NEWS - Roundup
Random updatey bits.
I'm glad the police took this seriously. 'Prank' implies something harmless, when we've had multiple accounts of viral party invites leading to riots. And I'm trying to imagine being a sixteen year old girl knowing that an older guy is engaging in harassment of you leading to the possibility that at least dozens of male adults are going to turn up to your party. Yeah, frankly? That's pretty creepy and scary.
"An Indian-Australian model told by a national modelling agency that her work chances were "limited" because she was not Caucasian, is speaking out against the company in a bid to stop the discrimination continuing." And good for her. The agency is really trying to deny racism in this? Don't make me laaaauugh. The comments are about as disappointing as you'd expect, with the whole 'it isn't racist, it's realistic' line being played.
I've been vaguely following the whole palaver about unions in the US (particularly the teachers unions), with the claims that having them will destroy business. Given the constant adoration of the concept of the free market from libertarians, it strikes me that of course if the unions do destroy business, by the concept of the free market that's just fine, surely? Because then they'll all be out of work and it won't matter and they'll have to capitulate in order to eat? Sure, a few people may suffer in the meantime, but that is almost always the case in free market arguments ('A few people will suffer from reduced goods and services, then it will all be okay'). The objections I've seen from certain folk over this seem to boil down to: But this time it will be me! So I don't have much pity. I have a great deal more sympathy for the teachers involved. Especially since it is now becoming harder to find teachers, since the position is seen as unattractive.
The objection to teachers having more collective bargaining power seems to run like this:
The youth of today are pretty bad so obviously teachers are not doing their jobs.
Therefore teaching must be a job people do badly even though it's actually pretty easy.
Plus they are always taking tonnes of holidays and have a short working day. We need to change that.
So we don't need to pay them very much and should be paying them less to shake them up and get them to do good work.
Whereas the reality in my experience runs more like this:
Every generation has complained about the last (there are quotes from Roman texts discussing the terrible fashions of the youth!).
Teaching is quite complex, dealing with many personalities still in the process of forming and requiring a breadth of skills from instruction to dealing with child abuse to understanding various levels of cultural difference.
It's not very well paid compared to other jobs requiring a college education but one of the things that helps make it more attractive is...
...that there are slightly longer holidays and sometimes a shorter working day.
So we should grant them an appropriate wage and benefits to encourage them to stay and do good work.
And people of all kinds only have so much energy in a day, if you treat them badly and pay them poorly, they're probably going to slack off more, not less, in an effort to redress the balance - the ones that don't behave this way are rare cases and one shouldn't expect all teachers to be rare cases any more than any other profession. In the case of teachers, a decent teacher who continues to educate themselves has a number of much better paying jobs available to them. By removing the benefits of teaching that are already balanced by the pay and sometimes the conditions, you're going to remove the teachers.
But...maybe that's what they want?
I'm glad the police took this seriously. 'Prank' implies something harmless, when we've had multiple accounts of viral party invites leading to riots. And I'm trying to imagine being a sixteen year old girl knowing that an older guy is engaging in harassment of you leading to the possibility that at least dozens of male adults are going to turn up to your party. Yeah, frankly? That's pretty creepy and scary.
"An Indian-Australian model told by a national modelling agency that her work chances were "limited" because she was not Caucasian, is speaking out against the company in a bid to stop the discrimination continuing." And good for her. The agency is really trying to deny racism in this? Don't make me laaaauugh. The comments are about as disappointing as you'd expect, with the whole 'it isn't racist, it's realistic' line being played.
I've been vaguely following the whole palaver about unions in the US (particularly the teachers unions), with the claims that having them will destroy business. Given the constant adoration of the concept of the free market from libertarians, it strikes me that of course if the unions do destroy business, by the concept of the free market that's just fine, surely? Because then they'll all be out of work and it won't matter and they'll have to capitulate in order to eat? Sure, a few people may suffer in the meantime, but that is almost always the case in free market arguments ('A few people will suffer from reduced goods and services, then it will all be okay'). The objections I've seen from certain folk over this seem to boil down to: But this time it will be me! So I don't have much pity. I have a great deal more sympathy for the teachers involved. Especially since it is now becoming harder to find teachers, since the position is seen as unattractive.
The objection to teachers having more collective bargaining power seems to run like this:
The youth of today are pretty bad so obviously teachers are not doing their jobs.
Therefore teaching must be a job people do badly even though it's actually pretty easy.
Plus they are always taking tonnes of holidays and have a short working day. We need to change that.
So we don't need to pay them very much and should be paying them less to shake them up and get them to do good work.
Whereas the reality in my experience runs more like this:
Every generation has complained about the last (there are quotes from Roman texts discussing the terrible fashions of the youth!).
Teaching is quite complex, dealing with many personalities still in the process of forming and requiring a breadth of skills from instruction to dealing with child abuse to understanding various levels of cultural difference.
It's not very well paid compared to other jobs requiring a college education but one of the things that helps make it more attractive is...
...that there are slightly longer holidays and sometimes a shorter working day.
So we should grant them an appropriate wage and benefits to encourage them to stay and do good work.
And people of all kinds only have so much energy in a day, if you treat them badly and pay them poorly, they're probably going to slack off more, not less, in an effort to redress the balance - the ones that don't behave this way are rare cases and one shouldn't expect all teachers to be rare cases any more than any other profession. In the case of teachers, a decent teacher who continues to educate themselves has a number of much better paying jobs available to them. By removing the benefits of teaching that are already balanced by the pay and sometimes the conditions, you're going to remove the teachers.
But...maybe that's what they want?