How come this article by David Marr and Nick O’Malley is in the national news section of the Sydney Morning Herald, and not the opinion section? Compare the nakedly partisan polemic of Marr and O’Malley with the balanced, careful analysis of Nicholas Gruen here at Troppo, or even the factually based analysis of Tim Colebatch in the SMH’s sister publication The Age.
I can’t help but despair about Australia’s mainstream media when one of our leading broadsheets doesn’t understand the difference between news and opinion (or doesn’t care), while the other major media group (along with the Prime Minister) editorialises in favour of dumbing down Australia by encouraging kids to leave school at 15 because we need more tradespeople and they don’t need a Year 12 education! Where are Paul Keating and the Clever Country when we need them? Somebody stop me! I’m starting to sound like that dreadful McConville chappie. BTW McConville’s blog seems to have been pulled for “serious reconstruction” in the wake of Andrew Norton’s masterly demolition job.
Trackback: http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/10/the_sydney_morn.html
Most of the articles in the Australian are heavily laced with highly biased partisan opinion.Indeed the Australian as a w(hole)– black that is.
Well said Ken! On a point of detail, I think I am with the PM on opting out of school if you think you don’t really need the extra time for your chosen career path. However I would like to see the extra years held in credit in case the person wants to top up later, not necessarily in school, perhaps in TAFE or some other course.
The dumbing down that we need to worry about is not the result of voluntary opting out by motivated kids, it is to do with the standard of education that is provided from year 1.
By the way, on another point of detail, don’t try to tell me that Nicholas Gruen is a real person, he is a commune or committee of people. No single person knows all that stuff or has the time to write it all down.
Enough of the namby-pamby half measures I say; it’s time to go back to the basics. Free beer with school dinners, a beagle pack in every school and plenty of fagging for the juniors. That’s what made England great, it could make this country great too.
Rafe: Nicholas is indeed real and is pictured each month in ‘Australian Property Investor’ mag ;)
can we say that the Norton anti-virus protection has worked at Mcconville or have we all been Mcconned?
“Enough of the namby-pamby half measures I say; it’s time to go back to the basics. Free beer with school dinners, a beagle pack in every school and plenty of fagging for the juniors. That’s what made England great, it could make this country great too.”
Somewhere in the archives here I described a curriculum for St Hamiltons Academy. You kind of summed it up pretty well.