Listen To Your Elders

I have 3 children, 7 grandchildren and 3 ( nearly 4 greatgrandchildren ). The children and grandchildren have all gone to public schools and obtained different levels of attainment ranging from top professionals to simple passes in HSC. I presume that they all had the same level of teachers and so the different level of attainment wasn’t due so much to the teacher’s skills as it was to the students desire for success and the drive and encouragement obtained from the parents.

If I look at the students in any one class that my offspring attended, though they all had the same teacher at any one time they didn’t all obtain the same academic levels. So in any one class, if I look back, there are students that ended up ranging from doctors, teachers, engineers, etc down to in some less fortunate cases, criminals. Which level obtained do we reward the teacher for?

It seems to me that it would be more appropriate to grade the parents of students, this is where the motivation springs from. Nowdays parents seem to want the teachers to train the children in self discipline, morality, social responsibility etc, and also to have their little Johnny or Mary end up as top scholars. It is not a viable proposition, our teachers should be able to teach their students to think for themselves and learn the subjects set. The other things are for the parents to teach outside the school gates.

If we had more parents that instead of buying boats and other luxuries (supposedly for the children but really to satisfy their own egos) that would sit down for only a half hour or so a night with their children and try to teach manners etc as well as to help with their home work, then we may have a better education system.

As for the threat to cut off finances if the state school teachers don’t comply with this arrogant education minister’s edict, she should realise that the money she is talking about is our money and we have paid it in not for her to obtain political advantage but to finance a decent education system.

If she has a logical argument it should more likely follow the line of testing all future parents for their suitability and perhaps mark them out of 100 and adjust their income accordingly!

It seems to me that it is both immoral and dangerous to keep financing private education from the public purse because it is from these sources of learning that we get the extremist views of the terrorists and racists.

I object to my taxes being used to spread the mumbo-jumbo of the religions which is basically a way to ensure that the religions maintain their control of the masses. I pay my taxes to try to spread the knowledge of the sciences and the arts and not belief in man made gods.

I can understand how gods were first introduced into the system to answer the questions that were beyond the knowledge of the early days. However, it seems rather stupid these days to believe that the earth is only 6 thousand years old, and all the other stories of the various religious books of wisdom.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the gods which were first introduced to answer questions beyond the knowledge of the day are now used to override the teachings of the prophets so that the leaders of the religions can now say, for example, that it is wrong to kill, unless it is a jew or a muslim or a christian etc. The prophets never put provisos on the teachings, it was, “thou shalt not kill” period.

I think that it would be better if people were to acknowledge the teachings of the Buddha which included the non acceptance of information blindly. Even his own teachings were open to question, blind acceptance is a denial of the power of the human intelligence which is the only thing which seperates us from the other animals.

Secular education is the only way forward to national security and cohesion between the peoples of the country and the world.