Why is it, that they spend an entire lecture, run by a guest speaker and senior lecturer Peter Weiniger, discussing the education system from an utterly one sided, socialist and left-wing perspective ?
The anti-Howard rhetoric was stepped up incredibly. Numerous comments about "the good old days when education was free" were thrown about. The lecturer himself suggested that Howard wanted to create a system where only the rich can get education. But to find the biggest specific idiocy, it occurred when Peter Weiniger was asked by a curious student what he thought was the biggest problem with public education ?
The answer he delivered could not have been *MORE* idiotic, wrong or ignorant.
He answered:
"Not enough funding"
In Victoria alone, the amount of public funding thrown into the education system has doubled in the last 8 years. Today, the State Budget will be released, and no doubt, the funding will be massively boosted yet again. Despite the fact that the system fails, politicians continue to throw money at it, hoping to win elections.
And despite the ever increasing amount of taxes stolen from working people and allocated to the failing public sector, the idiots who teach journalism to thousands of students would have you believe that the current approach of increasing public spending is effective. Is it ignorance or propaganda ?
You'd like this youtube vid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA
ReplyDeleteThere's a funny bit in it where the interviewer points out that the US is already spending $10K per child... so how much more would be enough... 15K? The answer - said in all seriousness, with a straigh face - was: "15, 20, 30... the more the better!"
Astounding stupidity.
Thanks for that video, now my blood is boiling.
ReplyDeleteReally, how can these bleeding heart types pretend to moan and groan at the tragedy of rising private education and health costs, and how the average family can't afford them.....yet at the same time.... celebrate similar amounts of money per person being pumped into the public system, with much worse quality levels and customer satisfaction ?
Its a tragedy somehow, when a family knowingly and voluntarily exchanges large amounts of moeny for a key service, yets its a victory when that family or individual have similar amounts of money coercively taxed and shoved into the massive bureaucracy of the public sector ?!
jono, love your use of Google on this blog.
ReplyDeleteBy linking Weiniger's RMIT staff details page (No.1 entry when you Google "Peter Weiniger") to your blog page, you get the No.2 spot when Googling "Peter Weiniger".
It's an old technique I know, but still bloody brilliant.
"Why was I Googling 'Peter Weiniger'?" you ask.
Well apparently the only way to know how good a university lecturer really is, is to Google them and find out what was the last book or writing they did in their related area.
On this basis, it doesn't look good for Ol'Pete. In fact, if you Factiva him it looks far worse. If in journalism you are only as good as your last story, well...(I won't say more).
Why is it, that they spend an entire lecture, run by a guest speaker and senior lecturer Peter Weiniger, discussing the education system from an utterly one sided, socialist and left-wing perspective?
ReplyDeleteGuest lecturers reserve the right to speak from a particular perspective. Your post demonstrates the problem with the ideology of the right - it makes value-laden assumptions regarding what should be taught at universities without any idea of how the public education sector works. There is absolutely no assumption at all that a university syllabus will be taught objectively - because that rests on the idea that the adult students in tertiary education are poor dumb babies who can't think for themselves and whose impressionable minds will be damaged irrevocably by the evil socialist academics. There is however an assumption in journalism that stories rest on facts without emotion and research, not on unsubstantiated claims such as
In Victoria alone, the amount of public funding thrown into the education system has doubled in the last 8 years.
Someone better tell the OECD that, then - because according to their latest report Australia's public education funding has decreased rapidly in the ten years to 2008. Luckily for you this is a blog and not a reputable news organisation. So if you're hoping to make it in journalism, it'd be a good idea to learn about objectivity and how to use statistics properly.
BTW, the link to Peter Weiniger's homepage lists him as an Associate Lecturer not, as your post alleges, a Senior Lecturer - you might want to know that accuracy also gets you far in journalism.