As I sit at my computer on at 8:20 pm Monday 24 September 2012, I am quite aware I am a deviant. Why? Because just about everyone in Melbourne, plus tens of thousands more in the old football states of Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia plus many more in the new territories of New South Wales and Queensland are watching the Brownlow Medal count. Even my wife, who had never even seen a game of Australian Football until she was well into her '20s, is watching. The Brownlow is the trophy for the best and fairest player in the Australian Football League, the most outstanding player in what is now certainly Australia's national game. The Brownlow is the highest indivudual honor a footballer can attain.
It is not my intention to say footballers are stupid -- these days, many are highly educated -- or that the viewers of the Brownlow count are necessarily stupid. But it is true that smart countries do not reward stupidity.
The term 'clever country' was coined by Prime Minister Bob Hawke on 8 March 1990 when he said "No longer contnet to be the lucky country, Australia must become the clever country." We will overlook the fact that the "lucky country" was an ironic term coined by the late Donald Horne, and the fact that my wife, who is Chinese and therefore values both cleverness and education (not the same thing) burst out laughing when when she heard the PM say this phrase, as it was so obviously absurd. Australia is known for a number of things in Asia, but cleverness is not one of them.
Tonight on the ABC TV news the government announced a new education policy and paraded a snaggle toothed moron as evidence of its necessity. Now the government has already 'fessed up that its new handicapped care policy (see my post 'Be hard hearted with handicapped') will cost not $1 billion but at least $10 billion! as I predicted. These days I greet my friends in the ALP with the words 'how many billions have they spent today? For reasons of sheer economic necessity and common sense, Australia should concentrate its educational resources, in the first place, on the most capable young people.
The best description of Australia's economic good fortune I have ever read came from a French journalist who said 'Australia is like the village idiot who wins the jackpot every time he buys a lottery ticket ."
Truly intelligent societies, like Taiwan, which lives on its wits -- not by how many million tons of rocks they dig up and ship to China -- respect and reward intelligence. Scholars are important and respected in Taiwan. Their opinions are often quoted in the press. How else would a tiny island half the size of Tasmania with a population slightly larger than Australia not only gain an enviable standard of living but also become a world leader in high tech?
In China, few things are sacred, but the gaokao, the nationwide university entrance exam, which gives the poorest peasant's son the same chance to excell as the Party Secretary's son, is regarded as the great leveler in the Middle Kingdom. University entrance, which is highly sought after as the gateway to fame and wealth, is decided on the results achieved in the gaokao.
Bob Hawke came from a priviledged background. His uncle was Premier of Western Australia and his father was a learned man. His fellow students said he had a 'Jewish mother' because she pushed and pampered him. He went to Perth Modern School, the best high school in the State. He was a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University, one of the most respected universities in the English-speaking world. Bob Hawke has been doing his yobbo act for so long, including his corney 'Solidarity Forever' rendition at the last Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) conference, that people forget he is a scholar from the upper middle classes. Bob Hawke may try to disguise the fact, but he is a highly intelligent man and the best Prime Minister of Australia since Sir Robert Menzies.
Some may regard the attention paid to educating nature's fools as the mark of an enlightened society but I regard it as sheer stupidity. Many, if not most, children of Chinese origin in Australia attend on their weekends what are known as bushibans, or cram schools. Chinese parents know that Australia is honest enough that one exam paper is marked the same as another and if their children get better marks that Anglo-Celtic students, then their kids will get the place in dentistry, medicine or whatever. In other words, the best jobs with the best incomes.
Therefore, Bob Hawke's 'clever country' statement can be regarded as what the Chinese call 'pi hua' --- literally, 'fart talk.'
No comments:
Post a Comment