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changelingThink I might just give you a run for your money when it comes to long posts with this one, Tych...
Nelson Tells Students Not To Go To Uni
This is the article I'm talking about, but I've summarised the main arguments I want to discuss below, so you don't *have* to read it. Damn debating habits...
Dr Brendan Nelson is Australia's new federal Educational Minister. He has come out publicly to promote apprenticeships and vocational education as "just as valid as university degrees". By no means is he suggesting students drop out of VCE; just that those who feel they are "not equipped to complete year 12" are aware that they have alternatives in apprenticeships and vocational education and training.
NSW Premier Bob Carr has come out against Dr Nelson's comments, as he suspects that they are being used to justify the Howard government's extensive cuts to education. NSW Parents and Citizens Association president Bev Baker has also taken offence at Nelson's view of tertiary education. Her position is that if students find that secondary education is not meeting their needs, the government needs to divert funding to them to ensure they can meet the needs of all their students.
As my father would have said, both have pieces of the picture, but neither have the full puzzle. I think it's vital that secondary school students are made aware that there are other alternatives to university. This awareness needs to extend to privileged schools like Melbourne High School and MacRobertson Girls High School. It's students from these sorts of schools that are least aware of the alternatives. Everything is geared towards being accepted to Australian National University, Melbourne University or Monash University. RMIT is acceptable, but only just. It's this obsession with university, and the misconception that nothing else will do that mean that many of my fellow MHS/MGHS students wind up in a course they're barely interested in. We drink our way through the first two semesters and abandon our courses. Dr Nelson quoted the figure that 40% of students studying university degrees dropped up. Many of these were in their first year of studies.
However, both Premier Bob Carr and Bev Baker have good points. Being a small-l liberal[1] and the daughter of an university lecturer, as well as now being a uni student, I have been at least semi-conscious of the careful destruction of our education system. In Victoria, we had Premier Jeff Kennett (a Liberal; see footnote 1) who did some good things, but closed down many of our primary and secondary schools and sold the land to private owners. [2] One of Kennett's main aims while he was in power was that as much be privatised as possible. This included utilities such as power and water, which he sold outright, but his slashing of funds to education and closure of public schools certainly were a large step in the direction of private education. The Howard Government (likewise a Liberal Government...sort of.[3]) are also big fans of privatisation. In recent years John ("Never Ever" will there be a GST) Howard has pushed heavily for a shift to a private health system for Australia.
This attitude towards privatisation is typical of right-wing thinking. Where left-wing thinking (such as socialism) stresses the importance of government control over public utilities such as education, water, electricity, transport and welfare, the right-wing attitudes favour private control. The advantage of the former is that prices tend to be heavily regulated. The latter (privatised utilities) encompasses everything that is good and bad about the free market economies. Prices can be brought down through competition, and sometimes services are improved. For example, with the introduction of Optus Telecommunications into the market that the government-owned Telecom (later renamed Telstra) had previously had to itself introduced a rapid decrease in prices and an increase in services. The downside to all this is that privatised companies are suddenly not owned by governments, not working for the common good, but rather working for their own good. The bottom line becomes all about profits, rather than providing the best services with the money to hand.
Howard's cuts to education has demonstrated quite clearly his belief in a private education system. The problem with private education is that it is not designed for the majority of school students. Private schools usually have high fees, and thusly are able to offer things that public/state/government (these terms are synonymous) schools cannot. At a private school you may have a swimming pool in the grounds. There are usually better facilities. You get to wear a spankier uniform, often with stylish tie and a blazer. Most importantly of all, you can make contacts. This is particularly of use to any future lawyers, politicians or businessmen. The Melbourne High[4] and Melbourne Grammar Old Boys network are quite powerful in Melbourne. Melbourne High can name Lindsay Fox (highly successful businessman; made a successful bid for Ansett mark II), Gareth Evans (former foreign minister) and Graeme Base (writer/illustrator) amongst its Old Boys; and those are only the ones I remember. Photographs of many more famous Old Boys line the corridors of MHS. I have heard stories of Melbourne Grammar's Old Boys network that are rather Masonic in their undertones; apparently there's a "secret" tie that one receives on graduation that other Old Boys can recognise. Private schools can offer a lot to those who can afford them, but what public schools can offer is a universal education.
There are still many, many Australians for whom sending their children to school is a major financial problem. I knew someone at MacRob who was constantly hassled by the school bureaucrats because her parents could not afford to pay the school's "voluntary" fees. The Smith Family charity has a program to help underprivileged children have the education they deserve. The current attitude that education is an area of the budget that can be easily cut back on without consequence is anathema to me. It's also stupid. Nelson recognises this to a certain degree. His holistic view of tertiary education is to be applauded. University isn't the only option anymore when it comes to getting a job; in fact, it rather falls behind TAFE[5] when it comes to job preparation.
Bev Baker does has a legitimate point. More funding needs to be diverted to the public school sector to ensure it meets the needs of all its students, not only the ones who would do well regardless of how well the system operates. I support her wholeheartedly in that matter. Traditional teaching methods often come up short when trying to reach some students. The sad thing is that these students are the ones that teachers need to reach out to most. These are the truants, those who are completely disillusioned with the learning experience. They're the ones the system has failed.
However, what Ms Baker fails to realise is the great difficulty in pleasing all parties when it comes to education. Yes, our education needs to be better. Yes, it is in desperate need of funding. Another thing we must realise is that there are students for whom school simply isn't the best option. I'm not saying we should give up on them, or that we shouldn't try to make school as relevant to them as possible; of course we should. However, we still have students dropping out, not reaching year 12. And for them, vocational training is a dream come true.
So maybe they never learned the main themes within Othello. Perhaps they can't deconstruct one of A.B. 'Banjo' Patterson's poems. So what? When has that ever been a necessary life skill? If I've been in a car crash and my physio can help me regain proper control of my legs, I don't care if he failed Literature, Culture, History in first semester uni. If my plumber manages to unblock the sewer line so my toilets stop overflowing, I think that the fact she only got an E for Maths Methods in year 11 is somewhat irrelevant. Universities were once great places of learning, and this was partly due to the fact that they had the knowledge, the books that were not as easily available as they are now.
What the Howard government seems to be overlooking is the necessity for a good education. There are lots of statistics out there that detail the need for at the very least a good secondary school education when it comes to getting a job. University students are our doctors, surgeons, opthalmologists, optricians. They are our scientists, lawyers, politicians, historians and accountants. TAFE students are our bus drivers, day care workers, accountants, and managers. TAFE sometimes offers an alternative to university when it comes to doing many of the same courses. TAFE can also be a gateway to university for those who missed out the first time for whatever reason. TAFE gives adults the opportunity of finishing their VCE or HSC (last two years of high school). Education is important, and what we need to realise is that there are more avenues for former education that we usually admit.
The old Monash University Latin motto (before such mottos were naf) was "Always Learning". I think that's something we should all keep in mind.
Footnotes:
[1] In the Australian political system, to be a liberal (usually termed a "small-l liberal" to avoid confusion) as foreigners would understand it usually means you vote for/support the Labor party, who are Centrist Lefties (or possibly the Democrats). In Australia, a Liberal (note capitalisation, please!) is someone who supports the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party are Right Wing, or Conservatives. No, I don't understand it either.
[2] History freaks like me could draw parallels between this and the secularisation of church land after the first French Revolution in 1789.
[3] John Howard, our prime minister is a Liberal, however, his government is properly a coalition: The Liberals joined forces with the National Party (formerly the National Country Party) in order to amass the numbers to ensure victory over Labor and thusly have the majority in our Lower House, the House of Representatives. Neither Nat nor I can remember the last time the Liberals formed government without the National Party, and although we're young, she studied Politics in year 12 and I'm at least vaguely politically aware. I also remember Louis Nowra's The Incorruptible stating that the Liberals need the Nationals to form government.
[4] Melbourne High School and its sister school MacRobertson Girls High School are not actually private schools, although they pretend to be. Entrance is based on an exam rather than simple ability to pay. As an ex-student of MacRob, I'm pretty sure fees are greater than at "lesser" state schools. Uniform includes a tie and blazer, which my old high school certainly didn't bother with. These two aren't the only public-schools-masquerading-as-private-schools, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with. You can usually spot pseudo-private schools by their names; most of them are called "high schools", whereas normal public schools usually prefer to be called "secondary colleges". This is not a hard-and-fast rule, and I can only promise its application in Victoria. All other states and you're on your own.
[5] I'm pretty sure this stands for Technical And Further Education. That's the gist of it, anyway.
Nelson Tells Students Not To Go To Uni
This is the article I'm talking about, but I've summarised the main arguments I want to discuss below, so you don't *have* to read it. Damn debating habits...
Dr Brendan Nelson is Australia's new federal Educational Minister. He has come out publicly to promote apprenticeships and vocational education as "just as valid as university degrees". By no means is he suggesting students drop out of VCE; just that those who feel they are "not equipped to complete year 12" are aware that they have alternatives in apprenticeships and vocational education and training.
NSW Premier Bob Carr has come out against Dr Nelson's comments, as he suspects that they are being used to justify the Howard government's extensive cuts to education. NSW Parents and Citizens Association president Bev Baker has also taken offence at Nelson's view of tertiary education. Her position is that if students find that secondary education is not meeting their needs, the government needs to divert funding to them to ensure they can meet the needs of all their students.
As my father would have said, both have pieces of the picture, but neither have the full puzzle. I think it's vital that secondary school students are made aware that there are other alternatives to university. This awareness needs to extend to privileged schools like Melbourne High School and MacRobertson Girls High School. It's students from these sorts of schools that are least aware of the alternatives. Everything is geared towards being accepted to Australian National University, Melbourne University or Monash University. RMIT is acceptable, but only just. It's this obsession with university, and the misconception that nothing else will do that mean that many of my fellow MHS/MGHS students wind up in a course they're barely interested in. We drink our way through the first two semesters and abandon our courses. Dr Nelson quoted the figure that 40% of students studying university degrees dropped up. Many of these were in their first year of studies.
However, both Premier Bob Carr and Bev Baker have good points. Being a small-l liberal[1] and the daughter of an university lecturer, as well as now being a uni student, I have been at least semi-conscious of the careful destruction of our education system. In Victoria, we had Premier Jeff Kennett (a Liberal; see footnote 1) who did some good things, but closed down many of our primary and secondary schools and sold the land to private owners. [2] One of Kennett's main aims while he was in power was that as much be privatised as possible. This included utilities such as power and water, which he sold outright, but his slashing of funds to education and closure of public schools certainly were a large step in the direction of private education. The Howard Government (likewise a Liberal Government...sort of.[3]) are also big fans of privatisation. In recent years John ("Never Ever" will there be a GST) Howard has pushed heavily for a shift to a private health system for Australia.
This attitude towards privatisation is typical of right-wing thinking. Where left-wing thinking (such as socialism) stresses the importance of government control over public utilities such as education, water, electricity, transport and welfare, the right-wing attitudes favour private control. The advantage of the former is that prices tend to be heavily regulated. The latter (privatised utilities) encompasses everything that is good and bad about the free market economies. Prices can be brought down through competition, and sometimes services are improved. For example, with the introduction of Optus Telecommunications into the market that the government-owned Telecom (later renamed Telstra) had previously had to itself introduced a rapid decrease in prices and an increase in services. The downside to all this is that privatised companies are suddenly not owned by governments, not working for the common good, but rather working for their own good. The bottom line becomes all about profits, rather than providing the best services with the money to hand.
Howard's cuts to education has demonstrated quite clearly his belief in a private education system. The problem with private education is that it is not designed for the majority of school students. Private schools usually have high fees, and thusly are able to offer things that public/state/government (these terms are synonymous) schools cannot. At a private school you may have a swimming pool in the grounds. There are usually better facilities. You get to wear a spankier uniform, often with stylish tie and a blazer. Most importantly of all, you can make contacts. This is particularly of use to any future lawyers, politicians or businessmen. The Melbourne High[4] and Melbourne Grammar Old Boys network are quite powerful in Melbourne. Melbourne High can name Lindsay Fox (highly successful businessman; made a successful bid for Ansett mark II), Gareth Evans (former foreign minister) and Graeme Base (writer/illustrator) amongst its Old Boys; and those are only the ones I remember. Photographs of many more famous Old Boys line the corridors of MHS. I have heard stories of Melbourne Grammar's Old Boys network that are rather Masonic in their undertones; apparently there's a "secret" tie that one receives on graduation that other Old Boys can recognise. Private schools can offer a lot to those who can afford them, but what public schools can offer is a universal education.
There are still many, many Australians for whom sending their children to school is a major financial problem. I knew someone at MacRob who was constantly hassled by the school bureaucrats because her parents could not afford to pay the school's "voluntary" fees. The Smith Family charity has a program to help underprivileged children have the education they deserve. The current attitude that education is an area of the budget that can be easily cut back on without consequence is anathema to me. It's also stupid. Nelson recognises this to a certain degree. His holistic view of tertiary education is to be applauded. University isn't the only option anymore when it comes to getting a job; in fact, it rather falls behind TAFE[5] when it comes to job preparation.
Bev Baker does has a legitimate point. More funding needs to be diverted to the public school sector to ensure it meets the needs of all its students, not only the ones who would do well regardless of how well the system operates. I support her wholeheartedly in that matter. Traditional teaching methods often come up short when trying to reach some students. The sad thing is that these students are the ones that teachers need to reach out to most. These are the truants, those who are completely disillusioned with the learning experience. They're the ones the system has failed.
However, what Ms Baker fails to realise is the great difficulty in pleasing all parties when it comes to education. Yes, our education needs to be better. Yes, it is in desperate need of funding. Another thing we must realise is that there are students for whom school simply isn't the best option. I'm not saying we should give up on them, or that we shouldn't try to make school as relevant to them as possible; of course we should. However, we still have students dropping out, not reaching year 12. And for them, vocational training is a dream come true.
So maybe they never learned the main themes within Othello. Perhaps they can't deconstruct one of A.B. 'Banjo' Patterson's poems. So what? When has that ever been a necessary life skill? If I've been in a car crash and my physio can help me regain proper control of my legs, I don't care if he failed Literature, Culture, History in first semester uni. If my plumber manages to unblock the sewer line so my toilets stop overflowing, I think that the fact she only got an E for Maths Methods in year 11 is somewhat irrelevant. Universities were once great places of learning, and this was partly due to the fact that they had the knowledge, the books that were not as easily available as they are now.
What the Howard government seems to be overlooking is the necessity for a good education. There are lots of statistics out there that detail the need for at the very least a good secondary school education when it comes to getting a job. University students are our doctors, surgeons, opthalmologists, optricians. They are our scientists, lawyers, politicians, historians and accountants. TAFE students are our bus drivers, day care workers, accountants, and managers. TAFE sometimes offers an alternative to university when it comes to doing many of the same courses. TAFE can also be a gateway to university for those who missed out the first time for whatever reason. TAFE gives adults the opportunity of finishing their VCE or HSC (last two years of high school). Education is important, and what we need to realise is that there are more avenues for former education that we usually admit.
The old Monash University Latin motto (before such mottos were naf) was "Always Learning". I think that's something we should all keep in mind.
Footnotes:
[1] In the Australian political system, to be a liberal (usually termed a "small-l liberal" to avoid confusion) as foreigners would understand it usually means you vote for/support the Labor party, who are Centrist Lefties (or possibly the Democrats). In Australia, a Liberal (note capitalisation, please!) is someone who supports the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party are Right Wing, or Conservatives. No, I don't understand it either.
[2] History freaks like me could draw parallels between this and the secularisation of church land after the first French Revolution in 1789.
[3] John Howard, our prime minister is a Liberal, however, his government is properly a coalition: The Liberals joined forces with the National Party (formerly the National Country Party) in order to amass the numbers to ensure victory over Labor and thusly have the majority in our Lower House, the House of Representatives. Neither Nat nor I can remember the last time the Liberals formed government without the National Party, and although we're young, she studied Politics in year 12 and I'm at least vaguely politically aware. I also remember Louis Nowra's The Incorruptible stating that the Liberals need the Nationals to form government.
[4] Melbourne High School and its sister school MacRobertson Girls High School are not actually private schools, although they pretend to be. Entrance is based on an exam rather than simple ability to pay. As an ex-student of MacRob, I'm pretty sure fees are greater than at "lesser" state schools. Uniform includes a tie and blazer, which my old high school certainly didn't bother with. These two aren't the only public-schools-masquerading-as-private-schools, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with. You can usually spot pseudo-private schools by their names; most of them are called "high schools", whereas normal public schools usually prefer to be called "secondary colleges". This is not a hard-and-fast rule, and I can only promise its application in Victoria. All other states and you're on your own.
[5] I'm pretty sure this stands for Technical And Further Education. That's the gist of it, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2002-01-23 04:26 am (UTC)I think that while rallies etc can be a good way to be involved, even simply being aware of the government's attitudes towards education and the way it is funded is important. There should not be a single uni student who votes for Howard. If they're sensible, their parents won't either.
Pipe dream? Maybe. I can never believe it when one of my peers admits to supporting the Liberal party. Not because they're evil (although they are), but because how any self-respecting person can vote for a party who does not even remotely represent their interests (quite the opposite, in fact) is beyond me.
no subject
Date: 2002-01-23 06:07 am (UTC)Knowledge is good. But that magic number - 70% - and a healthy dose of paranoia has kept things in check for Howard and it almost seems that it doesn't matter how much knowledge people have about education funding they are more concerned about security, immigration and economic management. As much as I hate Howard, I have to respect him for his skills as a politican - he knows exactly what is going on, which is a pity because en masse Australians are idiots.
I wouldn't call you politically unaware in any way, btw :)
d
no subject
Date: 2002-01-24 12:22 am (UTC)It makes me so angry that Howard can manipulate the constituency, but he has been in politics for...what? forty years? Something like that. Now all we need is someone in the left to A/ formulate some policies and B/ actually have some political skills.
*sigh*