#auspol

Yarp. The times, they be a changin'. :/

In other news, this is a mildly interesting take on Turnbull and how he relates to the rest of his party: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au...oalitions-social-conservatives/14456052002541

 

Honestly the PM is a puppet. He can't do anything the party doesn't approve of, otherwise risks being kicked out. Think it was part of the agreement to get him in the position.

 

Sadly, while that dynamic isn't anything new to auspol (the rules haven't really changed for PM <--> party relations since federation) the flimsy/precarious nature of PM-ship seems to have been dialled up a lot more in the past 10 years.

 

Not strictly auspol, but definitely relevant.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au...t-content-after-domestic-abuse/14504436002771

 

See, Australia? This is the kind of shit you inspire when you start limiting people's family support based off whether or not they've have their kids immunised:

http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2016/01/05/current-affair-dipping-their-toe-fun-world-eugenics

"Well, if it's okay to legislate against poor people making decisions [however badly] for their children's health..."

 

We got rid of that PM; our new one is basically like an ethically dubious Yoda.

Also, more ways to fuck poor people over:

http://www.mamamia.com.au/medicare-pap-smears-not-free/

Yaaaay! \o/

 

Oh, I certainly agree that it's a prickly belief to hold; but the current legislation is a terrible way to go about enforcing immunisation. It really only targets poor people 'cos the rich are all "oh, I don't get paid a few hundred dollars a fortnight? lol, yolo, w/e".

 

Most of them are. Well, rebateable at least. You pay, government pays you back. It's interesting to think though; people are going "what a wonderful thing Turnbull's doing with the welfare access thing for non-immunisers" when they lambasted Tony Abbott for the same thing.

Not to mention the grand majority of antivaxxers are rich inner city, often either ill-educated or educated but into "mysticism".

 

True. But a point to keep in mind is that he's speaking about a very different kind of education to the kind we have in AU (or US, for that matter) today.

The bulk of "education" carried out in Houston's time had very little government oversight and--so long as the kids could do basic read/'rite/'rithmetic--there was little government-backed BS about "moulding a national character". Today there is heavy government & lobby-group influence in "education" with an increasing emphasis on schools producing graduates who're 'stable' and happily (often, unthinkingly) in support of the status quo.

tl;dr
"Education" in our day/age isn't really comparable to that of Houston's era. Moreover, in terms of promotion/preservation of "free government" it may actually be quantifiably worse.

 

Apologies in advance for dropping a bach. of education on you, J-man, but the actual reason the Taliban are against Western-style schools (NB: they don't actually seem to mind the traditional modes of education practised by Afghanis; why this is so should become apparent by the end of this post) is the same reason that I'm against government-controlled (or even influenced) schooling (aka what we've got in most of Au and the US): because education isn't about knowledge or common sense. It's about culture.

In pedagogical philosophy (i.e. the theory of teaching) there are two distinct processes that are occurring in a classroom:

1. schooling;
2. education.

Schooling is what you're referring to when you say "basic common sense and knowledge"; it's a process wherein children learn about the world around them and develop the skills necessary to effectively interact with it. Education, otoh, is a process where children learn about the people around them (e.g. their nation, ethnic group, social & economic class, etc.) and how to integrate with them (i.e. think/act/be like them). I know this distinction might seem pedantic or overly technical at first glance, but please believe me when I say that it's actually a pretty vital understanding to the theory of teaching (and education as a whole).

The problem with governments influencing or controlling education is that it allows those in power to train everyone else (who're supposed to keeping those in power accountable) to see things their way--which is a road to much major badness and, imho, is probably a contributing factor in some of the major screwups in the national and global scenes this past hundred years or more. Similarly (just to return to your comment on the Taliban), if the Taliban allow Western-style schools to do their thing in Afghanistan then they're actually allowing the West to train their children to think not like the Taliban (not even like Afghanis!), but like Westerners. Which is a massive attack on Afghani culture, even if you disagree with/removed the Taliban element.

tl;dr
shiz b brok m8. And by "shiz", I mean how we allow the gov to play a role in the raising of kids.
----

In other news:

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...y-celebrating-cruelty-obfuscation-and-neglect

(Although, tbh, the reason we allow the atrocities that have given rise to this comic probably has something to do with government meddling w/ the AU education system. :V)

 

But even without bias coming directly from the teachers themselves things are pretty much problematic to an insane degree. Don't have time to get into it now (late for work, argh) but basically when a government can freely meddle with the curriculum of a school (to name one of several avenues for manipulation), like they can in AU, UK, US (those are the ones I'm certain of, 'though I'm sure it's true in other counties as well) then you're basically asking for your government to become more corrupt and/or totalitarian. Would expand further; but am late, as mentioned above. o/

 

There's a lot of things that the education system here could do with, for sure. Funding is a big one, and not just given to private schools who are already running a profit.

 

Going halfly necro this... But...

Its that time where the party's make empty promises that if all of them was fulfilled it will bankrupt the nation.

In all seriousness for those who don't understand what this means, its coming up to an election.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-08/malcolm-turnbull-announces-federal-election-live-blog/7391958