Monday, December 12, 2016



Australia's Workforce Gender Equality Agency: More men to be recruited as teachers and nurses -- but how?

This is undoubtedly a desirable outcome but legislating for it is not likely to achieve much.  There were once quite a lot of male teachers in the schools.  I was taught by six of them that I can remember.  Where have they gone?  They have gone where a lot of capable female teachers have gone -- to more pleasant employment.  The undisciplined rabble that teachers in Australia's government schools are often confronted with is a pain which anybody with options would avoid. A restoration of discipline, including corporal punishment for chronically unruly kids, would be the first step to getting more male teachers.

Even that, however, could have quite limited results.  Because in the present climate of political correctness, any male engaging in teaching is a huge risk-taker.  There have been in recent years too many instances of disgruntled teenage female students making false complaints against male teachers after getting a poor grade or some other beef.

And the treatment of the male teacher in  such circumstances has usually been abominable -- with no regard for proper judicial procedures and standards or other protections for the falsely accused teacher.  Even the utterly basic  presumption of innocence is often denied, with feminist influence insisting that the presumption of truthfulness must be given to the female students.  And even after exoneration does finally  occur the teacher is still usually left with a shattered life.

Reviving the presumption of innocence would greatly improve the situation and matching all publicity to the publicity given to the complainant would also have a major effect.  If the complainant insists on public anonymity, the accused should get  that too. One imagines that false complainants would be particularly likely to demand no publicity of their identity so suppressing the identity of an accused teacher would be particularly appropriate in those circumstances.

I have no firm comment on men becoming nurses even though I have met and talked with the occasional "Mister Sister" over the years.  I have however heard reports of feminazi nurses finding ways to harass male colleagues -- with false reports etc. That has had distressing results to the harassed males. Once again, insistence on proper judicial proceedings and standards in assessing any complaints would go a long way to achieving a just outcome



MORE men will be recruited as teachers and nurses, as Australia’s sex equality watchdog pushes for "bloke quotas" in schools and hospitals.

The Workforce Gender Equality Agency — the federal government body set up to promote gender equality and equal ­opportunity at work — wants affirmative action to bring more manpower to the "caring professions".

Agency director Libby Lyons called for male recruitment targets to smash the ­"industrial and occupational segregation" which brands teaching and nursing as "women’s work".

"Set a target," she told The Saturday Telegraph. "That’s how you get cultural change."

Ms Lyons, a former teacher, said boys needed male role models in schools, where four out of five primary teachers and 58 per cent of high school teachers are women.

"Until we encourage more men into teaching we’re not going to see little boys feel more secure and thrive as we do little girls," she said.

"There’s no diversity of thought or innovation happening there in the classroom if we are solely relying on females, particularly in primary school."

Ms Lyons called on schools and hospitals to mimic the mining and rail industries, which set quotas to hire and promote women — and even banned blokes from applying for some jobs — in an effort to feminise the workforce.

She said children were "like sponges" in primary school and picked up on "innuendo and habits and culture" from teachers. She did not want any of her future grandchildren "being taught in schools just by women".

"I’m a woman. I like things that females like — but also let males project who and what they are as well," she said.

Ms Lyons also wants more men in nursing, given nine out of 10 nurses are women. "We need to challenge the norm that says men cannot care," she said. "Men can care — and do the job as well as women," she said.

State Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said he would "like more male teachers in our classrooms" but ruled out targets.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said teachers were role models.

"Ideally we would have both men and women providing outstanding examples to boys and girls in their schools," he said.

SOURCE






Leftist professors fear exposure

As the complaint below shows.  Excerpts only below. I have deleted most of the hysteria

This Monday, an organization called Turning Point USA launched a website called the Professor Watchlist, which provides the full names, locations, offenses—and sometimes photographs—of liberal academics it has singled out for ignominy.

The mission of the watch list, according to its website, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The site invites users to nominate candidates, asking that they “submit a tip” about the nefarious pinkos who teach them

Some of the professors on the list have responded thoughtfully to their inclusion; others on social media have trolled the list with complaints about Indiana Jones and Jesus.

I contacted Kirk, asking him whether the timing was intentional, and whether the watch list was intended to intimidate, harass, or otherwise harm the people on it. He dismissed my suggestions as “preposterous,” and we had a brief, civil chat on the phone.

His organization, he was quick to emphasize, is a mainstream conservative student outreach group, devoted to the usual jazz about free markets and bootstraps and other sundry Rush lyrics. That is: While its website looks like a stock agency for photos of self-satisfied young white people, Kirk stresses that Turning Point USA is in no way affiliated with alt-right or similar hate groups, and is instead a mild-mannered fiscal-conservative outreach group that “believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.”

He told me in no uncertain terms that he “denounce[s] completely” last weekend’s nauseating neo-Nazi Woodstock, and that the watch list’s launch had been planned for “months.” Its dovetailing with the white nationalists’ coming-out party—and the corresponding rash of grim, incredulous press coverage—was an unfortunate coincidence, and one that caused an unanticipated surge of traffic thanks to heightened media attention in the wake of the launch’s inauspicious timing. The intention, he said, is not to threaten or harm the professors—his commitment to free speech means he’ll “fight to the death” for their right to disagree with him—but to raise “awareness” for students and the parents who often pay their tuition.

But the photos? I asked. Did Kirk at least understand my unease about the photos? They’re “just stock images,” he said, publicly available, like all of the other information the site has aggregated—aggregated, he emphasized, not created. Plus, “Nowhere do we say they shouldn’t have the right” to express their views; the site has “no calls to action,” whether that be firing or worse.

Yes, it’s true that Turning Point USA didn’t create any original material on its compendium, and its claims of professorial malfeasance —from using swear words to attesting that racism is a thing— are reputably sourced. It’s also true that beleaguered conservative intellectuals have as much of a right to grumble as liberal professors have to grandstand. And I will take Kirk’s word that he didn’t create the site with the intent to intimidate, threaten, or bring harm to any of the human beings on it.

But what the site did do—what it continues to do—is compile a one-stop shop of easy marks and their precise locations, complete with descriptions of offenses against America, God, and the “children of the sun.”

SOURCE 






UK’s ‘juggernaut’ HE bill may crush university autonomy

The UK government’s higher education bill has been criticised by peers as a “juggernaut” that will override universities’ autonomy and willingness “to speak truth to power”, with Conservative, Labour. Lib Dem and crossbench figures all joining the attack.

Sixty-nine peers – many with current or former senior roles in universities – spoke during the Higher Education and Research Bill’s second reading in the House of Lords on 6 December.

Many argued that the bill would give too much power to the government and to the new English regulator, the Office for Students. The OfS will have the power to strip universities of degree-awarding status and university title, even when granted by Royal Charter.

Peers also criticised plans to make it easier and quicker for new private and for-profit providers to gain degree-awarding powers, as well as plans for the teaching excellence framework to rate universities as “gold”, “silver” or “bronze” and the folding of the seven research councils into a single UK Research and Innovation body.

Lord Waldegrave, a former Conservative Cabinet minister who is soon to be installed as University of Reading chancellor, called the legislation “a juggernaut” and “a disappointing bill from a Conservative government”.

He said: “Arguably, it is the formal end of the delicate structure of autonomy under Royal Charters, which goes a long way back in our history.”

The Tory peer said the bill would move the sector “towards the sort of state governance structures that produce depressingly second-rate systems in, for example, France or Italy”.

Lord Willetts, a Conservative peer who was universities and science minister until 2014, backed the bill’s shift “to an open and transparent regulatory model”, but said peers had raised “legitimate concerns”.

He added: “Perhaps the biggest is about the autonomy of our universities. Some of the earlier government documents could have been read by some as implying that universities were a kind of poorly performing part of the public sector that needed a bit of a doing over.”

He continued: “I do not believe that it is the government’s intention to draw universities into their ambit, and I hope that the bill can be amended further to make that clear.”

Lord Mandelson, a Labour peer, former business secretary and now chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, said the government “must guard against lower entry standards for new challenger institutions, reducing the overall quality of Britain’s university offer. A ‘stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap’ approach will be hugely retrograde.”

Baroness Wolf, a crossbench peer who is Sir Roy Griffiths professor of public sector management at King’s College London and who carried out a review of vocational education for the Conservative-led coalition government in 2011, said the bill “proposes a dramatic change in how government relates to our universities…for the worse”.

She said the legislation “will have a knock-on effect on institutional autonomy and critical thought and inquiry, and it will corrode the willingness of universities to speak truth to power”. The powers created in the bill “may well be abused by governments in the not-so-distant future”, Baroness Wolf argued.

Peers sent the bill forward to a committee of the whole house and are likely to try to amend the bill significantly. No dates have yet been set for that stage.

Viscount Younger, the government’s higher education spokesman in the Lords, said the bill was much needed to remedy a regulatory system that is “complex, fragmented and out of date”.

SOURCE 


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