On Catholic educators and Gonski 2.0 

David Edmunds writes: Re. “Catholic educators’ bitterness over Gonski 2.0 is rich indeed” (Friday)

Underpinning the education funding debate that Bernard Keane wrote about on Friday is the simple fact that the money is simply being spent wrongly. We are slipping down the international rankings of student performance, and this slippage precisely correlates with the increase in private schooling. 

There is unequivocal evidence from international comparisons that the best performing education systems are ones where carefully-selected, highly-credentialed teachers work in a system with virtually no private education.  In these systems people with power and influence have a direct interest in the performance of public schools and drive performance.  In Australia, the people with power and influence generally have little direct interest in the performance of public schools and it shows.

Our current system is bedevilled by yet another political poison pill from the Howard era that is nearly impossible to untangle.  To correct the system would mean defunding the independent and Catholic systems, and this would seem to be electorally impossible.

So, for the foreseeable future we will live with a second-rate system regardless of how school funding is allocated. Thank you, Mr Howard.

On the French election

Les Heimann writes: Re. “Marine Le Pen is the future, not just of France, but of the modern West” (Friday)

Marine Le Pen is the future? An out and out extremist Nazi loving fascist is the future? That is simply not acceptable. Were she to add to ultra-populist Trump in the USA and Australia’s group of extremist, populist and racist right and left wing we would be arming the guns of war pointing toward the ultimate nuclear conflagration that would destroy all life. Only the cockroaches would survive, and that would be fitting.

The world is too populated – full to the brim with the noisy and false extremists; ignorant, lazy, envious, materialist and uninformed rabble from both the left and the right who obtain their understanding through Twitter and a glance at Wikipedia.

Whilst these noisy wastrels scream real people suffer. We suffer from the false burden of materialism, unbridled pursuit of greed by robber barons and carpetbaggers and the slaughter of the middle class. Real people — yes there are millions of these — are swept aside, purposely marginalised as the coppery smell of revolution comes ever closer.
This is the USA under Trump, France under Le Pen; this would be Australia under One Nation/Conservative alliance with the only opposition the ultra-left dominated NSW Greens. ISIS and the like need only wait — then scythe through the blood and gore of revolution.

The choice is still ours, the real people. We can bring forward leaders who will create an evolution led future or succumb to the jackhammer of Trump/Le Pen/One Nation that must usher in revolution and/or annihilation.  Why isn’t anyone pushing this line?