Breakfast in Surry Hills

The Rabbit was an early riser today, as I found him already breakfasting in The Coffee Roaster when I came downstairs around 8 am. He has an exam starting around about now…

And the rather silly novel I have been reading is Key of Light by Nora Roberts (London, Piatkus 2003). It is entertaining but, deep down, incredibly childish really. Children would however prefer Harry Potter.

” I am a popular writer and proud of it,” Nora Roberts told Publisher’s Weekly in 1998, and as J D Robb she has written some fair-enough SF/Crime Fiction crossovers. In the one I am reading now “mortal women quest to unlock the spellbound souls of ancient demigoddesses” and, incidentally (a real American touch this) may score ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Rarely have God and Mammon lived together so happily, but it all goes down well at the box office, as they say.

But I am being mildly entertained.

Book Review: The White Earth, by Andrew McGahan

Book Review: The White Earth, by Andrew McGahan

I have not quite finished, but have cast my eye ahead to the end… It is a page-turner in its way, quite compulsive reading once you get into it.

Needless to say it is far more worthy of respect than anything ever written by Di Morrissey, not to mention Dan Brown. Needless to say, despite having just won the Miles Franklin Award, it will wither on the vine in comparison to Brown, Di Morrissey, Colleen McCullough or Bryce Courtenay (”Australia’s Best-Selling Author”).

Slice of Australian gothic takes out Miles Franklin

Yes, I do have a copy of Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth at the moment, from the Salt Mine Library. I shall try to read it over the weekend and let you know what I think. I do know I very much enjoyed his 1988 (1995) which I read some time back.

Meantime I am reading Neil Belton’s The Good Listener: A Life against Cruelty (199 which was one of the books I proposed to dump, but maybe not now. (It had been a bargain bookshop impulse buy about a year ago.) The book is a treasure. It is profound, responsible, well written, intelligent, absolutely relevant… We need such books in these days. For example, see Heather Mallick, “The Heart of Darkness Beats Clear and Steady in Guantanamo Bay” (2002):

Angst de jour…

Posted today on the current HSC cheating media frenzy.

The whole saga has developed into a family soapie, it seems. HSC scandal teacher betrayed by daughter.

I have been ranting online for SOOO long!

Not that all of it is still there, mind you. Some of it only exists now on my own computer, that sturdy and ancient beast which was introduced to you thus:

Winter Solstice

Seeing this is the shortest day of the year, I have resolved today’s effort here will be much shorter than yesterday’s. Yes, of course it was all brilliant — but Sirdan can’t afford to spend all that time at work reading it, and The Rabbit still has assignments to complete.

I must add to yesterday’s, though, a clarification: I really do recommend Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s The Heart of Islam as a very elegant defence of the traditional position of Muslims, utterly opposed to the evils we have come to associate with Islamists and terror. Professor Nasr is a very learned man and a great spirit. He also writes extremely well. He is not a simple literalist in his interpretation of the Quran either, though he does hold to the traditional exaltation of that book.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. is one of the most important and foremost scholars of Islamic, Religious and Comparative Studies in the world today. Author of over fifty books and five hundred articles which have been translated into several major Islamic, European and Asian languages, Professor Nasr is a well known and highly respected intellectual figure both in the West and the Islamic world. An eloquent speaker with a charismatic presence, Nasr is a much sought after speaker at academic conferences and seminars, university and public lectures and also radio and television programs in his area of expertise. Possessor of an impressive academic and intellectual record, his career as a teacher and scholar spans over four decades…

This is one impressive person, of that there is no doubt, and being located at the Sufi end of Islam seems to guarantee a certain loveliness of thought that the world, Islamic or not, sorely needs.

Sydney Star Observer: Teachers furious over gay lesson ban

A follow-up to this morning’s entry.

The state government’s decision to ban an anti-homophobia teaching resource is “disgraceful and cowardly”, according to the NSW Teachers Federation. The Federation’s comments came as NSW Education minister Carmel Tebbutt attempted to clarify her position, saying homophobic behaviour in schools was unacceptable but that the banned material was inappropriate.

The material was used during a lesson titled “Dealing With Difference” by a school in western Sydney. Year Nine students were asked to imagine they lived in a gay world where straight people were bullied and discriminated against, in a bid to show them what life can be like for homosexuals.

Despite the fact there had been no complaints from parents, students or teachers at the school, when the government was informed The Daily Telegraph was running a story about the lesson on its front page this week [that is, two weeks ago, as this morning's story is a gratuitous rerun], the material was banned from future use.

“It’s a disgraceful and cowardly decision by the minister for Education in this state,” president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O’Halloran, told Sydney Star Observer. “The program fits clearly within the Board of Studies syllabuses and the Department of Education and Training guidelines. Those teaching materials and that program have been up on the Department of Education’s website for other teachers to use, because it’s been deemed to be such a good unit of work.”

O’Halloran said the minister had banned the material “because she’s afraid of The Daily Telegraph, there is no other answer”.

A spokesperson for Tebbutt told the Star “it was not the minister who banned the syllabus, it was the Department of Education”. She added: “The minister is fully supportive of teaching tolerance and diversity in our schools.”

The spokesperson sent a two-page document to the Star outlining a number of Department of Education programs used in schools to combat homophobia. One of these programs was the Anti-Bullying Plan which required all schools to develop strategies to address forms of harassment including bullying about a student’s homosexuality. The document also stated students were taught about the effects of homophobic bullying and discrimination from Years Seven to Ten in personal development and health classes.

The spokesperson said last month’s Writing Themselves In Again report by La Trobe University — a national report on the wellbeing of same-sex attracted young Australians — “reminds us of the need to ensure all students are supported to learn and achieve positive educational outcomes in a safe learning environment”.

It is up to schools to make decisions about the most appropriate content and timing of lessons about sexual health and sexuality.

Tebbutt said the particular scenario used in the class was taken from a book by American author Brian McNaught that was not endorsed by the Department of Education.

Federal Education minister Dr Brendan Nelson supported the ban, saying Year Nine students were too young to be taught such complex issues.

“The material at that age is as unacceptable as prejudice and vilification of homosexual people in adult life,” he said.

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby slammed the decision, with co-convenor David Scamell saying the banned material was simply “trying to make students aware of some of the isolation young gay people feel growing up in our society”.

Vicki Harding, author of the Learn To Include books for preschool children, which feature same-sex parents, said she was in “despair about an education system that takes its lead from the media and responds in such a knee-jerk fashion”.

See also PDF file on homophobia from Curriculum Support, PDHPE NSW.

Backtrack: Brisbane Courier Mail 06 June 2005:

It’s schoolies week at the Daily Terror

The dear old Terror. Always having a go, as tabloids do. Having had its ethics exposed in that rather tawdry Tegan Lane identification beat-up a week or so back, not to mention their “reportage” of the Corby case, they plough on regardless.

Second school in gay uproar

By BRUCE McDOUGALL Education Reporter
June 20, 2005

ANOTHER public school has asked students to imagine a world dominated by homosexuals and lesbians as an inquiry is launched into the content of sex education lessons.

Year 11 and 12 pupils at Model Farms High School were asked to visualise themselves being kissed by a member of their same sex as part of the program. [So shocking! They are being asked to imagine being in someone else's moccasins for a moment... Truly evil! This could lead to empathy and tolerance if you're not careful.]

They were given the same text offered to Year 9 students at a different school, which was banned by Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt after The Daily Telegraph revealed details of the sex lessons. [It should be noted this is a red herring in terms of the Model Farms story; probably this course, designed as it is for Year 11 and 12, ought not to be used in Year 9.]

The mandatory course in Sydney’s northwest flies in the face of Government claims only one high school on one occasion has offered the controversial lessons. [Not if the course is being offered in Year 11 and 12.]

Principals are investigating the content of personal development and health education programs delivered in classrooms across the state.

Students at Model Farms High canvassed the material during a course known as “Crossroads” earlier this year — before the Minister’s ban. [Examine the course for yourselves, folks, so you can judge the Terror's version of things for what it is.]

The lesson program, seen by The Daily Telegraph, covers relationships, sex, drug issues and homophobia.

When the lessons were being given to Year 9 students at another school, education experts branded them “brainwashing and social engineering”. [Oh yes, these are "experts" with a particular axe to grind who instantly spout these snarl-words on demand; or the experts convene every afternoon in a pub near Kippax Street...]

Students as young as 14 were asked to place themselves in an imaginary world dominated by homosexuals and lesbians. [Not if the course is being offered in Year 11 and 12.]

In the lesson, “Dealing With Difference”, pupils were asked to imagine they are growing up heterosexual in an environment where everyone else was gay — their teacher and even their family.

The text was taken from A Guided Journey, by US author Brian McNaught, known as the “Godfather of gay sensitivity training”. [What interesting connotations that has, eh!]

At the time, Ms Tebbutt said: “This material is inappropriate to be used in schools. I am advised it’s been used on one occasion in one school. It will not be used again.”

A spokesman for the Department of Education said principals had been warned to be “vigilant” about the use of inappropriate material.

He said parents should be informed prior to the material being used and given the option of withdrawing their child from the program.

The Nation | Book Review | Martha Nussbaum

This came my way through the Arts and Letters Daily page: I should thank Simon H for telling me about this a while ago. It is now my browser’s home page! I clicked on it because 1) Martha Nussbaum is great and 2) The Nation is what one hopes America might be more often.

I wasn’t disappointed. The article is a review of a new book on the least familiar (to me at least) of the 19th-century Utilitarians, Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900).

Stealing the American Dream (By Jeanti St Clair)

Thought I would go to the local gay press for a film review for a change:

Cafe Omelette

They do specialise in omelettes (and salads) some of which sound good. I, however, merely had a Turkish sandwich and coffee. They no longer use Coffee Roaster. The food, on the other hand, arrived quickly.

The decor is very yellow. And very red.

Lazy day

I am going to The Mine on Monday instead of today, so in a few minutes I am off to check Cafe Omelette in Devonshire Street, the revamped Cafe Max, which is now open.

Yesterday at The Mine I made myself feel old thus. There has been a boy in Year 12 who has quite literally been rearranging the school, with the boss’s blessing. Pictures, honour boards, and so on are being distributed all over, and I have to say the results look good.

The philosopher and the ayatollah

Link.

In 1978, Michel Foucault went to Iran as a novice journalist to report on the unfolding revolution. His dispatches — now fully available in translation — shed some light on the illusions of intellectuals in our own time.

By Wesley Yang | June 12, 2005 | Boston Globe

“IT IS PERHAPS the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and most insane.” With these words, the French philosopher Michel Foucault hailed the rising tide that would sweep Iran’s modernizing despot, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Shah, out of power in January 1979 and install in his place one of the world’s most illiberal regimes, the Shi’ite government headed by Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini…

Foucault was virtually alone among Western observers, Anderson and Afary argue, in embracing the specifically Islamist wing of the revolution. Indeed, Foucault pokes fun at the secular leftists who thought they could use the Islamists as a weapon for their own purposes; the Islamists alone, he believed, reflected the “perfectly unified collective will” of the people…

And so on. Yes, Foucault was wrong, but isn’t this article a typical bit of right-wing intellectual-baiting?