Weekend away
Spent the weekend at Chudley Stud, Cooroy with the Cattle Club from the local Nudgee boys college. The Cattle Club is a program run by a friend that teaches boys, most of them city slickers, how to ‘show’ cattle. It may sound simple but isn’t. The lads need to learn a lot about handling cattle and develop sufficient confidence to lead a beast weighing up to a tonne in such a manner as to suggest to the judge that he has total control.
Working in cattle yards during the day and socializing a night makes a pleasant change from city living. Meeting the local farmers, all of whom are threatened by the Traveston dam, highlights the impact governments and population growth has on people. They are not happy and I do feel for them but the march of civilization leaves many damaged along the road for the better good. When I pointed out that all this angst has already been seen in the Wolfdene Dam project where land was resumed and a dam could’ve been built but the project was canceled by the Goss government with Swan and Rudd in attendance, nobody felt any better.
Socializing with teachers has it’s fascination as well. I took part in the following conversation;
Teacher; “Did you read about the toad fence being proposed by Beattie…or was it Bligh…no – has to be the nationals”
Self:”No, haven’t heard but I imaging it would be the NT government – they are concerned about toads”
Teacher ” No, thinking about it, it would have to be Howard throwing money around to get votes”
Boy commenting from sidelines “Yeah, that Howard’s an idiot”
Teacher; “Yeah, must have been Howard”
So, Howard is charged, fronts the court of bias and is found guilty on the basis of a biased mind.
As you can imagine, a minute or two after I got home I googled anti toad fence and found that the fence is one of the suggestions being considered by the Territory Government in an effort to protect native species from the toads.
Some people should simply be disenfranchised.
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Kev
This turkey,if he behaved as you described, is the type that gives the profession a bad rap. This is not professional behaviour. It doesn’t matter whether this conversation took place around a campfire or in a classroom, it’s an inappropriate response even if it was given in jest.
The relationship between teacher and student is a power relationship.This means that it must always be treated with respectful professionalism irrespective of the context.
Your response was a better one – to find the truth before making any comment. In fact, a competent teacher, particularly in a secondary situation, would have turned the situation into a learning opportunity by inviting the student to research the fact, and report back.
Some teachers let their guard drop once outside the school gates. This should never happen. He needs someone to remind him of “Code of Conduct” which is precisely what would have happened if he had been on my staff – together with some brief but pertinent advice about his future should he continue to behave this way.
Nudgee has a great reputation. Like many GPS schools, staff will often develop the false premise that the reputation is something fixed and static. It isn’t – and needs to be earned day by day by the highest standards of teacher conduct and effective pedagogy.
In Nudgee’s defence it was a teacher from another school. I agree with you totally but you are a bit optimistic if you don’t recognize a culture of ALP support in your profession. I can name the teachers at Nudgee that I know are pro-conservative on one hand and I do know that this permeates into their classes.
So there’s a culture of ALP support in the teaching profession? So what? There’s a culture of coalition support amongst merchant bankers, stockbrokers and farmers. What does all this mean? Absolutely nothing. If all these teachers are permeating their classrooms with radical lefty views how come the conservatives have been in power for eleven years? Kev, I think you are imagining an influence that just isn’t there.
Hi Kev,
I enjoyed your story but was a little disappointed that you just wrote off Traveston as a ‘better good’ coming from the march of civilisation.
It is in deed a very complicated situation but in a nutshell the people of the Mary Valley would accept this too if the dam wasn’t a really stupid idea. Building a dam on an alluvial floodplain with a surface area 1.2 times that of Sydney Harbour is sure to fail!
All these people will lose their homes, properties (often in their family for generations), their schools, their community and a unique environmental ecosystem all for another empty dam in South-east Queensland.
Whichever the new government may be, they really do need to start looking towards the future and stop adopting the failing techniques of the past!
Kev
I’d agree with you that more teachers support the ALP than the Coalition. This has always been the case in the 40 years that I’ve been part of the scene in Queensland.
There are two compelling reasons for this. One has been around since Adam played front row for Valleys, the other one is more recent.
The first is that teaching, by its very nature, is not a conservative profession. As a vocation, it’s about preparing individuals for a changing world. As I understand conservative philosophy, it’s essentially about maintaining the status quo – supporting certainty. A good teacher must instill a questioning and challenging mindset in his/her students. The two are incompatible. It’s a worldwide phenomenon, which is one reason why teachers are always targeted by totalitarian regimes.
The second (and new) reason is the current federal government’s policy on industrial relations, as it applies to teachers. The Howard Government has maintained its view that performance pay would form part of the next round of funding negotiations with the states and territories.
The performance pay regime would not be accompanied by additional federal government funding and it would more than likely take the form of Australian Workplace Agreements (individual contracts). The decision by Federal Treasurer Peter Costello not to allocate any additional money to Julie Bishop’s proposal on this would have the effect of teachers sacrificing salary increases to provide bonuses for a few.
The Howard Government has proposed a number of possible models for performance pay. In my view this fails to recognise the complex social and human dynamic of education.
The models include:
1. Handing out performance pay on the basis of student results in mass testing programs. Performance pay could be based, for example, on the year 3 basic skills test. This begs the question of who would claim the performance pay? The year 3 teacher or the K, 1 and 2 teachers who played an equally important part in the education of year 3 student?’ A similar question could of course be asked of a year 7 or 9 mass test and so on. The other problem with this practice is “teaching to test” which has occurred in the various Counties in the USA where performance pay has been tried.
2. Developing a surveyed rating of teachers with parents and students. This effectively reduces teaching to a popularity contest where parents and students would rate teachers. I could see a result where Paris Hilton would be the highest paid teacher at a boys’ high school.
3. Principals handing out bonuses as they see fit. As an ex-principal, I think this would result in a loss of collegiality and cooperation, both absolutely essential to create a productive campus. It would more likely cause division and disruption in schools where staff currently work productively to produce the best outcomes for students. Unfortunately, some principals already play favourites by allocating those in favour to the less challenging classes. My practice was to put the best performing teachers with the most difficult classes. It didn’t make me popular, but it did produce better results all round.
Incidentally, during my brief and unspectacular army career I discovered that most regular soldiers were coalition supporters. These employment related political profiles are generally well known and understood. I can’t see a problem with that.
Felix – So What?
I think it’s unprofessional to impart your personal opinions on those you are teaching. English, for example, should be taught so that the student develops a love and knowledge of the language; not so they develop political opinions in the mould of the teacher. Text selection is a case in point. My niece studied Motorcycle Diaries and has the opinion Che was a saviour- that opinion can only come from biased teaching.
Yes we still have conservatives in power despite perceived biases in education but that just reflects on life generally. Most kids leave school, get a job and learn things are different in the world outside the campus but some don’t and are blinded.
Gabe,
I didn’t give an opinion as to whether Traveston is right or wrong just that it is now inevitable. I spent the evening expressing sympathy and my crack about Wolfdene puts it in perspective. I come from the land and if my family farm was lost for a similar reason I too would be devastated but the ‘march of civilization’, particularly when it’s a political knee jerk reaction, marches over a lot of dreams.
I do have opinions about dams and I accept what you say about the alluvial plains of the Mary River valley. I personally think we should be moving water from the land of plenty of water and few people (Nth Qld) to SE Qld with millions of people and indifferent rainfall. To do this we would need a government, State or Federal, to commit to a long term infrastructure development, ie longer that one parliament, and few seem willing to do that.
This is out of the blue.
I went to Nudgee College a few yeas back and studies a subject called AES, ran at the time by “hammo”.
I’m just curious, are you the bloke who came along with us in his Land Rover to Canarvon Gorge.
I remember you(if it was you) telling me I carried on like your pet dog when I lined up for more food.(haha)
Anyway nice site, a good relief from the shit we are being fed by our new government and that somtimes Rudd loving rag The Courier Mail.
Ex Nudgee,
It was me. I’ve trained up my labrador to be more polite – how about you? haha joking of course. Good to see you are looking for other opinions. I still go out with AES and still enjoy it and the boys still drink a weeks worth of milo in one night if I turn my back.
It’s all good fun and it’s satisfying seeing them grow up.