Heat and Kitchen

Bolta's blog has been great fun lately.

The behaviour of most of the regular posters is entirely predictable. Generally if you disagree with Bolta you cop abuse, are accused of a range of unspeakable acts, but debating points made are rarely challenged. Because this follows a pattern, it becomes boring.

If you take the time, however to identify Bolta's spin, and actually have the temerity to point it out, his moderators get very twitchy. The best example most recently of this phenomenon happened on Sunday 24th May when he had (another) go at Quentin Bryce for lavish spending.

Trouble was, when you read the link to the original story, it became clear that the spending took place in Jeffries' (previous GGs) term. Bolta obviously hadn't read beyond the first few lines of the story he quoted.

I pointed this out, and the original post was altered slightly shortly afterwards by putting a strike-through over Bryce's name, and including Jeffries' name in that part of the story (at the end of it).

The by-line

Grand Dame too Grand Even for Rudd

wasn't altered, nor was the rest of the story, despite the fact that the proverbial rug had been pulled from under the entire rationale of the post.

I drew attention to that in a further post and used the word "spin" in my reply.
I got away with that, but an innocuous comment about spin on Bolta's Monday May 25th comment about the proposed extension of the retirement age was snipped on the grounds that it was off-topic and abusive, and could I (please) be "less bitter". My highlighting of his oversight had been noted.

The only conclusion possible is that Bolta is extremely sensitive to being shown up as careless and slipshod - although he often is.

Surely a polemicist of his ilk should be able to stand the kitchen heat.

More Transitions

As the kids have moved out, they’ve left their gear behind.

There are four of them, so that’s a lot of gear. The funny thing is, they don’t seem at all interested in making decisions about what should become of these abandoned symbols of childhood.

We could be mean, and simply disappear the stuff – Vinnie’s, the Sallies, etc beckon. But that would be a bit harsh. I’m sure that guerrilla tactics in the end will win out. For example, I simply load one or two bulky items each time I visit, and make the announcement “I thought you might be missing this”, upon arrival.

This works with most things, and so far I have not been told to backload anything. There are some things that fail this method, however. You can’t use it when trying to get rid of a model dinosaur collection when it belongs to a twenty-four year old male. Even suggesting that it might be useful for when he has children cuts no ice at all.

We have a canoe, which is probably owned collectively by all my children, given that they had most use of it. I bought it back in 1982 from a manufacturer in Townsville, where we were living at the time. Back then we had no kids.

It was bought, I guess, as therapy, to help my wife and I recover from the loss of our firstborn in March of that year. She would have been 27 this year. Canoeing and wine-tasting were both great therapy.

Nothing concentrates the mind more thoroughly than navigating rapids with the threat of wet gear and scrapes and bruises if something goes awry – even on the relatively placid Burdekin. We did a number of three day trips, always downstream, which meant easy paddling. Canoeing, besides being good therapy, is a great test of a relationship. If you’re stoushing with your partner in a two-person canoe you go round in circles. In later years, I used canoeing as a method of encouraging cooperative behaviour in delinquent kids. It worked.

So this 18 foot* Canadian has been taking up space for many years. Last week I was working at a school so far west that the next school out was in the Northern Territory. I noticed a brace of canoes behind the school, and discovered through chatting with the principal that they were borrowed. I explained that if he had a way of getting my old Canadian out there, it was the school’s property.

One of the parents runs a carrying business, and she offered to freight it out the 700kms next time they had a job along the Warrego. So I cleaned the Redbacks out of it today, and it’s waiting to be collected. Seeing it go will be a bit of a wrench, as it symbolises a significant chapter in our family history, but my wife and offspring don’t mind, and the bush kids will put it to good use.

Ironically enough there’s good canoeing country out there on the desert’s edge.

* Canoes aren't metric.

The Bleeding Obvious

Today the local media excels itself in the statement of the bleeding obvious.

Tanya Chilcott displays a blissful ignorance of human psychology in the opening statement of her vacuous piece about the tabling of information already available on the website of every Queensland school.

She points out that -

NOT one Brisbane school had all students above the national benchmark for every category in state-based numeracy and literacy tests for 2007.

The capital letters are hers.

Now when I studied child development at Kedron Park Teachers’ College in 1966, I learned about the curve of normal distribution. Unless basic human psychology has changed radically in the last fifty years, this curve still holds.

Put simply, the graph of distribution of Intelligence Quotient shows that there are very many average people, few very dull people, and few very bright people. The inverted U-shaped curve is the graphical representation of this mathematical truth. This is quite clearly reflected in the data distribution as displayed in the comparative tables in the Courier. It shows that in every Brisbane school, there are some students who fall on the left side of the continuum.

What a surprise!

This simple phenomenon of human performance is obviously lost on Tanya. I doubt that it is lost on her readers, who for years have managed to make school choices without the assistance of the Courier Mail.

Without delving too deeply into these out-of-date statistics (they’re 2007 figures), it is clear that what they do show is the strong correlation between Socio-economic status and school performance.

If the Courier devoted more column space to the pressure applied to teachers by the politically-driven testing regime (NAPLAN) distracting them away from the business of teaching and helping kids to learn, they would indeed be providing a public service.

As it is, they’re simply selling newsprint.

Not on the Test

Today Queensland teachers go on strike for the first time in more than ten years.

I remember the last one. I was a Principal at the time, and a member of the Queensland Teachers’ Union. After retirement, I’m no longer a principal, but am still a teacher and have maintained my union membership.

I don’t always agree with the QTU, but support this action. It has been taken as the result of a secret ballot, so the rank and file are behind it. It’s probably not going to be effective, as the money simply isn’t in the state treasury, but teachers in this state are being shafted.

I’m pretty sure that if you polled teachers in Queensland, they wouldn’t rate salaries as their major concern. They’d talk about the politicisation of education, the lack of support from parents and community, and the onslaught of the plaintiff lawyers. This trinity of factors has made the profession so much less attractive than it used to be.

The retention figures bear this out. We’re losing teachers (especially young ones) at a rapid rate. Industrial action gets the issue into the public eye, but that’s about it. If the Union and the government got together and started talking about the quality of the lives of teachers and the necessity to support them to do what they do best, more would be accomplished in terms of getting the best results for kids.

Improvements in training, resourcing, and critically, the mentoring of beginning teachers would make a difference. There also needs to be some serious tackling of the lack of gender balance in the profession. There is a role for affirmative action to improve both the quantity and quality of male teachers. Like it or not, there’s a strong link between the misbehaviour of young males in schools and the dearth of male teachers.

The introduction of standardised testing is not the answer. In fact it is one of the main factors increasing malaise in the profession. NAPLAN* (or Napalm as most teachers call it), has had the effect of creating lots of hype, bureaucracy and stress. Teachers are “teaching to the test” (surprise/surprise). No doubt the next set of results will show an improvement, simply because the kids are learning how to complete the test – but that’s all that will improve.

Little or nothing will change in terms of improving the literacy and numeracy of individuals. It will, however, keep the pollies (and some sections of the manic media) happy.

One of the aspects of the principalship that I don’t miss is the management of industrial action itself. Principals are usually monstered by the regional and district administration to keep the schools open and report on the number of teachers striking.

These same principals are members of the union, so are also bound through basic ethics to support the action of their teachers if the strike is supported by the majority. My action during the last strike was to refuse to cooperate with providing information of teacher intention to the District Director. I asked my teachers to send individual emails to District Office advising them of their intention. They all did so.

I turned up on the day itself, but donated the day’s pay to a charity, and wore a sticker staying “I am on strike”. It was necessary to be at the school physically in the interests of keeping everyone safe and helping parents who were in a jam. It didn’t make me popular with the District Director, but was the only way I could maintain personal and professional integrity.

Integrity and professionalism are slowly being squeezed out of teaching by our governments (both federal and state) following the worst aspects of the American system.

Hence the American video. (Just click the word "video" - thanks to my music teacher sister).

*National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy

Bloody Leaves

As I was raised north of the tropic, I find more seasons than two a mite confusing.

Back in Carmilla, there was only ever the Wet and the Dry. It was very simple and symmetrical.

You spent half the year mowing and clearing encroaching vegetation, and the other half trying to keep it alive.

Here in the garden city, it’s more complicated. We have something approaching a Northern hemisphere autumn and spring, as well as the other two. This is picturesque (even spectacular – especially in the spring) but some elements of it leave me cold (excuse the bad pun).

One of these is the bloody leaves. My wife loves the Japanese maple that grows in the front of our home. For ten months of the year, I don’t mind it, as it does the usual tree thing of standing there looking green. During May and June, however, it goes feral and drops what seem to me tonnes of pretty brown leaves everywhere. The prevailing South-Easter gets hold of them and blows them into the front of the house and the garage where they rot and decay and generally mess up the place.

This means that I have to rake them almost daily. This is not fun. Once raked, they have to be put somewhere. They are not particularly useful as mulch, and take up lots of space. Bagging them means they can be stored, but what then?

They’re aromatic, and smell good when dry and put into our wood fire, but you need to dry them well or lots of white smoke results and we don’t get a new Pope, no matter how much I wish we did.

Glenmorgan

Staying with the vintage/veteran motoring theme, I’m posting some shots that I took at Glenmorgan last week.

Click on the images to get a good look.

Glenmorgan isn’t really on the way to anywhere in particular, but it can be an interesting destination in itself. A local bloke with the time and resources necessary has set up a museum to things automotive on the road through the township.

It features vehicles from the forties (mostly military) through to the early sixties. What makes it unique is that they are presented as if they’re on sale in a used car lot.

The Ford V8 Ute shown was one of a batch that was requisitioned. They were sedans when taken over by the military, but were smartly converted to Utes. The one displayed was used in Darwin and New Guinea. I remember my dad who served in the RAAF in New Guinea talking about these Utes. He was mightily impressed.

It is possible to imagine that you’ve slept through the last fifty
years or so when you look at the display. It’s also completely surprising, as there is nothing to suggest that it’s there until you turn the corner into the township.

There never seems to be anyone about – it reminds me of Canberra in that sense.

I’m usually on my way to Surat, itself an interesting spot.

Cars and Planes and Stuff

Last Sunday was David Hack Classic day in Toowoomba. The uninitiated should check here.

This is always a good day, but this year was amazing, despite GFC, AGW and SFP*.

I took the Mazda along to display it. It’s not vintage, but in my book is a classic. Any machine that’s depreciating more slowly than my Super, is by my definition, a classic.

Besides, you get in for less if you display, and it’s not a bad excuse to sit in the sun, read the papers and talk cars and aeroplanes.

I was surprised at the interest shown in the MX5, although not a lot of it was well-informed. One Gen Y character asked me if it handled well because of the “front wheel drive”, and was more than a little surprised when I pointed out that front engine – rear drive was the configuration.

The variety of machinery displayed was the best I’ve seen anywhere with the possible exception of Birdwood (SA), but there weren’t any aircraft at Birdwood.

Aircraft on display were a range of warbirds including Trojans, a Winjeel, and a number (don’t know the collective noun) of Yaks. Here was a wooden DH Dragon Rapide and there some Tiger Moths. The Aerotec hangar had its usual fantastic display including Guido Zuccoli's Fiat G-59-4B.

The dapper-looking chappie who flew the Winjeel up from Point Cook wasn’t persuaded that this breed of aircraft was used in the artillery spotting role until 1975.

I know it was. This is because the skipper (platoon commander) flew in one doing exactly that when we were training for tropical warfare in the sleet and mist in the Putty area in 1969. As I recall, the aircraft at that time was based at Williamtown. It’s not wonderful in that role, despite being very robust. The low wing and lack of agility don’t help.

I didn’t bother arguing. He came across as a bit like a number of bloggers (usually sharply inclined to the right) who derive their understanding of recent history from doubtful written sources, and place more trust in them than a primary source who has actually lived the real experience.

There was a contingent of Alvis owners, some from the UK, who had flown their cars across. Beautifully crafted cars – and their owners can’t be short of a quid. Maybe the UK isn’t in such a mess after all. The one in the photo has front wheel drive – a rarity in those days, although they didn’t persist with it.

A light tank was displayed that I can't identify. Any ideas?

I also found a 1967 HR Holden. Unremarkable? Perhaps, but I owned one exactly the same colour from 1971 until 1973.

I bought it from my Dad when I got back from Vietnam, and drove it everywhere (including one epic journey from Brisbane to Darwin and Alice Springs in 1972). It never missed a beat.

You could also buy a decent coffee if you were prepared to queue, and the loos were clean. Catering at events like these has come a long way in the last ten years.

Next year I’ll try to talk the MX5 club into a group display. Maybe we can conjure up some sponsorship from the local Mazda distributor.