John Howard our notorious Prime Minister today put forward another good reason for me not to like him. He's encouraging year 10 students disenchanted with school to drop out and do a trade. Why would he do this you ask? Well, two reasons as far as I can tell:
- He's getting his arse-kicked about the economy. He needs to divert attention from the bad figures released last week. He has raised this non-issue because of the perceived economic issues related to a skilled labour shortage that is about to hit this country (which is largely a result of his government failing to adequately fund training institutions for the last 10 years.... but that's another story). His solution, students that are feeling down on school probably aren't suited to it and they should be encouraged to quit and do a trade. It'll get the op-ed pages of the newspapers to focuss on this debate and not on rising interest rates!!
- He hates education. For every extra year that someone is educated, the probability that they will vote for his conservative style of politics diminishes. He knows this too well. It's why he enforces the view that universities are primarily vocational training institutions. It's why he dismisses academics as out-of-touch elites.
Enough of my ranting. To see a great rant on this topic see Andrew Hines' blog.
Oh yea, just for fun. Here's an old school photo I found of Andrew to lighten up the mood a bit:
Andrew Hines in his senior year of high school... he was school captain by the way... I think I've stirred up the hornets nest now. I can only hope I have more embarassing photos of him than he does of me!!!
