Australia tipped to lose one in 10 university jobs

Australia tipped to lose one in 10 university jobs
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/diminished-capacity-australia-tipped-to-lose-one-in-10-university-jobs-20200930-p560mv.html

Why does this happen? Ask our prime minister and his ministers to enrol in a diplomatic relation and communication course.

I shall discuss this in another blog in regards to how other countries benefited from Australia own action, leading to the demise of international education industry demise.

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Australia tipped to lose one in 10 university jobs

Students told to reject Box Hill TAFE after it waters down free course

Posted to Facebook on 31/7/2020 11:29 AM
Commenting on “Students told to reject Box Hill TAFE after it waters down free course"
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/students-told-to-reject-box-hill-tafe-after-it-waters-down-free-course-20200212-p54082.html

My hours of teaching at TAFEs dropped drastically when the funding cut was so severe. The cut was due to the smart Alec advisers and policy makers who came out with some ill-conceived ideas about market competition allowing private enterprises to open private colleges.

The quality of TAFE was not that bad when I started in the mid-90’s, but began to deteriorate when more and more overseas students came for further studies.

Early batches of students from Korea and Japan were good, hardworking and not spoilt brat. Of course, there were exceptions, but they belong to the minority.

The Indians and mainland China arrived in large numbers. The Indians were ok with English, but they came here with the intention to work to earn money to send to their families back in India. Many Chinese students were from families who were loaded, and to some extent, they were more like getting rid of the good riddance

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Students told to reject Box Hill TAFE after it waters down free course

China's school kids are now the smartest in the world

Posted to Facebook on 31/7/2020 11:03 AM
Commenting on “https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/students-told-to-reject-box-hill-tafe-after-it-waters-down-free-course-20200212-p54082.html”
https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2019/12/544468/chinas-schoolkids-are-now-smartest-world

Throughout history, education helps many poor people break out from the poverty cycle.

While some of these poor people that made it to the top worked very hard to self-support financially, many did have to be supported by parents, loved ones or people that have faith in them, because education was and is neither cheap nor free.

For decades if not centuries, wealthier countries seem to give their citizens a head start by promoting and providing free education for early learning age and primary schooling citizens.

Besides provision of Human Resources, some wealthier countries provide a lot more facilities, hoping the the students will excel in their academic performance.

From my personal experience, the latter assumption may not guarantee high success rate.

Chinese teaching styles and learning styles are very different from the Western education system. Chinese characters are single words not made up of a combination of alphabets.

Written in the traditional style, many of the characters can be identified by looking at the root words or radicals that form the word, and sometimes the pronunciation can be guessed. Unlike English words which are to great extent phonic, the Chinese words are tonal and almost all Chinese words have their unique sound.

That is why learning Chinese really begins with memorisation of words and their associated sound. This is the start of the rote system if learning.

I am a firm believer of rote learning, a system of repetition and drilling. The whole idea to get the information into our brain and stored for future use.

We all have two states of mind - the conscious and sub-conscious states. While we pay attention, our conscious mind is at work, in addition to our eavesdropping sub-conscious mind. Unfortunately, the things stored away by sub-conscious mind may not be in well organised manner and retrieval can be a bit difficult.

Repetition is a reinforcement, so that the sub-conscious mind is just as aware as the conscious mind.

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China's schoolkids are now the smartest in the world

China’s ‘wonder kids’ are literally too good to be true

Posted to Facebook on 21/7/2020 11:45 PM
Commenting on “China’s ‘wonder kids’ are literally too good to be true"
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3093813/chinas-wonder-kids-are-literally-too-good-be-true

I doubt some students who score top marks at school are really top performers, or whether their achievement is the result of their tutors or parents.

Do students go for tuition or helped by their parents understand the subjects better than the rest of the students who do not? My suspicion is that some tutors or the parents are the ghost writers doing the work or projects.

I prefer to teach students the problem solving methods, and give them enough clues to find the reference or source information to solve them. I normally explain the necessary terminology and definition before I proceed with a new chapter or topic.

It is always important give examples whenever possible, and explain in voice rather than just written words. However, if the examples can be shown on a whiteboard as well, then the students are assured of using more senses to digest the explanation.

Additionally, I also ask students to paraphrase what they have learnt.

I prefer to teach my students how to fish than to give them the fish

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China’s ‘wonder kids’ are literally too good to be true

Parents and children remote learning during the COVID-19 pandenic - 2

Posted to Facebook on 17/7/2020 5:51 PM
Commenting on “Parents and student children remote learning"

I have pointed out many times that far too many parents rely on others to raise their children, or outsource their child raising responsibility to childcare centre or after school carerers, school teachers or nannies.

When their children are bullied in cyberspace, the parents do not seek advice or coaching to help their children to deal with the problem. How difficult is it to turn off the computer or modem when the children are faced with cyber bullying?

It is most amazing that many educated parents can't help their children with their school work. Did the parents passed their primary or junior college (in the US)? A parents can follow the teaching concurrently with he child. If an adult can't follow the lesson, how can we expect the children to follow or learn?

Online learning or remote learning by the students without the presence of a teacher is definitely NOT on. The effective way is online teaching or remote teaching, where the students are to attend the cyberspace class with the teacher present as the host.

I am not a teacher but only a volunteer. Before the lockdown, I used to assist teachers to coach or deal with students who require more attention. At present, I am not able to help the school because of health risk, privacy and security reasons.

A good teacher can command the attention of the students either face-to-face in a real environment or in cyberspace.

China tries to step up pressure on Australia with warning to students

Posted to Facebook on 10/6/2020 2:33 AM
Commenting on “China tries to step up pressure on Australia with warning to students”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3088254/china-seeks-step-pressure-australia-warning-students-risk

My warning about Australian government kept antagonising China would backfire, jeopardising Australian export, international education and tourism is not ill-founded.

It took a lot of hard work for late former PM Gough William to pave the way to Beijing, and developed relationship with China. It also benefited the US President Nixon to have dialogue with China through the Ping Pong diplomacy. Former PM Kelvin Rudd also played a role in reinforcing that relationship during his term in office.

Why must the Coalition especially the Liberal component behave so poorly to create unnecessary tension with China? With a big financial sink hole caused by the Coronavirus pandemic to fill, Australian economic downward slide may not see daylight for a long, long time without the injection of money from the major investor, China.

Should the economy continue to go south, the only way to reverse the trend is to have a new government with a totally different set of foreign policies, including reduced association with the US, and be more independent to stand up to the allies, who are bullies in disguise.

May God save Australia!

Thank you for reading.

China tries to step up pressure on Australia with warning to students

Parents and children remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted to Facebook on 10/5/2020 3:49 PM
Parents and children remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the real professional teachers are not with the students face-to-face. The valuable, positive contribution to the students' wellbeing, especially the young children's, is being realised.

Many parents of younger students find themselves helpless to coach and assist their children with online study. Shouldn't parents take some time to reflect on how they have contributed towards the upbringing of their children, preparing them to face and deal with unforeseen expectation and uncertainty in life?

Thank you for reading.