Australian Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2

Jim Belshaw has posted on the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2006 from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, released just today. I have downloaded the full report, and to be honest have not had time to do more than browse.

Jim’s post does have a good historical introduction.

He then notes:

A second thing stands out when I look at the numbers. Those in the 15 to 19 age cohort had lower levels of literacy than the 20 to 24 year age cohort and by a reasonable margin.

The following graph captures that; I won’t even try to explain the five categories at this stage. The general trend is what Jim is referring to.

Sirdan’s Sunday lunch

The Empress, E, Sirdan’s neighbour and I had our post-election Sunday lunch today. There was no weeping or gnashing of teeth.

The conversation did get around to a remarkable story that was front page news in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald even with that day’s election dominating: Lesson for the school of hard Knox, concerning the young man above.

IT TAKES a lot of guts at the best of times to stand in front of 1350 fellow students, 150 teachers and 600 parents in the school assembly hall and tell it as it is.

But when it involves accusing some of your year 12 classmates of being cheats, and fingering influential parents for bullying the school authorities into giving prestigious positions to undeserving sons, the effect can be nothing short of sensational.

Especially when the school is the well-respected North Shore institution Knox Grammar, which counts among its alumni the veteran broadcaster John Laws, Macquarie Bank chairman David Clarke, former editor of the satirical Oz magazine Richard Neville, Hugh Jackman and ethicist Simon Longstaff.

What “Old Teachers Never Die” needs…

…is a bit of ranting. So I have obliged, though it is a rant I deeply believe in. See The literacy we need but many don’t want… That “many” includes just about everyone on Howard’s side of politics and some on Rudd’s, but if you really want an education revolution that might deliver a healthy democracy, this is the way you have to go.

Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax claim is a hoax…

Interesting.

See Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax claim is a hoax. Rush Limbaugh fell for it, though, as did several others who profess to be skeptical of global warming.

If Maths had been like this I may have been interested…

Dear me, there is a nasty left-wing plot brewing in the world of Mathematics of all places, according to Devine pater in today’s Australian.

The square route to hell is paved with good intentions

WATCH out for radical maths, which may be coming to a school near you. Also known as “social justice maths”, it is a teaching theory, gaining momentum in the US, which seeks to use mathematics as a form of instruction in social justice issues.

For example, in studying fractions, a student might be asked to “compare how money spent on military operations could be used to support other important causes (for example, if a bomb costs $10 million and it costs $10,000 to provide health care for an entire family for a year, how many families could get health care for the cost of this bomb?).”

Latest on Old Teachers Never Die…

…though they do, you know. Today I recall Sydney University’s Bill Maidment, who died in 2005. Anyone interested in English Studies or nostalgia about the “good old days” in academia will find the entry worth reading, I hope.

Ancient history

What now must be ancient history itself is the fact that I taught Ancient History for the HSC, almost twenty years ago. The last gig was particularly fascinating because it was at a Jewish school and involved teaching the history of New Kingdom Egypt and of the Kingdom period of Israel, that last slightly ticklish in that context. I asked the Rabbi for some pointers and he referred me to a book written by an American Lutheran!

However, I maintain an amateur interest, unlike one of the Ancient History teachers at The Mine who is a real Egyptologist. So I was fascinated by the story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald about the face of Tutankhamen, as reconstructed on the right. That really leaps time, doesn’t it?

It seemed a good idea at the time…

I am contrary, I know, but whenever Julie Bishop is enthusiastic about something I tend to take the opposite view. Yesterday, for example, speaking in defence of the ideologically driven (and short-sighted) abolition of compulsory union fees at universities — see The Sydney Morning Herald — she remarked: “The challenge for student unions is to attract student support by being relevant and efficient.” The context for that “Let them eat cake” utterance is this.

Students used to pay several hundred dollars a year in compulsory union fees, which subsidised services such as child care, international student support, food outlets, sporting clubs and infrastructure, student newspapers and social clubs, but the Federal Government passed laws banning the practice in 2005. Since then the sector has lost $167 million in annual income, resulting in a 50 per cent funding cut to inter-university sport, a 40 per cent funding cut to sporting clubs and more than 1000 people employed in student services losing their jobs, the study found.

Nationally 100 sporting services such as elite athlete support have been shut down or reduced, while the same has happened to 261 union services.

But the money students have saved will not necessarily remain in their pockets, with the study calculating they will spend more than that amount in the increased cost of services and rises in HECS fees.

Friday Australian poem #12a

We couldn’t have a #13, could we? In fact if you check “Men in Green” again you will find a revised version. There had been an overlap last week between my role as an English tutor and that poem; I have a coachee, John, who was born in Shanghai in 1995. I had happened to bring an anthology to tuition and he had been given the task at school of finding a ballad or story poem to learn and recite. (I am glad some English classes still do this.) So we settled on “Men in Green” which he rather liked. I gave him a bit of context for it, and last week and yesterday we talked about it — among other things such as vocabulary and grammar exercises. (He has only been speaking English for about three years.)

Old teachers never die… (Blogspot)

It has been a bit lonely, that blog, but I was happy to see some movement overnight: Turning one-way education around has attracted a really encouraging comment.

Summer Heights High

…has been a work of comic genius.

Yes it has been right out on the edge in what it dealt with and in the realism of its language. But I will say two things: I haven’t seen as total a set of character creations as the three that Chris Lilley simply inhabits: you could really be forgiven for thinking we had three different actors; Chris Lilley is a brilliant linguist and sociologist.

Bias is in the eye of the beholder

I was going to call the post “stupid f*ckers who wouldn’t know a fair question if it bit them on the bum”, but thought better of it… According to ABC News:

The Federal Government and the New South Wales Opposition have accused Labor and the unions of using yesterday’s Higher School Certificate (HSC) exam to indoctrinate students with left-wing ideologies.

The claim about a question in the industrial technology exam comes as almost 65,000 year-12 students in New South Wales prepare to sit the only compulsory HSC exam this morning: English.

The question asked students to discuss the impact of Government legislation on employees.

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop says it was clearly about WorkChoices and was another example of how political views are being pushed in the classroom.

“You’d have to be naive in the extreme not to see this as a loaded question,” she said.

“It has been backed up by months and months of union campaigning in schools in NSW, pushing their political agenda.

“We’ve got teachers handing out anti-Government propaganda to school children and parents are complaining that their children are being used as political pawns.”

But state Education Minister John Della Bosca has described the reaction to the question as hysterical.

Mr Della Bosca says the question was set by independent experts in the field from public, private and Catholic school committees.

Busy Redfern morning

Earlyish I went to the Redfern doctor because my last blood check showed above normal blood sugar, so next Monday I have to be checked out for diabetes as the reading was just within the diagnostic range. Mind you I had eaten a very sugary blueberry bagel not long before that test; we shall see.

The good news is the Logicol margarine has been working, along with the kangaroo sausages, so my cholesterol is acceptable at last.

I had fasted this morning just in case so I breakfasted after seeing the doc at Quirks just over the road — see pic. I should do this more often. It is quite delightful. I ate something very healthy.

While there I read about the latest polls. Can’t believe we are so impressed by men in raincoats offering boiled sweeties, or (as someone said on 702 last night) Big Brother restoring the chocolate ration. Then I rang Pan Macmillan and have set up an interview with Mark Willacy early next week. He will be at Politics in the Pub the day before the election: 6 pm to 7.45 Friday 23 November at the Gaelic Club, Level 1, 64 Devonshire St., Surry Hills (across from Chalmers St exit and Devonshire St tunnel at Central Station).

Friday Australian poem #10

This week’s featured archive post — October 2007.

Hard to believe this is the tenth in the series! I have chosen it with my Aunt Beth (Christison) Heard in mind, as she was born into such an environment in 1915, daughter of a teacher in a one-teacher school and herself later a teacher.

Schools, Australian History and the Garden Gnome of Kirribilli House

One small bit of Australiana: as a descendant of the Guringai my nephew is one of the original owners of Kirribilli House, just as I, if it is indeed the case that I am a descendant of the Dharawal, am one of the original owners of Sutherland Shire…

But all that aside…

I experienced a chill when I read the highlighted words in the Herald by Anna Patty. I am forced to transcribe from the print edition as this report online is quite different. They confirm the nature of our current Prime Ministership, the iron fist in the velvet glove, the protofascist* — I do not use such words usually — under the Aussie mate surface:

Need a good laugh?

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