School Chaplains

I'm back :)

The Howard Government has announced it will spend $90million on a school chaplaincy program, where schools (private or public) can have a taxpayer funded chaplain, provided they are Ok'ed by the Education Minister.

This is absolutely disgraceful. What an abhorrent waste of money! Schools struggle to get basic teaching services, but can have a "spirtual guidance" councellor. As far as I'm concerned, if you want religion as part of schooling, send your kid to a private school. And guess who just saved some more money? Rich private schools who already have two or three chaplains, now get these positioned tax-payer subsidised.


THe very idea that the Government should fund a program forcing Christianity into public schools is an attack on the seperation of Church and state. Oh, but they claim that the Chaplain's do not have to be Christian. Are they really going to appoint a Swami or a Mufti to that position? I think not. I find Christianity to be quite confronting, not least because of its in-your-face attitude to other religions. This young upstart of a religion goes around telling people of other religious beliefs that they are wrong, when their religion is relatively young (compared to Eastern religions). Believe what you like - thats fine - but to push a particular value system in PUBLIC schools is dead wrong. Besides, people who "need" spiritual guidance, will not be voluntarily turning to Chaplains. The only people to use such a service already have their beliefs. Why spend $90million to service a particular group, when school councellors can help anyone and everyone.

Thoughts?

A bit of a break

Unfortunately, NivCorp Blog will be a little quite for the next 3 weeks or so. Apparently I've got a thesis to hand in shortly... so I probably should be starting soonish :p

Wookiepedia

For everthing you wanted to know about Star Wars... and a whole lot more...

WOOKIEPEDIA!

National Curriculum Debate

Today, the Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, put forth a proposition that the Education system be federalised and standardised.

To me, this makes a lot of sense. Why not go for a standard leaving certificate at the end of school. Standardise the entry age for primary school. Remove departmental duplication across each state, and ensure that study is universally tranferrable.

I do, however, object to the subtext in the Minister's argument. She claims that the curriculum has been hijacked by ideologues (presumably, those left-wing intellectuals?), and that some of the teaching comes straight for Chairman Mao. The reference to Mao was dropped from her actual speech, but was present in the media release.

Bishop seems to be running two lines on this - one about efficiency, and one about changing the sylabus to what she describes as a "back to basics" approach - removing the supposed left-wing, contextualised bias. She cites Universities having to run remedial english courses for undergrads. These criticism are primarily in reference to History and English.

It seems like the Government wants to take the education system back to a rote learning system - read this, tell me what its about. In the case of English they say that Shakespeare, for example, should not be reinterpreted witha feminist reading, or a Marxist reading, etc. Rather, they should focus on exactly what the text says. Similarly, History should be a chronological narrative, not a series of thematic occurences in human experience. This sounds to me like a dumbing-down of the syllabus - tailoring to the lowest common denominator.

Even though it was quite challenging at the time, I really think the new English Syllabus was quite good, in that it forced a very critical approach to texts. The "comprehension" (which I believe is really what "back to basics" means), was assumed, and we were encouraged the think about texts (both past a present), in terms of how they relate to a variety of contexts. This sort of critical thinking (and I don't mean to sound elitist) may be beyond some, and potentially, this can result in some people attaining a lower standard of literacy at completion. However, there is much to be said for contextualisation and critical thinking. Personally, I found it made me think a lot more about messages being passed in the modern media. I subconciously begain to critically analyse movies as I watched them, rather than treating them as pure entertainment. These are more important life skills than the ability to recite the definition of "past participles", "pronouns" and "adjectives". If there are people struggling and indeed not meeting basic literacy standards, this should be factored into the already-tiered system of English (at least in NSW). Perhaps offering Standard English at an "easier" level is the way to go.

Today, people face a flood of information from a wide divergence of sources, and many of them not "official". The ability to read the subtext and determine the contextual meaning of messages is more important than ever. The same applies to history. Rather than recite events (which tend to protect the bias of the historical "victor"), the ability to judge world events in terms of context and a variety of perspectives helps in making better decisions for the future.

The cynic in me might say the the Governments stance on this is about further reducing accountability. They want to move to a more "Americanised" model, where the general population is largely uncritical and intellectually disengaged. This has always helped conservative governments. Howard has always been uncomfortable with intellectualism, since reduces the power of the encumbent. The era of "basic standard" education seems very Thatcher-esque at this point in time.


So - standardisation of curriculum, subjects, grades and starting years - absolutely. Changing the syllabus to a "basic skills" approach? Absolutely not. Particularly, since this government is intent on putting its conservative badge on everything it touches.

Thoughts? Over to you! And please drop a comment if you do read this!

The Debate

Joe Jockey and Bill Shorten faced off today in a debate about WorkChoices, at Manning Bar. It was indeed, a very entertaining debate. Firstly, Joe Hockey was very well spoken. In fact, if the Government want to sell their IR laws, they need Hockey to be the front face - not Kevin Andrews who looks like a pasty white example of 17th Century British ruling class - someone who has never done a minute of manual labor in his life. Anyway, I digress; Joe's openin speech was well planned and quite well executed. He got a respectful round of applause from a largely hostile audience. He spoke of this being the 3rd era of the trading world (nation-to-nation trading, company to company trading and now, person to person trading). He advanced the case that reform was necessary to keep Australia competetive, and this was what the Government was doing - getting on with ensuring the country was ready to meet current and future challenges.

Unfortunately for Joe, no matter how good his speech was, Bill Shorten totally blitzed him. He spoke rapidly, but clearly, providing effective examples of the problems with the WorkChoices legislation - logically tearing apart the opposition's argument, but with a quick witted sense of humour. THe Young Liberals crashed the party, and heckled Shorten - although Hockey faced many a dark rumbling and snide comment from the Audience. Whilst Hockey ploughed on, Shorten made short shrift of the heckles, with such things as "Don't worry you Young Libs down there - you'll get your NSW precelection soon enough - so long as you are right wing enough." He also fed off the audience support, making his speech more of an oration than a debate.

In the end, I felt sorry for Joe Hockey, and grateful that he made himself available for the debate. He was in a very hostile environment (this was a part-union organised event), and faced a tough-sell to Uni students. He was also up against a fantastic speaker and quick-witted opponent in Bill Shorten. I really, really hope Shorten has a fast rise through the Labor party - he is intelligent, articulate, appealing across a broad spectrum, and media savvy. And he could well bring back that Hawke/Keating-esque liveliness to Australian Politics, that it so badly needs.

Shorten Vs. Hockey

Tommorrow at 1pm, the Work and Organisational Studies Society has organised a debate between Bill Shorten (National Secretary of AWU and future Member for Marybydong), and Joe Hockey (Minister for Human Services and backup Minister for Workplace Relations). THis will indeed be a corker. Will let you know how it went.

Great Journalism

I just saw the grabs for the Channel 7 news. On the day the North Korea explicitly declared that it was going to carry out a nuclear test, interest rates have been put on hold, and the Government refused to mandate ethanol in petrol after an alternative fules energy summit, this is what they lead with:

Luxury car crashes into backyard swimming pool

Flag burners asked to appologise

Model falls over on catwalk

Fantastic work, guys.