Green thought, in a green shade, Green views The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy) |
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
The Goodies
good television
good movies
good books
good poetry
more good books
good songs
good children
good boys
good people
good leaders

Try a lucky dip:

Strange
Bedfellows
John Howard
Kevin Rudd
Al Gore
George Bush
Malcolm Turnbull
Leon Trotsky
Thomas Huxley
Oliver Goldsmith
Kurt Vonnegut
Tony Blair
Samuel Pepys
Winston Churchill
Peter Costello
Joan of Arc
Fidel Castro
Sarah Williams
Peter Beattie
Ned Ludd
De-Anne Kelly
Barack Obama
Kylie Minogue
Tony Abbott
Alexander Downer
Barbaro
Sam Kekovich
Alan Bennett
Osama bin Laden
Rupert Murdoch
George Lakoff
Bjorn Lomborg
Adolf Hitler
Ayn Rand
George Orwell
Julia Butterfly Hill
Saddam Hussein
James Carville
Charles Darwin
Philip Cooney
Jacky Kelly
Irshad Manji
James Lovelock
Bob Hawke
Brendon Nelson
Barnaby Joyce
Robert Menzies
Robert Tressell
Slim Dusty
Noel Coward
Samuel Johnson
Walt Whitman
Edmund Hillary
Robert Byrd
Phillip Adams
Alisa Camplin
Arnold Schwarzeneger
Blogger's Cut
Best slices from the watermelon
Future to the back
Ox power
Whacko Texas
Ticked off
Inhaling the Sixties
God unwilling
Bakers Oven 5
Game over
All change for
Dog bites man
Whale tears
Flowers for bosses
Curtin spinning
Gotta love it
Dodgy intelligence
A glass darkly
Truth and consequences
Media-ocrity
Cant get me Im part of the society
Growing like woody weeds in the nanny state
|
All of us I am sure have become increasingly concerned about what the federal government has been doing to our school system. Right from the start, ten years ago, they made their intentions clear. Less and less money for the public school system and more and more for the rich private schools. More and more funding for fundamentalist religious schools. Attacks on the integrity of our public school teachers, undoubtedly our most conscientious public servants. As funding levels fall, more and more demands on parents to pay more and more, and more involvement of big corporations, happy to advertise to captive audiences. Public schools beginning to fall apart as less and less is put into maintenance, let alone decent new facilities. All of this neglect undoubtedly aimed at discouraging people from sending their children to public schools, until, I am sure Mr Howard hopes, public schools will just fade away, and we will return to a nineteenth century model where only the rich could afford a school education for their children.
But in the meantime, the public schools not being able to be killed quickly enough, more and more interference with the curriculum and teaching methods. Demands that reading be taught using only one technique, demands that English literature be greatly limited, and only taught using a single philosophy. And History, back to the future with a vengeance here. Once upon a time history was only taught as it related to white men of the ruling classes, and the relation of Australia to the British Empire - history as written by the winners. Then scholars began pointing out that there were all kinds of different histories, depending on your point of view, and students were taught that there might be a history of women, of the poor, of unions, of migrants, of Aborigines, of the environment, all contributing to the total history of the country. John Howard hates the idea of different histories with different points of view, and is demanding that only history as he understands it is taught. All of these demands backed by threat to remove funding if public schools don't fall into line with the Howard vision - that approach used to be called blackmail.
All of that is bad, and frightening. But now comes a new demand. The government is determined to greatly expand the nuclear power industry. It knows people are opposed to this. So now there are calls for children in schools to be only taught that nuclear power is good for you. By the time they are adults they will be ready to accept Howard's brave new world of a nuclear power station in every city, a uranium mine in many states, and nuclear waste dumps in your backyard. And your children will be happy about this. Used to be called brainwashing. What next? How good the work choices legislation is? How forest clearing is good for the planet? How the war in Iraq benefits Australia?
The excellent Australian public schools have produced a great range of people with all kinds of abilities and ideas and views and philosophies. John Howard and I are both the products of public schools, and you couldn't get two people more different than us! I reckon that diversity is a good outcome. Mr Howard doesn't - he clearly wants, in future, for our public schools to only produce people like him. Do you think that is a good outcome?
{ Post a Comment }
No, I don't
{ 10:06 AM, 13 December 2006 }
{ Posted by snowy }
Well said, Mr Pickwick. The Howard brainwashing continues and the sheeple aren't even aware of it. Hopefully, sanity will prevail next election.
{ Last Page } { Page 470 of 957 } { Next Page }
|
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
People listen!
Browse recent entries (below), or select a
Category
Climate change Crop Marks (my novel) Dream Economics Education Environment Evolution Fire Health History Conquerors Infrastructure Iraq Media Nuclear power Politics federal Politics general Religion Rural life Shepherds Calendar The Arts Values Water
"We do not choose our convictions, but they choose us and force us to fight for them to the death." (Wedgewood Benn)
Recent Entries
Say cheese The Murdochurian Candidate Nobler in the mind Geology. Palinology Atishoo, Atishoo, we all fall down Origin sins Get a hair cut To kill a hummingbird Dog Days On the other hand Buckleys The boss of me now A many splendid thing, Spring. Mr Warren, are you with me? Olympian depths Soul brother? Blocking arteries Summer Love I find the defendant I see dead people Train whistle blowing Bring on the secular advisers Eyes Right This is the schoolroom Sailing down the river
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)

Links
Huffington Post The Greens Common Dreams Australia Institute The Nation Independent Guardian Truth Dig Edge New Matilda Global warming Kitchen gardeners Conservation International Diggers Club Community Suported Agriculture Voiceless Toronto Globe International fund for animal welfare Humane Society Concerned Farmers Network Worldwatch Institute George Monbiot Sierra Club Aust Inst Health & Welfare Parks Association NSW Gun control Aust Council of Social Service Aust Council for Educational Research Education Network Australia Rural Australians for Refugees Greenpeace Bush Heritage Geoff Davies Naomi Klein BBC Mother Jones Tom Paine John Quiggin Human Rights Watch Amnesty International Doctor's Reform Society Dissent magazine David McKnight Aust Film Institute True Food Network Get up United Nations Assn Arms trade protest Michael Osborne Lee Rhiannon Intnl Peasant Movement World Conservation Union Biological Farmers of Australia Natural Sequence Farming Union of Concerned Scientists Rockridge Institute Climate action now Climate Ark Sustainable Population Australia Global warming blog Zero Footprint Charles Darwin Mars Climate Institute Jeremy Rifkin Gene ethics (GM) Slow Food movement Darwin Awards Stern Review Bob Brown Baghdad blogger Web Diary (Margot Kingston) Real Climate (science of climate change) Spatial literacy Oil and energy Stop global warming Wilderness Society Columbia Journalism Review NSW Rural Fire Service Google Book Search World Public Opinion Reporters without borders Doctors without borders Which? UK Choice Australia Energy Science Womankind Worldwide Work Foundation Rocky Mountain Institute Sustainable Development Commission International Forum on Globalisation Democratic Audit Australia Stem Cells Emily's List Electoral Commission Turning the pages Domesday Book W.I.R.E.S. Women's Electoral Lobby Leakey Foundation Richard Dawkins Intnl Agricultural Research Alpine ecology SETI at home Rare breeds Friends of the Earth Revolutionary women Afghanistan Nature & Society forum Sceptic's Society Republican Movement Tom Dispatch City of Joy aid Mumble (Peter Brent) NASA - Mars Murray-Darling Commission Marine Conservation Well Being Live science Women's Health Children & Youth World weather The Progressive Lester Brown Australian Archives Jay Rosen (Press think) World Policy Health & Global Environment Surtees Genealogy (IGI) Free census (UK) Genealogy mailing lists Farmer John Steve Waugh Jane McGrath Meteorology Global Fund for Women One World network Red Cross RSPCA Camp Quest Humanists Pierre Tristam Landscape design Creative non-violence human extinction movt Witness Save our rivers Terry Jones No sweatshops IPCC Forest Stewardship Global Security Bad science Green building Energy [r]evolution Free the bears Pamela Poole Press Emblem Inst. for Public Accuracy Progress Iraq oil Atheists of Florida Museum of Woman International Women's Day Rodale Institute David Michael Green Good LIfe Center Food First Robert Dreyfuss Oxfam Jubilee Debt campaign Astronomy photos Rock Ethics Institute Linda O'Brien Foreign policy in focus Global giving Rare species ringtones Biofuel dangers Commercial free childhood Tom Tomorrow Environment & Development Robert Kennedy Memorial Sustainability Institute Idealists Book Mooch Irish Radio Show Step it up David Korten Intnl Forum Globalization WIMN's Voices Blog Crooked Timber blog Earth Rights Intnl Women's Media FireDogLake blog Anti War Christopher Brauchli Robert Koehler Science Blog Green alliance Wildlife Coalition charity donations Idealists Aid Watch Solartopia Women blogging Envt Management Systems Fund for Peace Away with Words Peace Direct De Smog Blog UN climate change Water treaty Francophiles Peter Martin Question everything Story of stuff
Contact me directly -
greenviews at optusnet.com.au
Or subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe
Site feed at http://www.blognow.com.au/ rss.php?w=mrpickwick

|