Ranty McRant

[melwil]

Higher Education

By the end of 2005 I will have completed 5 and a half years of higher education, and apparently, I will be ready to walk into a job. I used to love it. Serious study, jokes about collapsing boats, $15 text books - life as an Ancient History student was okay. But this education degree drives me crazy half the time. Overly expensive text books which we barely use, lecturers who don't know how to lecture, although they're supposed to be expert in teaching, group work where other members don't put in the work that's required. I wonder sometimes, since we're the last group doing our specific degree, if they don't really give a damn about us, they just want to get rid of us so they can put their shiny new course into action. Thus I rant





Education System and the Liberal Party in Australia

For those just playing here, the Liberal party in Australia aren't actually liberal. They're more like a soft right version of the Republican party, or a hard right version of the Democrats. And they hate education.

No, I lie. They hate the idea of free education. Especially free education run by the state governments. See the State governments are all Labour and the liberal party don't like this. So they redistribute federal funding so more money is given to the ritziest Private schools in the country. Then when the public school systems complain, Howard and Brenden Nelson say, sure you can get funding, but only if you teach our values So look for schools to move to value based education where you talk about flagpoles, the brave boys of Australian History, and good Christian morals as long as they are the morals of trustworthiness and abstinence, and not the morals of helping each other.





I was complaining about this to sangerin the other day. Those of you who everread the Baby-Sitter's Club will understand. How the bloody hell was Jessi as good as she was supposed to be? She was this 11 years old genius in pointe shoes. Interestingly, at my dance school, you didn't even get to put point shoes on until you were eleven, and then you just got to do a few small exercises in them at the end of the ballet class. Apparently Jessi, though, was strong enough to dance the Rose Adagio - which balletomanes will agree, would be incredibly difficult for someone her age. So was Jessi just a big fish in a small pond or was she some sort of freak?

I'm going for freak. Even Gelsey Kirkland wasn't advanced enough to dance full length ballets at 11. Unless they were high adapted. Just once, I wished that Jessi hadn't won a big role, that instead she was in the corps de ballet, a peasant, or dressed in a white tutu waving a rose back and forth.



The only other comment on my last post was a list of things to drive channel nine crazy. I love my sister