Odds & Sods

So many highlights in today's paper! Agamedes barely knows where to start ranting.

Do you need new -- lateral -- thinking for your own problems? email nick leth at gmail dot com. Need solutions? No worries. Now.

So much nonsense in The West Australian today (18 May 2010)! And wow! there's even something nice! Let's rave on...

Healthy eating

Inside Cover has a quick sneer at the Department of Agriculture and Food. I can't help but sympathise.

The big boss at Ag & Food sent an email to all staff: Eat healthy! he wrote. Meanwhile, out with the sporting try-hards...

I'm a regular competitor with the little-known sport of orienteering. Each week, throughout the winter season, we have an event in the bush -- with a cake stall to make it all worthwhile. Association members bring a cake, competitors buy a slice of cake, money raised goes to help the sport.

We -- members -- are now being encouraged to bring a healthy cake. Wholemeal flour. Less sugar. More fruit. Not just fruit in cakes -- real fruit, for sale. Sheesh!

We've just walked, jogged, run for two, five, six or more kilometres through the bush. Burnt off perhaps ten servings of Dinky Donuts. And -- for the sake of unneeded sponsorship from a government agency with nanny-like power urges -- we are being asked to bake and sell wholemeal sugar-free lentil cakes.

Sheesh!

Model TV show looks good

It's a very nice photo with the advertorial for Australia's Next Top Model. Three pretty girls from WA, a story in the WA daily newspaper, all very nice. Nice text, too.

The professional fashion photographer has comments on each of the WA contestants:

• "A serious contender... perfect proportions..." Looks as though she has a chance of winning.
  
• "A good eye for creating a look... achieve exciting angles..." Willing and flexible enough to do as the photographer asks.
  
• "Working hard early... develop her skills..." Tries hard.
  

Isn't that nice! Here's a positive statement about every single one of the contestants... Pick the ones from [select your own state] and you have a nice, positive story with local content.

Well done, that PR person!

Unqualified teachers

Then there's the report that the "New [physics] course [is] 'too hard' for teachers".

Igor Bray of Curtin university says that the proposed course content is good. But school physics teachers are not qualified to teach that level of technical physics content. Well durr!

Teachers are selected from amongst those who want to work with children. People who look forward to the challenge of passing knowledge to young people. People whose ambitions lie with being nurturing and supportive rather than fame and discovery.

Then teachers are thrown to the wolves.

Teachers are told to teach the unteachable. To manage classes of thirty, where perhaps one or two want to learn and at least one or two are psychopathic misfits who should not be allowed unaccompanied in public -- so they are relegated to the social welfare confines of the local school.

When students fight rather than learn, teachers are blamed. When students struggle to learn, do their best but are still only average, they are measured against private school students who are filtered for success... and the teachers who drag the dregs up to match the average -- are blamed for not teaching any better. Then the teachers collapse for a well-earned break, or just break under enormous pressure -- and are attacked by letters to the paper.

Teachers have lost all public status. Their role is to baby-sit, to be social workers, medical assistants and jailers. If you understood physics -- and could get a job as a physicist -- would you become a teacher? No way!

Raise the status of teachers. Let them teach. Change the role of schools back to education. Define the role as "teaching" rather than "social work". Perhaps then we will get teachers who are able to teach physics.

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems by Agamedes Consulting. Support for your thought: email nick leth at gmail dot com