At least, that’s the judgement of the national business paper, which failed to headline this morning’s awful PMI and eventually listed it somewhere below Kevin Rudd’s return to breakfast TV:
Meanwhile, China manufacturing, which is still growing, enjoys top spot:
I’m not sure that that is an editorial straight bat.
Mining, mining, mining.
Construction, real estate, property.
Retail, services, (latte anyone?) wealth management.
Manufacturing? No. It was decided under Hawke/Keating that we weren’t going to make things in this country any longer – Howard accelerated the process and now it’s pretty much non-existant, being managed into the ether.
The Fin Review is just acknowledgement of that fact – that we don’t really have a manufacturing sector anymore.
One the dollar crashes and mining slumps we’ll all live off each other’s superannuation serving each other coffees.
And we will all be paid so handsomely as to afford $600K median priced houses in Sydney.
I love it.
8% of the economy and 10% of our exports…
We don’t need exports we can just borrow the necessary. Imports replacing local production drives down inflation. What’s to cry over?????
)
(Note the lack of suitable expletives
Hmmmm lack of expletives hmmmm.
OK who are you?
What have you done with flawse?
Come on, put the ‘f’ back in flawse!
Are there any “editorial straight bats” in major Australian media? Not that I can see.
Maybe the ABC, a little?
Anyway, not to worry, I read just about, oh, a year or so ago that we’re on the verge of a new 100-year super cycle in the mining industry, so what’s the problem with all you Hanrahans?
The ABC bat has a distinct curve to the left.
Well anything not curved to the right looks curved to the left……
When looked at from overseas Australia’s media looks A/ contemptible and B/ right wing
Well anything not curved to the right looks curved to the left……
unless it’s straight!
As Straight as TestosterTones right to the wall above a Chairthing….
well noted
Lucky he kept to the right.
3d1k thinks anything other than Andrew Bolt is curved to the left. A persecution complex and tendency toward victimhood is classic feature of the hard right these days, perhaps it has always been so.
“A persecution complex and tendency toward victimhood is classic feature of the hard right these days…”
Thanks for the laugh mate.
You clearly have not kept abreast of Roxon’s anti-discrimination/personal offence legislation proposals. Typical Left angst salved by payment from others.
3d
‘You clearly have not kept abreast of Roxon’s anti-discrimination/personal offence legislation proposals. Typical Left angst salved by payment from others.’
What you really mean is
You clearly have not kept abreast of TestosterTone’s sexist discrimination and personal offence.
Typical Right bullying salved by parasitism on others.
No Gunna, I meant what I said.
Your comment got me thinking about the application of the word ‘sexist’ though. Are activities that work against the interests of some woman excluded from the claim. Individuals that engage in serial relationships with married men, catalysts to family breakdown of the kind experienced by shall be say Wilson, O’Connor, Gordon and Emerson which at some level may be opposed to the interests of the other women involved. You know, sisterhood. When it suits.
“Are activities that work against the interests of some woman excluded from the claim (of sexism). ”
Yes, of course! If the claim is directed against another woman who is clearly beyond reproach.
Great quote there 321k
Thats just beautiful. suggests a woman may be to blame for a relationship – good middle ages sexist attribution if ever there was some – why didnt you suggest she was a witch?
And raises the old furphy that sexism is just something raised by women for ‘when it suits’ gains. I think you might find there will be a few women out there with thoughts on that one!
And thats after taking cheap shots at my Mrs earlier today! Well done!
But when I am talking about sexism from TestosterTone I am talking about something alluded to by an overtly sleeved juvenile religious streak, backed by associates from across the political spectrum in his student politics days, a clearly stated stance on denying women the right to choose, backed by his bull headed myopia indicated every other time he opens his mouth either with reference to a women or discusses them in the general
He might die of shame! (but I doubt it) and it would appear some of his devotees probably wouldnt either.
Sorry Gunna, off the mark a bit there.
Calls of sexism and misogyny are freely bandied around the political sphere these days. I simply note that the pro-sisterhood cabal stands united, until it doesn’t.
In other word, when it suits. Falls apart when it would rather be it would rather be with suits…where are the concerns for fellow sisterhood then?
Quite a lot in relation to one TestosterTone, leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, whom in relation to they are 100% correct – and a very very large part of the electorate (even those who vote for him) know it…..
But when I am talking about sexism from TestosterTone I am talking about something alluded to by an overtly sleeved juvenile religious streak, backed by associates from across the political spectrum in his student politics days, a clearly stated stance on denying women the right to choose, backed by his bull headed myopia indicated every other time he opens his mouth either with reference to a women or discusses them in the general
Indeed.
My wife had the misfortune of meeting Mr Abbot once. His words were: “Female Electrical Engineers ? We have those ?”
Needless to say she was not impressed.
When looked at from overseas Australia’s media looks A/ contemptible and B/ right wing
Except America, of course.
But with going on 15 years now of slavish devotion by Australian Governments to the American model, we’re doing the best we can to catch up !
Not when it comes to finance.
“…manufacturing still has an important role to play in the Australian economy. It employs around 950,000 people and accounts for 9 per cent of output. This role is, however, changing.
Realistically, Australia cannot hope to be a large-scale producer of relatively standardised, plain-vanilla, manufactured goods for the world market. But what we can be is a supplier of manufactured goods that build on our comparative advantages: our educated workforce; our ability to design and manufacture specialised equipment; our reputation for high-quality food; our research and development skills; and our expertise in mining-related equipment.
Inevitably, the high exchange rate means that the manufacturing industry has little choice but to move up the value-added chain in order to compete. This is, of course, a lot easier to say than to do. It means difficult changes for many firms and those who work for them. It also means ongoing investment in human capital and the latest machinery and equipment and constant attention to improving productivity…”
The first graph says it all.
http://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2012/sp-dg-070312.html
“Realistically, Australia cannot hope to be a large-scale producer of relatively standardised, plain-vanilla, manufactured goods for the world market”
Why not, we’re too stupid?
Or is that kind of work beneath us?
“Inevitably, the high exchange rate means that the manufacturing industry has little choice but to move up the value-added chain in order to compete”
Or, we get realistic with what we pay ourselves. We start paying ourselves for our actual productive output relative to the global standard.
Can’t have a globalised market, globalised prices, a global workforce and local wages. Wages are set by prices. Prices are set by wages.
Some pretty big decisions are coming up very soon whether we want to make them or not.
I think the message the MineBot is trying to convey is:
“Realistically, Australia cannot hope to be a large-scale producer of anything except dirt”.
So lets just enjoy the ride … well, the miners can enjoy the ride, the rest of us should just shut up and stop whingeing.
“Some pretty big decisions are coming up very soon whether we want to make them or not.”
Well said.
The frightening thing is decisions will be made as a result of crisis instead of having preemptive policy.
Based in Spain for 15 years and I can see a rerun in Australia. The “advantage” is the free-floating currency will spread the coming income deflation. But it is coming and the deleveraging will not be pretty.
our educated workforce;????? You’re kidding right?
Get the dollar down to a level where we run a CAS and let it sort itself out. Until then we’re just busy doing an industrial Harakiri on all our industries…including manufacturing, rural and even downstream processing of mining output.
‘Educated workforce’ is the panacea Flawse…I know you’re not a fan, but Taleb turned that one on it’s head in Anti-Fragile.
‘Educated workforce’ is the universal catch-phrase at present, the education industry has all the answers
If our education system can’t turn out graduates with a basic grasp of grammar – such as when to use a possessive apostrophe – what hope does the manufacturing sector have?
Thats the least of it. You ought to have a look at the standard mathematics skills coming out of the Russian education system. We turn out those 16 stone checkout chicks who call for backup when the till goes down.
They’re adept at the internet though. Many of my fellow bogans have signed up with russianbrides.com
Gunna married one
lol
No need to sign up on the web gents. Just book a trip to Moscow or Kiev circa July – Fastest tracks in the known universe.
Many of them have advanced degrees, and my particular one (an economist) is watching the unfolding Australian economy with sheer incredulity.
She’s right. Our economy is something to behold.
Nice to see focus on the important things there Gerard! You’ll go far.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Get the basics wrong and failure is much more likely.
Fair enough Gerard. Personally I never watched that TV show – kinda glad as it might have given rise to thinking a misplaced apostrophe is the beginning of the end.
It probably is not.
You can take it literally 3d, and go about nitpicking, or take the point as it was intended – to illustrate our rapid decent down the slippery slope of educational mediocrity – it’s up to you.
Nitpicking it was Gerard. We’ll leave it there, hey.
I won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar.
Here’s Why.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html
Actually I’m a big Taleb fan, but I find it curious that you would cite Anti-fragile because I seem to remember that Taleb considers debt (in all its forms) to be the very foundation of fragile systems.
Debt constrains the debt taker to act in a “sensible” manner and this very action creates systemic Fragility. If “educated” becomes synonymous with “acting sensibly” than we are indeed building indeed building fragility into our economic and political systems.
In this sense the truly educated person is debt free because he is not constrained to act in a prescribed sensible fashion. I think Taleb comes to this conclusion because derivatives trading builds layer upon layer of sensible decisions to create the inconceivably stupid. Unfortunately those that are “trained” as distinct from educated are blind to the systemic stupidity resulting from the sum of sensible decisions.
In the ‘olden days’ a strong currency was indicative of a strong economy, with a bright future.
Do you really believe that we will indeed be better off with a weak $A?
And you are aware that we import almost all our liquid fuels?
In 2013 a strong currency is indicative of an economic patsy wedded to monetary orthodoxy in the face of overwhelming actions to the contrary by every major Central Bank in the world, with a central bank and government that hasnt got any idears.
A strong AUD has both positives and negatives although positives are generally overlooked. Another site recently had an article on the inhibitors to growth given low-value currency and high cost oil.
Artoo-Detoo, I would think you’re in favour of a low AUD, right?
An educated innovative nation would see the opportunity in that fuel conundrum.
I’m interested to see what the kiwis do.
Maybe they can come up with cars that run on milk.
With the high dollar, it is possible to import high quality machinery and other capital intensive goods with which to tool up for the niche markets.
I imagine though, that when the dollar goes down, those manufacturers presently grumbling about its strength, will be grumbling that they cannot afford to tool up with the latest machinery from Germany or the Czech Republic (or wherever) because of the weak dollar.
So the only way they will be able to make money is to reduce wages of course.
On the bright side, it is only those who are not getting the cycle right that are probably complaining. Those who have tooled up with cheap overseas manufacturing equipment already and will make a motza when the dollar does fall, are not likely to be complaining at all, and we will not hear about them in the media.
“With the high dollar, it is possible to import high quality machinery and other capital intensive goods with which to tool up for the niche markets”
This is true, however for a Company or person to risk their capital on such an investment program they will want more than a fluctuating favorable exchange rate in their favour. There would also need to be favorable tax and workplace environments in place AND confidence that those would remain so.
If private sector managers or investors imagine that there will be consistency, they may find themselves disappointed in this universe. Perhaps they might prefer the public service.
It is those managers that can make good calls on costs of inputs, and when to invest to take advantage of opportunities who make the profits. Not those who consistently get their decisions out of phase.
It seems we are more blessed with the latter than with the former in this country.
Maybe you could help us out by describing in more detail what constitutes “favorable tax and workplace environments”.
Sean,
Read Porter’s Competitive Advantage of Nations…..
http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Advantage-of-Nations-ebook/dp/B004S1WMIU/ref=pd_sim_kstore_5
In the absence of protection Australia can only ever have a niche role in manufacturing where either the barriers to entry (distance) or local ingenuity protected through IP afford us competitiveness.
The strength of the AUD due to the strength of mining exports, relatively high local interest rates and a currency now seen as a safe haven (who’d have thought?) – that combined with high labor costs, small scale market, inflexible working arrangements and cost of Govt bureaucracy (red tape) means Australia can never be competitive.
Taxpayer resources are better spent in those sectors where we can punch above our weight and Govts can assist in creating an environment where we can flourish in those areas. Unfortunately manufacturing in the traditional sense isn’t one of those.
Where we can be competitive (other than mining) is in sectors such as IT, Education, Finance, Construction, Research and Development, Tourism, etc – those areas where we have or can create a competitive advantage.
Governments should be working to create an environment which supports these activities rather than subsidising those where we are uncompetitive – motor vehicle manufacturing for example.
This should include as a govt mandate:
Reduction in bureaucracy and small Government
Internationally comparative taxation
Support for education and innovation
“Fair” Trade agreements which are truly fair
Interest rates that are internationally balanced vis a vis our competitors
Housing policies which remove asset price speculation
Removal of manufacturing subsidies
Reduction in excessive cost to business such payroll tax, workers comp excises, stamp duty etx
Unfortunately our over-governed, multi-tiered political system isn’t conducive to the change necessary to create this environment.
As a result it looks like I’ll be buying you a coffee in the very near future.
The McKinsey Institute, in their 1998 paper “Driving Productivity and Growth in the UK Economy”, said that one of the main reasons productivity was so low (20% to 40% below what it should have been, in fact) in the UK economy, was that the urban planning system prevented anything like Silicon Valley from ever happening.
I suggest the Australian urban planning system is causing the Australian economy to follow the UK economy down the gurgler.
Growth containment urban planning, besides preventing any Silicon Valley type phenomenons from happening, basically shuts down whatever part of the economy is both urban based and requires reasonable amounts of land.
Consider what would happen to farming if “planners” said that it must all now take place in multi-storey buildings. Well, economies have numerous different industries with differing requirements for land that falls somewhere between Farmer Joe and accounting firms.
Planners are so ignorant about the real world economy and how wealth is created, they think Manhattan can be recreated everywhere. Presumably everyone works as a stockbroker or a bureaucrat in the post-modern economy. I have a term for this: the “Second Life” fallacy.
Answer me one question. Why aren’t we using our natural endowments for competitive advantage? Instead of having cheap energy we are being forced to compete on international markets for our own resources. Throwing away a natural competitive advantage and forcing us to compete globally on wages alone? This is globalist ideology gone mad and it is a government that refuses to protect it’s citizens. The primary reason for the existence of government in the first place.
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=486
There were four basic reasons why successful industries developed a competitive advantage over industries in other nations:
• An adequate endowment of people, capital, technology, knowledge, etc, was needed for development. These factors were not necessarily natural or endemic to a country, as the Theory of Comparative Advantage suggested. These advantages were created by deliberate policy.
• An adequate domestic market for the industry’s products and consumers who demanded quality and innovation in them.
• The presence of internationally competitive suppliers and related industries that form clusters around the major industry players. These suppliers often became exporters in their own right.
• An internationally oriented business culture and intensive domestic rivalries within those domestic industries.
Stomper; you are right about the lack of activity on the political front. The problems that we face are often (in my opinion) due to the entrenched VESTED INTERESTS dictating policy.
You mentioned removing mechanisms that encourage price speculation in property – is that realistic considering the armies of agents, small-time landlords and ‘get rich quick’ Johnny Howard aspirationals who will take the the streets to oppose any such measures? I really doubt that any politician has the fortitude to follow through with any measures to discourage speculation. It might take a big four bank crash before anyone realises that price speculation is actually really damaging to the economy (in addition to locking new entrants out of the market or saddling them with a lifetime of debt). Poida (above) hit the nail on the head – $650,000 for the average house in Sydney – who the frig can actually afford that and even if you could why would you want to spend that sort of money to get a McMansion in some outer western hell-hole anyway?
Dystopian; I can’t agree with you more. We had the cheapest power in the world at one stage – the Chinese are burning coal like there’s no tomorrow – why can’t we burn our filthy brown coal to make cheap power for the poor (and everyone else for that matter)? Who gives a damn about rising sea levels in a hundred years time – I don’t have a beach-front house and we’ll all be dead by then anyway.
What do you suggest Sean? We all go back to living in caves? And let’s get serious for a minute: Why isn’t the exported coal taxed as well? i.e. we are partly responsible for China’s pollution yet our exported coal does not attract the carbon tax lest they seek coal elsewhere. Another example of globalist ideology gone mad – our government willing to throw their own citizens under the bus but not willing to lose a few international trade dollars to make a stand, if they think it’s so important. And BTW carbon trading makes no sense and will not work – that it is Goldman Sachs’s preferred model should set off immediate alarm bells. If they are serious a flat tax with the proceeds going to R and D would make more sense.
I was actually agreeing with you. Who gives a damn about sea levels rising in a hundred years – I’m more concerned that my power bill has tripled in three years for the sake of some stupid carbon trading scheme.
Brown coal IS filthy but we have hundreds of years worth – the Chinese don’t care so why should we?
OK, I thought you were being sarcastic but still think you might have missed the point. These free marketeers love this theory of competitive advantage. The article I attached points out it is a false theory and internationally competitive industries usually start out local and protected until they grow to a sufficient strength. It is countries that were already dominant that came up with this idea of competitive advantage so as to con other countries to drop their protections.
I was actually agreeing with you. Who gives a damn about sea levels rising in a hundred years – I’m more concerned that my power bill has tripled in three years for the sake of some stupid carbon trading scheme.
Your power bill hasn’t tripled because of a carbon trading scheme.
And you should thank the kind of people who care about sea levels rising. They’re the reason the air in our cities doesn’t look like the air in Chinese cities.
The more likely reason the air in our cities doesn’t look like the air in Chinese cities is foremostly population and secondarily that the west has outsourced manufacturing and consequently pollution. Another folly of globalisation where the pollution becomes concentrated in areas of cheap labour.
And why do you think that polluting manufacturing has been outsourced ?
Cheap labour. What’s your point? You think they outsourced because of the pollution? They don’t give a fig about the environment, they only care about profit. Read this definition of globalisation from the first paragraph of the article I posted:
Globalism is the ideology of “free trade.” It aims to open up national economies so that multinational companies, using modern transportation and communications, can freely shift their capital, technology and products around the world so as to maximise their profits by:
• Exploiting the cheapest labor costs, shifting operations to Asia where wage rates are between 39¢ and $1.00/hr;
• Minimising their taxes (60 percent of multinationals in Australia pay no company tax and 40 percent pay hardly any);
• Merging with and taking over competitors to reduce competition and increase market share;
• Gaining larger markets in Asia, Latin America, Russia;
• Avoiding legal restraints, especially environmental and labor laws; and
• Shifting speculative capital around the world financial markets to exploit currency, interest rate, bond rate and stockmarket changes.
I think the reason we don’t have pollution like that in Australia because of the laws preventing it.
So China having a population in excess of 1.3 billion has nothing to do with it?
Our laws are feeble and government is constantly being lobbied to end all kinds of legal restraints. As an example our once strict quarantine laws are being over ridden in the name of free trade. Produce from foriegn countries, treated with chemicals banned in Australia, is coming into Australia via NZ. It is simply repackaged in NZ and stamped as produce of NZ. Thanks cuz. Our government knows this is happening yet does nothing. I mention this only as an example of how feeble our laws are and they are easily changed for the sake of a few bucks.
So China having a population in excess of 1.3 billion has nothing to do with it?
That’s not what I said.
Our laws are feeble and government is constantly being lobbied to end all kinds of legal restraints.
Feeble, perhaps, but still stronger – thanks to changes made in the past that have yet to happen in countries like China.
Changes that came, to come back to my original point, thanks to people who give a damn about things like “sea levels rising”.
As an example our once strict quarantine laws are being over ridden in the name of free trade. Produce from foriegn countries, treated with chemicals banned in Australia, is coming into Australia via NZ. It is simply repackaged in NZ and stamped as produce of NZ. Thanks cuz. Our government knows this is happening yet does nothing. I mention this only as an example of how feeble our laws are and they are easily changed for the sake of a few bucks.
I’m not quite sure what your point is here. I suspect we are in furious agreement.
drsmithy, you really don’t see pollution as a consequence of overpopulation? If China had the same laws as Australia I would imagine that they would still have serious pollution problems.
Yeah re-reading my last post I tagged the NZ story on – it’s the current bee in my bonnet – damn NZ’ers.
drsmithy, you really don’t see pollution as a consequence of overpopulation?
That’s not what I said.
If China had the same laws as Australia I would imagine that they would still have serious pollution problems.
I’d imagine they’d have substantially less pollution problems than they do today.
Would it still be worse than Australia ? Probably. Would it be as bad as it is today ? Highly unlikely.
The number of people is a factor, but being able to do basically whatever you want is a much bigger factor, which is why the west moved from lower population and higher pollution levels to higher population and lower pollution levels over the last century or two.
And BTW, part of our natural endowments are gas, specifically CSG which is 60% less polluting than coal ande has been deemed a clean energy by Eurozone. Gas for which we are willing to endanger vast tracts of farmland for a very long time by potentially poisoning the aquifers and yet this gas is being sent directly to the ports and shipped, mostly to the benefit of multinationals and a pitiful rent tax collected. Again locals and local manufacturers are forced to compete internationally for this gas.
“Reduction in bureaucracy and small Government”
That can’t happen as long as people demand that heads roll whenever something goes wrong in the government. Bureaucracy is a defensive mechanism designed to stop mistakes and therefore stop people from losing their jobs, all they way up to the minister. Unfortunately by trying to stop mistakes it also slows down everything else.
Lots of interesting comments, which for the most part only highlight how far removed Australia is from even having a sensible discussion on 21st century manufacturing.
The product production game has changed dramatically in the last 10 years and will continue to automate at an ever accelerating pace, at least for the foreseeable future.
If automation is the corner stone of modern manufacturing than education is its foundation. Frankly Australian secondary school education is pathetic, there’s no point sugar coating it, Pathetic is the right word.
In NSW the selective schools are great but they are still stuck with chronically outdated course material. I know the basics of math have not changed but countries like Singapore (a little island just north of Oz) have really developed a fantastic math curriculum. My son was studying Singapore math at a Shanghai International school, my daughter was studying Shanghai math program at a select local school, they are both fantastic math programs.
The biggest problem with pathetic secondary school math is that it locks a whole society out of rewarding jobs in Engineering and the Sciences. Now you might say that kids are not interested in these fields (they’re too hard) but frankly it’s immaterial what the kids want because their parents and teachers are effectively pre-voting for them.
No Education = No Opportunity
It’s that simple!
Sorry for the rant, it’s a hot button issue because I get grief from my daughters Aussie teachers for keeping her at the correct Math/Grade level for her to return to Shanghai if needed. (BTW it is 2 to 3 grade levels above the Aussie system)
Where do we start the changes to education though? When you have a population that puts so much time and effort into the pursuit of mediocrity there becomes a fear of change. The punters don’t want to hear that their dreams are misguided. They want them endorsed. This is why we have the political parties we have.
I would like to see a change too but I can’t see anything changing until we’re a basket case…which may be sooner than anyone thinks.
“Where do we start the changes to education though?”
This is astonishing. A few years back didn’t our Govt blow untold Billions of the BER with its $500 toilet seats? Halls for nobody? It was hailed an economic miracle and a “Revolution” in education. Now, conveniently forgotten?
What people never seem to get ( or refuse to see) is that there IS money already available and being spent. But it is WASTED. Pi$$ed up against the wall. Our education system is not short of money, Govt is short of the ba**s to move out the vested ( Union based ) interests to bring forth the changes so desperately needed. Why? Because those same Unions keep this Govt in power. How’s that for a vested interest?
China Bob is absolutely correct. We are not challenging your children anywhere near enough in the Sciences and Math with the carricula we have in place. We are in fact dumbing down generations of Australian kids setting them up for at best mediocrity, at worst failure. Nothing short of wholesale revolutionary change is required.
Asian countries to our North are eating our lunch in education. We are at the beach. It’s so despairingly obvious.
Nice political rant, but my question remains.
Where does the change start? What needs to be done? That is what needs to be concentrated on. Not ideological ravings.
Where to start?
I don’t know, as I said earlier maybe the best place is to expand on that which is working well. In NSW this is the selective schools system. I know it is wrong to suggest that those students with above average abilities diverse a challenging school environment but frankly something has to be done to correct for the “main-streaming” of the disadvantaged.
In Texas the joke used to be Bush’s educational reform should have been named “no child gets ahead” fell the same way about the Aussie system.
Hey, most of the kids assume (thanks to their teachers) that they are going to work for some “planet-saving” or “social justice” bureaucracy when they leave school; who needs maths, science, technology etc? Wealth is just something you get by taxing “the rich” or printing money.
Hey, most of the kids assume (thanks to their teachers) that they are going to work for some “planet-saving” or “social justice” bureaucracy
Sad but true, it’s a good job that the big mines are so far away that we can ignore them, it’s another country or something like that, fortunately miners still remit their wages / profits to support East coast tree huggers and their planet saving brethren.
BTW: I’m skint so Who’s paying for the next round of $5 lattes.
Can someone please close the italic tag above?
Don’t suppose this will do it?
wonder if I need to close out the italics
did that work?
italics
hopefully normal
No, most kids assume their first job will be CEO of Apple for a couple years while they buy tonnes of property and retire a billionaire at 30.
I wouldn’t wish a Singapore education and upbringing on my kids for all the money in the world.
No roaming about swimming, sailing and riding bikes. Parents working long hours and the kids seeing the nanny from the Philippines more than their mum and dad. Loaded with pressure so that most are half depressed by the time they get out of school, and then in the office, getting these young guy/gals to act with innovation and ingenuity is next to impossible.
They work ridiculously long hours and mostly live without freedom and passion in fear of losing their consumer power. The asian success is a paradox and a myth and those that trumpet it are often validating their own decisions to work hard, see little of their family and put consumption above the other more noble aspects of life.
In the end, we are all dead and the most valuable thing we ever had was time.
Having been to Singapore a few years ago, I can’t agree more. Supposedly the envy of the rest of the world but I’d hate to live in a police-state like that, let alone the fact that you have to pay fortune to live in a shoe-box with no natural light and very little opportunity to exercise or enjoy the great outdoors.
Until I travelled overseas I had no idea just how great our own country is – what a shame our real-estate is so unaffordable for the average Joe… Maybe it won’t be that way forever.
What I say is, “IF ONLY” Lee Kuan Yew had had a decent SIZE territory to do such a fine job of running. If he had, the problems of lack of space would not be the same and people would be queuing up to get in, more so than with the USA and Aussie.
Terrific lil post aj
No roaming about swimming, sailing and riding bikes. Parents working long hours and the kids seeing the nanny from the Philippines more than their mum and dad.
Yep, great insight aj. Even the MineBot would have to agree on this point seeing as he sent his kids to a Steiner school (True!)
I can’t see Australian kids competing with Asian kids on cramming. When it comes to work ethic they have it all over us culturally. IMO, we should be encouraging creativity in our kids, and by this, I don’t just mean art, music, drama etc, I mean engineering and design creativity. The type of creativity that gave us iPhones and iPads, Google and Facebook.
I do agree with this. A big problem with modern education is that is it not, well modern. It is remains a one-size-fits-all production line where kids at either end of the curve are done a disservice and the the middle bit bored to death.
There has to be recognition that education need be far more fluid, on-line is the future and should commence in earnest during high school years at least.
Latham recently let-loose at the very poor quality of teaching in Australia (often true) and the outdatedness of much course content. Taleb would say get your kids to read the classics and if math is their thing, good, if not something else is likely to be. Artisan skills are to be much admired, as are the truly innovating and creative.
Sir Ken Robinson, Changing education paradigms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
His TED talk is also interesting.
Agreed, I have consulted overseas in Asian countries and encountered the issue of total lack of creativity even amongst their tertiary educated. Even simple engineering problems could not be overcome by them and as soon as they encountered an issue they would come straight to us (Aussie engineers) rather than their own guys because they knew we could turn the problem around in fifteen minutes and have a workable solution.
aj,
There must be a balance somewhere in the middle, if Australia wants to retain or even build a good resilient manufacturing sector.
It may not mean our kids becoming slaves to school or their education, but it certainly means we cannot go on waiting/hoping for the next bail out from our natural bounties either.
Does anyone have any experience re the Taiwanese, I saw a documentary a few years ago and again they are rated the number one country in Maths education.
Sure, if you want a human calculator that’s fine, but having worked with some of them they don’t have a knack for outside-the-box thinking. That leads to incremental development rather than innovative.
My kids attended a Taiwanese International school for a while but I really don’t have much direct knowledge of Taiwanese education. From what I can tell it is very similar to mainstream Chinese, but maybe without the teachers finger pointing.
In Taiwan learning English is a national obsession, you have all levels of English study from full English immersed kindergartens to geriatric English (don’t ask me, visit kids in the US maybe..)
It should also be remembered that a great deal of the original Singapore success story sits on the back of originally cheap mainland Chinese labour (now Indian) which was/is used in a way many would find ethically challenging to accept.
These competitive advantages are getting swept away fast and the current plan is revamping the idea of technology mercantiism and being a tax haven for IP – the jury is still out on how this will play out.
@aj,
who ever said the curriculum should define the teaching methods and student assessment regime. Believe me I’ve gotten in the face of many a teacher that wanted to measure my kids rather than teach them. So I try to get the best of both worlds, my kids live very active after-school lives, Basketball, scouts, surfing, heck sometimes they even go rock fishing with dad. But I also make sure they get a good formal education so that all possible doors remain open to them.
For me there is nothing sadder then a life that could have been, so we owe it to our kids to make sure they are educated at internationally acceptable level.
I spend a lot of time at various research institutes around the world and to be honest it saddens me that the students in the best research institutes are usually not natives of the country, they’re generally either Chinese or Indian.
They make good grad students, that is true, but they don’t make good professors.
Oh, come on, AJ, did our own ancestors during the industrial revolution live the idyllic non-Asian existence you are painting?
Nothing was more responsible for urban hells than lack of automobility. Without roads and cars and the minimisation of economic land rent, most people in a city are doomed to a miserable, crammed, exploited existence.
Don’t try and claim that pre-industrial rural “living” was superior either. It was subsistence or serfdom. Every example of “development” in history has found people flocking to the urban hell in preference to the rural one.
bs phil this isn’t anti anyone, if you think that the flog the kid mindset is part of any decent culture you’re kidding yourself. This is no hark back to any utopia, this is a childhood i had and my parents had and that unfettered development appologists like clearly dont give a sh8t about.
AJ, don’t get me wrong. No-one on Macrobusiness has slammed the fiscal child abuse in the contemporary western world that is the result of urban planning, more than I have.
I am merely pointing out the way we GOT TO the admirable existence you quite rightly celebrate, and I strongly resent the wind-back of this by ignorant and pig-headed urban planners and environmentalists.
Singapore is a city-state that simply lacks space. But Asia as a whole does not lack space. They will need to go through the same phases as our society did. They will urbanise and get more and more productive, albeit in urban hell rather than rural hell. THEN they will get automobility, suburbs, decreased economic land rent, democratised home ownership, breathing space, and family-friendly, child-friendly neighbourhoods.
If they have got any sense, they will not make the mistake we have, of allowing urban planners to destroy these conditions once they have them.
I think dumbed down is what our pollies are aiming for. I remember one of the current ministers let it slip what she thinks the true utility of education is – indoctrination.
Parlay that into decades of mortgage indebtedness and you have a conga line of zombies going to work each day with no time or inclination to question their big brother government.
Nirvana for any politician.
You need to teach Logic in all schools. The only time I did it during my compulsory education was in the hardest mathematics during year 12, and we only did a couple of weeks on it.
Secondly, encourage critical thinking – there are more than one way to arrive at the correct answer to a problem, even in mathematics. Our system stills struggles with the teacher-as-authoritarian when it should really be teacher-as-facilitator.
(CONT.) “……One of the serious problems we face as a result of the abandonment of Logic in the educational system, is the proliferation of hysteria in just about every area of politics. At one time, some of the political figures of the present day would have been unable to survive the scrutiny of a relatively intellectual press such as the “Times” in nineteenth-century London; the crudest analysis of the arguments presented would have been enough to dispose of some people who today have an enthusiastic following. While the unwashed mob have always been vulnerable to demagoguery, the vulnerability now extends to university graduates, who by traditional standards have a right to expect to have trained and acute minds, but have nothing of the kind……..
“………I see the inane simplicities of the pious in the Muslim world and compare them with the pieties of contemporary Australia. There is little to choose between them, they differ only in the detail, and it will surely not be long before the horde of chanting fools with their certainties will outnumber the sceptics with their doubts in Australia as in the Middle East. When you see street theatre and placards waving bravely and crowds chanting, you are seeing people who choose these methods to try to form your opinions. That, presumably, is how they formed theirs. It is how the ignorant have always found their ideas, but this has not usually included any university graduates…….
“…….Is there anything that can be done to halt or reverse the process? Not in this world. The younger teachers have undergone just such a miseducation themselves and are in no position to implement changes; nor will there be any attempt to require it of them. The amount of central direction by the state is hugely greater than at any time in the history of the West; look at the fraction of GDP attached by the government. And there is little benefit to the government in having an educated population, and never was………
“……It takes some time for a civilisation to collapse completely. Out on the periphery, honourable people still attempt to maintain standards long abandoned at the centre. Meanwhile the stupid are busily sawing off the branch of the tree we are all sitting on, and we are powerless to stop them…….
“…….We can, however, predict the results of sending out into the workforce people who have no capacity to reason. We can expect disasters at power stations and chemical plants as people with only an ability to press buttons are required to think in emergencies. We can expect to have to pay others for the technology because we will be unable to produce it and we will also have to hire engineers to maintain it because except in very simple cases we will be unable to do so. We shall, in fact, have become the poor white trash of Asia………”
There is a diff between a respect for the integrity of education and the nobility of professionalism and a belief that endless development and progress at any cost can fill an empty human soul.
Make up your mind. Do you like children to enjoy plenty of attributes of nature while growing up in leafy low density suburbs with plenty of democratised green space, or not?
You were condemning the soul-less existence of Singaporeans before – what do you think growth containment urban planning will do to our own civilisation?
AND see THIS comment:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003445-gentrification-end-game-and-r…
Trying to post that link again:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003445-gentrification-end-game-and-rise-sub-urbanity#comment-13168
Excerpts from an article in Quadrant June 2007, which cries out to be placed online and achieve a wide circulation. This is “The Decline and Fall of the West” by Mike Alder.
“……Providing arguments is what mathematics is all about: it has been since Euclid. It is the core of how science is practised; we seek structure and pattern in the universe generally and we seek to construct general rules to describe it, and to communicate them to each other……..
“……Bishop Alcuin of York is credited with determining, in the eighth century at the court of Charlemagne, the foundations of the education system in Europe……..This system endured, in essentials, for over a thousand years. It led, indisputably, to the rise of mathematical, scientific, and engineering triumphs beyond parallel, and to the dominance of the West…….A major element in this choice was the Christian tradition of applying reasoning to theological concerns……..
“……We are now at the end of the dominance of the West for two reasons. First, the success of our culture, evidenced mainly by our technology, is so overwhelming that almost all other cultures are copying it. They are not always copying the infrastructure which produced the mathematics and science upon which the technology depends, but they certainly want the technology. The second reason is that we in the West are busy dismantling the infrastructure ourselves. Logic has not been taught in the schools for over a hundred years and Euclid was phased out in the second half of the twentieth century. Euclidean geometry……..has been at the centre of the Western intellectual tradition for two and a half thousand years, but it could not survive the amateurish educationalists of the last century….”
(CONT.)
(CONT.)
“…..Being able to reason and argue with clarity and force is not considered particularly desirable by contemporary Alcuins. The kind of thinking which produced the world we now inhabit in the West is not being maintained in our schools. Our traditions are being lost. The technology which depends on science which was new and fresh a century ago will keep on going for a while, but the whole machine is slowly grinding down. We are still the beneficiaries of technological advances at a great rate, but the underlying process which led to the technology is being destroyed.
One can easily discern the mechanics of the process. An emphasis on logic and reason is most distressing to the stupid. Given a modest kindness, it is not hard to see why the wind should be tempered for the shorn lamb, and a teacher who wishes to see happy, cheerful children will be disinclined to favour an environment in which the crass inegalitarianism of God is demonstrated repeatedly and vividly every day. So drop the logic and replace it with finger painting. Or train them all to press the right buttons on the calculator. Something which conceals rather than exhibits the embarrassing fact that some people are very much cleverer than others is much to be preferred. And above all abandon logic. For logic reveals muddled and confused thought, which is painful for those who cannot produce any other…..”
(CONT.)
Moderation is causing a real headache. For some reason the FIRST part of the article I am posting excerpts from, refuses to post regardless of how much shorter I cut it.
It is “The Decline and Fall of the West by Mike Alder, in Quadrant Magazine June 2007.