Letters to the Editor, August 30, 2018

TODAY’S LETTERS: Readers have their say on the shortcomings highlighted by the latest NAPLAN test results, the Liberal leadership change and democracy in Australia, and the abortion debate in Queensland.

NAPLAN results reveal education inequalities. Picture: Mathew Farrell

CONGRATULATIONS to all those independent schools that did so well on the NAPLAN test (C-M, Aug 29).

However, that a school can excel with a select group of students and generous government and parental funding is not surprising.

It must be said that the public sector does a magnificent job with often limited resources and a complex mix of students.

That so few government schools are on these lists is not a reflection of their merit, but rather an indication of the inequality inherent in our education system.

Adoption of needs-based funding must be a priority of government, based on this somewhat flawed data.

One bright statistic is that Queensland has one of the highest rates of student withdrawal from NAPLAN.

The pernicious impact of this test should not be underestimated.

Steve Jenkins, Sinnamon Park

REGARDING the NAPLAN test, it seems many people are fixed on the blame game for the poor results in Queensland schools.

The education of a child is a trifecta of parents, teachers and child, and the outcome is correlated to their interaction.

When all three are on song, the outcome is very good and is in no way dependent on the academic ability of the child.

Success in life is not dependent on academic ability but on a broader range of social, cultural and academic factors that teachers and parents can promote in their children. NAPLAN tests one section and should not be looked on as the only factor in the development of a child.

Greg McKay, Dalby

CONSIDERING the different writing styles employed by today’s students, I’m not surprised that some of them can’t write properly.

What has happened to basic education?

I’ll bet that very few students could master basic mental arithmetic using fractions or decimals.

It is a dying subject, if not already dead.

It is sad to watch even teachers struggling on TV quizzes, trying to correctly answer history or geography questions that high school students should know.

You don’t have to qualify for Mensa to know the oceans and continents of the world, or which English king was the father of Elizabeth II, but some answers defy belief.

Something is radically wrong with our education system when foreign students are leaving us far behind in knowledge and dedication.

Technology is the culprit. All the answers to everything are just a click away, but remove the technology and panic sets in.

The challenge is to pull the education system apart, identify the major shortfalls and restructure the syllabus for each phase of learning.

Agreed, we turn out a lot of brilliant students, but we can, and must, do better.

Peter Corran, Manly West

WHEN I was at school many years ago, we were visited by the schools inspector once a year.

We would be told the day before he/she was due.

The inspector would arrive and we were tested for one day, and that was the end of the process until the next year.

There were no dramas, no stress, no recriminations and no endless post-testing analyses.

It was just another day in our childhood lives.

Noel McNamara, Burpengary East

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DEMOCRACY IN RUINS

DESPITE constant questions from the media, no Liberal politician has dared to state what is clear to most Australians in the latest disposal of a prime minister.

Des Deighton (Letters, Aug 29) got it down to a “T”: “Political parties will do whatever they can to stay in power for, in their opinion, the good of the country.”

He called this “robust democracy”, but I call it B-grade democracy.

It is not government of the people, by the people, for the people; but government of the people, by the people, for the party. It is about staying in power so the governing party can push through its political philosophy and agenda.

This win-at-all-costs approach leads to pre-election populist promises and scare campaigns, and in government, because the two main political groups are so evenly balanced, to legislation that will lose the least votes.

For true and robust democracy, we need genuine debate on the floor of Parliament, not just

party-political speeches to an almost empty House followed by a rubber-stamping vote won by the party in power.

But to achieve this, we also need to allow all MPs the freedom to speak their minds and to vote accordingly, and we need to remove the threat of “loss of government” between fixed elections.

I believe it is time we took a hard look at our political system, if we really want to defuse the growing cynicism about politics in our country.

John Vitale, Bald Hills

ON REFLECTION, the events of the past week, which saw the deposition of one prime minister and the supplanting of a new one, are water off a duck’s back.

I dare say few people were traumatised by this event, except for Malcolm Turnbull, his family and friends.

All the conversation that I have heard from ordinary people has reflected on their disbelief that again a prime minister has been unceremoniously dumped, but stated with an air of cynicism.

So what is it about Australians that we go with the flow when these events surface? Are we really so democratic?

Stephen Kazoullis, Highgate Hill

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CHURCH AND STATE CLASH OVER ABORTION REFORM

ARCHBISHOP Mark Coleridge is correct in claiming that a proposed Queensland law would permit abortions up to birth (C-M, Aug 28), since they clearly do not prohibit them, merely requiring two doctors to give approval.

There are plenty of doctors in this state who would willingly comply, particularly when the legislation includes severe penalties for any doctor who refuses to refer a woman for abortion, or refer her to a doctor who will.

Given that current laws are almost totally disregarded, why would anyone believe this pretence of a restriction would be any different?

Abortion is the only surgical procedure in which a woman can demand a referral based on her own diagnosis and, if this law is passed, a doctor who refuses can be prosecuted. It is also the only surgical procedure the sole aim of which is to end a human life, not sustain it.

These proposed laws are abominably bad, brutal and inhumane.

Peter Davidson, Ashgrove

IT’S typical of a Catholic archbishop, such as Archbishop Mark Coleridge, to characterise women as mindless flibbertigibbets with his alleged concern that “healthy expectant mothers” will have abortions late in their pregnancies “for reasons that have nothing to do with health”.

What woman who has been happily pregnant for six months or more will suddenly decide on a whim, such as putting on weight, to have an abortion?

There are very few abortions performed in Australia after 22 weeks, but the Archbishop needs his disrespectful stereotyping of women to hide his real agenda – a desperate grab to maintain some church and state control of women’s bodies.

Sue Boyce, Pro Choice Queensland

YOUR story regarding Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s abortion warning makes it clear that it is Health Minister Steven Miles who is guilty of misleading the public rather than the Archbishop.

The Archbishop is correct in saying that some grounds for late-term abortions in the proposed new law have nothing to do with health.

Just because all grounds, health or otherwise, must be considered “collectively”, as claimed by the Minister, does not mean that an abortion must be approved on health grounds.

The bigger question is why doctors are considered expert in issues other than health.

This is why we have hospital ethics committees, which comprise, as well as doctors, other professionals, such as bioethicists, who make judgments about the moral circumstances of certain health and medical procedures.

Stephen Kemp, Birkdale

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