If you are one of the deluded who believe that the education of children is the responsibility of the government, then you would no doubt applaud the latest Gonski report.
But if you believe that parents are responsible for educating their children, then let me cut to the chase: the entire Gonski program is nothing more than smoke and mirrors over ‘education’ and is mostly about shifting responsibility for children from parents to the state.
I’m not sure whether it does this by sheer stupidity or by design, although I’d bet on the latter. But, regardless, that is what Gonski is really all about.
And it does this two ways.
The first report demanded a massive increase in government funding for education. Under the scheme, even private educational institutions ‘win’ but all this does is essentially ensure that they become ‘contractors’ of the state education system.
Gonski might look like a massive sugar hit but the truth is that it is a hostile takeover by government of private schools.
Of course, more government funding for education means more taxes which means parents have less money to do the educating themselves.
Gonski Part One shifts the financial burden on parents from one where they incurred expenses for their children’s education to one where they wear the tax burden to pay for the state’s educational program.
To put it another way, parents are no longer working to educate their children. They are working to pay for the state to educate their children.
That’s a big difference.
The second report (which comes out today) is even worse, as described by the ABC this morning:
Mr Gonski’s second major review into Australian education said the country must urgently modernise its industrial-era model of school education and move towards individualised learning for all students.
The report was commissioned by the Federal Government last year after the passage of its amended schools funding legislation.
It says too many Australian children are failing to reach their potential at school because of the restrictive nature of year-level progression.
The code words here for ‘RUN IT IS A MASSIVE TRAP’ are ‘individualised learning’.
Nature understands that children need individual care and attention. That’s why God has given every single one of us a mum and a dad.
Parents are the best and most efficient providers of individualised learning for children.
They also tend to get in the way of centralised bureaucrats who think their Canberra-based committee knows best about the ‘life’ and ‘social’ skills that little Johnny and Mary need.
So it comes as no surprise that the latest Gonski report, instead of identifying the bleeding obvious (which is that centralised state control of education is failing our students) has instead hatched a plan to get rid of pesky parents.
It proposes to replace them with the teachers’ union who will be given the responsibility of providing ‘individualised’ care and attention to our children.
As a plan, it will never work. These plans have been tried all over the world since Pontius was a co-pilot and they always fail. But it hasn’t stopped tin pot dictators attempting to make them work at the point of a gun.
The real tragedy is that even the least brutal attempts to enforce these plans create misery.
At the very least, until Gonski goes, the financial burden on parents is going to have to shift again.
They are no longer working to educate their children.
Indeed, they will soon no longer even be working to pay for the government to educate their children.
Instead, they will be working to pay for the government to raise their children.
And that is something very different again.
The essence of Gonski should never be forgotten. It is a program steeped in a philosophy that believes the state, rather than parents, should be mum and dad for our kids.
May 2, 2018
I needed to replace both the batteries of my 4WD and selected two batteries at the local auto store and proceeded to the check out. One battery had a twenty four month warranty, which the young female attendant entered into the computer for my record.
The second battery had a three year warranty, but the computer needed the period to be stated in months. Without thinking I said thirty six months, but the attendant wouldn’t accept my advice and called her manager to tell her that three years equaled to thirty six months.
I felt truly sorry for this young woman who as a product of our education system couldn’t multiply three times twelve
May 1, 2018
Would not that be similar for parents, with what happened to “Alfie”, in London?
April 30, 2018
Section 4 of the NSW Education Act states “(a) every child has the right to receive an education,
(b) the education of a child is primarily the responsibility of the child’s parents,
(c) it is the duty of the State to ensure that every child receives an education of the highest quality,
(d) the principal responsibility of the State in the education of children is the provision of public education.”
Putting these all together, I am beginning to consider that the primary responsibility for parents is to ensure that the State is the principal educator of our children.
On a not entirely unrelated matter, a close friend of mine asked his 10-year-old son what 6 x 7 was and the date Cook arrived in Australia. He knew neither. What’s even more worrying was that neither did several high school students, government and private, he asked, nor did 20 or so of his mates at his school.
But the REALLY scary thing was that of the 10 or so teachers at his NSW government primary school, only 1 knew the date Cook arrived. The others, including the principal, said 1788 or just didn’t know. It was a very, very sad irony that the principal didn’t know Cook’s arrival and surely must rate as the uber-indicator of just how sick our schools are. (I have another friend who teaches at one of Australia’s leading universities where, as part of their before-graduating Primary School teaching degree, the fourth-year students have to undergo an intensive grammar course because they are illiterates. They can’t form paragraphs, use an apostrophe etc etc.)
But the ultimate scary thing was when this friend of mine went to the principal to complain about his son’s appalling lack of BASIC education, the principal’s only response was “That’s cool.” The only item the principal was interested in was that my friend had supposedly “intimidated” a teacher when he asked her the date Cook arrived. She didn’t know and so my friend had obviously embarrassed her. No harsh words were spoken, no abuse, nothing. When my friend asked for exact details how he had supposedly “intimidated” he was refused any information. The principal then went to the Police who handed my friend a letter stating that he was now officially warned under the NSW Inclosed Lands Protection Act that any further instances of “being argumentative” would result in Police action.
My friend has postgraduate qualification in teaching and had taught for many years. His wife has a Master’s and PhD in education and has taught at 5 universities, as well as presenting papers here and overseas. They do know something about schooling and to them it all seems to be the blind leading the blinded.
There’s only one way to know multiplication, and that’s to learn the rote. And Cook? Ahh, just another racist white man, obviously!
April 30, 2018
God help the children, parents and Australia if this goes ahead.