Tag Archive | Education
Reduce 7 billion people to 100 people to depict our world
When Mr O Jnr 2 (he of the recent major bone surgery) was whinging about my internet restrictions he stated, categorically, that “everyone” else in the world had the internet – all seven billion people, according to him. Remembering the 100 People: A World Portrait I had read longer ago than I thought, I reminded […]
How Apple plus school made this parent grumpy
School started this week. So off went Mr O Jnr 2 (fourteen) and Miss O 2 (twelve) with their mandatory iPads. As you may be aware, in order to download apps from the iTunes store, the customer has to login. To login the customer has to have an ID. When we got the iPads I […]
Education: who will get some?
Commenting on the 2014 federal budget is something I keep trying to stop doing, but every time I look at a newspaper, I get irritated and feel like wrangling these op-ed writers. Today it was Amanda Vanstone that set my fingers itching for the keyboard. I have periodically agreed, to varying degrees, with Amanda. I […]
Taxes versus benefits and other observations
The first Abbott/Hockey budget certainly stirred up a storm of controversy. Not just in the mainstream media, but everywhere. There is a very interesting stream of comments on “Benefit scrounging scum in the news again. Disability is fake, right?” The same author wrote a little flash fiction worth considering on “For The Good Of The […]
I am a woman of calibre
Well, well, well: I’m a woman of calibre. How nice for me! I don’t earn that much, but the rest of it fits! I never got a cent of paid parental leave. I didn’t get a baby bonus either, or a first home owners’ grant. I did earn a degree and damn hard work it […]
What the hell is happening to the “civilised” western world?
I brought my family here from what is arguably a third world country. Now I am left trying to explain to them why the western world seems to be crumbling before our very eyes. I’d like to take a couple of prime news issues from the last couple of days to illustrate. Let us first […]
The use of language in society
Several issues have arisen lately in Australia that have convinced me more than ever standards of communication are dropping. I have previously described my dissatisfaction with Australia’s politicians: they use personal attacks that have no place in society against their opponents. We then had four specific incidents in a month here. The protest in Sydney and elsewhere […]