Too many loose threads -giving you a headache?

Its amazing how long the people (in the now reactionary West) can be strung along . New color and movement seems to be what has revived interest in what Rudd is doing.  For some obscene reason we are all in the jungles of PNG this week.  
What happens when such leaders run out of salvation destinations to send our problems to?

Perhaps more importantly , what instability of mind leads to people not being sure of what they know ?
Gary Furnell makes a good case for the traditional view of why a real education revolution is needed . Australians are some of the most pedantic of any . see first posts on this blog . Worse they don't understand that you can actually understand something without having to prove it point by point . Most of us are too busy making high level risk decisions to try and explain even the first few steps to a certainty that's become part of our science understanding .

Our now tired and predictable education system has ALSO given in to idea that ideas evolve and therefore stringing along is anything but wrong. This means we no longer focus well enough on the building idea in education.There are steps but some routes go nowhere but down or out.

Furnell's point too is that paradox is a way to box understanding without spending your life in space travel . Its a great article ,  but won't suit those who have spent their lives trying to find a place to hide inside their own limited logic.                              QUADRANT magazine May 2013

Scoring our intelligence and ignoring our blind spots

Why do ATAR scores allow for "degree of difficulty" DOD ?  Maybe " difficulty ' has more to to do with disinterest in some areas . While this doesn't apply to History which unfortunately no one wants to do , it might apply to languages as ---You get points for doing it when you don't get points for music . Some comparisons  are onerous and most onerous if used by people who claim they are interested in a broad education ( what incentive  do we need to get children to study history?)
Physics is "difficult "but if you do it slower its very difficulty can drive great achievement and make it easier and more fun. The key driver we want is not DOD but FUN and help in DISCOVERY in a hard landscape full of bricks and brick walls - not the dumber rating system that relies too much on DOD .

Howard Gardner describes 7 types of intelligence ; how many are we encouraging ?  Spatial is a  critical one for growth in the future -- ART and history can help develop thinking skills in this area.

Does ATAR importance end in mere institutional concerns? Because there is so little focus in "the education revolution" on the " world beyond ", we all talk hypocritically talk about "Jobs" instead of  actual Careers.

Teachers seem to need no high ATARS . Teaching is a great career but are we preoccupied with mere stats and not providing the right incentives to encourage competence . Have we sold our souls to the bookeepers ; Columns of figures that don't account for any competence ?

We are taking the Environment seriously

Superficially , ......which simply means we aren't taking it seriously at all.
The blokes in charge in Victoria , Australia think they are doing a wonderful job . They have moved "The Environment "onto the front page in every quarter of the land and every child's mind .(Our children may not know much but the new preachers from hell know how to tell us what's wrong with us. Poor kids have no hope ) .No longer does other bloke do what they like to do with the land and stuff it up. Those rich farmers!

Pity its only a headline and a good intention that creates great evil. All this talk of doing things to change direction makes people feel good and for some in leadership thats all that matters .Actually changing your own direction let alone societies is just a little more difficult - if we are being really serious.
Pity that , because its such a complex beast,  nearly every solution is wrong . You have to be simple to not see that .
-Pity that to really manage the beast ( people and the resources) you have to study both for decades.
-Pity that to do surgery in this area you MUST know what ARTERY you are cutting . So much careless talk and so much of it by THE GREENS and so much by the ABC who have now officially joined the fearmongers shop .Buy at your cost . No buy in and let the Government PAY for your simplicity

I interrupted Jon Feine's ( ABC RADIO) world problem solving segment last week to tell him of the despair out here in the Victorian bush .( Weekly times front page 1st may) People who aren't being listened to go quiet before they take their own lives ( 4 a week in rural aust) . I know many great public spirited people ,whom I will always respect for their big thinking inspiration., .. but nearly to a man .... they have gone quiet.  Thankfully Tim Wilson IPA, on that friday morning in May on 774 ,  agreed that there is an intolerable burden in some of what is being done....in the best intentions... for better environ management . Meanwhile Jon, like so many who aren't learning fast or deep enough, supported those who come out here to tell us how to look after the environment ( fine if they knew but they have no grace to listen and realise their ignorance ).

It would funny if it wasn't so serious - the city solving the countries problems ; Readers please acknowledge  there is projection ,ignorance , incompetence and guilt involved -- nothing is as it seems on the surface . the smart arses have the audacity to mock those who would stand up for those in danger .Did you see Bob Katter tell Ged why her brilliant quickfix for the cattle industry won't work on Q&A?  Did you listen to Clive Palmer quietly and respectfully say to too quick to spell/spit out Green and others that they were NOT listening but driving a QUICKFIX process that kills !- watch out for it ; its become a cultural norm and well identified as fanaticism . I don't agree with everything those 2  wonderful blokes say but God help our country if we have stopped listening !....you will see more anger( or despair)  if you don't listen better!
These people who run our Shires on a industry fine ledger model just don't know what they are doing and should "but out ". I know some of them they genuinely think they are doing a good job -BUT  they aren't listening and if they are they are not doing something about what they hear -the responsible thing and saying " enough crap is enough "or even lets hear more from these blokes !!
Collecting reports of humpty but never able to put him back together again . It crushes and burns because it costs so much ( all the reports overlays and now offsets ( direct cost) ....and the big picture of better env  is never seen or found .I know because I got lots of great coastal and other local development and ecological protection going.How do I know ? - because they are still there performing at a sound rate !
All good deep thinking greens please unite to reject the nonsense of http://meredescription.blogspot.com and mere bookkeeping as recipe for managing "the household".
We don't need market simplicities; we have moved on from them - we are rich but paid nothing and have got beyond 2 columns since before Moses.  We should all know better than to LET this happen --solving the worlds problems on a Monday night  .Look up ecomia and help move our collective level of respect for those who study and those who would help us move our ecological understanding into something more mature and workable than casual Green crap ( that most people are happy with) .The greatest evil is done in the name of the best intention . Join any of my blogs if you want to do more and do it properly.

What's holding back education ?

The parties are agreed( Q&A ABC TV) - its the teachers problem. Its not the parents problem or a paradigm problem ---its the teachers problem . I think we as society have a problem in identifying the problem. We talk about "denial' when its clearly someones else's problem - "that other unreasonable bloke".CC What about when the problem is closer to home .

I think we have a problem in identifying the problem . Maybe it has something to do with thinking too simply and the reactionary politics of our age ( cf prophetic politics of a previous age )

Let me cut to the chase - we are behaving like a bunch of old Greeks and allowing ourselves to be limited by words . . This was Chesterton's criticism of is friend Shaw .Shaw was too pedestrian, reactionary and rebellious - and yet he'd grown up.... or so he said . Is this true also of us and our generation? Somewhat sheepishly we graze 
Some pedantry 

1. Should a man be serious for example ? Should we as a society be serious about education ? .If kids a parents took it seriously maybe then then the teachers could ?  Chesterton points out the word has  it has 2 meanings and a double meaning ." It sometimes means solemn and it sometimes means sincere . Most solemn people though are generally the most insincere . But a more delicate and detailed consideration will show that the most sincere men are generally not solemn." 
2. Depth and context make all the difference to the meaning of statements yet men are still crucified on the mere meanings of words (Mr Bean's ( Rowan Atkinsons) liberating statement on the stupid use of insult in English law until recently) 
3. Begging  It can seem bad but we all learn to do it at home, and from our mothers of all people . Maybe if we are going to help our children grow up we need to be the nag( dad's too) . When they say chemistry is hard we need to say " i don't expect anyone finds it easy to do at the start , but if you wanna enjoy life son,  its through a few hills -"its not about doing what you want"  ( TV is wrong) .
   Short term pain ---long term gain . When it comes to a good edcation its not about what you get in the end, but what you build on from the start ( You heard it first from EA march 12 2013) 

I trust science but so did Hitler and Pol Pot

Science can be comforting because it is about some relative certainties . But those certaintes are mostly small ( it can't tell you whether you will be happliy married or not and it doesn't tell you whether you are destined to survive and your brother not )  Should we expect it then to banish all fear and replace religion ;Or will it be used,  like religion can be,  to be a potent poison - a reason to kill your brother . Truth even when it involves science is often much bigger than it .The truth has a way of breaking out of idealism and categorisism and setting us free
It seems the best way to store this dangerous  stuff is to keep the all ingredients of good decsionmaking in seperate places.  Everybody learns best if categories of knowledge are retained and it was good to see this established by discussion on TV last night . This doesn't mean the categories and storesafes  are perfect - just that we can contest boundaries best when we study both individual cells of knowledge and experience and then move onto their overlap areas. There is also no contest if there is only one player ;and only one person controls the conversation.(science , politics religion literature , history)

The ABC's attempt to rerun the false premise that Science gazumps religion and ( philosophy) went bad last night because it allowed its main guest to say that the above ecosystem function principle was no longer valid . Krauss said philosophy provided a bridge to reality testing that is no longer needed .  While his simple premise has always been popular , many scientists,  philosophers or fiction writers DO NOT accept this overly simple idea --- that science will eventually answer all our questions .
One reason most category students  don't accept the over ascendancy of science is because we don't know as much as Krauss says we do - we still need philosophy of some kind to inform the choices and drivers within us . We need some answers NOW  to decide how to resist our hormone drivers ,talk to our children, reform the ecosystem , use welfare  money, deal with disobedient citizens,  who to marry and what work to do. The when and how of community will use both science and world view .
We need values that science struggles to clearly identify. Even Plebechek should realise that the last leaders who took the view advocated by her and Krauss directly justified a curriculum control that allowed some people to kill others;  on the basis of science and science alone ( the survival of the fittest) .Krauss says science has brought only good,  but forgets  about the ends justifying the means Science spells out the logic of production  but does'nt spell out its purpose  If you leave that purpose with the leaders to decide,  they may , as they have done just use it for self centred ends
More reasonable and less fanatical people on the panel say science can be used for good or bad and has been . As Dickson  said,  religion puts a reason brake (what should have been a consensus issue) on some,  who , like little children , use the logic of self preservation to go no further. The reactionaries need a grand philosophy of community to substitute for the Christian one,  but they are unwilling to say what it should be .
The gazumping , even if "the God of the gaps"  closes with time, will not happen because neither science or philosophy can answer all the questions we want answers to . Krauss 's overstating of what science can tell us becomes evident in his distracted talk  of the world shaking significance of flooding islands and ice bergs.
If philosophy teaches us anything,  it  is that politics and right actions are only simple if ethical decisions are simple . Krauss would have been more credible if he recognsed that , like his certainty on what we should do about sea level rise,  advocates of science only solutions were prone to overstate " some certainties"; and even some moral impertives   Clearly, he overstated certainties on the best CC policy, even though he did go beyond ABC policy on the matter.

ANYONE who has studied one discipline has no right to say his discipline is the overridingly important one ---they all are . There are some questions science is good at answering  ( like how much detail about the big bang you can find in a book thats not even focused on it )  but there are some questions microscopes periscopes and telescopes can't seem to answer
Without respecting the boundaries in the Cells of life (  the old buildings at univ, the nature of life ) we can't interact reasonably and responsibly with each other . We trade in the dark as Plato said .  The paradox is that you can't study history and literature , science and faith , literature, art,  and politics  if you don't study them both seperately and together.Greg Hunt made that point very well. You can't progres unless you coalesce
Mark Scott and the Board of the ABC need to ask themselves whether they are part of the education revolution or in need of it .  Their first target for a product  review might be the ageing reactionaries who are becoming fanatical enough to rerun tapes they made 20 years ago , Tapes that to annoy their own former friends,  because those friends , unlike them , have gone ahead and studied the subject more deeply - the philosophical profession and the writing profession.

The evidence on the night was that,  instead of looking like they had a handicap to growth ( "some weird old beliefs") , the majority of Christians and Christian thinkers took a number of study disciplines very seriously  ( and were clearly all over Australia attracting a growing number of unbelieving students to their schools ) .

Before you start a fight,  make sure you are not just punching the air. No need to try and  control the discussion about the truth- it has a habit or breaking out eventually under its own steam.

Lies ,wrongdoing and asking questions

Its the last day of Parliament for 2012 , and it will be dominated by a frustrating war of words that is all the worse for being so personal.  No one wants this sort of nonsense to be the main game in Parliament  and both major parties will be under scrutiny for their clear role in prolonging it . One it seems by asking questions,  and the other for not answering questions.
Whatever comes to light today (29th November 2012) The Prime Ministers and Cabinets reliance on "lawyer speak" ( cf using a variety of language ) goes down badly with those of us who think the matter is about facts ( did Julia write a letter to defend the setting up of a slush fund) and answering questions.WE can all be pedants but no dispute at home resolves if we do that !
As Nixon, the lawyer,  so famously said " Remember you can always say " I don't remember"  and that expression is today---the theme . Similarly saying "I did nothing wrong" ( or the term "no wrongdoing") can be  a legally acceptable  cover for wrongdoing because in the  Western tradition noone is assumed guilty unless proven guilty - because the question has not been put in a court of law ; therefore because there is no court,  there is technically no "wrongdoing ". "Lies" similiarly
The fact that our society at present ,  like many,  before it has lost sight of the basis for its legal principles ( and its very high sensitivity to the extremely delicate matter of knowledge) is no excuse - and only adds to the importance of "answering questions ".( the basis for responsibility - answer- ability)  Infact, the public confusion ( wrong in principle or wrong in law? ) being used to cover the poor use of words by Labor could be considered an abuse of public trust.
The opposition are allowed and even encouraged to ask questions , Those in power don't have to answer them( noone can force anyone to do anything that isn't against the law in this country or ever - we have a wonderful rights and legal system ) , but if they don't , it reflects badly on those in power .
Sending in the troops to defend someone also doesn't work if the person facing a straight accusation doesn't directly answer it themselves ( we are all perosnally responsible for our own actions and how we explain them is our business) - If someone fails to defend themselves against an accusation they are wasting the courts time - given to them in grace and opportunity . There has been a lot of not answering questions  in Parliament-- of various kinds --Labor
I hope Julia did nothing wrong in principle in this case and can legitimately  use the valid excuse of " not knowing ". If she  has done the wrong she's not alone but a  lawyer in her situation has only one option .To use language to answer questions ------not to hide behind language. Plead guilty or not guilty.

Mere words man

Its just not fair ! The girls were miffed that the mouths of the men kept moving without a break ;  the wise women were not being heard , in the end , on The Q&A panel on Monday night. Maybe they had enough sense to stay out of the game going on at that point .
I wouldn't be too worried .  So few know where equality begins and ends and where quality and diversity and unity start . Pedantry abounds and mere words and mere time given to them are a shallow preoccupation,  if you want to get to the big picture.
Because when they spoke,  the women made sense - we remember not how much time you had,  but how well you spoke .Wonderful,  light and clear.
I don't believe in progress as a religion because until our parliamentary put a qualitative filter on the conversation,  men will continue to be think themselves wise for all their words;  and be seen as fools for removing all doubt by using too many .( Kevin Rudd clearly took the cake on the night)
 Kiss is the principle and Concatenation the guide:  Proverbs 11 provides the ground floor of Parliament just as 1 Corinthians and Matthew 11: 25 should echo politely and succinctly around its walls.

Don't be too greek - its likely to set us ALL back a few thousand years.