World news. Putin spanks Obama .
Fancy that! A research centre in the UK recently found that lavishing praise on students, particularly low-attaining students, may be counter-productive. By providing a no-fail, no-consequences environment in which the top priority is to make everybody feel good about themselves, we are doing little more than setting young people up to fail.
It would appear our modern education systems have delivered us not only a backslide of Australian student rankings, but also our highest youth unemployment rate in decades. Research suggests that basic employability skills, where worker can arrive on time, take instruction and get on with others, are wanting in this generation of young people.
Culture. A sublime collection of medieval icons is currently on display at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. It’s a rare treat for aficionados of Byzantine art as we have never had an exhibition of icons of this calibre in Australia before.
Incidentally, it is not new for culture and learning to come to Ballarat because in 1856 the Mechanics Institute opened.
The Institute was established in 1859 in the top floor of the Ballarat Fire Brigade in Barkly Street. On the 28th September, 1860 a foundation stone was laid at the rear of the present building. According to the Ballarat Star a crowd of 10,000 people attended the ceremony. By 1869 the Institute consisted of four floors, shops on the ground floor, a grand entrance with a library on the second floor and a museum on the top floor.
This was just one of a large network of similar (though not all so grand) places of learning for working men and women across Australia. In the course of time they were overtaken by the rise of secondary education and the colleges that usefully gave out certificates and diplomas until recently they suddenly became universities.
Books. Cricket writing. Shakespeare books.
Interesting concepts. Spending in the USA. Secular sabbath. Female traffic lanes. The long and the short of it.
Sport. Performing at the edge. Getting a little more distance out of “the unforgiving minute”. Cute gridiron play and other freakish scores.
Education. Stephen Matchett on the trials and tribulations of education reform.
Around the town. IPA HEY. The Sydney Institute. Australian Taxpayers Alliance, Quadrant on line, Mannkal Foundation, Centre for Independent Studies.
Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog [new addition will appear on Friday mid-afternoon]. Don Aitkin. Jim Rose, feral and utopian!
Sites of interest. Richard Hammer, Free Nation Foundation. Aust NZ libertarian students. Powerline. Econotalk a “must read” for nerds too!
For nerds. Melvyn Bragg’s radio program. Stephen Hicks, always interesting for nerds. Econotalk.