tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20894960015037792062024-03-13T23:08:30.703+11:00Education Training Learning Marketing Communications and SocietyThis blog includes posts, articles, research and information about education, training, learning, assessment, evaluation, digital technology, curriculum, syllabus, program or instructional design, pedagogy, andragogy, adult, vocational and higher education in Australia, Asia EU, Europe and internationally.
Additionally related policies, regulations, politics, media, society and history in Australasia, Europe and internationally.Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-45631392709282209652020-02-25T16:56:00.001+11:002020-02-25T16:56:59.871+11:00Anglo World Party Politics, White Nationalism and Immigration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Australian politics as with Trump’s America and U.K.’s Brexit has become hollowed out with declining membership, less organic policy development, more reliance upon both external policy development by trans national think tanks and promotion or opposition by media or PR.<br />
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An enforced focus upon immigration, population growth and refugees, or white nationalist issues, may risk bi-partisan support and ignore the immigrant heritage of Australia versus aggressive demands for a WASP white Anglo Saxon protestant and Irish Catholic culture to rule.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/political-parties-hollowed-out-and-identity-issues/" target="_blank">Populist Politics and White Nationalism</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
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This is especially so among the less diverse above median age vote in regions, while Australia’s elites in business, government, politics and media also reflect the same mono culture or lack of diversity.<br />
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Further, positives and benefits of immigration are seldom cited and especially the leveraging of temporary resident churn over; whether students, backpackers or temporary workers who are net financial contributors supporting the tax base, vs. ageing and increasing proportion of pensioners or retirees in the permanent population.<br />
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From The Lowy Institute:</h2>
'<a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/hollowed-out-but-not-unhinged" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hollowed out, but not unhinged</a><br />
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Judith Brett<br />
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The scenario put forth in Sam Roggeveen’s “Our very own Brexit” runs counter to the major parties’ economic realities.<br />
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Sam Roggeveen has written a lively essay on the current state of Australian federal politics, centred on the hypothetical scenario that one of the two major parties takes an anti-immigration policy to an election, overturning Australia’s post-war bipartisan commitment to immigration to gain political advantage. Such an election would be a referendum on continuing population growth, and bring to a halt our cultural diversification and our integration into Asia, which is now the largest source of permanent new settlers.<br />
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It sounds unlikely, but as Roggeveen argues, both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were unlikely, rogue events that have overturned political assumptions. His scenario is not a prediction, he stresses, but a plausible, worst-case scenario arising from the current state of our political parties.<br />
Our two major parties have become “hollowed out”, Roggeveen argues, untethered from their traditional social bases in class-based interests. Party membership and party loyalty have declined, leaving a more volatile and skittish electorate potentially vulnerable to the anti-immigration siren song of a party desperate to gain electoral advantage.<br />
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There are two parts to this argument. The first is that the parties have become hollowed out; the second that it is plausible that one of the major parties break the bipartisan support for the migration program.<br />
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First, the evidence is clear for the decline in rusted-on party loyalty.</h3>
However, Roggeveen does not, to my mind, have a sufficiently nuanced understanding of the reasons for this decline and writes as if it is mainly the result of a deficient political class.<br />
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In the early 20th century, when our current party system took shape, it made social and economic sense to have two parties based on two class blocks. Working and middle class, employee and employer, labour and capital – these spoke both to people’s everyday experience and sense of themselves and to competing economic interests. This is no longer the case. More than a hundred years later, Australia’s society and its economy are much more complex.<br />
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In developing their policies, parties have to broker compromises among various competing interests, and this undertaking is much harder today. To take a stark example: the problem Labor has in developing policies responsive both to its traditional union base and to the middle-class social democrats who flocked to the party with Gough Whitlam. Compared with the early 20th century, lines of class division have blurred, and new lines of difference have been politicised: gender, race, ethnicity, attitude to nature, and, after the fading of sectarianism, religion again. If the parties are failing, it is in part because the task of uniting disparate constituencies is harder…..<br />
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……Second, I do not find it plausible that one of the major parties would break the bipartisan consensus on immigration.</h3>
A minor party might succeed with an anti-immigration policy, but neither major party could afford the electoral risk. The 2016 Census reported that 49% of the Australian population was either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Not all of these people will be on the electoral roll, but all who are citizens will be, and once on the roll, they will have to vote.<br />
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Because of compulsory voting, Australian parties do not need highly emotional and divisive policies to get out the vote, and to support them carries considerable risks. Both Brexit and the election of Trump occurred in polities with voluntary voting, where it makes electoral sense to risk courting an alienated minority. There is no doubt there is a nativist faction in Australia that would support a stop to immigration, but Australian elections are won and lost in the middle, which is occupied by increasing numbers of foreign-born voters and their children.<br />
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Also holding the major parties to their consensus on immigration is its contribution to the economy. Australia’s recent sluggish economic growth would be even slower were it not for migration. The housing and retail sectors in particular would be sharply affected by its halt. Our two major political parties may be untethered from their historical social bases, but they are not unhinged from contemporary economic reality.'<br />
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For more articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/11/25/australian-brexit/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">populist politics</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/ageing-populations-politics-and-demographic-decline-in-the-u-k/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">demographics</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/immigration-immigrants-and-public-misconceptions/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/globalisation-of-islamophobia-and-antisemitism-by-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-22558250988665606112020-02-09T17:03:00.000+11:002020-02-09T17:03:34.719+11:00Fake News Education in Finland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We have witnessed years now of conventional and now digital media being manipulated to confuse, misinform and mislead the public of all ages round science of climate change or global warming, politics and campaigns, immigrants and population growth, vaccinations, natural disasters, religion and minorities etc.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/fighting-fake-news-in-finland-via-schools/" target="_blank">Critical Thinking in Finland's Curriculum</a> <br />(Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
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Like some states in Australia used to teach critical thinking to high school students in the 1970s, since been 'embedded' and/or disappeared, Finland has taken the lead in developing skills at primary school age dealing with Russia especially, and global warming denialism.<br />
From The Guardian:<br />
<h2>
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news?" rel="noopener" target="_blank">'How Finland starts its fight against fake news in primary schools</a></h2>
Country on frontline of information war teaches everyone from school pupils to politicians how to spot slippery information.<br />
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You can start when children are very young, said Kari Kivinen. In fact, you should: “Fairytales work well. Take the wily fox who always cheats the other animals with his sly words. That’s not a bad metaphor for a certain kind of politician, is it?”<br />
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With democracies around the world threatened by the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of false information, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/finland">Finland</a> – recently rated Europe’s most resistant nation to fake news – takes the fight seriously enough to teach it in primary school.<br />
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In secondary schools, such as the state-run college in Helsinki where Kivinen is head teacher, multi-platform information literacy and strong critical thinking have become a core, cross-subject component of a national curriculum that was introduced in 2016.<br />
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In maths lessons, Kivinen’s pupils learn how easy it is to lie with statistics. In art, they see how an image’s meaning can be manipulated. In history, they analyse notable propaganda campaigns, while Finnish language teachers work with them on the many ways in which words can be used to confuse, mislead and deceive.<br />
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“The goal is active, responsible citizens and voters,” Kivinen said. “Thinking critically, factchecking, interpreting and evaluating all the information you receive, wherever it appears, is crucial. We’ve made it a core part of what we teach, across all subjects.”<br />
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The curriculum is part of a unique, broad strategy devised by the Finnish government after 2014, when the country was first targeted with fake news stories by its Russian neighbour, and the government realised it had moved into the post-fact age.<br />
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Successful enough for Finland to top, by some margin, an <a href="https://osis.bg/?p=3356&lang=en">annual index measuring resistance to fake news</a> in 35 European countries, the programme aims to ensure that everyone, from pupil to politician, can detect – and do their bit to fight – false information.<br />
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“This affects all of us,” said Jussi Toivanen, chief communications officer for the prime minister’s office. “It targets the whole of Finnish society. It aims to erode our values and norms, the trust in our institutions that hold society together.”<br />
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Finland, which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Finland/The-struggle-for-independence">declared independence</a> from Russia in 1917, is on the frontline of an online information war that has accelerated markedly since Moscow annexed Crimea and backed rebels in eastern Ukraine five years ago, Toivanen said.<br />
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Most campaigns, amplified by sympathetic far-right, nation-first and “alternative” Finnish news sites and social media accounts, focus on attacking the EU, highlighting immigration issues and trying to influence debate over Finland’s full Nato membership.<br />
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Resistance is seen almost as a civil defence question, a key component in Finland’s comprehensive security policy. Toivanen said: “We are a small country, without many resources, and we rely on everyone contributing to the collective defence of society.”<br />
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The programme, piloted by a 30-member, high-level committee representing 20 different bodies from government ministries to welfare organisations and the police, intelligence and security services, has trained thousands of civil servants, journalists, teachers and librarians over the past three years.<br />
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“It’s a broad-based, coordinated effort to raise awareness,” said Saara Jantunen, a senior researcher from the defence ministry who has been seconded to the prime minister’s office. “Like virus protection on your computer: the government’s responsible for a certain amount, of course, but ultimately it’s up to the individual to install the software.”...<br />
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.....He wants his pupils to ask questions such as: who produced this information, and why? Where was it published? What does it really say? Who is it aimed at? What is it based on? Is there evidence for it, or is this just someone’s opinion? Is it verifiable elsewhere?<br />
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On the evidence of half a dozen pupils gathered in a classroom before lunchtime, it is an approach that is paying off. “You must always fact check. The number one rule: no Wikipedia, and always three or four different and reliable sources,” said Mathilda, 18. “We learn that basically in every subject.”....<br />
.....Part of that continuing education is also provided by NGOs. Besides operating an effective factchecking service, Faktabaari (Fact Bar), launched for the<a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2014-results/en/country-results-fi-2014.html"> 2014 European elections</a> and run by a volunteer staff of journalists and researchers, produces popular voter literacy kits for schools and the wider public.<br />
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“Essentially, we aim to give people their own tools,” said its founder, Mikko Salo, a member of the EU’s independent <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/high-level-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation">high-level expert group</a> on fake news. “It’s about trying to vaccinate against problems, rather than telling people what’s right and wrong. That can easily lead to polarisation.”<br />
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In the run-up to Finland’s parliamentary elections last April, the government went so far as to produce an advertising campaign alerting voters to the possibility of fake news, with the slogan “<a href="https://vnk.fi/en/article/-/asset_publisher/suomessa-on-maailman-parhaat-vaalit-mieti-miksi-">Finland has the best elections in the world. Think about why</a>”.<br />
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Similarly, Mediametka has been developing and working with media literacy tools since the more innocent days of the early 1950s, when its founders were motivated mainly by fear of the irreparable damage that comic books might do to the minds of Finnish children.<br />
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These days, the NGO, part-funded by the culture ministry, organises ed-tech hackathons with inventive Finnish startups in a bid to develop “meaningful materials” for schools and youth groups, said its executive director, Meri Seistola.<br />
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“We work with pictures, videos, text, digital content; get our students to produce their own; ask them to identify all the various kinds of misleading news,” said Seistola: from propaganda to clickbait, satire to conspiracy theory, pseudoscience to partisan reporting; from stories describing events that simply never happened to unintentional errors of fact.<br />
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Finland has something of a head start on information literacy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/12/safe-happy-and-free-does-finland-have-all-the-answers">ranking consistently at or near the top of international indices</a> for press freedom, transparency, education and social justice. Its school pupils have the EU’s highest PISA score for reading.<br />
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“The level of trust in national institutions, in the media, in society as a whole, does tend to be higher in the Nordic countries than in many others,” said Faktabaari’s Salo. “But that means we really need even greater vigilance now, to prepare ourselves for the next phase. Because we have more to lose.”'<br />
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For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/student-youth-marketing-communications-digital-technology-social-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">younger generations</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/critical-thinking/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">critical thinking</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/climate-change/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">climate change</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/curriculum/" target="_blank">curriculum</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-7022432731379267462020-02-06T14:49:00.000+11:002020-02-06T14:49:24.145+11:00Restrictionist Myths of Immigration and Migrants<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Immigration has been front and centre of (mostly) conservative politics in the USA, UK, Australia and Europe presented as a problem requiring a ‘solution’, helped along by the influence and ideology of white nationalists. However, most people do not understand the dynamics, facts nor benefits of ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrants’ when white nationalists influenced by eugenics are doing the informing, based upon beliefs not facts nor optimal analysis.<br />
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‘<em>Harvard University study recently found that people in Western countries, including America, have succumbed to many restrictionist myths…… About 3 percent of the world's population lived outside its birth country in 1900. And 3 percent does so now. By any objective metric, the modern age has experienced no historic flood of immigration.</em>’<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kiZcDO0VWaY/XjuLPgt_xCI/AAAAAAAAFiY/AOgoo_gQJuEOSnjQwwxJ994nIygKrw-4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Global%2BMigration%2BHistory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Conservatives and white nationalists have promoted negative views about immigrants and immigration, mostly untrue." border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="640" height="196" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kiZcDO0VWaY/XjuLPgt_xCI/AAAAAAAAFiY/AOgoo_gQJuEOSnjQwwxJ994nIygKrw-4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Global%2BMigration%2BHistory.jpg" title="Myths about impacts of immigration needing a solution." width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/immigration-immigrants-and-public-misconceptions/" target="_blank">Global Migration Facts and Analysis or Beliefs?</a> <br />(Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
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From The Week:</h2>
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<a href="https://theweek.com/articles/889620/lie-immigrant-welfare-queen" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The lie of the immigrant welfare queen</a></h2>
By Shikha Dalmia 28 January 2020<br />
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Harvard University study recently found that people in Western countries, including America, have succumbed to many restrictionist myths. The right-wing campaign against immigration, in other words, has worked.<br />
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But that doesn't mean that immigration advocates should despair. The study's findings suggest that to the extent that they can make the case that immigrants don't need handouts to succeed, they have a shot at turning public opinion around.<br />
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The study, <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w24733.pdf">conducted</a> by Political Economy Professor Alberto Alesina and and Economics Professor Stefanie Stantcheva, administered online questionnaires to 24,000 respondents in six countries — U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden — with the explicit aim of studying legal, not illegal, immigration. That is something that everyone, except for the most hardline restrictionists, allegedly favors, especially in America.<br />
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But on literally every count — the levels of immigration, the composition and basic characteristics of immigrants — negative stereotypes abound.<br />
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About 3 percent of the world's population lived outside its birth country in 1900. And 3 percent does so now. By any <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/opinion/trump-immigration-myth.html">objective metric</a>, the modern age has experienced no historic flood of immigration. But restrictionists have been beating the drum of "mass immigration" so long that people have come to believe it as true. In every country, the study found, people vastly overestimate the number of immigrants present. For example, in America, legal immigrants constitute about 10 percent of the population. But what is the average perception? Thirty-six percent — or a whopping 22 percent above the total combined share of immigration — legal and illegal, which is about 4 percent of the population. Every group — educated, uneducated; rich, poor; liberal, conservative — has fallen for this myth.<br />
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What's more, people also seem to have a warped idea of where immigrants come from and who they are. Americans in particular tend to overestimate the share of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, particularly Muslim. Indeed, Muslims are 10 percent of all immigrants (or <a href="https://reason.com/2016/09/13/muslim-in-america/">less than 2 percent</a> of the total U.S. population) but the study's respondents commonly believed they were 23 percent. At the same time, the respondents underestimated the share of Christian immigrants, systematically exaggerating the cultural distance between themselves and immigrants.<br />
Such misperceptions extend beyond the cultural characteristics of immigrants to economic ones as well...<br />
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... But where restrictionists have succeeded most spectacularly is in depicting immigrants as welfare queens. The Harvard researchers presented respondents with a scenario in which two individuals, one with a foreign-sounding name like Mohammad or Jose and another with a standard native name like Jack, are identical in every respect — age, qualifications, jobs, and families — each with three young children — except that Jack is a native and Mohammad or Jose is an immigrant who legally moved to America five years ago. The respondents were asked whether they believed Mohammad or the person with the immigrant-sounding name would pay more, the same, or less in taxes than Jack and whether he would receive more, the same, or less in government help. In America, over 25 percent of respondents said the person with the immigrant-sounding name would pay less in taxes than he collected in welfare compared to Jack — even though immigrants are barred from collecting most means tested federal benefits for five years. This reveals that about a quarter of the American public is outright biased against foreigners just because they are foreigners and not because they are illegal or poor or for any other objective reason….<br />
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….So what's the good news? It's that despite decades of anti-immigration messaging, there are some restrictionist lines that the public is not falling for, especially in America.<br />
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Americans, the study found, believe strongly that immigrants should be considered "truly American" as soon as they become citizens and that they should be able to get citizenship quickly. Moreover, once immigrants do become citizens, most Americans believe, the government should care for them equally. This means that restrictionists who want to scrap birthright citizenship or force immigrants to wait longer are out-of-step with mainstream American sentiment. By contrast, European respondents were much less inclined both to let immigrants become citizens quickly or consider them truly part of the country when they obtained citizenship. "Overall, the U.S. is most supportive of immigration," the study notes.<br />
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Most encouragingly, in every country, the respondents attributed the economic success of immigrants to immigrants themselves and not any social advantage. Conversely, they were less inclined to attribute the success of natives to natives themselves, meaning people don't always believe the worst of immigrants and the best of natives. They especially softened after hearing a story about an immigrant who held two jobs to support a family while also going to school.<br />
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But the best news is that once respondents were told about the correct share of the immigrant population, they were less inclined to think of the current level of immigration as a problem. That means that if immigration advocates can cut through the cloud of restrictionist misinformation and correct the record on immigration levels, it may be possible to get public buy-in for more generous immigration policies — although no doubt they will have to buttress the stats with real-life examples of immigrants getting ahead. The notion that natives, even working class ones, resent the success of immigrants is overblown. In fact, so long as immigrants are seen as succeeding through their own grit, natives may have no real objection to them.<br />
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What is most likely to sour the public on immigration are the grandiose universal freebies that Sen. Warren and other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination want to shower on everyone. Immigrants should be wary of Democrats bearing gifts.<br />
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For more articles and posts about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/population-growth-or-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">demography</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/hans-rosling-the-facts-and-ignorance-about-population-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/">white nationalism</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-62435646104907225452020-01-26T16:53:00.000+11:002020-01-26T16:53:33.542+11:00Eco-Fascism - Global Warming - Environment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With the science of climate change and global warming under attack as Australia experiences bushfires not seen before in scope and intensity, there are now clear links between white nationalism and niche environmentalism, or ‘eco-fascism’. According to many this has included long term support from fossil fuels oligarchs' foundations in promoting eugenics and anti-immigrant sentiment as an ecological solution.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4L_n6bwDRoE/Xi0oVLWYEqI/AAAAAAAAFds/d_7Rdx2d4AgwsS39204_0sxXK7lhqpw0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Eco-Fascism%2BEnvironment%2BOligarchs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Eco-fascists and right wing terrorists have a distorted view global warming and climate change, blaming immigrants and population growth." border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="500" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4L_n6bwDRoE/Xi0oVLWYEqI/AAAAAAAAFds/d_7Rdx2d4AgwsS39204_0sxXK7lhqpw0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Eco-Fascism%2BEnvironment%2BOligarchs.jpeg" title="Right Wing Environmentalism" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/global-warming-climate-change-eco-fascism/" target="_blank">Fossil Fuels and Eco-Fascism</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
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Jeff Sparrow in The Guardian Australia presents a summary of his recent book Fascists Among Us: Online Hate and the Christchurch Massacre below:<br />
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/30/eco-fascists-and-the-ugly-fight-for-our-way-of-life-as-the-environment-disintegrates" rel="noopener" target="_blank">'Eco-fascists and the ugly fight for 'our way of life' as the environment disintegrates</a><br />
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Genuine fascists remain on the political margins, but we can increasingly imagine the space that eco-fascism might occupy.<br />
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Earlier this year, when the fascist responsible for the El Paso massacre cited ecological degradation as part motivation for his killing spree, many considered him entirely deranged.<br />
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Eco-fascism sounds oxymoronic, a mashup of irreconcilable philosophies.<br />
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Yet, while eco-fascists violently oppose contemporary environmentalists, they often appropriate ideas from the past of the environmental movement.<br />
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In the United States, the first conservationists – men like Teddy Roosevelt – were wealthy big-game hunters trying to preserve creatures they liked to shoot.<br />
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These elite enthusiasts for “the manly sport with the rifle” blamed impoverished arrivals from eastern and central Europe for “pot hunting” – that is, for killing game for food or money rather than for fun. But they also saw immigrants as polluting America’s racial stock, making an explicit parallel between “lesser races” and the invasive species threatening native animals and plants.<br />
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On that basis, Julia Scott from the Daughters of the American Revolution could speak at the National Conservation Congress of 1910, urging attendees not only to protect flora and fauna but to conserve “the supremacy of the Caucasian race in our land”.<br />
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You can get a sense of the centrality of eugenic theory to the early movement from the career of Madison Grant, the most important environmentalist of his generation.<br />
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We can thank Grant for saving the American bison, the bald eagle, the pronghorn antelope, the Alaskan bear and the fur seal, as well as, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Defending-Master-Race-Conservation-Eugenics/dp/1584657154">according to his biographer</a>, contributing to the preservation of elephants, gorillas, koalas and many other charismatic species.<br />
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But Grant also campaigned for the racist Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, and wrote the bestselling The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, an impassioned defence of white supremacy that Hitler described as his personal “bible”.<br />
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The book’s popularity in Germany was not coincidental. Grant, like many of his colleagues, derived his environmentalism from a conservative Romanticism, the philosophical source for Nazi concepts about the importance of Lebensraum (living room) and Blut und Boden (blood and soil).<br />
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Modern eco-fascists still draw on the same Romantic contrast between the sublime hierarchies of nature and the supposedly effete degeneracy of modernity.<br />
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They also exploit the legacy of a tendency influential in environmental circles in much more recent times.<br />
<br />
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published a book called The Population Bomb, in which he argued that ecological destruction – and, indeed, almost all social problems – could be attributed to overpopulation.<br />
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As the historian Thomas Robertson notes, few signs of a mass environmental movement existed when The Population Bomb first appeared. Yet, “by the spring of 1970, Americans could hardly pick up a magazine or a newspaper without seeing mention of ecology and the environment”. That year, the first Earth Day attracted an astonishing 20 million people to environmental teach-ins, a result attributable at least in part to Ehrlich.<br />
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Today, his influence – and that of population theory more generally – has waned considerably, not least because the rate of world population growth has slowed substantially while his predictions of ever-worsening famines in the 1970s proved spectacularly wrong.<br />
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But progressive environmentalists also recognised the succour populationism provided to the extreme right.<br />
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The attribution of ecological destruction to demographic growth obscures the social relations through which, for instance, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions">a mere 20 fossil fuel companies can be linked to more than one-third of greenhouse gas emissions</a> in the modern era.<br />
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Worse still, arguments that (in theory) blame all people often (in practice) target particular people: usually the poor and the oppressed.<br />
<br />
The Population Bomb itself opened with Ehrlich describing how he’d understood the case for population control “emotionally” during a visit to Delhi where, he said, the streets “seemed alive with people” and the “dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect”. At the time, Delhi housed some 2.8 million while the population of Paris stood at about eight million – and yet it would be difficult to imagine Ehrlich reacting with equivalent disgust to crowds on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.<br />
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Other populationists came to oppose not just fertility but also immigration, on the basis that, if the teeming masses from poor nations moved to the rich world, they’d adopt a western resource-heavy lifestyle. As a result, <a href="https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/26026333">as academics Sebastian Normandin and Sean A Valles argue</a>, America’s modern anti-immigrant movement “was built and led by – and in some cases is still led by – a network of conservationists and population control activists”.<br />
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The vast majority of greens now disavow the environmental populationist John Tanton, who, according to Susan A Berger, constructed many of the anti-Mexican organisations relied upon by Donald Trump as he electioneered for his border wall during the 2016 poll.<br />
<br />
Yet the argument that ordinary people, rather than social structures, should be blamed for climate change still circulates – and invariably pushes in rightwing directions.<br />
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Think of the El Paso shooter and the document in which he justified his racial massacre.<br />
“If we can get rid of enough people,” he wrote, “then our way of life can become more sustainable.”<br />
The glibness with which he advocates environmental murder marks the El Paso perpetrator as distinctly fascist.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, genuine fascists remain on the political margins in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, we can increasingly imagine the space that eco-fascism might occupy. When asylum seekers fleeing floods and famines arrive on Australian shores in their millions, how will politicians respond?<br />
<br />
Unless there’s a radical shift in the political culture, they will, presumably, rely upon the strategies perfected during decades of bipartisan anti-refugee campaigning, deploying the familiar arsenal of boat turnbacks, naval patrols and offshore detention, albeit on a much, much larger scale.<br />
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In other words, they’ll embrace an approach already advocated by European racist populists like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, who posits massively intensified border policing as a “realistic” response to the inevitability of the environmental disaster.<br />
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Just as the stop-the-boats campaigners of recent decades depict refugee advocates as indifferent to drownings at sea, the supporters of “green” border policing will denounce climate activists for sabotaging “practical” responses to climate change with their utopianism.<br />
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It’s not difficult to imagine “eco-authoritarianism” or what Naomi Klein calls “climate barbarism”: a politics centred on the state making “our way of life” sustainable as the environment disintegrates. Future governments committed to this project will be able to draw upon the vast array of coercive powers they’ve acquired over the past decades: draconian anti-protest laws; secret trials and imprisonment; the deployment of the army to quell civil disturbances; and so on.<br />
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Eco-fascism represents a related but distinctive tendency. It will emerge not through the state but as a political movement, with people like the El Paso perpetrator violently defending climate privilege against immigrants, environmentalists and progressives.<br />
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We’re nowhere near that point yet. But it’s a lot less unimaginable than it should be.<br />
Jeff Sparrow’s new book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45711768-fascists-among-us">Fascists Among Us: Online Hate and the Christchurch Massacre</a>, is out now through Scribe.'<br />
<br />
For more blogs and articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/globalisation-of-islamophobia-and-antisemitism-by-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/11/30/tactics-against-bipartisan-climate-change-policy-in-australia-limits-to-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">environment</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/hans-rosling-the-facts-and-ignorance-about-population-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-3472001699623402862020-01-10T16:52:00.000+11:002020-01-10T16:52:22.568+11:00Most Sustainable Pension Systems - Australia - Germany - Switzerland - Denmark - Canada<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As populations age and work forces decline i.e. few taxpayers contributing to budgets, pension systems have been subjected to conflicting needs. This includes preserving the tax base into the long term while catering to ageing electorates, in some cases dominated by pensioners or retirees.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWivLkyrrL4/XhgP4OIwfaI/AAAAAAAAFak/DVyINOZ_hcsXr18Zr6KuruEJpilLtXDmgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Pensioners%2B-%2BPensions%2BSystems%2B-%2BPopulist%2BPolitics%2B-%2BAgeing%2BPopulation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Several nations have sustainable pension systems dealing with increasing numbers of retirees and pensioners" border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWivLkyrrL4/XhgP4OIwfaI/AAAAAAAAFak/DVyINOZ_hcsXr18Zr6KuruEJpilLtXDmgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Pensioners%2B-%2BPensions%2BSystems%2B-%2BPopulist%2BPolitics%2B-%2BAgeing%2BPopulation.jpg" title="Ageing populations and tax base sustainability" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2020/01/09/pension-systems-and-budget-sustainability/" target="_blank">Pension and Budget Sustainability</a> <br />(Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Following is an overview of the top five most sustainable systems including Australia which is a hybrid of state asset tested pension and the still developing private pension or superannuation system.<br />
<br />
Further, an essential part of supporting the tax base is to use temporary residents churn over of international students, backpackers, temporary workers etc. as net financial contributors.<br />
<br />
From The Nation:<br />
<h2>
<a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/global-top-five-most-sustainable-pension-systems/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">'Global top five most sustainable pension systems</a></h2>
WITH pension contributions expected to rise globally, a number of nations have developed models to reward their workforce for life after retirement.<br />
<br />
As the retirement age and life expectancy continues to rise around the world, having a sustainable pension scheme is more important than ever<br />
<br />
Thanks to gradually rising life expectancy and a higher state pension age, pension contributions are set to soar around the world. World Finance explores the top five countries with sustainable pension systems, where retirees can live particularly well with their pension pot.<br />
<br />
Thanks to rising life expectancy and a higher state pension age, pension contributions are set to soar<br />
<h2>
Australia</h2>
Australia’s three-tier ‘superannuation’ pension system is one of the most touted in the world. It includes a tax-financed age pension, providing basic benefits, a company pension pot and the individual contribution to a retirement savings account. Employers are required to contribute 9.5 per cent of worker’s gross earnings, which totalled AUD2.3trn ($1.8tn) at the end of 2017.<br />
<h2>
Canada</h2>
Canada provides its workforce – especially low-income citizens – with the Canada Pension Plan, which is a universal flat-rate pension plus a supplement based on income. Voluntary pension plans were also recently introduced, and from 2019 until 2025, workplace contributions will increase by one percent to 5.95 percent.<br />
<h2>
Denmark</h2>
The average Danish pension pot is well funded due to its ‘folkepension’ – a universal pension scheme ensuring that pensioners receive a basic retirement income. One notable result of Denmark’s successful system is that, according to an OECD 2017 report, its private pension assets represented 209 percent of Denmark’s GDP in 2016.<br />
<h2>
Germany</h2>
Germany’s pay-as-you-earn state pension makes up its main retirement system, which provides a safety net for low-income earners. Occupational pensions are not compulsory but approximately 60 percent of all German workers participate – a number that is expected to grow in the coming years.<br />
<h2>
Switzerland</h2>
Ranked sixth in the world in 2017 by Mercer’s Global Pension Index, Switzerland’s public pension primarily depends on workers’ earnings. Conversely, the compulsory organisational pension depends on a worker’s age – meaning that with age comes a larger contribution. Swiss insurers and various banking foundations have also put voluntary schemes in place.<br />
<br />
For more related blogs and articles on <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/ageing-populations-politics-and-demographic-decline-in-the-u-k/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">demography</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/cost-of-ageing-populations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">economics</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">populist politics</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/population-ageing-populist-politics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">younger generations</a> click through.<br />
</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-51615402542160790862019-12-21T16:50:00.000+11:002019-12-21T16:50:36.486+11:00 Learning Non English Languages - Benefits and Obstacles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Language learning in Australia by monolingual English speakers is hardly encouraged while for many descendants of non-English Speaking Background (NESB) immigrants, their knowledge of their parents’ language is declining. However, not only does language allow access to one’s own cultural background or preservation of heritage, learners can also do the same in a smaller world, with other benefits in outlook, creativity, soft skills, business communication and development etc..<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDwezdDjDU8/Xf2xFe2SMmI/AAAAAAAAFD0/qRuHhkdndhwD2q8459Zms2V9J2rKtAAIgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Diversity%2BLanguages%2BMulticulturalism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="White nativist and nationalist policies have made other language learning difficult" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZDwezdDjDU8/Xf2xFe2SMmI/AAAAAAAAFD0/qRuHhkdndhwD2q8459Zms2V9J2rKtAAIgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Diversity%2BLanguages%2BMulticulturalism.jpg" title="Difficulties in learning languages other than English" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/language-learning-english-and-white-nativism/" target="_blank">Language Diversity Other than English</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<h3>
Legislating for English</h3>
One would argue that this is not a passive organic process. Till the ‘90s multiculturalism and other languages were encouraged e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Hamer" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hamer</a> Liberal conservative government in 1970s Victoria. This was till the Howard government adopted white nationalist or WASP policies creating antipathy towards other languages, banning the word 'multiculturalism' in the PM's Office and promoting English only, influenced by US organisations related to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/07/18/john-tantons-legacy" rel="noopener" target="_blank">John Tanton</a>, the ‘racist architect of the modern anti-immigration’ movement.<br />
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The main organisation was <a href="https://proenglish.org/the-board-of-directors/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ProEnglish</a> which included Tanton on its Board of Directors, lobbying Washington, and described by SPLC as:<br />
<br />
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
<em>‘<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/01/26/anti-immigrant-hate-group-proenglish-visits-white-house" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Anti-immigrant hate group ProEnglish visits White House</a>. </em><em>Since 1994, ProEnglish has pushed to have English declared the official language of the United States through legislative means. The latest attempt at the federal level, HR 997, the English Language Unity Act, was introduced in 2017 by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant members of Congress. ProEnglish has also pushed for similar legislation at the state level, where 32 states have some form of official English measures on the books.’</em></div>
<h2>
‘<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-30/language-loss-and-revival-australia-tongue-tied-and-fluent/11736450" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Australia has been called 'a graveyard of languages'. These people are bucking the trend</a></h2>
ABC Radio National<br />
<br />
By Masako Fukui for To<span style="color: var(--color-text);">ngue Tied and Fluent </span><span style="color: var(--color-text);">on </span><span style="color: var(--color-text);">Earshot</span><br />
<span style="color: var(--color-text);"><br /></span>
Gaby Cara speaks to her nonna in fluent Italian, but only because she spent a year in a Tuscany when she was nine.<br />
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"We were in this tiny little village, and because I was so young, I just picked up Italian really quickly," Gaby says.<br />
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For her dad Bruno, a second-generation Italian-Australian, this was a dream come true.<br />
"I always wanted the kids to experience the culture, and to learn the language at a level where they could communicate freely," he says.<br />
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Gaby and her sister Alexia, who was five at the time, attended the local school in picturesque Panzano.<br />
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Alexia soaked up the new language "like a sponge".<br />
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"She had a real Tuscan inflection. It was actually beautiful," Bruno says.<br />
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"Roots migration", or going to the homeland for an immersive cultural and linguistic experience, is how the Cara family managed to buck a rather alarming trend.<br />
<h3>
Losing your language</h3>
Italians are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-13/italian-is-the-fastest-disappearing-language-in-australia/10606540">losing their language at a faster rate than any other ethnic group</a> in Australia.<br />
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In the last 15 years or so there's been a drop of around 80,000 people speaking Italian at home.<br />
According to Census <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-13/italian-is-the-fastest-disappearing-language-in-australia/10606540">data</a>, there were almost 354,000 people who spoke Italian at home in 2001. By 2016, that had fallen to around 272,000.<br />
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The Greeks share a similar migration trajectory to the Italians, but "there are some factors that have helped the Greeks maintain their language more," says Antonia Rubino, senior lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Sydney.<br />
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"One is the lack of this distinction between dialect and standard Italian."<br />
<br />
Many post-war Italian migrants spoke dialect as their first language, and often did not pass on Italian to the second generation, Dr Rubino explains.<br />
<br />
"The Greeks also had the church," she says.<br />
<h3>
The 'monolingual mindset'?</h3>
This attitude is reflected in our education system.<br />
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"Australia is one of the most multilingual countries in the world," says Ken Cruickshank of the University of Sydney.<br />
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Yet, language education is not seen as a high priority and "languages are not part of the core curriculum in any state apart from Victoria in the primary schools," he says.<br />
<br />
In fact, he says, "we come lowest of all OECD countries in the provision and uptake of languages".<br />
The result is that a bilingual child has a five in six chance of losing their heritage language by the time they finish high school, according to Dr Cruickshank.<br />
<br />
Or put simply, multilingual kids go to school to become monolingual, in the majority of cases in Australia.<br />
<br />
This monolingual mindset is totally out of sync with our multilingual reality — around 300 languages are spoken in Australia on any given day.<br />
<h3>
There are two ways people can lose the languages they speak.</h3>
The first is through linguistic colonisation, which is what's happened to many Indigenous and minority languages around the world.<br />
<br />
The second is linguistic assimilation.<br />
<br />
That's when immigrants lose their languages as they gradually shift towards the dominant language, English — itself a migrant language….<br />
<br />
…..And that raises an important question for all of us living in multicultural Australia.<br />
<br />
If language is key to people's cultural identity, doesn't it make sense that we value our rich multilingualism?<br />
<br />
Gaby appreciates how important knowing Italian is.<br />
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Her language not only connects her to her nonna, but also gives her an understanding of different cultures.<br />
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"When we were younger, we didn't think anything of going to Italy," she says.<br />
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She's now 30, and understands that living in Italy as a kid was also about experiencing a different culture, which is why she's determined to pass Italian on to the next generation.<br />
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That would mean that four generations of Caras speak Italian — a small yet significant contribution to countering the image of Australia as a "graveyard of languages."<br />
<br />
For more blogs and posts about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/learning-theory/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">learning theory</a> and the promotion of <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/white-nationalism/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-66231826629999497072019-12-12T17:44:00.001+11:002019-12-12T17:44:42.731+11:00Climate Change Policy - Limits to Growth - Australia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A recent ABC article '<a href="https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-24/10-years-of-climate-change-inertiaand-the-role-of-andrew-robb/11726072?pfmredir=sm" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The day that plunged Australia's climate change policy into 10 years of inertia</a>', endeavoured to describe how climate change consensus was broken by former Liberal MP Andrew Robb who claimed he had followed the ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Limits to Growth</a>’ (LTG) theory via the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Club of Rome</a> but changed his mind, hence withdrew support on bipartisan support on carbon emission measures (?).<br />
<br />
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
‘<em>And so it was that Andrew Robb made one of the most extraordinary and — by most conventional measures — indefensible tactical decisions in the history of political chicanery.</em>’</div>
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
<br /></div>
Also reported in climate science denial blog in the USA Watts Up With That with post titled ‘<a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/23/how-the-limits-to-growth-broke-australias-bipartisan-climate-policy/">How “</a><a href="https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/23/how-the-limits-to-growth-broke-australias-bipartisan-climate-policy/">The Limits to Growth” Broke Australia’s Bipartisan Carbon Tax’</a>, as did Catallaxy Files in ‘<a href="http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/11/25/follow-the-climate-money-and-the-time-when-tony-beat-malcolm-by-one-vote/comment-page-1/">Australia Follow the climate money and the time when Tony beat Malcolm by one vote</a>’ which also promotes climate science denialism.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jcazZv1hg3Y/XfHgTycqVHI/AAAAAAAAFCc/_nAkm1W_khEypc9jMUK8D3Y3cjpO4AmXACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/climate-change-emissions-Australia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Limits to Growth used to break bi-partisan support for carbon emissions trading" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jcazZv1hg3Y/XfHgTycqVHI/AAAAAAAAFCc/_nAkm1W_khEypc9jMUK8D3Y3cjpO4AmXACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/climate-change-emissions-Australia.jpg" title="Climate Change Politics in Australia" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/11/30/tactics-against-bipartisan-climate-change-policy-in-australia-limits-to-growth/" target="_blank">Australian Climate Change Politics and Partisanship</a> <br />(Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
In fact the LTG theory, ‘a riddle wrapped up in an enigma’, is irrelevant to climate change as it was developed as a PR construct of liberal and environment ideas or theory then (misre)presented publicly as grounded and tested empirical science to confuse debates, then both opponents and protagonists.<br />
<br />
The pseudo-science of LTG was developed and presented via the Club of Rome and applied by some of the participants and collaborators including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Herman Daly</a>’s ‘Steady-state economy’ (autarkist economy), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Paul Ehrlich</a>’s ‘population bomb’ and his <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26026333" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Zero Population Growth (ZPG)</a> colleague <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton" rel="noopener" target="_blank">John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton</a> to support immigration restrictions for non-Europeans.<br />
<br />
Interesting was that the Club of Rome was hosted on the Rockefeller (Standard Oil/Exxon) estate and sponsored by Fiat and VW, while ZPG had support from Rockefeller Brothers, Ford and Carnegie Foundations; strong whiff of fossil fuels, global corporates/oligarchs and eugenics.<br />
<br />
LTG helped encourage a pincer movement of seemingly unrelated ideas or constraints which in fact protect the corporate and personal interests of such global players. Daly’s autarkist Steady-state theory stresses nation states, avoidance of trade agreements (and environmental regulations) etc. while allowing long standing global corporates (with existing footprints) to operate without commercial, competitive or regulatory constraint (James Buchanan’s radical right libertarianism for all, i.e. '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Buchanan" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Public Choice Theory</a>', except when there is state support for global corporates).<br />
<br />
From University of Sussex on Limits to Growth or '<a href="https://archive.org/details/modelsofdoomcrit00cole" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Models of Doom</a>':<br />
<br />
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
<em>‘An interdisciplinary team at Sussex University's Science Policy Research Unit reviewed the structure and assumptions of the models used and published its finding in Models of Doom; showing that the forecasts of the world's future are very sensitive to a few unduly pessimistic key assumptions. The Sussex scientists also claim that the Meadows et al. methods, data, and predictions are faulty, that their world models (and their Malthusian bias) do not accurately reflect reality.’</em></div>
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
<em><br /></em></div>
How could they promote not just junk science but inequitable libertarian economics to the masses for the benefit of the few and have ‘Turkeys vote for Christmas’?<br />
<br />
Brexit is a good example, Trump also and Australia since Tampa refugee incident, i.e. dog whistling immigration, population growth, and white nationalism, then encourages borders, withdrawal from trade agreements and insular view of the world, while allowing global corporates to fly under the radar and conservative political parties to gain votes (especially amongst the upper median age cohort) to implement the right policies (or not at all).<br />
<br />
‘<a href="http://Recent%20article%20endeavoured%20to%20describe%20how%20climate%20change%20consensus%20was%20broken%20by%20former%20Liberal%20MP%20Andrew%20Robb%20who%20claimed%20he%20have%20followed%20the%20%E2%80%98Limits%20to%20Growth%E2%80%99%20(LTG)%20theory%20via%20the%20Club%20of%20Rome%20but%20changed%20his%20mind,%20hence%20withdrew%20support%20on%20bipartisan%20support%20on%20carbon%20emission%20measures%20(/?).%20%E2%80%98And%20so%20it%20was%20that%20Andrew%20Robb%20made%20one%20of%20the%20most%20extraordinary%20and%20%E2%80%94%20by%20most%20conventional%20measures%20%E2%80%94%20indefensible%20tactical%20decisions%20in%20the%20history%20of%20political%20chicanery.%E2%80%99%20Also%20reported%20in%20climate%20science%20denial%20blog%20in%20the%20USA%20Watts%20Up%20With%20That%20with%20post%20titled%20%E2%80%98How%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Limits%20to%20Growth%E2%80%9D%20Broke%20Australia%E2%80%99s%20Bipartisan%20Carbon%20Tax%E2%80%99,%20as%20did%20Catallaxy%20Files%20in%20%E2%80%98Australia%20Follow%20the%20climate%20money%20and%20the%20time%20when%20Tony%20beat%20Malcolm%20by%20one%20vote%E2%80%99%20which%20also%20promotes%20climate%20science%20denialism.%20In%20fact%20the%20LTG%20theory,%20%E2%80%98a%20riddle%20wrapped%20up%20in%20an%20enigma%E2%80%99,%20is%20irrelevant%20to%20climate%20change%20as%20it%20was%20developed%20as%20a%20PR%20construct%20of%20liberal%20and%20environment%20ideas%20or%20theory%20then%20(misre)presented%20publicly%20as%20grounded%20and%20tested%20empirical%20science%20to%20confuse%20debates,%20opponents%20and%20protagonists.%20The%20pseudo-science%20of%20LTG%20was%20developed%20and%20presented%20via%20the%20Club%20of%20Rome%20and%20applied%20by%20some%20of%20the%20participants%20and%20collaborators%20including%20Herman%20Daly%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%98Steady-state%20economy%E2%80%99%20(autarkist%20economy),%20Paul%20Ehrlich%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%98population%20bomb%E2%80%99%20and%20his%20Zero%20Population%20Growth%20(ZPG)%20colleague%20John%20%E2%80%98passive%20eugenics%E2%80%99%20Tanton%20to%20support%20immigration%20restrictions%20for%20non-Europeans.%20Interesting%20was%20that%20the%20Club%20of%20Rome%20was%20hosted%20on%20the%20Rockefeller%20(Standard%20Oil/Exxon)%20estate%20and%20sponsored%20by%20Fiat%20and%20VW,%20while%20ZPG%20had%20support%20from%20Rockefeller%20Brothers,%20Ford%20and%20Carnegie%20Foundations;%20strong%20whiff%20of%20fossil%20fuels,%20global%20corporates/oligarchs%20and%20eugenics.%20LTG%20helped%20encourage%20a%20pincer%20movement%20of%20seemingly%20unrelated%20ideas%20or%20constraints%20which%20in%20fact%20protect%20the%20corporate%20and%20personal%20interests%20of%20such%20global%20players.%20%20Daly%E2%80%99s%20autarkist%20Steady-state%20theory%20stresses%20nation%20states,%20avoidance%20of%20trade%20agreements%20(and%20environmental%20regulations)%20etc.%20while%20allowing%20long%20standing%20global%20corporates%20(with%20existing%20footprints)%20to%20operate%20without%20commercial,%20competitive%20or%20regulatory%20constraint%20(James%20Buchanan%E2%80%99s%20radical%20right%20libertarianism%20for%20all,%20except%20when%20there%20is%20state%20support%20for%20global%20corporates).%20How%20could%20they%20promote%20inequitable%20libertarian%20economics%20to%20the%20masses%20for%20the%20benefit%20of%20the%20few%20and%20have%20%E2%80%98Turkeys%20vote%20for%20Christmas%E2%80%99?%20%20%20Brexit%20is%20a%20good%20example,%20Trump%20also%20and%20Australia%20since%20Tampa%20refugee%20incident,%20i.e.%20dog%20whistling%20immigration,%20population%20growth,%20and%20white%20nationalism,%20then%20encourages%20borders,%20withdrawal%20from%20trade%20agreements%20and%20insular%20view%20of%20the%20world,%20while%20allowing%20global%20corporates%20to%20fly%20under%20the%20radar%20and%20conservative%20political%20parties%20to%20gain%20votes%20(especially%20amongst%20the%20upper%20median%20age%20cohort)%20to%20implement%20the%20right%20policies%20(or%20not%20at%20all).%20%20%E2%80%98The%20day%20that%20plunged%20Australia%27s%20climate%20policy%20into%2010%20years%20of%20inertia%20https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-24/10-years-of-climate-change-inertiaand-the-role-of-andrew-robb/11726072?pfmredir=sm%20%20BY%20ANNABEL%20CRABBUPDATED%20SUN%20AT%201:28PM%20Ten%20years%20ago%20Andrew%20Robb%20arrived%20at%20Parliament%20House%20intent%20upon%20an%20act%20of%20treachery.%20No-one%20was%20expecting%20him.%20Robb%20was%20formally%20on%20leave%20from%20the%20Parliament%20undergoing%20treatment%20for%20his%20severe%20depression.%20But%20the%20plan%20the%20Liberal%20MP%20nursed%20to%20himself%20that%20morning%20would%20not%20only%20bring%20about%20the%20political%20demise%20of%20his%20leader,%20Malcolm%20Turnbull,%20but%20blow%20apart%20Australia%27s%20two%20great%20parties%20irrevocably%20just%20as%20they%20teetered%20toward%20consensus%20on%20climate%20change,%20the%20most%20divisive%20issue%20of%20the%20Australian%20political%20century.%20%20They%20have%20never%20again%20been%20so%20close.%20%20A%20decade%20later,%20according%20to%20the%20ABC%27s%20Australia%20Talks%20National%20Survey,%20climate%20change%20is%20a%20matter%20of%20urgent%20community%20concern.%20Eighty-four%20per%20cent%20of%20respondents%20said%20that%20climate%20change%20was%20real%20and%20that%20action%20was%20warranted.%20When%20offered%20a%20range%20of%2019%20issues%20and%20asked%20which%20were%20of%20gravest%20personal%20concern,%20climate%20change%20ranked%20at%20number%20one.%20As%20bushfires%20ravage%20the%20landscape%20and%20drought%20once%20again%20strangles%20vast%20tracts%20of%20the%20continent,%20the%20inability%20of%20the%20Australian%20Parliament%20to%20reach%20agreement%20on%20how%20to%20answer%20the%20threat%20of%20climate%20change%20%E2%80%94%20or%20even%20discuss%20it%20rationally%20%E2%80%94%20may%20well%20be%20one%20of%20the%20drivers%20of%20another%20shrieking%20headline%20from%20the%20Australia%20Talks%20research:%2084%20per%20cent%20of%20respondents%20also%20feel%20that%20Australian%20politicians%20are%20out%20of%20touch%20with%20the%20views%20of%20the%20people%20they%20represent.%20This%20is%20the%20story%20%E2%80%94%20told%20on%20its%2010th%20birthday%20%E2%80%94%20of%20a%20political%20event%20that%20changed%20the%20course%20of%20a%20nation%27s%20history.%20%20How%20bipartisan%20policy%20fell%20apart%20%20Robb%20was%20on%20sick%20leave%20from%20his%20job%20as%20shadow%20minister%20for%20climate,%20managing%20the%20notoriously%20difficult%20transition%20from%20one%20anti-depressant%20medication%20to%20another.%20In%20his%20absence,%20acting%20shadow%20minister%20for%20climate%20Ian%20Macfarlane%20had%20successfully%20negotiated,%20with%20the%20authority%20of%20Liberal%20leader%20Malcolm%20Turnbull,%20a%20deal%20with%20the%20Rudd%20government%20to%20land%20the%20Carbon%20Pollution%20Reduction%20Scheme,%20or%20CPRS.%20%20An%20extraordinary%20tactic%20%20And%20so%20it%20was%20that%20Andrew%20Robb%20made%20one%20of%20the%20most%20extraordinary%20and%20%E2%80%94%20by%20most%20conventional%20measures%20%E2%80%94%20indefensible%20tactical%20decisions%20in%20the%20history%20of%20political%20chicanery.%20Parliament%20House%20is%20no%20stranger%20to%20mental%20illness.%20Historically,%20its%20sufferers%20have%20covered%20their%20tracks,%20loath%20to%20be%20seen%20as%20vulnerable.%20But%20this%20must%20be%20the%20only%20recorded%20occasion%20on%20which%20mental%20illness%20has%20been%20used%20as%20a%20tactic.%20Robb%20ripped%20himself%20a%20scrap%20of%20paper%20and%20scrawled%20a%20note%20to%20Turnbull.%20%22The%20side%20effects%20of%20the%20medication%20I%20am%20on%20now%20make%20me%20very%20tired.%20I%27d%20be%20really%20grateful%20if%20you%20could%20get%20me%20to%20my%20feet%20soon,%22%20he%20wrote.%20Turnbull%20called%20Robb%20to%20speak%20soon%20after.%20He%20rose,%20and%20denounced%20the%20proposed%20scheme%20in%20forensic%20detail,%20his%20words%20carrying%20significant%20weight%20as%20the%20erstwhile%20bearer%20of%20the%20relevant%20portfolio.%20The%20deal%20never%20recovered.%20The%20meeting%20went%20on%20for%20six%20more%20hours.%20Turnbull%20%E2%80%94%20a%20streetfighter%20when%20cornered%20%E2%80%94%20added%20the%20numbers%20of%20shadow%20Cabinet%20votes%20to%20the%20%22yes%22%20votes%20in%20the%20party%20room%20and%20declared%20that%20he%20had%20a%20majority.%20%20Leadership%20contest%20%20The%20party%20room%20wasn%27t%20buying%20it.%20Turnbull%20was%20cooked.%20One%20week%20and%20one%20day%20later%20%E2%80%94%20December%201,%202009%20%E2%80%94%20a%20ballot%20was%20held%20for%20the%20leadership%20of%20the%20Liberal%20Party.%20Tony%20Abbott%20%E2%80%94%20who%20nominated%20against%20both%20Turnbull%20and%20shadow%20treasurer%20Joe%20Hockey%20%E2%80%94%20won%20by%20a%20single%20vote.%20The%20Abbott%20opposition%20was%20born,%20with%20its%20strident%20campaign%20against%20Labor%27s%20%22great%20big%20new%20tax%20on%20everything%22.%20The%20next%20day,%20the%20emissions%20trading%20scheme%20legislation%20went%20to%20a%20vote%20in%20the%20Parliament%20and%20was%20defeated%20soundly.%20Both%20the%20Coalition%20and%20the%20Greens%20voted%20against.%20The%20Rudd%20government%20relinquished%20its%20attempts%20to%20put%20a%20price%20on%20carbon.%20Rudd%20himself%20was%20overthrown%20mid-2010.%20Julia%20Gillard%20staked%20her%20political%20life%20on%20installing%20a%20carbon%20price,%20but%20lost%20it%20at%20the%202013%20election%20in%20the%20face%20of%20Abbott%27s%20muscular%20anti-carbon-tax%20campaign.%20Abbott%20installed%20his%20%22Direct%20Action%22%20model%20which%20survives%20to%20this%20day,%20despite%20Turnbull%27s%20subsequent%20prime%20ministership,%20during%20which%20he%20tried%20and%20failed%20to%20introduce%20the%20National%20Energy%20Guarantee,%20a%20legislative%20device%20aimed%20at%20establishing%20reliable%20supply%20and%20reduced%20emissions%20from%20the%20energy%20sector%E2%80%A6.%20%E2%80%A6.%27You%20can%20still%20see%20the%20scars%27%20For%20Kane%20Thornton,%20chief%20executive%20of%20the%20Clean%20Energy%20Council,%20the%20past%2010%20years%20are%20a%20tale%20of%20intense%20frustration.%20%22What%20happened%20back%20then%20has%20just%20so%20fundamentally%20shaped%20the%20direction%20and%20the%20context%20for%20climate%20and%20energy%20policy%20ever%20since,%22%20he%20says%E2%80%A6..%20%E2%80%A6..Visiting%20Sydney%20this%20week,%20the%20founder%20of%20Bloomberg%20New%20Energy%20Finance,%20British-born%20Michael%20Liebreich,%20was%20brutal%20in%20his%20assessment%20of%20Australia%27s%20contemporary%20energy%20situation.%20%22It%27s%20unbelievable%20how%20you%20can%20have%20a%20country%20with%20such%20cheap%20solar%20power,%20such%20cheap%20wind%20power,%20frankly%20such%20cheap%20natural%20gas%20and%20yet%20you%20still%20have%20expensive%20power%20and%20an%20unreliable%20grid,%22%20he%20told%20ABC%27s%20AM.%20%22I%20mean,%20how%20do%20you%20do%20that?%20It%27s%20a%20government%20failure.%22%20Turnbull,%20in%20an%20interview%20published%20on%20Saturday%20by%20The%20Guardian,%20said%20the%20climate%20debate%20in%20Parliament%20was%20hostage%20to%20%22insurgents%22%20inside%20the%20Coalition.%20%22There%20are%20plenty%20of%20odd%20beliefs%20out%20there%20and%20conspiracy%20theories%20but%20what%20I%20have%20always%20struggled%20to%20understand%20is%20why%20climate%20denialism%20still%20has%20the%20currency%20that%20it%20has,%20particularly%20given%20the%20evidence%20of%20the%20impact%20of%20climate%20change%20is%20now%20so%20apparent,%20and%20it%20is%20particularly%20apparent%20to%20people%20living%20in%20regional%20and%20rural%20Australia,%22%20he%20said.%20%22Precisely%20what%20has%20been%20forecast%20is%20happening.%22%E2%80%A6..%20%E2%80%A6..Robb%20admits%20that%20his%20was%20an%20extraordinary%20intervention%20in%20a%20sliding-doors%20juncture%20of%20Australian%20political%20history.%20%22I%27ve%20seen%20so%20often%20in%20my%20career%20where%20something%20monumental%20gets%20down%20to%20one%20vote.%20Then%20when%20the%20vote%27s%20taken,%20it%20sticks,%20and%20the%20world%20adjusts.%20It%20was%20the%20beginning%20of%20Tony%20%E2%80%94%20who%20won%20by%20one%20vote.%20Democracy%27s%20an%20amazing%20thing,%20really.%20And%20it%20does%20show%20you%20that%20if%20you%27ve%20got%20half%20of%20the%20votes%20or%20just%20over%20half%20or%20just%20under,%20that%20can%20reflect%20community%20attitudes%20too,%22%20he%20says.%20%22This%20is%20not%20a%20fault%20of%20democracy,%20it%27s%20a%20fact.%22%20He%20mentions%20that%20when%20he%20was%20a%20much%20younger%20man,%20he%20was%20%22a%20great%20student%22%20of%20the%20Club%20of%20Rome,%20an%20association%20of%20scientists,%20bureaucrats,%20politicians%20and%20public%20thinkers%20who%20in%201972%20published%20the%20book%20Limits%20To%20Growth,%20warning%20that%20the%20world%27s%20resources%20could%20not%20withstand%20the%20depredations%20of%20ceaseless%20economic%20growth%20indefinitely.%20Limits%20To%20Growth%20is%20still%20the%20highest-selling%20environmental%20book%20in%20the%20history%20of%20the%20world,%20having%20sold%2030%20million%20copies%20in%20more%20than%2030%20languages.%20But%20Robb%27s%20early%20fascination%20with%20the%20work%20gave%20way%20to%20distrust%20of%20its%20conclusions%20and%20primitive%20computer%20modelling;%20he%20says%20its%20warnings%20of%20resource%20exhaustion%20and%20economic%20collapse%20towards%20the%20end%20of%20the%2020th%20century%20were%20overstated.%20%22The%20thing%20they%20didn%27t%20talk%20about%20was%20technology.%20That%20you%20could%20find%20gas%20300%20kilometres%20offshore,%20for%20example,%20and%20find%20a%20way%20to%20bring%20it%20onshore.%20Because%20of%20this,%20the%20Club%20of%20Rome%20%E2%80%94%20which%20was%20quite%20a%20reputable%20group%20of%20people%20%E2%80%94%20looked%20more%20and%20more%20ridiculous%20as%20the%20years%20rolled%20on.%22%20The%20Club%20of%20Rome%20has%20its%20critics%20and%20its%20defenders;%20Limits%20To%20Growth%20was%20commonly%20derided%20by%20the%201990s%20as%20a%20misguided%20Doomsday%20scenario,%20but%20has%20enjoyed%20something%20of%20a%20renaissance%20lately.%20The%20CSIRO%20published%20a%20paper%20in%202008%20finding%20that%20the%20book%27s%2030-year%20modelling%20of%20consequences%20from%20a%20%22business%20as%20usual%22%20approach%20to%20economic%20growth%20was%20essentially%20sound.%20But%20what%27s%20not%20deniable%20is%20that%20this%20work%20influenced%20one%20young%20man%20who%20grew%20up%20to%20be%20one%20member%20of%20a%20parliamentary%20party%20with%20a%20singular%20role%20to%20play%20in%20one%20vote%20on%20a%20policy%20that%20would%20either%20change%20or%20not%20change%20the%20course%20of%20a%20country.%20Democracy,%20he%20says,%20is%20an%20amazing%20thing.%20Or%20an%20infuriating%20thing.%20Or%20mysterious.%20Or%20random.%E2%80%99%20%20For%20more%20articles%20and%20blog%20posts%20about%20environment,%20population,%20immigration%20and%20white%20nationalism%20click%20through." rel="noopener" target="_blank">The day that plunged Australia's climate policy into 10 years of inertia</a><br />
<br />
BY <a href="https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/annabel-crabb/167108">ANNABEL CRABB</a>UPDATED SUN AT 1:28PM<br />
<br />
Ten years ago Andrew Robb arrived at Parliament House intent upon an act of treachery.<br />
<br />
No-one was expecting him. Robb was formally on leave from the Parliament undergoing treatment for his severe depression.<br />
<br />
But the plan the Liberal MP nursed to himself that morning would not only bring about the political demise of his leader, Malcolm Turnbull, but blow apart Australia's two great parties irrevocably just as they teetered toward consensus on climate change, the most divisive issue of the Australian political century.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
They have never again been so close.</h3>
<br />
A decade later, according to the ABC's <a href="https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-06/australia-talks-explained/11570332">Australia Talks National Survey</a>, climate change is a matter of urgent community concern. Eighty-four per cent of respondents said that climate change was real and that action was warranted. When offered a range of 19 issues and asked which were of gravest personal concern, climate change ranked at number one.<br />
<br />
As bushfires ravage the landscape and drought once again strangles vast tracts of the continent, the inability of the Australian Parliament to reach agreement on how to answer the threat of climate change — or even discuss it rationally — may well be one of the drivers of another shrieking headline from the <a href="https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-06/australia-talks-explained/11570332">Australia Talks</a> research: 84 per cent of respondents also feel that Australian politicians are out of touch with the views of the people they represent.<br />
<br />
This is the story — told on its 10th birthday — of a political event that changed the course of a nation's history.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
How bipartisan policy fell apart</h3>
<br />
Robb was on sick leave from his job as shadow minister for climate, managing the notoriously difficult transition from one anti-depressant medication to another.<br />
In his absence, acting shadow minister for climate Ian Macfarlane had successfully negotiated, with the authority of<a href="https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-08/32782"> Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull</a>, a deal with the Rudd government to land the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, or CPRS.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
An extraordinary tactic</h3>
<br />
And so it was that Andrew Robb made one of the most extraordinary and — by most conventional measures — indefensible tactical decisions in the history of political chicanery.<br />
Parliament House is no stranger to mental illness. Historically, its sufferers have covered their tracks, loath to be seen as vulnerable.<br />
<br />
But this must be the only recorded occasion on which mental illness has been used as a tactic.<br />
Robb ripped himself a scrap of paper and scrawled a note to Turnbull.<br />
<br />
"The side effects of the medication I am on now make me very tired. I'd be really grateful if you could get me to my feet soon," he wrote.<br />
<br />
Turnbull called Robb to speak soon after. He rose, and denounced the proposed scheme in forensic detail, his words carrying significant weight as the erstwhile bearer of the relevant portfolio.<br />
The deal never recovered. The meeting went on for six more hours. Turnbull — a streetfighter when cornered — added the numbers of shadow Cabinet votes to the "yes" votes in the party room and declared that he had a majority.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Leadership contest</h3>
<br />
The party room wasn't buying it. Turnbull was cooked.<br />
<br />
One week and one day later — December 1, 2009 — a ballot was held for the leadership of the Liberal Party.<br />
<br />
Tony Abbott — who nominated against both Turnbull and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey — won by a single vote.<br />
<br />
The Abbott opposition was born, with its strident campaign against Labor's "great big new tax on everything".<br />
<br />
The next day, the emissions trading scheme legislation went to a vote in the Parliament and was defeated soundly.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Both the Coalition and the Greens voted against.</h3>
<br />
The Rudd government relinquished its attempts to put a price on carbon. Rudd himself was overthrown mid-2010. Julia Gillard staked her political life on installing a carbon price, but lost it at the 2013 election in the face of Abbott's muscular anti-carbon-tax campaign.<br />
<br />
Abbott installed his "Direct Action" model which survives to this day, despite Turnbull's subsequent prime ministership, during which he tried and failed to introduce the National Energy Guarantee, a legislative device aimed at establishing reliable supply and reduced emissions from the energy sector….<br />
<br />
….'You can still see the scars'<br />
<br />
For Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, the past 10 years are a tale of intense frustration.<br />
<br />
"What happened back then has just so fundamentally shaped the direction and the context for climate and energy policy ever since," he says…..<br />
<br />
…..Visiting Sydney this week, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, British-born Michael Liebreich, was brutal in his assessment of Australia's contemporary energy situation.<br />
<br />
"It's unbelievable how you can have a country with such cheap solar power, such cheap wind power, frankly such cheap natural gas and yet you still have expensive power and an unreliable grid," he told ABC's AM.<br />
<br />
"I mean, how do you do that? It's a government failure."<br />
<br />
Turnbull, in an interview published on Saturday by The Guardian, said the climate debate in Parliament was hostage to "insurgents" inside the Coalition.<br />
<br />
"There are plenty of odd beliefs out there and conspiracy theories but what I have always struggled to understand is why climate denialism still has the currency that it has, particularly given the evidence of the impact of climate change is now so apparent, and it is particularly apparent to people living in regional and rural Australia," he said.<br />
<br />
"Precisely what has been forecast is happening."…..<br />
<br />
…..Robb admits that his was an extraordinary intervention in a sliding-doors juncture of Australian political history.<br />
<br />
"I've seen so often in my career where something monumental gets down to one vote. Then when the vote's taken, it sticks, and the world adjusts. It was the beginning of Tony — who won by one vote. Democracy's an amazing thing, really. And it does show you that if you've got half of the votes or just over half or just under, that can reflect community attitudes too," he says.<br />
<br />
"This is not a fault of democracy, it's a fact."<br />
<br />
He mentions that when he was a much younger man, he was "a great student" of the Club of Rome, an association of scientists, bureaucrats, politicians and public thinkers who in 1972 published the book Limits To Growth, warning that the world's resources could not withstand the depredations of ceaseless economic growth indefinitely.<br />
<br />
Limits To Growth is still the highest-selling environmental book in the history of the world, having sold 30 million copies in more than 30 languages.<br />
<br />
But Robb's early fascination with the work gave way to distrust of its conclusions and primitive computer modelling; he says its warnings of resource exhaustion and economic collapse towards the end of the 20th century were overstated.<br />
<br />
"The thing they didn't talk about was technology. That you could find gas 300 kilometres offshore, for example, and find a way to bring it onshore. Because of this, the Club of Rome — which was quite a reputable group of people — looked more and more ridiculous as the years rolled on."<br />
The Club of Rome has its critics and its defenders; Limits To Growth was commonly derided by the 1990s as a misguided Doomsday scenario, but has enjoyed something of a renaissance lately. The CSIRO published a paper in 2008 finding that the book's 30-year modelling of consequences from a "business as usual" approach to economic growth was essentially sound.<br />
<br />
But what's not deniable is that this work influenced one young man who grew up to be one member of a parliamentary party with a singular role to play in one vote on a policy that would either change or not change the course of a country.<br />
<br />
Democracy, he says, is an amazing thing.<br />
<br />
Or an infuriating thing. Or mysterious. Or random.’<br />
<br />
For more articles and blog posts about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/population-growth-or-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/globalisation-of-islamophobia-and-antisemitism-by-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> click through.<br />
</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-17253196254480031512019-11-27T17:26:00.000+11:002019-11-27T17:28:30.887+11:00Brexit and Anti-Immigration Sentiment in White Australia <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There has been gross over simplification of Brexit to supposedly avoid bureaucracy, the EU, Europe and increasing antipathy towards immigration by ageing electorates through populist politicians.<br />
<br />
However, many would suggest Australia had a form of Brexit upon colonisation via the First Fleet 1888 by the British, then after Federation in 1901 the bi-partisan 'White Australia Policy' inspired by British eugenics movement (and finally ended after mostly opposition by NGOs, churches etc.).<br />
<br />
Fast forward to the supposed crisis of Tampa when then Australian Prime Ministers helped start the demonisation of refugees with able support from mainstream media including Murdoch's NewsCorp, then carried further by society in creating antipathy towards non-Europeans; a new proxy white Australia policy.<br />
<br />
Further, there are clear links between ideology, political and media tactics of white nativism or white nationalism inspired by eugenics, which has been mainstreamed in the US and UK; with further links onto the fringes of Europe.<br />
<br />
White nationalism, white nativism or eugenics all share a clear architecture including astro turfing, manipulation of media, fake news etc., that can also be linked to radical right libertarians or elements of neo-liberalism by global corporates, via think tanks, to deflect attention away from tax avoidance, interference in domestic policies, cast doubt on climate change etc.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T8-zjhszHxM/Xd4Vf0_BgqI/AAAAAAAAE-c/MqBG6EjT1p4VQ-u1aWR7f7RID84uxH_bwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Brexit%2BEurope%2BAgeing%2BPopulations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Brexit for many was anti-immigrant and similar to Australia's now defunct white Australia policy" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T8-zjhszHxM/Xd4Vf0_BgqI/AAAAAAAAE-c/MqBG6EjT1p4VQ-u1aWR7f7RID84uxH_bwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Brexit%2BEurope%2BAgeing%2BPopulations.jpg" title="Ageing citizens in the UK want Brexit do Australians too?" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/11/25/australian-brexit/" target="_blank">Australia Ready for Anti-Immigrant Brexit?</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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'<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-new-conventional-wisdom-in-canberra-doesn-t-stack-up-20191104-p5375q.html" target="_blank">The new conventional wisdom in Canberra doesn't stack up</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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By <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/by/sam-roggeveen-p4yvj0" title="Articles by Sam Roggeveen">Sam Roggeveen</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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November 5, 2019 — 12.00am<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It is Canberra’s new conventional wisdom: the government’s
unexpected election victory gives Prime Minister Scott Morrison stature and
stability that his recent predecessors all lacked. The last decade of political
dysfunction is behind us. The trouble is, this view is based solely on very
recent events in one country alone. What if we took a global perspective over a
longer period?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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A political transformation has been under way in Western
democracies for decades now, quietly and in the background for most of that
time, though in recent years it has broken cover. In the US it produced Donald
Trump, in the UK Brexit, and in Europe the rise of new right-wing populist
movements.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Western democracy has hollowed out. It has happened in two
stages. First, the public has drifted away from major political parties, the
institutions that once connected them to the political process. In every
Western nation, mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties are in decline.
In the early to mid-20th century, party affiliation was a question of class,
religion and family inheritance – you voted a certain way because your parents
and peers did too. But for decades now membership of the big parties has fallen
and the share of the vote they can rely on has decreased.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In response (and this is stage two), the big parties have
found new ways to survive. They have evolved from amateur mass-membership
organisations to small, professionalised outfits financially reliant on big
donors and, increasingly, the state. Other than at election time, the big
parties don’t really need the public.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, voters withdrew from political parties, and the parties
responded with a withdrawal of their own. The result is that the public square
is left empty and politics is hollow.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Europe, right-wing populist parties have done well
because the minority of voters who are attracted to those ideas have slipped
from the grip of the big parties. But as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s
Greens show, the big parties are not bleeding votes only to the right, they are
losing them in the centre and on the left too.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In America, the weakening of parties helped mavericks like
Trump and Bernie Sanders, who tied themselves to the big parties out of
self-interest rather than conviction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the UK and Australia, the decline of the big parties has
produced a different kind of instability. In both countries the voting system
makes it hard for small parties to win seats even though their vote share has
increased. Yet as the big parties have become less popular, they have also
become less stable and more vulnerable to shocks from outsiders and ambitious
MPs. That’s what caused Brexit, essentially an internal Tory Party dispute
stirred up by Eurosceptic backbenchers and Nigel Farage’s UKIP.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is also what has produced the leadership churn in
Australian politics over the last decade, a succession of tight election
results, and two periods of minority government. Australians are abandoning the
major parties at record rates. At the same time, these shrinking and insular
parties are increasingly cut off from a bored and unengaged Australian public.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Lacking genuine connections to a deep social base,
major-party MPs look to their peer groups in politics and the media for
inspiration, which is where they got the idea that changes of leadership might
fix their problems and why, for instance, Morrison borrows Trumpian language on
"negative globalism".<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The 2019 election resolved none of these underlying
problems. True, the Liberal and Labor parties have now changed their rules so
that leadership coups are harder to mount, but this is much more than just a
leadership issue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Again, if we broaden our view beyond Australian shores, we
can see why. Angela Merkel has been German chancellor for 14 years, yet in that
period, German politics has been completely transformed – Alternative fur
Deutschland, a populist party that didn’t even exist when Merkel took office,
is now the official opposition in the Bundestag.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It would be foolish to assume that Australian politics,
still dominated by two parties the public cares little for, is suddenly immune
to upheaval on that scale.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sam Roggeveen is director of the International Security
Program at the Lowy Institute and author of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/our-very-own-brexit-australias-hollow-politics-and-where-it-could-lead-us-9781760894603">Our
Very Own Brexit: Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where It Could Lead Us.</a>'<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/globalisation-of-islamophobia-and-antisemitism-by-white-nationalists/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a> and Australian <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/ageing-populations-politics-and-demographic-decline-in-the-u-k/">politics</a> click through.</div>
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-1994414395144115272019-11-11T13:52:00.000+11:002019-11-11T13:52:20.659+11:00Tourism Australia Marketing Campaigns - Content or Channels?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Australian tourism campaigns have often been in the news, sometimes for good reasons attracting attention, other times questions about the campaigns including the most recent '<a href="http://www.tourism.australia.com/en/news-and-media/news-stories/tourism-australia-invites-the-world-to-come-and-live-australias-philausophy.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Philausophy</a>'.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fRtaut9N45I/XcjLWu3XDbI/AAAAAAAAE38/M9F2gPtJKEUGZvORCyWve02PfMAVFvCBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Tourism%2BAustralia%2BGlobal%2BMarketing%2BCampaigns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Tourism Australia marketing campaign content has been in the news but digital and word of mouth is more effective?" border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="640" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fRtaut9N45I/XcjLWu3XDbI/AAAAAAAAE38/M9F2gPtJKEUGZvORCyWve02PfMAVFvCBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Tourism%2BAustralia%2BGlobal%2BMarketing%2BCampaigns.jpg" title="Tourism Australia Marketing Campaigns" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/tourism-australia-marketing-campaigns/" target="_blank">Tourism Australia Marketing Campaigns</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h2>
'<a href="http://www.tourism.australia.com/en/news-and-media/news-stories/tourism-australia-invites-the-world-to-come-and-live-australias-philausophy.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The ‘Philausophy’ campaign is self-indulgent wank, and a crime against Australia</a></h2>
Tourism Australia's latest 'Philausophy' campaign has "desecrated" Australia and is appalling, self-indulgent wank, according to creative director and senior copywriter Mark Farrelly.<br />
<br />
November 1, 2019 10:52<br />
<br />
by MARK FARRELLY<br />
<br />
What happens when you give a government department $38m dollars of our money? You get a pile of self-indulgent wank that’s an embarrassment to our nation.<br />
<br />
You would think after the unmitigated disaster that was ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’, Tourism Australia would have learnt a lesson. But clearly, it did not.<br />
<br />
The campaign after that was completely forgettable. Can you remember it? Bet you can’t. It passed like a ship in the night. The only thing memorable about it was the fact its weak, pathetic slogan was grammatically wrong.<br />
<br />
There’s nothing like Australia? No people. Australia is a place. A location. It is somewhere, not something.<br />
<br />
There’s nowhere like Australia would have made sense. I’m not saying that’s great. But it’s okay.<br />
Rule one of tourism advertising: you are advertising a destination.<br />
<br />
So it’s not surprising that when you have a team of people so unable to use even basic English, they are going to come up with something even more appalling than before…<br />
<br />
…The campaign after that was completely forgettable. Can you remember it? Bet you can’t. It passed like a ship in the night. The only thing memorable about it was the fact its weak, pathetic slogan was grammatically wrong.<br />
<br />
There’s nothing like Australia? No people. Australia is a place. A location. It is somewhere, not something.<br />
<br />
There’s nowhere like Australia would have made sense. I’m not saying that’s great. But it’s okay.<br />
Rule one of tourism advertising: you are advertising a destination.<br />
<br />
So it’s not surprising that when you have a team of people so unable to use even basic English, they are going to come up with something even more appalling than before.’<br />
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<h2>
<strong>What had happened before?</strong></h2>
<br />
'<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-02-07/tourism-australia-looks-beyond-controversial/1036344" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Tourism Australia looks beyond 'controversial campaign</a>'<br />
<br />
‘"Where the bloody hell are you?" has gone the way of the "shrimp on the barbie" - into the dustbin of advertising history.<br />
<br />
It is two years since the Government unveiled the confrontational slogan to sledge people into coming to Australia, and now it is being dropped.<br />
<br />
The $180 million campaign generated much publicity around the world but did not generate any major increase in visitor numbers.<br />
<br />
Tourism Australia is also set to review its contracts with advertising agencies as it opens one of the country's largest advertising accounts to tender.’<br />
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<h2>
<strong>What is the issue or challenge round tourism marketing?</strong></h2>
<br />
"<a href="https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/the-best-job-world-beyond-brave-new-marketing-world/1089697" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Best Job in the World" & Beyond in a Brave New Marketing World</a><br />
<br />
"Not since Willy Wonka and the golden tickets hidden in chocolate bars, has something come along like this." Editor, The Sunday Times, United Kingdom<br />
<br />
Investing heavily in content but not communication channels to reach prospective tourists, however, Queensland’s ‘Best Job in the World’ did gain attention globally through having travellers create the content.<br />
<br />
The challenge was to convey to the rest of the world, in an already saturated global travel market, that surrounding this vibrant living organism was tangible product and a new tourism story for Australia…<br />
<br />
….By the end of 2008 the groundwork was laid, the tourism regions and operators along the 2300 kilometre of the Great Barrier Reef had come on board under the "Islands of the Great Barrier Reef" banner, we had agreement from our international travel partners to start including Islands of the Great Barrier Reef product into their packages and marketing collateral had been produced. Now all we needed was an idea or a "hook" to sell the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to the world.<br />
<br />
Stage two was the big idea itself. Brisbane-based creative agency SapientNitro was given a brief to devise a campaign to promote the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. While several ideas were floated we realised that "The Best Job in the World" was The One; a dream job offering one candidate something priceless, the role of Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef with six months to explore the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef while based in a luxury house on Hamilton Island for a pay cheque of AUD150,000.<br />
<br />
While the caretaker’s duties, cleaning the pool, feeding the fish and collecting the mail, were tongue-in-cheek, for the campaign to work, it needed to be a real job…..<br />
<br />
….Then on a cold January morning they opened up the newspaper or turned on the television and were hit by a ray of Queensland sunshine; an advertisement for "the best job in the world" with the initial criteria of "anyone can apply". The application process simply asked people from around the world to submit a one minute video of themselves telling Tourism Queensland why they deserved the best job in the world….<br />
<br />
….On 6 May 2009, Ben Southall, a 34-year-old British charity events organiser, was announced as the successful candidate for "the best job in the world". In the first 24 hours of his announcement as the successful candidate, Ben undertook more than 100 media interviews and featured in news stories around the globe.<br />
<br />
Two months later on 1 July 2009, Ben started his role as the Caretaker for the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. During his stint he visited almost 100 Queensland destinations, fielded more than 450 media interviews and posted more than 60 blogs of 75,000 words, 2,000 photographs, 47 video diaries and more than 1,000 tweets….<br />
<br />
….The estimated publicity value of the campaign topped AUD430 million and penetrated almost every country on earth. Not bad for an investment of around AUD4 million over the three-year life of the campaign.'<br />
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<h2>
<strong>Ongoing issue of direct communication with prospective tourists</strong></h2>
<br />
Campaign fantastic but let down by one oversight by QLD Tourism, no direct channel via their global web presence to contact or make an enquiry in one’s own language, locally. However, this is where Tourism Australia has been quietly creating a global web presence and physically through local travel and related representatives trained as ‘Aussie Specialists’ with resources made available online via ‘<a href="https://www.aussiespecialist.com/en-gb/aussie-specialist-club.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Aussie Specialists Club</a>’.<br />
<br />
As important, mostly ignored, are the significant digital marketing resource created by Aussie Specialists developing their own web presence targeting geographic, cultural and linguistic regions.<br />
<h2>
<strong>Result?</strong></h2>
Most related web searches would find the relevant Tourism Australia website then finding travel planning and an <a href="https://www.australia.com/en/facts-and-planning/book-your-trip/find-a-travel-agent.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Aussie Specialist travel agent</a> would only be three clicks away; digital marketing 101.<br />
<br />
For more blogs and articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/website-design-for-digital-marketing-and-seo/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">digital marketing</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/marketing-strategy-4ps-7ps-4cs/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">marketing strategy</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0Australia-39.3749858349977 145.43469425-64.667000334997709 104.12610025000001 -14.082971334997701 -173.25671175000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-74932485461214198992019-11-01T13:56:00.000+11:002019-11-01T13:56:16.935+11:00Urban Youth vs. Ageing Regional Electors in the U.K.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The England and the U.K., like much of the developed and now developing world has an <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ageing population</a>, even more so electorally, which is having a significant impact upon democracy and the <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">economy</a>, at the expense of younger generations.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Population in regional or rural areas in England are declining" class="alignnone wp-image-512" height="200" src="https://educationtrainingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ageing-decling-rural-england.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Regional England Ageing Demographics Elections and Brexit" width="133" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/30/ageing-populations-politics-and-demographic-decline-in-the-u-k/" target="_blank">Regional England and Ageing Demographics</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
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<br />
Not only are politicians catering to ageing and regional electorates, younger generations although ignored, are expected to support older generations through the tax system, but will not receive similar state benefits in future due to budget impairment.<br />
<br />
From The Guardian:<br />
<br />
‘<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/28/some-parts-of-uk-ageing-twice-as-fast-as-others-new-research-finds" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Some parts of UK ageing twice as fast as others, new research finds</a><br />
Study by thinktank Resolution Foundation warns divergence will have political and economic impacts.<br />
<br />
Parts of the UK are ageing twice as fast as other areas of the country, while in some cities the population is getting younger, a divergence that will have a lasting impact on local economies, local government and national politics, according to new research.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/">A study by the Resolution Foundation</a>, an independent thinktank, found that the populations of Maldon in Essex, Copeland in Cumbria and Richmondshire in Yorkshire are ageing twice as fast as the rest of the UK, while Nottingham and Oxford are growing younger.<br />
<br />
The report, entitled Ageing, fast and slow: When place and demography collide, said that while the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/27/ageing-britain-housing-crisis-build-almshouses">UK population as a whole is ageing</a> – one in four will be older than 65 by 2041 – there are widespread divergences in the pace and even the direction of ageing.<br />
<br />
The UK’s average age has been rising steadily, from 36 in 1975 to 40 today, but there is a 25-year gap between the oldest and youngest local authorities: North Norfolk, where the average age is 54, and Oxford, where it is 29, reflecting its large universities, the Resolution Foundation said….<br />
<br />
….Charlie McCurdy, researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Everyone knows we’re getting older, but how and where this ageing is taking place is less well understood.<br />
<br />
“Britain is growing apart as it ages because many rural and coastal communities are welcoming fewer babies each year, while migration within the UK and from abroad has seen younger people concentrating in urban areas that are already relatively young.”<br />
<br />
Middle-income areas are ageing fastest, while the richest and poorest areas age the slowest, the research found. There are two key drivers: young people are leaving rural and coastal communities, which are already older on average than other locations, for urban areas, and low local birth rates are a key factor in ageing in older communities.<br />
<br />
Poorer urban ethnically diverse areas are ageing more slowly because of high birth rates. The high birth rate in Barking & Dagenham – 19 births per 1,000 people, compared to 11 in the UK as a whole – has given it the highest proportion of under 18s in the country (30%).<br />
<br />
The think tank says increasing divergence between old and young areas will have a lasting impact on local economies, local governments and national politics.<br />
<br />
MPs are becoming increasingly reliant on the demographics of their constituencies, with older and younger seats becoming safer for the Conservatives and Labour respectively.<br />
<br />
For local economies, the foundation says that policymakers should tailor their economic strategies to local demographics, including benefitting from the potential of young graduates, or the greater spending power of pensioners.'<br />
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For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/population-ageing-populist-politics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">demography</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/population-growth-or-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/per-capita-gdp-growth-and-ageing-populations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">economy</a> click through.<br />
</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-71418105697506691122019-10-22T12:57:00.001+11:002019-10-22T12:58:05.494+11:00High Global Population Growth Fears Debunked<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Since the 1970s, and earlier with Malthus and <a href="http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/535eed6a7095aa0000000249" rel="noopener" target="_blank">eugenics movement</a>, we have been presented with the threat of catastrophic <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/population-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> due to fertility rates in the less developed world, then due to '<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/immigration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>' from the less developed world when in fact we are facing <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population decline</a> from mid century; contrary to UN Population Division data which inflates future headline growth?<br />
<br />
This 'misunderstanding' has been highlighted by science journalist Fred Pearce in 'The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future'; Hans Rosling in 'Don't panic the truth about population'; Prof. Wolfgang Lutz of Vienna's IIASA and Sanjeev Sanyal demographer at Deutsche Bank.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A_T279S1548/Xa5g80TK_xI/AAAAAAAAExA/j9JDb8_HY3EVhd2TNOZFZr2QTTdjn1pCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Global%2BPopulation%2BGrowth%2Bor%2BDecline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Most assume the world is experiencing exponential population growth due to high fertility but are wrong." border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A_T279S1548/Xa5g80TK_xI/AAAAAAAAExA/j9JDb8_HY3EVhd2TNOZFZr2QTTdjn1pCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Global%2BPopulation%2BGrowth%2Bor%2BDecline.jpg" title="Global population growth is sustainable and in decline" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/population-growth-or-decline/" target="_blank">Global Population Growth or Decline?</a> (Image copyright Pexels.com)</span></td></tr>
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<h2>
'Book review: '<a href="https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/book-review-empty-planet-explores-the-world-s-next-biggest-population-threat-1.848236" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Empty Planet</a>' explores the world's next biggest population threat</h2>
<h3>
Humanity is facing an imminent catastrophe, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson assert in their new book</h3>
The central assertion Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson make in Empty Planet is one that readers of the daily news or regular government reports will find deeply counter intuitive. According to all that received wisdom, there is a worldwide population crisis, with humans reproducing at ever-increasing rates, rapidly eating up all the world’s resources and driving the engines of runaway climate change.<br />
<br />
Stripped of modern trappings such as greenhouse gases and industrial meat farming, this is fairly close to the old vision of 18th-century scholar and theorist Thomas Malthus. He declared back in 1798 that in conditions of economic and cultural stability, the human population would continue to increase, even to the point where it chokes resources and overburdens the Earth itself.<br />
<br />
Such a view has been the standard for centuries, and some of its proponents have made quite tidy sums writing books about the doom it foretells, most notably Paul Ehrlich. His 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb warned of imminent, widespread famines as the result of human overpopulation.<br />
<br />
Bricker and Ibbitson say such books and the thinking behind them are “completely and utterly wrong”. They agree with Malthus, Ehrlich and company that humanity is indeed facing an imminent population catastrophe – but the problem won’t be overpopulation. “The great defining event of the 21st century – one of the great defining events in human history – will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population begins to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.”<br />
<br />
The authors know they’re working against not only popular perception, but also raw numbers. They point out that the United Nations predicts the human population to hit 11 billion in the 21st century, up from the nearly eight billion on Earth today, an increase from five billion since 1950.<br />
<br />
But Bricker and Ibbitson say that population growth rates have declined slightly in the 21st century, particularly in what they refer to as the richest places on the planet. Japan, Korea, Spain, Italy, much of Europe – all such places are facing long-term reproduction rates that won’t come close to sustaining their current population levels. And they claim this same levelling and then downward trend will be seen in places such as China, Brazil, Indonesia and even such fertility hot zones as India and Sub-Saharan Africa.<br />
<br />
The main reason Bricker and Ibbitson cite for their certainty about all this is that the floor of the world’s basic prosperity is steadily rising. Two things happen as a result: an increasing number of women in developing countries are gaining more education and more control over reproduction, and an increasing number of couples are therefore either postponing having children of their own or having far fewer children than their ancestors did.<br />
<br />
Empty Planet makes the case that this change is not only inevitable but already well under way, and that it will be permanent: humanity will simply go into terminal decline, no asteroid or other global catastrophe required. As mentioned, readers have heard such alarming claims before – Ehrlich, for instance, was certain the human population would reach its breaking point in the 1970s.'<br />
<br />
For more articles and blogs on <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population decline</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/population-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/immigration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-91270870752413508352019-09-28T17:51:00.000+10:002019-09-28T17:51:28.205+10:00Value of International Students, Education and Immigration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The value of <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/importance-of-international-student-satisfaction-in-marketing-communications/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">international education</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/student-youth-marketing-communications-digital-technology-social-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">international students</a>, tangible and intangible, is egregiously under - estimated by the application of a narrow 'white nativist' or politically opportunistic prism that ignores inconvenient facts and dynamics.<br />
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Many Australians of Anglo Irish heritage focus too much upon international students described as ‘immigrants’, their potential for permanent residency (with significant hurdles) and demands for same ‘foreign’ students to return home in support of their home country.<br />
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Conversely same qualifications are used by Australians internationally, many of the same gain other residency or even dual citizenship, yet there are no demands for the same e.g. to return home and/or pay back fees?<br />
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This dynamic is simply a reflection of increasing geographical and social mobility (taken for granted in the EU) for all in the developed and many in the less developed worlds for whom higher education and/or technical skills and languages improve their lives and others’.<br />
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Meanwhile too many narratives from our mono-cultural political, media and social elites seem about creating ‘us vs them’ for voters, and worse, deep seated Nativist or colonial ideology.<br />
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Global population is expected to peak mid-century whereby there may be increased competition for people, with sub-Saharan Africa being the only place with population growth and significant younger demographic cohorts.<br />
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<strong>Late news: The U.K. has announced the re-introduction of post graduate work visas for international university graduates.</strong><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TS4TgSgFiaE/XY8PtKp4bFI/AAAAAAAAEsQ/3BmiarwV1YYSP7wJc3Xt9pM2l6Am2hO8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/International-Foreign-Student-Education-Value.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="International education has been criticised by media using white nativist tropes and describing them as immigrants" border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="640" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TS4TgSgFiaE/XY8PtKp4bFI/AAAAAAAAEsQ/3BmiarwV1YYSP7wJc3Xt9pM2l6Am2hO8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/International-Foreign-Student-Education-Value.jpg" title="Value of international education and international students" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/international-education-foreign-student-value/" target="_blank">International Students and Education Create Value</a> (Image copyright Pexels.com)</span></td></tr>
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<h2>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/university-graduate-employment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Australia should try to keep more international students who are trained in our universities</a></h2>
Jihyun Lee - September 13, 2019 6.02am AEST<br />
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Australia’s education system takes almost one in ten of all international students from countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).<br />
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That’s according to the latest Education at a Glance report from the OECD. But Australia should do more to retain some of those students after graduation or it risks losing good talent overseas.<br />
<h3>
A degree of talent</h3>
The OECD report says Australia’s higher education sector is heavily reliant on international students. They represent about 48% of those enrolled in masters and 32% in doctoral programs.<br />
This is partly due to a lack of interest among Australians in pursuing higher-degree study compared to other countries, about 10% in Australia versus 15% across OECD countries.<br />
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International students make up 40% of doctoral graduates in Australia, compared to 25% across OECD countries. That’s higher than the US (27%) and Germany (18%), the other two popular destinations for international students.<br />
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Australian students are not choosing some STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects as much as those in other OECD countries. For example, only 17% of adults (aged 25 to 64) with a tertiary degree had studied engineering, manufacturing and construction.<br />
<br />
Other comparable industrialised countries such as Sweden (25%), Korea (24%), Japan (23%) and Canada (21%) are obviously doing better. This trend appears to be getting worse because the proportion of new students entering STEM-related bachelor degree programs is lower in Australia (21%), compared to 27% across OECD and partner countries.<br />
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While the government here provides for up to four years of post-higher-degree stay for international students, it is inevitable that Australia faces a drain of foreign-born specialists who were educated in Australia.<br />
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In 2017, the Australian government granted permanent visas to only 4% of foreign students and temporary graduate visas to only 16% to live in Australia after completing their study. It is obvious then that many international students return home after they study in Australia.<br />
<h3>
What can the Australian government do?</h3>
We need to provide better incentives for those who complete a higher-degree program, especially in the STEM areas, to stay on in Australia.<br />
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The OECD’s report says people who studied information and communication technologies (ICT) and engineering as well as construction and manufacturing will continue to benefit greatly from strong labour-market opportunities everywhere in the world.<br />
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Australia can do better in attracting younger generations to be trained in the STEM area at higher degree levels. We then need to try to retain more of the foreign-born higher-degree holders rather than sending them back home.<br />
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Being afraid of an influx of Chinese or Indian students who will contribute to development of innovation and technological changes in this country should become a thing of the past.<br />
<h3>
Good news for Australia’s education</h3>
The Education at a Glance program aims to give an annual snapshot of the effectiveness of educational systems – from early childhood to doctoral level – across all OECD and partner countries.<br />
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At almost 500 pages, the 2019 report does contain some good news for Australia. Australia spends a higher proportion of its GDP (based on public, private and international sources) on education, 5.8% compared to the OECD average of 5.0%.<br />
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The Australian education system strongly promotes compulsory education. Our 11 years of compulsory education is the longest among OECD countries. That means each student gets 3,410 more hours over the period of compulsory education.<br />
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When it comes to people going on to further studies, the proportion of tertiary-educated Australians has increased over the past ten years. It is now 51%, compared to the OECD average of 44%.<br />
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On graduation, the average debt for Australian students is US$10,479 (A$15,243), one of the lowest among OECD countries. It’s about half that of New Zealand US$24,117 (A$35,080), which has similar tuition fees and financial support systems.<br />
<h3>
Education pays off</h3>
Australian young adults with vocational qualifications have a higher employment rate (83%) than the OECD average (80%). Although earning power is still greater for those with a higher level of educational attainment, the financial return from more schooling is far smaller in Australia.<br />
<br />
Compared to those with upper secondary education, full-time tertiary-educated Australian workers earn 31% more, compared to 57% more on average across OECD countries. Adults with a master’s or doctoral degree earn 52% more, compared to 91% more on average across OECD countries.<br />
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The OECD attributes this trend partially to good labour-market opportunities for those with upper secondary vocational qualifications. The OECD also notes that the average employment rate for Australian tertiary-educated adults is 85%, only two percentage points higher than the 83% for those with a vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary qualification. This is one of the smallest differences across OECD countries.<br />
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For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/university-graduate-employment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">international education</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-38385428275312482822019-09-08T17:39:00.000+10:002019-09-08T17:39:27.200+10:00Islamophobia and Antisemitism promoted by White Nationalists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In recent years both Islamophobia and antisemitism have come to the fore in US, UK, Australian and European politics, media and social narratives, emanating from white nationalism, conspiracy theories and Nazi ideology.<br />
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Following are excerpts from an article by Nafeez Ahmed explaining the co-dependence and shared ideology of Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US white nationalist movement, now in the mainstream and coursing through social narratives including the ‘great replacement’ theory.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s-Gaf1YflyQ/XXSudEhPklI/AAAAAAAAErQ/oQh2qfYrk4UiETM4ykVklvRBUF6InRn0wCLcBGAs/s1600/Israel%2BIslam%2BJudaism%2BJerusalem%2BChristian%2BZionists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Eugenics movement then the Nazis developed social Darwinism, Antisemitism and Islamophobia" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s-Gaf1YflyQ/XXSudEhPklI/AAAAAAAAErQ/oQh2qfYrk4UiETM4ykVklvRBUF6InRn0wCLcBGAs/s320/Israel%2BIslam%2BJudaism%2BJerusalem%2BChristian%2BZionists.jpg" title="White Nationalism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/globalisation-of-islamophobia-and-antisemitism-by-white-nationalists/" target="_blank">Jerusalem the Meeting Point of Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Christian Zionism</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
From the Foreign Policy in Focus:</h2>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<br />‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Behind Islamophobia Is a Global Movement of Antisemites</a></h2>
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed<br />
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The global rise of white nationalist violence proves that the threat of fascism is not just<br />about one community — it threatens all communities: white people, black people,<br />Muslims, Jews, and beyond.<br />
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The spate of mass shootings at the end of July comes head on the heels of an escalating epidemic of U.S. gun violence. Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 257 mass shootings, which have killed 9,080 people. This is nearly triple the number of people that died on 9/1 1 , the terrorist attack which justified U.S.-led wars that have killed at least a million people.<br />
Over the last decade, nearly three quarters of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been<br />linked to domestic right-wing extremists, with just a quarter linked to Islamists. And in<br />201 8, every terrorist murder in the U.S. was linked to the extreme right.<br />
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The ideology of extreme white nationalism is now a bigger U.S. national security threat,<br />and a bigger cause of death, than Islamist terrorism or immigration. Yet millions of white<br />Americans have been brainwashed into believing the exact opposite….<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The shared ideology of global white nationalism</h3>
In one of these tweets, Hopkins openly endorsed the rise of extreme nationalist politicians around the world, including Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, and leader of the Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) Jaroslaw Kaczynski.<br />
<br />
All four politicians have promoted divisive, xenophobic policies….<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The making of the ‘great replacement’ mythology</h3>
It is now widely recognized that at the core of this shared far-right ideology is the so called “great replacement” theory, which posits that a genocide of white people is being achieved through their replacement by migrants, mostly from Muslim countries (or, in the United States, from Latin America).<br />
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The overlapping xenophobic agendas of these politicians illustrates how latent Antisemitism remains a driving force in this global movement, which nevertheless masquerades under the guise of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiment as a mechanism to achieve mainstream reach…<br />
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…In short, the focus on a “Muslim invasion” through a combination of mass immigration and birth rates allowed far-right groups inspired by neo-Nazi ideas to rehabilitate themselves and conceal their traditional anti-Semitic roots.<br />
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It is no surprise then to see that many of the groups that have played the biggest role in<br />spreading the core tenets of the “great replacement” mythology through the specter of a<br />global Islamist conspiracy are simultaneously allied with longstanding white nationalist<br />movements…<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Widening the net</h3>
After 9/1 1 , the U.S. government launched a major multi-agency investigation into<br />terrorism financing across multiple agencies known as Operation Green Quest, focused<br />on uncovering Muslim charities operating as “front organizations” for terrorists.<br />
<br />The problem was that U.S. government agencies like the Treasury Department, FBI and<br />many others had a nebulous and weak understanding of the Muslim world, often leading investigators to see connections and ties which were not there and to read conspiratorial meaning into every association or relationship that might potentially link individuals or organizations to extremism — however tenuous….<br />
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<h3>
Far-right penetration of the FBI</h3>
Indeed, part of the problem is that for years the FBI has suffered from institutional<br />Islamophobia.<br />
<br />
FBI training manuals obtained by Spencer Ackerman for Wired revealed that after 9/1 1<br />the agency was teaching its counter terrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American<br />Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult<br />leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding<br />mechanism for combat.” And “combat” can include numerous techniques including<br />“immigration” and “law suits”. Thus, a Muslim who immigrates to the U.S. or sues the FBI<br />for harassment is seen as just another agent of the jihad….Rather the “Muslim invasion” narrative is central to the goal of legitimizing a broad, xenophobic agenda rooted in anti-Semitic movements historically aligned with neo Nazism.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The alliance between Islamophobes and anti-Semites</h3>
That is why so many of the same groups promoting Islamophobic myths play a lead role<br />in amplifying white nationalist concepts…..<br />
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….I described this alarming phenomenon as a form of “reconstructed-Nazism,” “indicating that the core ideology [of the global far-right] embraces core Nazi principles, but embeds them in a range of cosmetic narrative adjustments which allow those principles to function subliminally in a new post war, anti-Nazi, and post-9/1 1 global cosmopolitan context.”…<br />
<h3>
Conclusion</h3>
…The upshot of this is clear: Jews and Muslims cannot afford to be at loggerheads in the fight against fascism. Both communities are in the firing line of a global far-right agenda advanced by groups and political parties forged in the historic bowels of Nazism.<br />
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Whatever their political differences and disagreements, both communities need to forge<br />bonds of solidarity in the struggle against racism. If they are to survive, our communities<br />have no choice but to resist being distracted by efforts to divide us and turn us against<br />each other, which is a deliberate far-right strategy to debilitate both Jewish and Muslim communities.<br />
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Instead, we need to identify new lines of strategic cooperation to resist and disrupt a global far-right movement which threatens not only our communities, but the very foundations of our democracies.<br />
This means that no matter what our political leanings might be, the struggles against<br />Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are fundamentally about the same thing: protecting diverse, inclusive, and free societies.’<br />
<br />
For more articles and blogs about the political issues regarding <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> etc. click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-145050162516907442019-08-31T17:11:00.000+10:002019-08-31T17:11:49.027+10:00Killer Cars in Cities<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Article discussing issues, assumptions, entitlement and habits round the use of motor cars or vehicles in urban areas in America, same issues exist in Australia. Often if not always accidents, injuries, deaths, more roads, car parks, traffic congestion, bitumen or asphalt, fossil fuels and pollution are never questioned or linked to car usage. However, if question do arise about pollution, traffic congestion etc. the deflection used is blaming ‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>’ or ‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a>' rather than focus upon the incentives e.g. salary package tax breaks and lack of disincentives e.g. discouraging private motor vehicle usage.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcU_jfq6Qew/XWoc6tKnTLI/AAAAAAAAEqk/KXl1CATOYBwARwMCbNWcgWMNa-n-CYwWACLcBGAs/s1600/Cars-vehicles-traffic-auto-automobiles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Cyclists and pedestrians in danger from cars and pollution" border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="640" height="196" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcU_jfq6Qew/XWoc6tKnTLI/AAAAAAAAEqk/KXl1CATOYBwARwMCbNWcgWMNa-n-CYwWACLcBGAs/s320/Cars-vehicles-traffic-auto-automobiles.jpg" title="Killer Cars in Cities" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/cars-killing-cities-and-citizens/" target="_blank">Cars, Roads and Fossil Fuels</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
From <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/12/05/australian-business-challenges-2019-kpmg/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Week: 'American cities need to phase out cars</a><br />
<br />
Ryan Cooper<br />
<br />
August 19, 2019<br />
<br />
On August 12, a man named Umar Baig was driving illegally in Brooklyn — speeding his Dodge Charger down Coney Island Avenue far, far above the speed limit of 25 miles per hour. At the intersection with Avenue L, he ran a red light, and smashed directly into the side of a Honda SUV.<br />
The collision was so violent that Baig's car lifted the Honda completely off the ground for a split second in the process of flinging it at high speed across the oncoming lanes of Coney Island Avenue — where the SUV crushed a cyclist named Jose Alzorriz, who had just pulled up to wait for the red light Baig blew through. Bystanders lifted the car off him, but Alzorriz later died of his injuries. (A pedestrian and the Honda's driver were also injured, but not fatally).<br />
<br />
This was the 19th cyclist killed by a car in New York City so far in 2019, in addition to 69 pedestrians — as compared to 10 and 107 respectively in the whole of 2018. For reasons of safety and basic urban functionality, it's time to start banning private automobiles from America's urban cores.<br />
<br />
The basic problem with cars in a dense urban setting like New York is that they go too fast and take up too much space. Dense cities are enormously more energy efficient than sprawling suburbs or exurbs because apartment buildings and row houses are far more efficient to heat and cool than single-family homes (due to shared walls), larger enterprises can take advantage of efficiencies of scale, and because lots of people packed into a small area enables highly-efficient mass transit. New Yorkers emit only about 2.3 tons of carbon dioxide per person, as compared to 45 tons from residents of Flagstaff, Arizona.<br />
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A car-centered transportation system is simply at odds with the logic of a dense city. For commuters, cars take up a huge volume of space being parked at home and at work. On the road, a lane of highway traffic can transport about 3,000 people per hour under perfect conditions, while a subway can easily manage 10 times that — and many do even better. And while subways can be delayed, conditions are rarely ideal on the highway — on the contrary, every day at rush hour most are jammed to a crawl with too many cars, or slowed by some gruesome accident.<br />
<br />
What's more, the terrible toll of injuries and deaths inflicted on New York's cyclists and pedestrians this year is simply what happens when one allows cars to roam free in cities. It is highly risky to allow huge, heavy steel cages capable of high speeds to be flying around crowds of delicate human bodies. It takes only a slight error or moment of inattention to get someone brutally killed.<br />
<br />
Yet America's urban centers were still rent asunder during its great mid-20th century car bender. Large swathes of our finest cities were eviscerated to make way for filthy, dangerous freeways, and hideous parking lots and garages. New cities were built entirely around this new transport paradigm, eating up vast quantities of land and forcing millions upon millions of people to spend hours every day stuck in traffic. Cars became a near requirement for most Americans, even in relatively dense metros.<br />
<br />
This has left many American cities and neighborhoods without high-quality public transit, even where density is high enough that it could be supported. Big chunks of D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and many other places are stuck in a sort of no-man's-land where bus and train service aren't good enough to enable a truly car-free lifestyle for most residents — but driving and parking are still a monumental inconvenience.<br />
<br />
All this is why American cities should follow the lead of European cities like Oslo and Brussels, and start phasing out private cars in their central cities…..<br />
<br />
…..All this would be expensive and difficult in many cities, but the bigger obstacle is cultural. Even in New York, the only city in America where a majority of households do not own a car, laws are so ludicrously biased in favor of drivers that police and prosecutors are struggling to find a way to charge Umar Baig with a serious crime. A proposal to ban private vehicles from just a few blocks of the clogged 14th Street in lower Manhattan to improve bus service inspired screaming outrage from the reactionary New York Post, and has been repeatedly blocked by a judge. But perhaps once the manifest benefits of a car-free urban core can be widely seen, attitudes will start slowly shifting. Cars simply do not belong downtown.'<br />
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For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Australian politics</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Immigration</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Population Growth</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-70125099207729467192019-08-05T18:53:00.000+10:002019-08-05T18:53:25.767+10:00Population Growth or Decline?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Many believe that local, national and global population growth is exponential leading to calls to avoid immigration or cut, need for population control etc., but is it true? No, according to experts, outside of the UN Population Division, population will peak mid century then decline while ageing further.<br />
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What does this mean for the world and nation state economies? Competition for people whether immigration and temporary workers to fill gaps and support budgets.<br />
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From The Lowy Institute:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/cost-of-ageing-populations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">'Harnessing demographic destiny</a><br />
<br />
GRANT WYETH<br />
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Competition for the world’s best and brightest will intensify as global population growth slows. Is Australia ready?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0rPXGl-UEp0/XUftm0RfYqI/AAAAAAAAEpA/3cMnjpYC-5Ut30Jvg72fg_SEIuAyZ5cdgCLcBGAs/s1600/Population%2BImmigration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Many believe that local, national and global population growth is exponential leading to calls to avoid immigration or cut, need for population control etc., but is it true?" border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="640" height="132" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0rPXGl-UEp0/XUftm0RfYqI/AAAAAAAAEpA/3cMnjpYC-5Ut30Jvg72fg_SEIuAyZ5cdgCLcBGAs/s320/Population%2BImmigration.jpg" title="Population growth will not occur forever and in fact will decline" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/population-demographic-decline/" target="_blank">Managing Population Decline</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
Once confident predictions that the world’s population will reach billion by the end of this century are beginning to be debunked. It is now appears more likely that the global population will hit a ceiling before reaching nine billion by mid-century, and then begin to decline.<br />
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This tapering of world population growth is being driven by two key revolutions. One is increasing urbanisation, with more and more people living in cities, which makes children less of an essential resource for families then they would be in rural areas. The other is female education and empowerment, with women deciding – when given the choice – that they desire no more than two children.<br />
<br />
Such global trends have significant implications for individual countries, both in national capabilities and geostrategic calculations. This is particularly the case for Australia. Countries that are able to both retain and attract people will find themselves at a distinct advantage.<br />
<br />
Currently there is a low-intensity competition for human capital between mostly Western states. These countries have recognised a basic demographic problem; that their birth rates are too low to replace their populations, and without immigration they will end up with elderly societies without the workers to sustain their living standards. Alongside this, attracting highly skilled migrants also boosts productivity.<br />
<br />
Yet the population strategies of most of these countries are under threat by parochial narratives that place the political sustainability of their immigration programs at risk.<br />
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These narratives are born out of a paradox within the nation-state, where elements within these countries believe that the strategies of the state are undermining the nation. Such sentiment seems uninterested in economic imperatives, or indeed foreign policy concerns about their country’s capabilities in relation to others. Yet these issues are vital to a national interest, and therefore need to be aligned to how a country sees itself….<br />
<br />
….. However, it would not be prudent for Australia to rely on this possibility. By seeking to enhance its own capabilities, Australia can help to escape the influence of external forces. Which means in a world of declining birth rates, Australia’s immigration program should be seen as the country’s principal strategic asset. This indicates that Australia may need to develop something it currently lacks – a prominent positive public narrative around its highly successful immigration story.<br />
<br />
A recent speech from Canada’s Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer offers a good example of the way Australia can develop a positive public narrative around immigration. Scheer highlighted the bravery of migration, the honour Canada feels at being chosen by migrants, and the prosperity that has developed in Canada as a consequence of these migrant flows. It is a speech that no politician in Australia could seemingly deliver (bar its requisite politicking) but is a sentiment that is embraced by all Canadian political parties (with the exception of the Quebec nationalist parties).<br />
<br />
As a competitor to Australia for skilled labour, the message Scheer conveyed helps to reinforce support for Canada’s immigration program. And if national competition for people intensifies as global population declines, it will provide Canada with a distinct advantage that Australia currently cannot match.’<br />
<br />
For more articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/hans-rosling-the-facts-and-ignorance-about-population-growth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">population growth</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">NOM net overseas migration</a>, click through.<br />
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</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-54097393649015533592019-07-19T16:17:00.000+10:002019-07-19T16:17:44.267+10:00Immigration to Support Retirees, Pensioners and Workforce<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While most politicians, media and society assume ‘immigration’ drives unemployment, recent Australian research from CEDA contradicts this, as did research presented by left workers’ ‘Solidarity’ in 2012.<br />
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Why has it ever been an issue? Political tactics and strategy, amplified by media and societal word of mouth have felt compelled to promote nativist or white nationalist tropes (from the past) as an appeal to native or incumbent citizens, creating fear, anxiety and even anger (see ‘alt right’), as both an electoral strategy and ideology (e.g. blaming immigrants vs. wage rises).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Immigration whether permanent or temporary does not cause unemployment" class="alignnone wp-image-450" height="326" src="https://educationtrainingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/impact-of-immigration-on-unemployment.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Younger immigrants support ageing population and tax base" width="490" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/immigration-is-not-cause-of-unemployment/" target="_blank">International Temporary Resident Workers and Professionals</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<h3>
From The Guardian:</h3>
<h3>
‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/population-ageing-populist-politics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Temporary skilled migration has not undercut Australian jobs or conditions, report finds</a></h3>
Politicians’ ‘revolving door’ response to foreign workers frustrates businesses, industry group CEDA says Temporary skilled migration has not undercut job opportunities or conditions for Australian workers but the “revolving door” political response to foreign workers has frustrated businesses, an industry report has found.<br />
<br />
The report from the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), released on Monday, said that skilled migrants, particularly those on temporary skilled working visas, have been an “overwhelming net positive” for the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/australia-economy">Australian economy</a> and have not had a negative impact on either the wages or participation rates of Australian-born workers.<br />
<br />
However, the report said that despite economic evidence suggesting migration is a positive, “governments have responded to community concern with a seeming revolving door of reviews, reports and frequent policy changes to Australia’s temporary skilled migration program”.’<br />
<br />
<h3>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">From SBS Australia:</a></h3>
<h3>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/immigration-population-growth-decline-nom-net-overseas-migration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">‘Migrants don’t actually threaten Australian workers’ jobs, new analysis reveals</a></h3>
A new report found immigration has not harmed the earnings of local workers.<br />
<br />
Temporary skilled migrants have not displaced Australian workers despite fears immigrants threaten the local job market, new analysis by an independent economic organisation has revealed.<br />
<br />
Research by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has also shown immigration has not <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/skilled-visas-to-be-processed-within-a-week-to-fill-temporary-shortages">harmed the earnings of local workers.</a><br />
<br />
The report, "Effects of temporary migration", showed there are about two million people on temporary visas, including students, working holiday-makers, skilled workers and New Zealand citizens.<br />
<br />
The research, released on Monday, showed 70 per cent of temporary skilled migrants reside in NSW and Victoria, which have the lowest rates of unemployment in Australia.’<br />
<br />
<h3>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">From Solidarity.net</a></h3>
<h3>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">‘Immigration is not to blame for cuts to jobs and wages</a></h3>
9 August 2012<br />
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The suggestion that bringing 457 visa workers from overseas is coming at the expense of “local jobs” reinforces the myth that immigration causes unemployment and drives down wages.<br />
<br />
In fact evidence from Australia and internationally shows that immigration actually creates jobs. In his book, Immigration and the Australian Economy, William Foster’s surveys over 200 studies on immigration and wages. He found there was, “a marginally favourable effect on the aggregate unemployment rate, even in recession”.<br />
<br />
In a 2003 paper economist Hsiao-chuan Chang wrote that, “there is no evidence that immigrants take jobs away from the local Australian over the past twelve years… This supports the conclusion from existing research”.<br />
<br />
This is because new migrants generate demand for products and services, such as housing and food. Many of them bring savings to help pay for these things, further boosting the economy and jobs.’<br />
<br />
<br />
Politicians and media commentators could explain more clearly why immigration helps a nation and its economy. Some of these factors include ageing and declining tax paying work forces in permanent population, with increasing proportion (vs. workforce) of retirees and pensioners requires more tax income to fund related services, and higher temporary immigration means (most of) the same temporary cohort will not also be a drag on state budgets in future.<br />
<br />
For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/immigration/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">immigration</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/white-nationalism/">white nationalism</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/category/economics/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">economics</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-68660861284212863412019-06-24T16:55:00.000+10:002019-06-24T16:55:47.675+10:00Soft or Work Skills for Employment and Society<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Soft skills for work and employment to complement technical skills have been recently highlighted, again, by a Deloitte Australia media release, following is a summary.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qdbqUh6-L2U/XRBzNPEssFI/AAAAAAAAEaY/kUJyDTfxVd8rjH6_atbmK6FAUHCbmzYlACLcBGAs/s1600/Soft%2BSkills%2Bfor%2BFuture%2BEmployment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Soft and work skills for employment and life to support had or technical skills" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qdbqUh6-L2U/XRBzNPEssFI/AAAAAAAAEaY/kUJyDTfxVd8rjH6_atbmK6FAUHCbmzYlACLcBGAs/s320/Soft%2BSkills%2Bfor%2BFuture%2BEmployment.jpg" title="Soft skills for work and employment to complement technical skills have been recently highlighted, again, by a Deloitte Australia media release" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/06/15/soft-skills-for-work-and-employment/" target="_blank">Soft Skills for Work</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<h2>
‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/soft-or-work-skills-development-of-students-for-employment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">While the future of work is human, Australia faces a major skills crisis</a> - The right response can deliver a $36 billion economic bonus</h2>
12 June 2019: With skills increasingly becoming the job currency of the future, a new Deloitte report finds that the future of work has a very human face. Yet Australia is challenged by a worsening skills shortage that requires an urgent response from business leaders and policy makers.<br />
<br />
The path to prosperity: Why the future of work is human, the latest report in the firm’s <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/building-lucky-country/topics/building-lucky-country.html">Building the Lucky Country</a> series:<br />
<ul>
<li>Dispels some commonly held myths around the future of work</li>
<li>Uncovers some big shifts in the skills that will be needed by the jobs of the future</li>
<li>Reveals that many key skills are already in shortage – and the national skills deficit is set to grow to 29 million by 2030</li>
<li>Recommends that businesses embrace, and invest in, on-the-job learning and skills enhancement</li>
<li>Finds that getting Australia’s approach to the future of work right could deliver a $36 billion national prosperity dividend.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<h3>
Employment Myths busted</h3>
The report dispels three myths that tend to dominate discussions around the future of work.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><strong>Myth 1: Robots will take the jobs</strong>. Technology-driven change is accelerating around the world, yet unemployment is close to record lows, including in Australia (where it’s around the lowest since 2011).</li>
<li><strong>Myth 2: People will have lots of jobs over their careers</strong>. Despite horror headlines, work is becoming more secure, not less, and Australians are staying in their jobs longer than ever.</li>
<li><strong>Myth 3: People will work anywhere but the office</strong>. The office isn’t going away any time soon, and city CBDs will remain a focal point for workers.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The big skills shift ahead: from hands…to heads…to hearts</h3>
<br />
“That today’s jobs are increasingly likely to require cognitive skills of the head rather than the manual skills of the hands won’t be a surprise,” Rumbens said. “But there’s another factor at play. Employment has been growing fastest among less routine jobs, because these are the ones that are hardest to automate.”<br />
<br />
More than 80% of the jobs created between now and 2030 will be for knowledge workers, and two-thirds of jobs will be strongly reliant on soft skills.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Critical skills and the multi-million gap</h3>
<br />
As work shifts to skills of the heart, Rumbens said the research reveals that Australia already faces skills shortages across a range of key areas critical to the future of work.<br />
<br />
“These new trends are happening so fast they’re catching workers, businesses and governments by surprise,” Rumbens said.<br />
<br />
At the start of this decade, the typical worker lacked 1.2 of the critical skills needed by employers seeking to fill a given position. Today, the average worker is missing nearly two of the 18 critical skills advertised for a job, equating to 23 million skills shortages across the economy.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The business response?</h3>
<br />
Rumbens said that getting ahead of the game will require concerted action.<br />
<br />
The report includes a series of checkpoints business leaders and policy makers, can use to inform, and drive action. These include:<br />
<ul>
<li>Identify the human value – Identify which jobs can be automated, outsourced to technology such as AI, and which are uniquely human. Use technology to improve efficiency, and increase the bounds of what’s possible.</li>
<li>Forecast future skills needs – Understand the skills, knowledge, abilities and personal characteristics of your employees.</li>
<li>Re-train, re-skill, and re-deploy – People represent competitive advantage. Consider alternatives to redundancy such as re-training, re-skilling or re-deploying as options to support existing workers reach for new opportunities.</li>
<li>Involve people – The people who do the work are often the best placed to identify the skills they require to succeed. Find ways to involve employees in the design and implementation of learning programs.</li>
<li>Talk about technology honestly – Engage in an honest dialogue about the impacts of technology to support staff and generate new ideas for managing change.</li>
<li>Manage the robots – Introduce digital governance roles to evaluate the ethics of AI and machine learning, alongside existing frameworks.</li>
<li>Use mentoring and apprenticeships – Micro-credentialing holds the key to unlocking the value of emerging job skills, while apprenticeship models are re-emerging as an effective way for business to develop a future-ready workforce.</li>
<li>Recruit and develop social and creative skills – Recognise and reward social skills such as empathy, judgement, and collaboration when recruiting and developing workers.</li>
</ul>
<br />
For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/soft-or-work-skills-development-of-students-for-employment/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">soft skills</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/adult-education-pedagogy-andragogy-apply-complex-learning-teaching-models/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">adult learning</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-62845639827985534202019-06-08T17:17:00.001+10:002019-06-08T17:17:45.452+10:00Ageing Population Budget Costs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Elections, budgets and governance in most western and now developing nations that are democracies are being impacted by increasing numbers of retirees and pensioners in the upper median age demographic, being catered to by politicians, especially conservatives.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K04vMcLoZfc/XPtfPDZnlhI/AAAAAAAAEZ0/QHyhrD2Cd40XlF8SezUzMWkXaHgynsuqwCLcBGAs/s1600/Budget%2BBalances%2B-%2BAgeing%2BAustralia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Increasing numbers of retirees and pensioners versus declining working age population threatens budgets" border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="700" height="221" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K04vMcLoZfc/XPtfPDZnlhI/AAAAAAAAEZ0/QHyhrD2Cd40XlF8SezUzMWkXaHgynsuqwCLcBGAs/s320/Budget%2BBalances%2B-%2BAgeing%2BAustralia.jpg" title="Ageing Population Drawing upon Budget" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/cost-of-ageing-populations/" target="_blank">Older Households Drawing upon Budget</a> (Image copyright Grattan Institute)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
From the Australian Broadcasting Commission:<br />
<h2>
<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/per-capita-gdp-growth-and-ageing-populations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">'<em>The costs of an ageing population keep growing, but who's going to pay?</em></a></h2>
<br />
<em>By chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>Updated 27 May 2019, 9:29am</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>‘…..The politics may be tricky but future governments will have to confront the grim economic reality of the post-World War II baby boom.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>Australians born after 1946 began to retire in huge numbers in 2011. Demand for the aged pension, aged care and health services have been rising commensurately.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>The working age population is a net contributor to the federal budget. Older people, on the other hand, are the largest recipients of welfare, aged care and health care services.</em><br />
<h3>
<em>Retirees are getting expensive</em></h3>
<em><a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office/Publications/Research_reports/Australias_ageing_population_-_Understanding_the_fiscal_impacts_over_the_next_decade">A report released last month</a> by the independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) warns the ageing population will exert "historically unique" pressure on the federal finances in the decade to 2028-29.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>New figures in the report show that by 2028, Australians born between 1946 and 1964 will cost the Government more than Medicare does each year. Based on 2018 budget forecasts, the PBO estimates the cost of Medicare to be $32 billion in 2028-29. By then, lost revenue ($20 billion) and increased spending ($16 billion) on baby boomers will amount to $36 billion.</em><br />
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<em>The number of working-age Australians for every person aged 65 and over has fallen from 7.4 in the mid-1970s, to 4.4 in 2015. That figure is projected to fall to just 3.2 in 2055.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>Economists and policy makers need to find new taxpayers and increase workforce participation to support the hordes of older people entering retirement.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>The ageing population means that by 2028-29, the PBO estimates there will be 600,000 fewer workers.</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
<em>While the Australian population has been ageing, life expectancy has also improved.</em><br />
<em>As far as the government's fiscal fortunes go, it's a perfect storm. The pension was introduced in 1909 with 65 set as the qualifying age for men.</em>'<br />
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While mostly conservative parties attract most of the upper median age vote they are or have been compromised by financial policies catering to the same, but impairing budgets into the long term. Who's going to pay? Younger generations.....<br />
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For more articles or blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ageing democracy</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/per-capita-gdp-growth-and-ageing-populations/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">demography</a>, click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-33334590777573901492019-05-22T18:01:00.000+10:002019-05-22T18:01:50.157+10:00Contract Cheating Ghost Writing - University Students<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Recent media news stories and documentaries have highlighted perceived issues of international student plagiarism, collusion, ghost writing and contract cheating.<br />
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Most institutions have systems and processes in place to deal with, or at least ameliorate the impact of sub-optimal academic integrity, including higher language requirements (and level testing at enrolment), Turnitin and other duplication detection software, in class assessments, assignment workshops, feedback and monitoring.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Issues of plagiarism, collusion, ghost writing and contract cheating at university by students." class="alignnone wp-image-438" height="213" src="https://educationtrainingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/student-contract-cheating-ghost-writing.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Recent media news stories and documentaries have highlighted perceived issues of international student plagiarism, collusion, ghost writing and contract cheating." width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/05/20/detection-of-student-plagiarism-ghost-writing-contract-cheating/" target="_blank">How to stop or limit ghost writing and contract cheating</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
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However, like other sectors, education is prone to only lip service being paid by some commissioners, owners, shareholders, management, academia and related; rather than enforcement of minimum regulatory compliance it’s viewed as a voluntary code by some.<br />
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The following is summary of an article about the issue and how to deal with it, in an American context which has recently seen SAT and related corruption for entry to top universities.<br />
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<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/essay-mills-ghost-writers-and-university-students/">Detecting and Deterring Ghostwritten Papers: A Guide to Best Practices</a> (from The Best Schools website)</h2>
By David A. Tomar<br />
<h3>
1 Introduction For ten years, I made my living helping students cheat. I worked as a professional ghost writer, completing homework assignments, producing essays, and composing senior theses for alternately desperate, lazy, or disengaged college and graduate students.</h3>
I worked as an independent contractor affiliated with various online paper mills and, between 2000 and 2010, spent nearly every day of my life immersed in academic research and compositional writing. Writing as many as 5,000 typewritten pages a year, I earned as much as many professors.<br />
In November of 2010, I announced my retirement in a tell-all article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Using the pseudonym Ed Dante, I covered what was, for many, a first glimpse into the shadowy underworld of academic ghostwriting.<br />
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2 The Ghostwriting Business. Before it is possible to prevent and police ghostwriting, one must understand the industry. Though many educators are well aware of ghostwriting, how it happens and that it most likely has occurred in their own classrooms, just as many others have a limited or non-existent sense of its impact.</h3>
Quite to the point, of the many reactions that greeted my original article in The Chronicle, doubt and skepticism were among the most common. Some truly dedicated, earnest, and otherwise astute educators refused to accept not only that wholesale cheating of this sort could be perpetrated but that it could be done so consistently and effectively without detection right under their noses.<br />
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2.1 Prevalence….. Still, we may be able to deduce a great deal just from the accessibility and ease-of-use of ghostwriting services. According to an article in the New York Times regarding rising rates of student cheating, “research has shown that a major factor in unethical behavior is simply how easy or hard it is.”<br />
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We can say with great certainty that it is easier than ever to employ an academic ghostwriting service. If a student has the money, he or she has the means.<br />
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The vast majority of students locate these services simply by doing a Google search for “Custom Paper Writing,” “essay help,” “term papers,” “homework services,” “essay writing services,'” or any number of other pertinent word combinations. Each of these terms will ultimately return dozens of pages of relevant search results.<br />
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From what is immediately apparent though, we can conclude two things about the prevalence of ghostwriting:<br />
<ol>
<li>The inquiring student will find it easy to locate a desired service and begin using it; and</li>
<li>The enterprising freelancer will find it easy to locate an employment opportunity and begin earning income from it.</li>
</ol>
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2.2 Pricing and Structure Most companies operate using a similar pricing spectrum, charging between $10 and $50 per page depending on proximity of the deadline. For instance, Mypaperwriter.com prices its custom writing services between $17.55 and $45.85 per page. This is in line with the pricing spectrum and structure of the industry's more lucrative companies.<br />
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The variance is usually determined by deadline. This is the measure used most frequently to define an assignment's price. Papers due in a week or more are typically bound to the low end of the pricing spectrum. For anything due in less than a week, the cost per page will go up as the number of days goes down. A paper due in less than 24 hours will fall on the highest end of the cost-per-page spectrum.<br />
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2.3 Clientele The ghostwriting industry enjoys a customer base comprised of three primary demographics. These are the likeliest perpetrators of ghostwritten plagiarism:<br />
2.3.1 English Language Learners: International students often arrive at American universities without a background or meaningful support in English composition.<br />
2.3.2 Composition/Research deficient students: A startling number American students—for whom English is a native language---will actually suffer from many of these exact same deceits<br />
2.3.3 Lazy students: Some ghostwriting clients simply lack the motivation and interest to complete their own work, a condition that Farnese et al. (2011) call “academic moral disengagement.” In many cases, a perfectly capable student will utilize an academic ghostwriting service as a way to cut down effort or improve his or her chances of receiving a better grade.<br />
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<h3>
3 The Ghostwriting Conundrum…… However, the web has proliferated and simplified cheating, dramatically expanding the accessibility, visibility, and ease with which students can lift, recycle or otherwise claim authorship of work that is not their own. Consequently, the growth of this industry helped to provoke the growth of the plagiarism-detection industry of which Turnitin is a leading example.</h3>
Other notable sites include Viper, Plagscan, Plagtracker, Grammarly, Small SEO Tools, and Plagiarism Checker.<br />
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Turnitin represents the gold standard in plagiarism detection. Even so, given the limitations inherent in plagiarism detection, even Turnitin has no way to bring its extensive empirical data to bear on ghostwriting.<br />
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With these conditions in mind, we point to a handful of detection and deterrence challenges that are unique to ghostwriting:<br />
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3.1 Original, non-plagiarized content: Most ghostwriting companies are faithful to this service guarantee and will terminate independent contractors for failure to comply.<br />
3.2 Low likelihood of raising suspicion: Ghostwriting places the onus on the educator to have initial cause for suspicion. This requires the individual grading a written assignment to sense a disconnect between the student and the assignment, which of course requires some initial familiarity with the student in question.<br />
3.3 Difficulty of translating suspicion into proof: Cheating is, of course, a serious allegation and students have a lot riding on the completion of their education. So obviously, the average student will go to great lengths to deny any such allegations. Students are not afraid to get litigious if need be. The point is, as an educator, one must be very careful about levying the accusation without hard evidence.<br />
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<h3>
4 The Four D's of Ghostbusting</h3>
4.1 Design Design refers to the way a professor constructs assignments, course materials, tests, classroom time and the semester-long curriculum. This is an area in education where quality control runs the gamut from excellence to criminal incompetence. There are plenty of professors who work tirelessly to tailor assignments, materials and examinations to remain in-step with constantly evolving subject matter, student culture and best practices. But there are also plenty of professors who recycle old materials without scrutiny and who depend wholly on text-based content which most students could acquire without professor mediation.<br />
4.2 Deterrence Deterrence refers to ways of diminishing the inclination, motive, or desire to purchase a ghostwritten paper…..That is, students at least believe that they are cheating out of ease, normalcy, or necessity. The study finds that the onus falls on instructors to live up to certain student expectations regarding clarity and engagement of course content. The study identities this as the best route to deterring the rationalized impulse to use a ghostwriting service.<br />
<h4>
Practical Strategies</h4>
4.2.1 Individualization: Individualization of the educational experience can instill in the student a greater sense of commitment to course materials and to the knowledge and career opportunities thereby implied. Large lecture halls and online courses can create a sense of anonymity for the would-be cheater.<br />
4.2.2 Conferencing: One thing that large universities and online courses have in common is that, if one desires, one can go an entire semester without ever once personally meeting a professor. There is comfort in this anonymity. Removing this comfort creates a deterrent that does not otherwise exist.<br />
4.2.3 Emphasis on in-class participation: Mandatory class participation heightens the imperative for students to become familiar with course content. Mandating contributions to class discussions gives students a strong incentive to establish a consistent voice and perspective on course subjects.<br />
4.2.4 Student engagement: This one is really and truly up to each individual educator. It is within every educator's power to be as creative, energetic, inspiring, original, unpredictable, and engaging as he or she wants to be….Many students feel no remorse about cheating in a course from which there is a feeling of disengagement. Uninspired lectures, standard texts, and generic assignments serve as great ammunition for a student who wishes to rationalize his or her detachment.<br />
4.2.5 Miscellaneous strategies of deterrence: Course discussions where students are invited to share research experience and knowledge Professor lectures based on and attributed to content drawn from student assignments A requirement for students to occasionally present research findings or other written work to the class or professor.<br />
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4.3 Detection Detection is both a manual process driven by professorial experience and a technology driven process with continued room for growth and improvement.<br />
<h4>
Practical Strategies</h4>
4.3.1 Assignment exit interviews: Standardizing one-on-one conferencing with each student following assignment submission requires each student to defend his or her writing.<br />
4.3.2 Manual literary fingerprinting: Of the many strategies outlined in this account, this may well be the most readily adaptable to any context where writing forms a portion of the coursework. Here, the orientation process for any writing intensive course will begin with an in-class writing assignment.<br />
4.3.3 File properties: One way to improve the chances of detecting ghostwritten work is to simply be a savvier user of technology than the average cheating student. It's easier than one might think.<br />
4.3.4 Computational literary fingerprinting: Based on the effectiveness and value of Turnitin.com as a strategy for plagiarism detection of the non-ghostwritten variety, this strategy may best predict the future of ghostwriting detection.<br />
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4.4 Dedication Detection is all well and good, but let's face it, people good at detection are more likely to join a police force than a teachers union. Teachers are in the classroom to teach. This is where the fourth “D” comes into play. The instructor must be dedicated to the education of his or her students, not just to punching an academic time card.<br />
<h4>
Practical Strategy</h4>
4.4.1 Identify struggling students and see that they get help: These are the students who are by far the most likely to employ a ghostwriter. In order to reduce the presence of the ghostwriter in the classroom, educators must take pre-emptive steps to identify those who are most likely to need his services.<br />
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For more blogs and articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/importance-of-international-student-satisfaction-in-marketing-communications/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">international students</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/373/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">academic integrity</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/international-education-market-research/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">international education</a> click through.</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-71132037225125924352019-04-08T17:25:00.000+10:002019-04-08T17:25:48.724+10:00Ghost Writing Essay Mills and Academic Integrity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Academic integrity, copying, plagiarism, collusion, ‘ghost writing’ and essay factories have become a fact of life in university or higher education, internationally. This article endeavours to explain how or why is it an issue but at same time, short on what are the solutions?<br />
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While western democracies, and the developing world, have politicians, business and public leaders openly flouting ethical standards through egregious corruption and related unethical behaviour, is it any wonder?<br />
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Some solutions are precluded by universities’ corporate or financial needs e.g. rather than (barely modified) assessments that are more efficient to grade (or worse more multiple choice), there maybe a need for a return to in class open book and variety of assessments?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Academic integrity plagiarism essay factories and ghost writing for university students" class="alignnone wp-image-432" height="310" src="https://educationtrainingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/university-students-academic-integrity-plagiarism.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="University student cheating, copying, plagiarism, ghost writing and essay mills" width="434" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/essay-mills-ghost-writers-and-university-students/" target="_blank">Academic Integrity at University</a> (Image copyright Pexels).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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From The Guardian, Chris Husbands:<br />
<h2>
'<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/copying-and-plagiarism-at-university/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Essay mills prey on vulnerable students – let's stamp them out</a></h2>
Universities alone can’t stop the rise of essay mills. We need support from the government and tech firms to defeat them<br />
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In the 1990s, there was enormous optimism around how the internet would connect people and make knowledge available to all. Fast forward twenty years, and identity theft, cybercrime, online bullying and appalling sexual exploitation have become everyday news stories. Increasingly, it’s the perversions of the internet which dominate our thinking.<br />
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The business model is simple. You have an essay to write, you are time poor, you pay a fee for the essay to be written. The fee these crooks charge depends on the length, the standard you are looking for, and the deadline you are facing….<br />
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For universities, the digital world’s most concerning development is the spread of essay mills. They’re not new: it’s always been tempting for some students to pay someone to do their work for them. But the internet has vastly eased the relationship between customers and suppliers, fuelling the growth of these essay mills….<br />
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….Learning is based on integrity and scholarship: showing that students have read, understood and been influenced by the work of others, and can explain how their thinking is new or different. Education is not about getting grades, it’s about being an active participant in learning opportunities. If some of that is difficult, well, difficulty is the point….<br />
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….The Secretary of State for Education’s announcement that tech firms should block payments to essay mills and students should report on their peers is a step in the right direction. We need to work together to preserve the integrity of the UK higher education system from these unscrupulous companies, and the way they prey on vulnerable students who don’t fully understand the implications of their actions.'<br />
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<em>Chris Husbands is the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University</em><br />
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For more articles and blogs about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/study-advice-for-starting-university/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">academic integrity</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/why-students-copy-plagiarise-collude-or-cheat/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">copying</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/373/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">student plagiarism</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-42828600431553489752019-03-20T17:16:00.000+11:002019-03-20T17:16:46.001+11:00Mainstreaming Hate in Australia - White Nationalist Terror in NZ<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After the tragic white nationalist extremist event in Christchurch’s mosques by an Australian extremist white nationalist gunman, we have observed attempts by local and international politicians and media to explain. However, they are also guilty of propagating or encouraging <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">white Nativism</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">white nationalism</a> and nowadays promoting ‘western civilisation’ for attention, power, influence over policy making and elections while demonising diversity and multiculturalism.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nf02BO9PEHk/XJHZejfHoqI/AAAAAAAAET8/1AbwmVWRJwckI4nQhzxp64Ge6WX80K0BgCLcBGAs/s1600/Diversity%2Bin%2BSociety.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Australian white nationalist extremist terroist events at Christchurch mosque" border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nf02BO9PEHk/XJHZejfHoqI/AAAAAAAAET8/1AbwmVWRJwckI4nQhzxp64Ge6WX80K0BgCLcBGAs/s320/Diversity%2Bin%2BSociety.jpg" title="Diversity and Multiculturalism vs. White Nationalism" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/white-nationalist-extremism-mainstreamed-by-politicians-and-media/" target="_blank">Diversity and Multiculturalism</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
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In past decades, emanating from the US (according to Nancy MacLean author of ‘Democracy in Chains’), has been radical right libertarianism for corporates e.g. Kochs et al. and/or fossil fuel related sector to deny global warming, attacking science and education, demanding lower taxes, smaller government etc., while co-opting ageing conservative Christian evangelicals and white nationalists to vote the right way aka Trump and Brexit.<br />
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However, dog whistling and divisive narratives focused upon non-WASPs and non-Europeans, are also symptoms of a long-standing ideology, i.e. eugenics, which while being one and the same, has re-emerged amongst politicians, media and voters of the right in the Anglo world and parts of Europe (but described benignly as an electoral tactic), after becoming unpopular due to the Nazis’ experiments and holocaust.<br />
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This ideology, or power structure, is manifested and presented in multiple ways and media in Australia with refugees and ‘boat people’, US with Trump and UK with Brexit; back grounded by old WASP culture and isolationism. Manifested as raw racism or promoting ‘whiteness’, ‘final solutions’ (to immigration), ‘globalisation’ (of people), promotion of border control or security, withdrawal from trade agreements, alarm round ‘high immigration’ or ‘exponential population growth’, use of offshore detention (camps/prisons), back grounded by criticism of ‘refugees’, Islam, and even local minorities whether women, recipients of welfare, LGBT, workers, indigenous or youth.<br />
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In addition to the poisonous ideology, masked by dog whistling and proxy issues, is the transnational and systematic nature of the ‘architecture’ via academia, politicians and media (‘assembly line’ according to author of Dark Money, Jane Mayer) to normalise and spread the negative messaging; funded by (mostly) US radical right libertarians, oligarchs and selected think tanks.<br />
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Key architect, funded by oligarchs et al., was the recently deceased John Tanton, described in a New York Times article as the ‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/hans-rosling-the-facts-and-ignorance-about-population-growth/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">most influential unknown man in America</a>’, linked with Paul Ehrlich, Club of Rome, ZPG Zero Population Growth (supported by Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie etc. foundations), Population Matters UK, Sustainable Australia, white evangelical Christians, white nationalists and his US Inc. based network now influences (or even writes) White House immigration policy.<br />
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<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">'Tanton’s own Social Contract Press has been influential</a>: ‘<em>The Social Contract Press (TSCP) routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today's immigrants.</em>’<br />
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Not only had Tanton also supported the white Australia policy, liaised with ‘Sustainable Population Australia’ and its elite ‘environmentally minded’ local patrons, his TSCP also published and reviewed one of the most infamous white nationalist screeds which influences the controversial Steve Bannon et al., ‘Camp of the Saints’ (reviewed by Australian Academic Katherine Betts), from Sutherland in The Guardian 2004 ‘<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Far right or far wrong?</a>’:<br />
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‘<em>The book currently generating the most chatter is Jean Raspail's Camp of Saints. First published in 1973, in France, no British publisher (a gutless crew) has been brave enough to take it on. In America, publication was sponsored, in 1985, by the ultra-right (ultrawrong), anti-immigration Laurel Foundation, under whose aegis it now sells like hot cakes.</em></div>
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<em>Camp of Saints foretells an imminent "swamping" of Europe by illegals from the orient. Forget passports or border controls: they just hijack tankers and come, an armada of subcontinental sub-humanity: a brown tsunami. Europe is so enervated by liberalism and postcolonial guilt and depopulated by "family planning" that the alien tide ("with a stench of latrines") just laps over the continent. A small resistance band (the "Saints") is liquidated - by the French government. The immigrants come, they settle, they rape, they steal. Above all, they breed. Raspail calls it "the Calcutta solution" - genocide by stealth. Europe becomes a Dark Continent.</em></div>
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<em>Raspail's loathsome novel has recently achieved something like respectability. The author has a website and has been hailed "the Frantz Fanon of the White Race". Camp of Saints articulates a western nightmare fashionable among neo-conservatives. Civilisations won't "clash". The developed world (and in the Middle East, Israel) will simply be out spawned into extinction.</em>’</div>
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What we now observe is frantic dissembling by most conservative politicians desperate to separate themselves from extremists, after their own unethical and divisive Nativist utterances or dog whistling from the past and present.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-52765893089850436512019-03-13T18:05:00.000+11:002019-03-13T18:05:02.439+11:00Ageing Populations and Monetary Policy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Australian economic, political and social narratives focus upon ‘high immigration rate’ and ‘population growth’ as negatives, claiming in first article following from The Conversation that the latter masks low or declining economic growth. On the other hand, VOX CEPR suggests a linkage between ageing, longevity and declining per capita GDP; increasing numbers of retirees may well be a significant cause?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j9Jqodm9ALI/XIiqgc6MRaI/AAAAAAAAESA/k28wsdf2FCso-qHIkb5IDKnz_sZsDnEEgCLcBGAs/s1600/Per%2BCapita%2BGDP%2Band%2BAgeing%2BPopulations.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Does a decline in per capita GDP signify increase in population via immigration or ageing citizens?" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j9Jqodm9ALI/XIiqgc6MRaI/AAAAAAAAESA/k28wsdf2FCso-qHIkb5IDKnz_sZsDnEEgCLcBGAs/s320/Per%2BCapita%2BGDP%2Band%2BAgeing%2BPopulations.jpeg" title="Impact of Ageing Populations on Per Capita GDP" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/per-capita-gdp-growth-and-ageing-populations/" target="_blank">Ageing populations and declining per capita GDP</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
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<h2>
'<a href="https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-australias-sudden-ultra-low-economic-growth-ought-not-to-have-come-as-surprise-113026" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Vital Signs: Australia’s sudden ultra-low economic growth ought not to have come as surprise</a></h2>
March 7, 2019 1.28pm AEDT<br />
<br />
Australia’s big little economic lie was laid bare on Wednesday.<br />
<br />
National accounts figures show that the Australian economy grew <a href="http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/meisubs.nsf/0/7F1A83D8EEABAF73CA2583B40018551F/%24File/52060_dec%202018.pdf">by just 0.2%</a> in the last quarter of 2018. This disappointing result was below market expectations and official forecasts of 0.6%. It put annual growth for the year at just 2.3%.<br />
<br />
But the shocking revelation was that Gross Domestic Product per person (a more relevant measure of living standards) actually slipped in the December quarter by 0.2%, on the back of a fall of 0.1% in the September quarter…..<br />
<h3>
Population growth hides it</h3>
The more insidious answer in Australia is that, for a long time, our high population growth, fed by a high immigration rate, has masked a much less rosy picture of how we are doing. And neither side of politics has wanted to admit it.<br />
<br />
At 1.6% a year, Australia’s population growth is roughly double the OECD average, which is perhaps why we hear politicians say things like “Australia continues to grow faster than all of the G7 nations except the United States,” as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg did this week.<br />
<br />
The good news is that standard economic theory tells us that in the long run, immigration has very little impact on GDP per capita in either direction, unless it drives a shift in the population’s mix of skills.<br />
<br />
But in the short term, it depresses GDP per capita because fixed capital such as buildings and machines has to be shared between more workers….<br />
<br />
But the fundamentals of the Australian economy are looking somewhat weak. Like the US and other advanced economies, we are living in an era of secular stagnation – a protracted period of much lower growth than we had come to expect.<br />
<br />
And until we do something to tackle it, such as a major government investment in physical and social infrastructure, we will continue to face anaemic wage growth, shaky consumer confidence, and mediocre economic growth per person.'<br />
<br />
'<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/ageing-democracy-nativism-and-populism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The impact of population ageing on monetary policy</a><br />
<br />
Marcin Bielecki, Michał Brzoza-Brzezina, Marcin Kolasa 05 March 2019<br />
<br />
Population ageing is likely to affect many areas of life, from pension system sustainability to housing markets. This column shows that monetary policy can be considered another victim. Low fertility rates and increasing life expectancy substantially lower the natural rate of interest. As a consequence, central banks are more likely to hit the lower bound constraint on the nominal interest rate and face long periods of low inflation, especially if they fail to account for the impact of demographic trends on the natural interest rate in real time.<br />
<br />
Many countries, developed and developing alike, are experiencing a process of population ageing – fertility rates remain below the level that guarantees the replacement of the population and the average life expectancy at birth keeps increasing. As a consequence, the ratio of the elderly to the working-age population – the old age dependency ratio – has been, and will be, increasing over the upcoming decades. To give some idea on the magnitude of this process, while the ratio of elderly (aged 65 or more) to the working-age population (aged 15-64) in the euro area was around 0.25 at the turn of the 21st century, the proportion is projected to exceed 0.5 by 2050 (see Figure 1).<br />
<br />
The demographic transition will have many consequences related to various aspects of economic activity. To mention just a few, the increasing share of elderly in populations is likely to negatively impact the growth rate of GDP per person (Cooley and Henriksen 2018) and the sustainability of pension systems (Boulhol and Geppert 2018), and will lead to an increase in the share of GDP being spent on healthcare and related services (Breyer et al. 2011)….'<br />
<br />
For more articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/population-ageing-populist-politics/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">population growth</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/nom-net-overseas-migration-immigration-population-growth/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NOM net overseas migration</a> click through.<br />
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</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-12533491645529170242019-03-06T16:39:00.000+11:002019-03-06T16:39:27.686+11:00Study Advice for First Year University Students<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Following is an article from The Conversation Australia with five tips for starting out at university including support services, time management, reading literature, plagiarism or academic integrity and personal responsibility.<br />
<br />
<h2>
'<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/flipped-model-pedagogy-or-andragogy-in-higher-education-teaching-learning/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Five top tips to succeed in your first year of university</a></h2>
February 25, 2019 6.15am AEDT<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XieecA_aHcE/XH9b9EIHShI/AAAAAAAAEQ0/C46s3_FrdvUC2muQxCRASI4xQRseHVEtQCLcBGAs/s1600/First-Year-University-Students.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Freshers or new university students can learn tips or advice for study success." border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XieecA_aHcE/XH9b9EIHShI/AAAAAAAAEQ0/C46s3_FrdvUC2muQxCRASI4xQRseHVEtQCLcBGAs/s320/First-Year-University-Students.jpeg" title="Tips for New University Students" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/study-advice-for-starting-university/" target="_blank">How to Study at University</a> (Image copyright copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
This week, thousands of new students from around the country will be starting their first year at university. For many students and their parents, transitioning to university is an exciting but daunting experience. Here are five tips to help students succeed in their first year.<br />
<ol>
<li><h3>
Find support services</h3>
</li>
</ol>
All universities offer student counselling, mental health, sexual health, disability services, careers centres, accommodation and financial support.<br />
<br />
One of the first places to look for these services is on your university’s website under the heading, Current Students. Students should also attend presentations during orientation week, ask their tutors and course coordinators or contact their student centre to get more information.<br />
<br />
The best way to get information is to talk to other students….<br />
<br />
<ol start="2">
<li><h3>
Manage your time well</h3>
</li>
</ol>
Learning how to juggle social and academic commitments is one of the most difficult challenges for new students. One of the best ways to manage study workloads is to draw up a semester plan. This can take the form of a timeline or calendar.<br />
<br />
Students should start by entering in all assignments and exams on their semester plan and then work backwards to allocate time for researching, draft planning, proofreading and checking references…..<br />
<br />
<ol start="3">
<li><h3>
Keep up-to-date with readings</h3>
</li>
</ol>
One common theme across different faculties is that a good assignment is one where arguments have been debated and claims supported by evidence. In order to do this well, students need to do the weekly readings assigned in their individual courses.<br />
<br />
You also need to read beyond the required list. Lecturers are not interested in students’ personal opinions. They’re interested in students’ opinions that are <a href="https://www.pearson.com.au/insights-and-news/the-future-of-education/becoming-independent-a-guide-to-succeeding-at-university/">informed by evidence</a>. That is, supported by the readings and research the student has done….<br />
<br />
<ol start="4">
<li><h3>
How to avoid plagiarism</h3>
</li>
</ol>
Learning how to reference reading sources correctly, to avoid plagiarism, is an essential skill. At the start of semester, most students have to complete <a href="https://avoidingplagiarism.uts.edu.au/">online modules</a> which explain the complexities of academic integrity.<br />
<br />
Students caught plagiarising risk failing a course or being expelled from their degree. What this means for students is everything you read which has informed your thinking must be included in your reference list.<br />
<br />
<ol start="5">
<li><h3>
Enjoy university life!</h3>
</li>
</ol>
If you’re not happy with your course or subjects, you should get advice from your faculty. Students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning progress, but you should still talk to your lecturers about any concerns.'<br />
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For more blogs and articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/copying-and-plagiarism-at-university/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">academic integrity</a> or <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/373/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">copying and plagiarism</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/skills-of-critical-thinking/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">critical thinking</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/soft-or-work-skills-development-of-students-for-employment/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">soft skills</a> click through.<br />
</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-45941233035263390312019-03-03T16:27:00.000+11:002019-03-03T16:27:31.947+11:00Brand Trust in Digital or Social Media Marketing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
How can trust in brands be developed and maintained in an age of digital marketing, speed, mistrust and social media?<br />
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This article first appeared in The Australian on 15th February 2019, then via KPMG NewsRoom.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/brand-trust-social-media-digital-marketing-personal-customer-data/" target="_blank"><img alt="How can trust in brands be developed and maintained in an age of digital marketing, speed, mistrust and social media?" border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="640" height="188" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eZ45VZaDETs/XHtk64owIfI/AAAAAAAAEPQ/yZRz0nEr26QatafX5adedDHzTNJU8Xf4QCLcBGAs/s320/Brand%2BTrust.jpeg" title="Brand Trust in Time of Digital or Social Media Marketing" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/brand-trust-social-media-digital-marketing-personal-customer-data/" target="_blank">Brand Trust in Digital Times</a> (Image copyright Pexels)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<h2>
'<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/negative-issues-of-digital-marketing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Brand power in the age of declining trust</a></h2>
Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer report in 2017 carried a headline “Trust is in crisis around the world”. A <a href="https://home.kpmg/au/en/home/insights/2018/06/customer-experience-excellence-report-2018-australia.html">KPMG report</a> last year found that “trust has declined in almost every major economy and many developing ones”. In a CNN interview recently, Salesforce’s founder and CEO Marc Benioff argued that “companies that are struggling today are struggling because of a crisis with trust”.<br />
<br />
There seems no end to the brands, organisations and leaders that have lost the public’s trust. There has been a royal commission into our banks, multiple questions over Facebook’s use of personal data, cheating cricketers, fake news, church leaders charged, and political parties bickering among themselves.<br />
<br />
It is hard to believe that some brands and organisations have turned a blind eye to building trust with customers over the past decade. Trust is the basis of all relationships, gained slowly like drops of rain but lost in buckets. It is fundamental to business, symbolised in a handshake and eye-to-eye contact.<br />
<br />
……These brands meet the “trust” checklist in the KPMG report – standing for something more than profit; demonstrably acting in the customers’ best interest; doing what you say you will; keeping customers informed; and being competent and likeable.<br />
<br />
There is no doubt that brand trust is more complex in a digital world, where social media and data personalisation have enabled brands to act as if they are talking to you in person. Combine that with the exponential growth of individuals’ data that can be captured; digital marketplaces; smartphones; voice technology such as Google Home and Alexa; and the algorithms and deep learning of artificial intelligence, and there are far more opportunities to get brand trust wrong. This is especially so when trust is measured at lightning speed and some decisions around brands are being made by machines acting like humans.<br />
<br />
Data became the hottest brand trust issue last year. The biggest data breach involved the Marriott International hotel chain and had an impact on up to 383 million people on the Starwood booking database. This included more than five million unencrypted passport numbers. Facebook had multiple issues, the most discussed being Cambridge Analytica’s access to Facebook users’ data. This data was used to persuade voters to change their opinions in the last US presidential election.<br />
<br />
Consumers started to question the trust they had in these brands: one US survey showed 71 percent of people were worried about how brands collected and used their personal data. …… Marketers also had their doubts after YouTube posted ads that appeared alongside offensive videos, leading to a number of companies and their media agencies withdrawing advertising from YouTube for a period.<br />
In the past five years, some of Australia’s biggest companies have rushed to establish or buy into data businesses that can offer insights into the purchasing behaviour of their customers and also use that information to improve their marketing communications……<br />
<br />
Some companies have commercialised this data by selling it to outside organisations that match it with their customer profiles, adding to the knowledge they have on their customers. Some have questioned the ethics of this, even if it is anonymous; others ask who actually owns the data – the individual or the companies?<br />
<br />
Trust around data relies on the fundamentals: common sense says that being a friendly and helpful neighbour is better for a long-term relationship than being annoying or remote. The personal customer data a business holds needs to be treated in the same way. In a business environment where consumers have more choice than ever, as well as more transparency and lower barriers to switching brands, boards, CEOs and marketers cannot ignore the need to invest in brand trust.<br />
<br />
For more blogs and articles about <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/trends-in-digital-marketing-and-business-strategy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">digital marketing</a>, <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/student-youth-marketing-communications-digital-technology-social-media/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">social media marketing</a> and <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/how-to-research-the-digital-customer-journey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">consumer behaviour</a> click through.<br />
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Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2089496001503779206.post-67753277963886479272019-02-27T14:23:00.000+11:002019-02-27T14:23:35.696+11:00Students better than professors teaching tutorials?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Interesting article from The Conversation regarding university tutorial teaching or tutoring quality, students or academics? The glib answer would be neither form of pedagogy, in fact 'andragogy' for adult learners shows that many should be learning together as students, not through teacher centred direction.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/university-education-student-teacher-tutors-or-professors/" target="_blank"><img alt="Can students teach as well as professors?" class="alignnone wp-image-411" height="310" src="https://educationtrainingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/university-student-teacher-tutors-or-professors.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="465" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/university-education-student-teacher-tutors-or-professors/" target="_blank">Student Tutorial Teachers or Professors? (Copyright image Pexels)</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
'<a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/adult-education-pedagogy-andragogy-apply-complex-learning-teaching-models/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research shows students are as good as professors in tutorial teaching</a><br />
<br />
February 19, 2019 5.23pm AEDT<br />
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Professors and graduate students are at opposite ends of the university hierarchy in terms of experience, qualifications and pay. But at many universities, both do the same job: they teach tutorials offered in parallel with lectures.<br />
<br />
Our <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp11975.pdf">research</a> explores whether it makes sense for professors to teach tutorials – and we found it doesn’t. They are no more effective as tutorial instructors than students.<br />
<br />
This finding implies that universities can reduce costs or free up professors’ time by asking students to teach more tutorials.<br />
<h3>
Measuring instructors’ effectiveness</h3>
We conducted a survey about tutorial instruction in OECD universities. Our <a href="http://ftp.iza.org/dp11975.pdf">results</a> show that tutorials are used in 63% of OECD universities. At 25% of these institutions, tutorials are taught by students, 29% by professors and 46% by a mixture of the two.<br />
<br />
Using professors to teach small groups is expensive, and <a href="https://newsroom.iza.org/en/archive/research/steering-more-students-into-stem/">reducing costs is a central concern</a> given the <a href="https://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/2018-trends-in-college-pricing.pdf">increases in tuition fees</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorkfed.org/studentloandebt/index.html">student debt</a>.<br />
<br />
We have studied the costs and benefits of using tutorial instructors with different academic ranks, using data from a Dutch business school that offers four key features. First, tutorials are taught by a wide range of instructors, ranging from bachelor’s students to full professors. Second, the school’s dataset is large enough (we observe more than 12,000 students) to give us enough statistical power to detect even small differences between instructors.<br />
<br />
Third, at this business school students are randomly assigned to instructors of different academic ranks, creating a perfect experiment for seeing whether academic rank matters. Finally, we were able to supplement these already excellent data with measures of students’ satisfaction with the course, and students’ earnings and job satisfaction after graduation, for some of these students. This is important since instructors might matter in many ways and we need to cast a wide net to capture a range of student outcomes.<br />
<h3>
Students just as effective</h3>
Overall, our results show that lower-ranked instructors teach tutorials as effectively as higher-ranked ones. The most effective instructors – postdoctoral researchers – increase students grades by less than 0.02 points on a 10-point grade scale compared with student instructors. The differences between all other instructor types, from student instructor and full professor, is smaller than that.<br />
<br />
Full professors are also no better than student instructors in improving students’ grades in the next related course or job satisfaction and earnings after graduation. We do, however, find that higher-ranked instructors achieve somewhat better course evaluations, but these differences are small.<br />
These findings are counter-intuitive. Yet they are consistent with the general <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272710001696">findings</a> in primary and secondary education that formal education does a poor job at predicting who teaches well.<br />
<br />
What could be the reason why all the extra qualification and experience of professors does not translate into better results for their students? The content of tutorials might be adjusted in a way that students can easily teach them. Further, lower-ranked instructors may compensate for their lack of experience by being better able to relate to students and being more motivated.<br />
<h3>
Key implication</h3>
The implications of our findings are obvious. Universities can free up resources by not asking their most expensive staff to do a job that students can do equally well. We show that the business school we study can reduce the overall wages they pay to tutorial instructors by 50% if they only employ student instructors.<br />
<br />
There are, of course, reasons why universities might not want to exclusively rely on student instructors. Students might not be able to teach some more technically advanced master’s courses.<br />
<br />
There might be some research-inactive but tenured professors whose most valuable use of time is tutorial teaching. And, as with other research that rely on data from one institution, future studies need to show whether our results hold in other universities as well.<br />
<br />
But even if these studies uncover some benefits to students of being taught by a professor, we would be surprised if these are worth the extra costs.'<br />
<br />
Unclear what is quality teaching and learning? Higher education or universities put great importance upon narrow and high-level specialised knowledge exemplified by a doctorate, i.e. content or subject matter expert. Further, the <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/tae40116-certificate-iv-training-assessment-package-asqa-review-submission/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">vocational Certificate IV of Training & Assessment TAE40116</a> is included on many job descriptions as a desirable teaching qualification and meanwhile ‘real world’ experience can be ignored by institutions and/or embellished by the beholder (unlike the ID points system, all factors are not taken into account).<br />
<br />
Related issues here, theory of teaching and learning, pedagogy (for children) is cited but for adults we should be speaking about andragogy. <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/adult-education-pedagogy-andragogy-apply-complex-learning-teaching-models/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Andragogy of adult education</a> focuses upon adults’ need for knowledge, motivation, willingness, experience, self-direction and task-based learning.<br />
Good instructional or learning design for adult centred learning:<br />
<ul>
<li>broad and deep needs analysis based on learners’ knowledge, expertise and real skill gaps</li>
<li>motivated when they have input and some control over learning, activities and outcomes</li>
<li>participate in learner centred activities, interaction and social learning</li>
<li>opportunities to contribute knowledge, expertise and reflect on their business practice</li>
<li>contribution to and management of learning activities through tasks and problem solving; post course too.</li>
</ul>
A more complete qualification is the <a href="https://educationtrainingsociety.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/learning-theory-behaviourism-english-language-teaching-celta/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">UK Cambridge RSA CELTA or TEFLA</a>, especially behavioural theories fitting 'andragogy', including teaching skills, and dealing with significant numbers of adult students for whom English is not their first language.<br />
<br />
Another issue to emerge has been that of 'ID Instructional Design' on behalf of university teachers, but not based upon subject matter or teach/learning skills (when ID is implicit for any competent teacher).<br />
<br />
Finally, explaining in terms of cost (cutting or savings) may seem mercenary when high fees are now the norm for most students.<br />
</div>
Andrew Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11352416169198133072noreply@blogger.com0