Hi Geoffrey

you're right - it is that simple.

If only life were so simple.

Geoffrey,

A terrific read or download is "The Death of the Liberal Class" by Chris Hedges. While I found it heavy going it was one of the best overviews of what is happened over the last 100 years or so plus.

What we are up against and all the forces that are mounting behind Abbott for PM!

Stephen,

They'll have a "voucher/token" plan for getting public education "moving?"...but it is not in their DNA?

Stephen, Geoffrey is right, the liberals are anti education, or at least anti public education. They believe in user pays and if you can't pay well you get the second rate system that is left after they cut the public sector funding to subsidise the private sector. Howard did that with education when he was in government, just as he did with health. It was not always liberal policy, but it has been since Howard.

"...you cannot control a population of educated people who have their own minds and are not sheep."

As adverse reactions to Grattan's columns here confirm.

Thanx Peter.

Yes, p'raps I'm too harsh on Gonski. I am mindful of Ashenden's qualified praise of Gonski -

Ashenden, Dean (2012) Gonski’s review: another salvo in the Hundred Years’ War, Inside Story, 23 February, retrieved 28 February 2012 from
http://inside.org.au/gonski-review/

Ashenden, Dean (2012) Gonski, again, Inside Story, 2 August, retrieved 7 August 2012 from
http://inside.org.au/gonski-again/

I agree that this is *another* good piece from Ms G.

While c 80% of State government funding goes to public schools about 80% of Australian Government funding goes to private schools. To implement Gonski the Australian and State governments would have to virtually pool their funding and allocate it according to need, resulting in a reallocation of funding increases from private to public schools.

I understand the Victorian Government to be objecting to that virtual pooling and reallocation of increases, and also objecting to the big increases that would be needed to implement Gonski without cutting funding for any school.

Totally correct Henry. Not one cent to private schools whilst public schools lack every modern resource available to private school students, end of story, that's equity in educational opportunity.

Very much so Whyn.

And I was attempting to raise the issue of the differences between education - which is difficult to measure - and training which is easier to guage.

If we reduce our schools to churning out useful factory hands, shop assistants and functionally literate only - even at a lower unit cost - the consequences for Australian society and economy would be absolutely disastrous.

Schools are not factories Whyn.

Trouble is, Peter, we educated them and then found they didn't want to come back to the farm. Average age of farmers in Australia is close to 60, in our WA eastern wheatbelt it's 64.

Name me one Australian University where the Ag Science course is full. Then have a look at this:

Updated: 2011-04-05 14:36
By Lu Chang (China Daily)
Of the 1.3 million who graduated from China’s 43 agricultural universities from 2001 to 2010, only 500,000 are working in the agricultural sector, the latest agricultural technology development guidelines from the State Council, China’s Cabinet, said.
Yet, the demand for agricultural graduates, particularly for technicians and engineers, has grown as China continues to implement modern technology.
Agricultural universities now face the challenge to recruit talented students. “We just don’t have enough students enrolling in our program,” said You Jie, a professor in the college of agricultural sciences in China Agricultural University in Beijing.

So it's just the system you reject then Whyn. This usually emerges in this argument from the private lobby. How is a union any more or less of a lobby group that a church except if you believe that one is good and the other bad? I bet the kiddies who found themselves at the mercy of hundreds of religious deviants in schools over the past century have a different idea of good and bad. The negativity point is another tool used by the “give us the money” private lobby. Your ignorance or bias also explodes from your words. Statements like “hope offered by schools owned and operated by the real world teachers and professional management who staff them” do you no service and detract from any relevant points you make make, again not unusual in this argument. Your final blunder comes from your anti-socialist rhetoric. Please have a look at the political systems the countries with the best performing (according to your results driven agenda) schools operate under.

Fruit picking will do that to you Whyn ... plants wrong thoughts and dresses them up as memories.

Trust me it was Saint Gough. It was January 1 1974.

One could of course - check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia

Bob Menzies!!!??? As if! :)

Michael, I don't disagree with most of what you have said, except for the blame you have placed on Gillard and labor. People, leaders, can always explain themselves and policies better. I don't have any complaint with that. But it would not matter what Gillard or labor said or did, it would not get positive coverage, let alone in-dept coverage from the mainstream media.

Gillard and labor could not buy positive media coverage form the media on their policies if they tried and that is the simple fact of the matter. The Gonski reforms are important as is the funding they would provide, but it is not going to happen. It like so many other important reforms/debates are simply mired in the politics of getting Abbott and the coalition back into government. And the failure of state labor governments and the scandals left behind by some of them has only made it far more difficult to make leeway on them in the media or with the public for that matter.

And of course we have the coalition state governments making the most of this to play politics with it. Though I should say not for the benefit of the people in their states, but to depose Federal labor and install a Abbott led coalition government. COAG now has no practical function other than for political grandstanding as the states demonstrate how they can prevent labor accomplishing any of their proposed reforms. And as far as I can see COAG as a functioning instrument of achieving policy outcome, is dead and buried. There will be no agreements, no outcomes with Gonski before the next election. And you can forget about Gonski reforms after the next election if as it looks Abbott and the coalition gain government. Any changes will be way out at the fringes with no real substance to them.

I hear you, it is very sad. I think your analogy with "the landed gentry" is quite apt