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Full text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'Law teachers as gatekeepers of law, public morality and human rights: Equipping our students for moral argument in a pluralistic legal environment' at the Australian Law Teachers Association Annual Conference 2013.
Malcolm Turnbull's justification for calling for the introduction of electronic voting is that roughly six per cent of voters failed to correctly fill in their ballot papers on Saturday. Electronic voting would stop this senseless waste. Ignoring the fact that electronic voting would disenfranchise the roughly 5.9 per cent of voters whose democratic wish is to draw male appendages on their ballot, Turnbull has a point.
'The Towards Healing protocol is not a substitute for criminal prosecution of sex abusers. Nor is it a cheap alternative to civil liability for damages. It is a procedure available by choice to victims in addition to criminal prosecution of perpetrators or pursuit of civil damages for negligence by church authorities.' Full text from Frank Brennan's address to the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand 47th Annual Conference, 4 September 2013 at Hotel Grand Chancellor Adelaide on Hindley.
Being born in Australia is a huge advantage. And having parents with money, a good education and connections always helps. Some of us have an advantage before we've even started school. But like the players in American psychologist Paul Piff's 'rigged Monopoly' experiments, those of us who do well tend to think we've earned our good fortune through hard work, talent and creativity.
'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.
A survey released this week found that the lion's share of philanthrpopic giving goes to independent non-government schools. Gonski devoted an entire chapter to the question of how private cash can be got to where need is greatest. The Government should act on his recommendation, but not before beefing it up.
The report's argument that a base level of funding be established might lead to a lowest common denominator approach to determining what is an 'efficient' education, in both the state and private systems. Creativity, diversity and experimentation may be hindered in such a regime. Friday 24 February
With militants firmly holding the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the already low literacy rate of 29 per cent has nosedived to 17 per cent in the region. Religious madaris are perceived as places of affordable education by common rural dwellers, while to the outer world, they remain breeding grounds for militancy.
Once, my mother reprimanded a young student whom she taught at an expensive private school. The boy replied that his dad could 'buy and sell' her. As easy as it would be to conclude that private schools breed poor behaviour, rude children are just that — class has little to do with it.
Teacher organisations have advocated for one sector rather than opposing the whole flawed structure. Catholic bishops have insisted on public subsidies for avowedly exclusive schools. Governments have adopted policies which have entrenched a socially counter-productive organisation of a major public institution. How many more generations has this scheme of things got left to run?
The classroom — one teacher, one group of students, usually of the same age, one rectangular space, door closed — is the great survivor of schooling. It has been depicted as a contest between 'teacher-centred' and 'student-centred' pedagogies. But in the age of technology there is a new contender for dominance in the classroom.
Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg observed that ‘the oldest, deepest, most poisonous debate in Australia has been about government aid to church schools’. The most dramatic episode in the history of church state relations in Australia was the Goulburn schools strike, which took place 50 years ago this month.
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