Dumbing Down Education

It’s conventional wisdom that the ticket to improving your job and prosperity prospects is a good education.

Historically, a ‘good’ education meant you got through 12 years of school, learnt how to read and write and reason. For some, it also meant university.

Today, none of that qualifies as a good education. It just means you have navigated the system successfully and could still be as thick as a brick.

One university lecturer told me that year 12 graduates now have the literacy and numeracy skills of a year 9 student of decades past.

We also read a lot about the out-performance of girls in schools versus boys, but I know the system is being gamed to help them perform better.

In many leading girls schools, despite the rules for year 12, students can submit multiple drafts of the same assignment until the final one receives very high marks.

It’s no coincidence that in some schools where some teachers sit on the examination panel, their students get exceptional results.

Unfortunately, when these students get to uni, the spoon feeding stops and they often struggle with the requirements.

And don’t get me started on the international student diploma mill scandal in our universities. How you can graduate from an Australian university without speaking English makes it a joke.

Internet Cut and paste skills aren’t degree worthy.

Tonight's talking points memo sheds some light on how the education system is failing our kids…and our finances.

1. Total combined Australian Government and state and territory funding per student has grown in real terms by 17.0% over the decade from 2008-09 to 2017-18. At the same time, Commonwealth funding has grown in real terms by 48.2%.
   
   Yet our kids get dumber. Global Literacy and numeracy rankings have been dropping.
   
2. UNICEF ranked Australia 39 out of 41 medium and high income countries for achieving quality education. Beating only Turkey and Romania.
   
3. Only 71% of Australian 15 year olds are achieving baseline standards in maths, reading and science ability.

And things are set to get worse under the new overhauled national curriculum.

4. Children won’t be taught how to tell the time until grade 2 and no instruction on how to multiply by 2,5 and 10 until year 4.

5. New teachings include the terms aboriginal and torres strait islander aren’t appropriate, Australia was invaded and that there are rules regarding ‘sexting’.

Just the thing for the next bunch of brainwashed woke activists.

Apparently this is being driven ‘due to the changing ways students understand new concepts.

Here’s the thing. Maths, English and science aren’t new concepts.

The gender fairy book, anthropogenic global warming and the myth of multiple established ‘nations’ on the Australian continent prior to European settlement are all new concepts….and a load of cobblers in my view.