Discussions about teaching and teaching methods has always seemed a little ‘something’ to me. There are many contradictory reports, all with a different way of measuring the success of our teachers.

I can’t really qualify my thoughts, but I get the feeling it is a sort of ‘hippy bashing’ exercise (and yes I know how that sounds). For a start our teachers clearly aren’t valued enough. They, by and large, do an amazing job and should be commended for it. Secondly they generally use both the teaching methods in question. Thirdly, the more holistic approach that is in question (where students are though to read entire sentences rather than single words) seems to be a little bit more ‘hippy’.

I guess by ‘hippy’ I mean two things. Firstly ideologically left-leaning and secondly I think it associates with ideas of a lack of discipline and that this is reflected in the preferred teaching methods.

Now I don’t know that the disciplinary issue has any real backing, obviously it comes down to the individual teacher. However my suspicions about the ‘ideological battle’ were given some more weight when I came across this little number.

As the article states: “Liberal education spokesman Victor Perton smells an ideological rat. “The three films going together really do indicate a left bias,” he said. “We’ve got a significant ideological battle. You still get teachers wearing Che Guevara T-shirts at the weekend,” he says.”

So stand proud teachers of Australia. Lets face it, the Libs are a little threatened by critical thought but it is probably the single most empowering thing someone can have.

…on Monbiot’s Age of Consent

I’ve been wanting to make a few points about Monbiot’s Age of Consent for a little while now as I think it is a really significant book. I’ve just been too lazy to pick it up and reference it. So having given up on that I’ll just make a few wild accusations.

Firstly, while it is only given a passing mention it would seem to me that Monbiot believes that the structural change he is advocating can really only occur in a top-down manner. I disagree with this because I believe that it is only through bottom-up pressure that governments and international institutions will concede their power – usually by being over thrown and being replaced by a more benevolent ruler (as we are seeing in South America). I should clarify that Monbiot argues for the top-down imposition of a bottom-up democratic system. So my argument is not with the end but the means.

I also felt he over simplified ‘localisation’ arguments. Moreover he overlooked Glocalisation which I feel more accurately depicts the argument of parts of the Global Justice Movement. He also seemed to rely on one or two people’s opinion on the matter, and while it is undeniable that these two people’s opinion were myopic, it was wrong to characterise this entire idea along the lines of these two authors who I felt were unrepresentative of the idea of ‘localisation’. Moreover, I felt that in a lot of ways Monbiot was trying to encourage a ‘localisation’ of sorts.

Monbiot also placed a strong emphasis on ‘full-cost accounting’ – where social and environmental factors were taken into account in the pricing of things which he hoped would reduce the amount of transport – or unnecessary transport. Transport is a massive problem in terms of the environment so any reduction in it is a positive (and this is partly why I think Monbiot leans himself to localisation arguments). However I can’t help but think that the environmental often disproportionately outweighs the social in full-cost accounting. In a sense this is because of the importance I place on the environment. But moreover, humans have an environmental impact – generally this is considered a negative impact (which is generally true). But the fact of the matter is that humans will always have a negative environmental impact, the question is: ‘Is that sustainable?’ By that I mean, can the environment deal with this impact? So, in my mind full cost accounting would make the pharmaceuticals that are sent to Africa to help people with AIDS would then become prohibitively expensive. Perhaps I’m over simplifying Monbiot’s argument a touch here and I’m not sure if Pharmaceuticals are a good example but I think my point stands that necessary things often become prohibitively expensive (either for the individual or the government) with full cost accounting. In my mind, you can’t just have a blanket approach to this it needs to be highly circumstantial however certain things should be costed higher than they are in order to reduce demand and hopefully use that extra money for social and environmental development.

As an aside to this, I also think it is impossible to cost environmental impacts because it is impossible to fully understand environmental interrelations.

I was particularly pleased to see him rebut the argument that majority world countries aren’t in a position to afford high environmental standards. For starters, they just have to – there is no argument here. But more importantly, it is largely the multinational corporations that are polluting majority world countries. Take Shell’s exploits across Africa and South America for example – particularly in Nigeria where their unnecessary gas flairs are resulting in acid rain for example. These companies can afford particularly high levels of environmental standards. There is the argument that this then reduces the competitive advantage of these majority world countries who are desperate for the jobs these companies create. I disagree. These countries still offer cheap labour and materials. But more importantly, the companies (as Stiglitz points out) actually tend to have a negative economic impact on the countries they are exploiting. In other words they take more money out of the country than they put in – this includes both actual cash and infrastructure/technology. So if they are no longer have a completive advantage then this could well be a positive.

Finally, I’d think that Monboit’s argument is really not as radical as he thinks it is. It seems to me that what he is proposing is the creation of international institutions that do the job that the current international institutions are supposed to be doing. And while I think that Monbiot’s proposal is excellent, it really isn’t any different from (at least the rhetoric) of the current international institutions.
For all of it, Monbiot’s book is excellent and a must read for ANYONE interested in the ideas of the Global Justice Movement (or Movements).