A temporary, tenuous and deeply superficial silence has overcome the federal Liberal Party as it battles to retain the seat of Wentworth.

Even the most bitter and aggrieved MPs have made a conscious decision to stay silent in the face of voter backlash that threatens to rob the party of its one-seat majority in the make-or-break byelection of Wentworth.

The MPs know that speaking out while the byelection campaign is in its final stages, airing grievances or policy concerns at this time, will be viewed as wrecking and sabotage. No-one wants to be accused of destruction when the party is already on its knees after the removal of Malcolm Turnbull.

The great policy elephant in the room in that by-election is the yet-to-be-released religious freedoms review — and the subsequent legislation that Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised to introduce to further protect and enshrine religious freedoms.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-10/religious-freedom-ruddock-schools-...

The Liberal candidate for Wentworth, Dave Sharma, said his party is “doing enough” and has “a good record” on climate change, after a blistering attack from former leader John Hewson, who said the party deserved a “drubbing” over its inaction on the issue.

Hewson told Guardian Australia that Liberal voters have a unique opportunity: register a protest now and return to the party at the general election in six months’ time.

“I obviously disagree with John Hewson on this,” the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said as he campaigned with Sharma at an optometrist’s shop in Rose Bay on Wednesday, where the theme seemed to be something about “vision”.

Frydenberg said a vote for an independent in Wentworth was as good as a vote for the Labor party.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/10/dave-sharma-says-...

Yep, Dave Sharms needs some of his glasses... or a microscope to see that the CRASS (CONservtive Royalists And Sorry Sods) party of which he is a member is doing the opposite to having a good record on climate change. Yep, this is a vision thing...

A review into religious protections in Australia has recommended making it more difficult for schools to turn away gay students, according to the report's author Philip Ruddock.

Mr Ruddock, a former Liberal MP, said the report, which is yet to be made public, suggests narrowing the scope of existing sex discrimination laws. 

"We weren't suggesting that the law should be expanded," he told the ABC's RN Drive program.

"We were simply saying it should be contracted to ensure that that information was clear and unambiguous in relation to those who were seeking to enrol children."

Reports earlier on Wednesday suggested the report recommended religious schools be given the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or relationship status.

It has since emerged that those laws already exist in varying forms in some states.

Mr Ruddock said his review recommended making the laws consistent across the country and forcing schools that do discriminate to be upfront about it by publicly stating their rules and beliefs.

"There may be a small number of schools who see that as a significant issue for religious reasons," he said. 

"Provided they make it clear, and abundantly clear, that they are the rules under which they're operating, that should be the basis upon which it occurs." 

One senior Australian Catholic has rejected the need to strengthen religious protections in Australia. 

The Vicar-General of the Catholic Diocese in Ballarat, Kevin Maloney, said those laws already existed in varying forms and his Church had not sought to change them. 

"No I'm not convinced that they need to be extended at all," he said.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-10/ruddock-plays-down-religious-freed...

Why has the report not been made public yet? BECAUSE OF THE BY-ELECTION IN WENTWORTH. Capice?

Former treasurer Peter Costello has launched an excoriating attack on the Liberal Party leadership, warning the government is "operating in a parallel universe" by promising voters it would deliver reforms in 10 years' time.

The government's inability to produce a coherent economic story meant the Liberal Party had splintered along the social lines that ultimately contributed to the demise of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, he also said.

"I was deputy leader of the Liberal Party for 14 years and I didn’t know that we had a right faction and a left faction and, if we did, nobody invited me to join either of them," Mr Costello said.

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/very-very-weird-peter-costello-l...

Time to learn something new, Peter... The Liberals were, are and will be divided along various idiotic CRASS lines (CONservative Royalists and Silly Sods) divide.

Some 300 citizens and 14 candidates for the Wentworth byelection braved the wind and slanting rain on Monday night to debate the issues at the historic Bondi Pavilion. But the race’s frontrunner, the Liberal Party’s Dave Sharma, was missing. Much like his party’s climate policy.

Campaign staff told the organisers Sharma had a prior engagement, but the suspicion was that he was being hidden. Much like the recommendations of the government’s inquiry into religious freedom – subsequently leaked this week.

Certainly, the crowd was not happy when the debate moderator announced Sharma couldn’t make it. There were jeers, and laughter at a few shouted interjections that Sharma – preselected even though he didn’t live in the electorate – couldn’t find his way to Bondi.

From the first minute, for two-and-a-half hours it was pretty much open season on Sharma and the party for which he stands. It wasn’t only the other candidates taking shots, either, but also the audience, who expressed their antipathy for Sharma and the Liberals in both their questions and their interjections.

And while the throng at Bondi could not by any means be considered representative of the whole electorate of Wentworth, much less Australia, the depth and breadth of the anger expressed at Monday’s meeting suggested not only short-term peril for Sharma but also longer-term peril for the Liberal Party as a whole. This byelection has held Australian politics in stasis. The stakes for the government could not be higher. If it loses – and that is a possibility – its razor-thin parliamentary majority will be gone, and it will be relying on the fickle cross bench for support. So it makes sense that the government is pouring money into the Wentworth runoff. But almost every time Scott Morrison has spoken publicly during the campaign, he has made Sharma’s job a whole lot harder.

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics

The possibility is that Sharma is holding fire until he does a "charm offensive" at the last minute, with a few polished porkies about the ScoMo government doing enough for climate change, as one can see with the freezing weather.

Please, get rid of this bogan ScoMo government which could be said to be bogus as if the illegitimate hot potato of a certain Peter Dutton.

As Attorney-General, Christian Porter is in charge of the Racial Discrimination Act and interpreting other complex legislation. Does he seriously expect Australians to believe that he couldn’t interpret what Senator Hanson’s motion meant?

Mr Porter needs to front up and take responsibility for this himself.

Up until late last night, Christian Porter was still trying to justify the government’s decision on Twitter, with Leader of the Senate Mathias Cormann himself, following suit.

This is not something the government can just shrug off. This is government Senators being seen to endorse a battle cry of the white supremacy movement inside the Australian Parliament. It is appalling.

This is not just a deeply embarrassing moment for the Coalition, but also for the country.

The voters of Wentworth should ask themselves – can they endorse a government with these sorts of values, with Senators who don’t even know what they’re supposed to be voting for?

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2018/oct/16/scott-morris...

Read from top... This white supremacist caper mixed with the "recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel" is not accidental. It is highly calculated by these ugly boffins to sway the voters in Wentworth back into the fold of the CONservative (CRASS) government...

This past week has been one of the first times in a decade I've overtly considered the Anglican values I learnt at school.

I went to SCEGGS Darlinghurst. I was not religious as a student, and I'm not religious now, but at school we attended chapel once a week and Religious Education classes until Year 10. I also sang in the chapel choir until I left school in 2007. 

Head of school Jenny Allum loomed large as an intelligent and righteous figure in my formative years. I remember distinctly her visit to our Year 7 Design and Technology class to explain we did not study Home Economics at SCEGGS because she believed it wasn't the school's job to train young girls as wives.

For the most part, our sojourns into religious practice were nothing like what agents of the Anglican Church have intimated in their controversial letter to MPs.

Thirty-four of Sydney's Anglican schools signed the letter, defending their "right to discriminate" against LGBTQI+ students and teachers. The letter, which is addressed to federal Education Minister Dan Tehan, asks that the schools retain the right to sack gay teachers and expel gay students, following a recent announcement from Prime Minister Scott Morrison that these legal protections for religious schools will be eradicated.

But in the chapel at SCEGGS, Reverend Garry Lee-Lindsay preached, above all, respect, acceptance and love. This is how he interpreted the Bible, and how he encouraged us to interpret it as well. 

I often listened hard to his sermons and thought about them long after they were over — not just because he was a bright man who gave us a lot to think about, but also because my mother, Janet, said he reminded her of her father — the grandfather I never met — Hubert Dixon.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-05/anglican-schools-right-to-discriminate-letter-opinion/

Read from top.

From Robin Nagy

After 25 years as a successful mathematics teacher, I have packed away my books and will not be returning to the classroom. I no longer wish to teach in Australia. 

This decision stems from a combination of factors, including a lack of systemic respect for teachers, over-compliance, superficial regulation and the erosion of teacher autonomy. 

The worse Australian mathematics is perceived to be, the more layers of restriction and overbearing compliance and regulation are added, and the more impossible it becomes to teach.

First let me start by saying that the last 25 years have been amazing. At its best, teaching is the most fulfilling job in the world. 

But teaching is all about nurturing and relationships. Most students will only enjoy a subject if they believe that their teacher is interested in them personally.

It is a performing art, not a science, requiring a multiplicity of dispositional skills, including communication, empathy, emotional intelligence and listening ability. 

And mathematics teaching requires an additional skill set, akin to that of a logician or scientist. 

The paradigms of these often-polarised factors are a small subset of the population, and so excellent mathematics teachers (and science teachers) will always be in short supply. 

This dearth of qualified mathematics teachers has resulted in "out-of-field" teachers taking many mathematics classes, and in the tightening up of regulation and compliance for all mathematics teachers to try to ensure consistency of delivery and student achievement. 

This has been an epic failure.

The root of the problem does not just lie in a lack of qualified mathematics teachers, however.

Extension mathematics is considered the domain of prodigies, and at the pinnacle of high-school mathematics in NSW are the HSC extension courses.

These courses are vital for our future engineers, scientists and mathematicians (as well as our future mathematics teachers), but participation in these courses is pitifully low and has been decreasing for years. 

Many schools do not offer these courses at all (particularly in regional areas where there is often scant capacity to teach them), and if they do, they typically require students and teachers to run them outside the school timetable.

External assessment of these courses is far too hard, resembling more of a mathematics competition or Olympiad rather than an assessment of learning, which has a direct impact on their uptake.

Our classrooms are overwhelmingly influenced by this inappropriate level of difficulty, resulting in many students failing to complete, or even start, courses of which they may be quite capable. 

The only students who thrive in this situation are those who, in the words of UNSW Professor Andrew Martin, have innate "academic buoyancy".

So how do we attract more qualified teachers to mould our mathematicians of the future?

First and foremost, inspirational teaching can only flourish with a high degree of teacher autonomy and trust.

When I first started teaching, I was able to adapt my approach for each class and each student, based on my assessment of their needs, to build confidence and motivation.

I was free to create and invent opportunities for learning and to be flexible in the delivery of the content. 

I communicated with my colleagues and shared ideas and resources, but I ran my own show. 

This teaching utopia has long since evaporated. 

Superficially the classroom still looks the same, but there are now invisible fetters and shackles restricting a teacher's every move.

Most teachers do not run their own assessment regimes. 

Due to perceived compliance requirements to maintain equity and fairness across all classes in a cohort, most assessment is written and marked collectively.

This results in a "one-size-fits-all" test which is not tailored to the developmental and motivational needs of any individual student or class. 

The assessment dates are usually fixed long in advance, before teachers even know what it is that will be assessed. This is the tail wagging the dog. 

The results of these assessments have a disastrous effect on student confidence, with many students achieving crushingly low scores and losing all confidence in their ability to learn mathematics. 

Teachers typically do not mark their own students' assessments but rather, mark a single question across the cohort. 

This leads to a lack of vital feedback for teachers about their own students' understanding. 

Teachers are also now discouraged from developing relationships with students. 

In recent years, the climate in schools has been damagingly affected by the burgeoning concern to protect children from abuse.

Teachers are warned about getting "too close" to students and what is intended as a "professional distance" to protect teachers from accusations, can sometimes be interpreted by students as a lack of interest in them. 

Moreover, there has been a systemic and insidious depersonalisation of teaching, seeking to replace the persona and charisma of the teacher with the blandness and uniformity of a facilitator of learning, in the mistaken belief that this will result in more consistent and better learning outcomes. 

Teachers are no longer encouraged to be creative and performing artists, but rather automatons who paint by numbers. 

The dehumanisation of teaching can be epitomised by teachers not being allowed to use "I" or "me" within their school reports in many schools. 

The rationale is that the report is about the student, not the teacher, but the reality is that the report is the teacher's opinion of the student and it is most effective if the student can clearly hear the teacher's voice, rather than a generic, insipid comment.

To put mathematics at the forefront going forward, we must give teachers back more classroom autonomy, trust and opportunities to be creative and responsible for their classes. 

Compliance and regulation need to be reined in to improve genuine quality teaching and learning.

We need to give teachers the environment they need to be able to thrive, and we need to recognise and encourage the importance of teachers' individual personality and character in inspiring the next generation of students. 

There is no silver bullet to the crisis in mathematics education, but tightening up compliance regulations and forcing all students to study mathematics will certainly make matters a whole lot worse.

Robin Nagy has taught high school mathematics in three continents and has been a Professional Learning Consultant for the Mathematical Association of NSW, in which capacity he ran courses for over 1,000 mathematics teachers across NSW.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-07/the-demise-of-australian-mathemat...

Read from top.

All this degradation of skill and enthusiasm has happened under the Liberal (CONservative) policies of crap, who prefer teaching about little Jesus. The decision to hammer the public service "for more efficiency" is a furphy of gross proportion designed, as usual, to remove the efficient managers of public service and replace them with government stooges who will muck up service as much as possible in order to "remove the red tape" that is preventing the Liberal (CONservative) mates to rape the land (clear-fell) or build shoddy buildings (developers) for profit... We've seen it before... and Scumshitologist is doing it again...