Stilgherrian » education http://stilgherrian.com All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris. Vive les poissons rouges sauvages! Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:49:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 en © stil@stilgherrian.com () stil@stilgherrian.com() 1440 Live Internet broadcasts from Stilgherrian. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris. stil@stilgherrian.com No no http://stilgherrian.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/sla_144w.jpg Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com 144 144 Australia 2020 News, 14 March 2008 http://stilgherrian.com/politics/australia_2020_news_20080314/ http://stilgherrian.com/politics/australia_2020_news_20080314/#comments Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:12:44 +0000 Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/politics/australia_2020_news_20080314/ Summit deputy chairman Professor Glyn Davis reckons Australia’s universities should be run like the American higher education system.

Professor Davis will argue in a speech today that America’s higher education system is more stable than Australia’s because it is more decentralised, with legal and financial responsibility primarily in the hands of the states. Universities are also given more power to set their own tuition fees, and students are offered a wide range of institutions from which to choose.

Well, “he will have argued”, because this was this morning’s newspaper reporting something that hadn’t actually happened yet. Newspapers know the future.

Apart from that, nothing much new to report. Everyone is presumably busy going through nominations. Tomorrow I’ll look to see what the blogosphere is saying.

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]]> http://stilgherrian.com/politics/australia_2020_news_20080314/feed/ Captains of Industry http://stilgherrian.com/politics/captains_of_industry/ http://stilgherrian.com/politics/captains_of_industry/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:17:46 +0000 Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/politics/captains_of_industry/ Here’s a nice little out-of-touch conversation, between three private schoolboys on a Sydney North Shore train.

Schoolboy 1: I feel sorry for the suckers in state schools.

Schoolboy 2: Their parents have no idea.

Schoolboy 3: How do they expect their kids to become captains of industry?

This was overhead by Sydney Morning Herald reader John, from Umina Beach (not published online). Three things strike me:

  • The goal of becoming a “captain of industry” is taken as a given. No thought of becoming a doctor, lawyer or scientist, let alone an artist or historian.
  • Only a privately-educated kid could ever become a captain of industry. Apparently. That’d certainly explain why so many of such captains are self-centred out-of-touch arseholes.
  • Private education is a choice available to everyone. No thought that perhaps some families can’t afford $20k a year, or that some families might not believe in the private school ethos of privilege.

When I wrote my piece on the Citizenship Test, I was subsequently slagged off in Crikey because a reader imagined I held those views on privilege. I guess he couldn’t imagine someone going to an elite private school and escaping that kind of programming. I believe that’s what they call “a failure of the imagination”.

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