NEA IN BED WITH THE FAR LEFT

"Last February Secretary of Education Rod Paige used the inflammatory and inappropriate term "terrorist organization" to describe the National Education Association. Perhaps he should have called them a "far left group." It might have been only slightly less inflammatory, but it would have been far more accurate.

Last Wednesday the NEA hosted a conference call to launch a new coalition called "National Mobilization for Great Public Schools." It is motivated by the need to make education "a higher priority across this nation" because "we're failing to provide too many children with the basics," according to the coalition's website. The coalition plans to host over 3,000 "house parties" across the nation on September 22 to make educational issues a major election issue.

The other coalition members include some of the usual suspects: NAACP National Voter Fund, and the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. However, the NEA is now working with groups much further on the left: MoveOn.org, ACORN, and Campaign for America's Future.

No description of MoveOn.org is necessary for regular readers of this site other than a reminder it was the organization sponsoring the political ad contest that included two ads comparing Bush to Hitler.

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) was founded by George Wiley whose claim to fame during the 1960s was to instigate poor single women to engage in sit-ins at welfare offices to end "oppressive" welfare eligibility restrictions. According to writer Sol Stern, Wiley's aim was "to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that, he believed, would force a radical restructuring of America's unjust capitalist economy." ACORN continues Wiley's proud tradition of confrontational tactics. Several years ago, ACORN members protested Baltimore's lack of service to poor neighborhoods by dumping garbage in front of city hall and conducting a profanity laced demonstration in front of the mayor's house. ACORN is the group most responsible for imposing living wage laws in many of America's cities, and it's currently conducting a sustainable development campaign that, by limiting the growth of the suburbs, would make it more difficult for people to flee the high-tax cities.

The other organization involved is Campaign for America's Future, whose co-director Robert Borosage was formerly president of the leftist Institute for Policy Studies. CAF hosted the Michael Moore speech during the Democratic Convention and has accepted about $300,000 in contributions from George Soros. During the conference call Borosage even unintentionally admitted that some of the members of this coalition were from the far left. In response to a question about how this coalition could contend that it was bipartisan, he let slip, "I think you'll see that by the time we finish this coalition very mainstream groups [will be] joining it, it's just the mainstream groups it takes longer to get through their process."

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AUSTRALIAN LEFT PUTS TEACHERS UNIONS FIRST TOO

The schools policy just released by Mark Latham, Federal leader of Australia's opposition Labor Party, promises to cut grants to private schools while giving more money to government schools

"The reason Latham is keeping down the private schools -- and particularly the most successful -- is simple: The big Labor-supporting teaching unions hate this competition. But rather than demand real reforms that will make state schools better, the unions insist Labor make non-government schools more expensive. They want to price their private rivals out of the market.

For Latham to give in to this special pleading doesn't just restrict parents' choices, but makes no sense financially or academically.

It makes no sense financially because every student in a non-government school saves taxpayers money. Scotch College, for instance, gets just $3.5 million a year from governments, although it has as many students as Balwyn High, a state school that gets $19.8 million. On average, a private school student gets half the grants of a state school student. It gets better. Parents of children in non-government schools also pump more of their own cash into their child's education -- more than $4 billion a year -- than do parents of children in state schools. And that's on top of their taxes.

Nor does Latham's plan to slug many parents who choose private make sense academically. After all, students of both independent and Catholic schools do better, on average, in the VCE than do state students.

So private schools save taxpayers money and make us spend more on educating our young, with better results. That's a hell of a deal, and it's hard to believe Latham resents it......

So that's Latham's education policy -- punish the parents who spend the most on their children's schooling, punish the schools with the best results, punish the Christian denominations that best build wealth and punish the taxpayer".

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP BEATS EDUCATION

Australia is less wealth oriented than the USA but even in Australia, business still beats education

"Go into any Year 12 class approaching its final exams and the tension is palpable. Why? Because if the students do not perform well, they will not get into university and therefore (so the theory goes) be consigned to low-paying jobs for the rest of their lives. This fear, albeit a bit dramatic, is not only coming from students but also is shared by their parents. In turn, it is passed on to politicians who try to prove which of them is better at achieving improved education outcomes.

However, as John Howard wants us to be a nation of entrepreneurs and Mark Latham is providing us with rungs of opportunity, the link between education and prosperity is not as clear as some think. In the BRW Young Rich list, published today, an examination of the richest people under 40, tertiary education does not correlate to wealth. Only 40 per cent of those on the list have university degrees. Instead, most pursued their entrepreneurial venture soon after leaving school.

Many of these rich young people argue that formal education delays one's ability to pursue dreams or blunts innovative thinking. The richest person on the list, John Ilhan (39), who made his $300 million fortune through his mobile phone company Crazy John's, speaks for many successful entrepreneurs when he says: "Without university you have the idea that one plus one could be three, and in business that is a good thing."

Students, parents and we as a society should take a less rigid approach to university studies. Young people should be allowed to pursue their interests - if this does not include studying at university, so be it. Tertiary education is not for everyone and it by no means determines how successful you will be in life and even how rich you can be.

Although it is considered that education should be done while young, the early years are also the best time to pursue entrepreneurial ambitions because young people have fewer obligations and greater optimism in their ability to succeed. With greater flexibility in education these days, pursuing studies later in life, if the entrepreneurial venture fails, can be a better option.

In the BRW Rich 200, which identifies Australia's richest people, most do not have degrees. In fact, of the top 10 richest people in Australia, only one (property developer Harry Triguboff) obtained tertiary qualifications. It might have been thought that entrepreneurs would gradually become better educated, as the broader population has, but the Young Rich list challenges this. Clearly, a university education is not related to entrepreneurial success....

If we as a society are encouraging people to go to university at the expense of pursuing their entrepreneurial activities, we will all be the worse off for it. What is more, who then will create the wealth? The ultimate irony is that university graduates will no doubt line up to work for those non-university graduates on the Young Rich list".

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A cynical comment from a reader: "There's no evidence that education has anything to do with being very rich. Kyle Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Elle McPherson were all on the rich Aussie women list. Like to know how many degrees those girls have. Reckon plastic surgery can pay better dividends then a degree, at least for some people.