Letter to DET's MCT >> The Lamp, the Golden Door and the Free Range Egg

This is another letter sent to the Big Boss of Department of Education and Training, NSW, Michael Coutts-Trotter. In many ways, this letter can be seen as a summary of issues that pertain to privatisation of TAFE and the corporate attempt of making the Trainer the focus of TAFE as compared to the Teacher.
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Dear Michael



Thanks for your reply. You said that my letter to you was like a Curate's Egg, excellent in parts but totally inedible. I think it was more like a free range egg, unlike your reply, a product of a corporate battery mindset that pretended to answer my questions by using semantic smokescreens and Don Watson's "weasel words".

By the way, on a more personal note, I'm certain I saw you at the Nick Cave curated "All Tomorrow’s Parties" at Cockatoo Island in January this year. If I remember rightly, you were wearing designer torn jeans. Was it you?

Being a rock n roll aficionado and enjoying Lou Reed's "New York" album, which I agree is great, you'd be aware that the song I referenced in my letter, "Connected in Spirit", satirized the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest - tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

When I was in Palestine a few years ago, I sat on a bench in Nativity Square, Bethlehem and befriended an old Palestinian man. He asked me what I did in Australia and when I told him that I was a Teacher, he smiled and said,

"Ah, you know in my country, a Teacher is a Lamp because a Teacher brings light to the darkness of ignorance."

Now, he didn't say, a trainer, he said a Teacher.

So, in the context of what is happening to TAFE, the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door" - takes on another metaphorical meaning. The lamp is the Teaching profession and the Golden Door is the equal and accessible opportunity given to everyone by TAFE.

Exchanging a TAFE system of giving a fair go for a private system whose sole purpose for existing is to make a profit while using the argument of "Competition" and downgrading Teachers to trainers, is the equivalent of throwing away the lamp and replacing it with a laser pen, without a rechargeable battery. The golden door becomes a locked door that only opens with a dollar key.

The people who seek an equal opportunity through education and training - yes, the "huddled masses" outside the golden door of opportunity lose out big time.

Kevin Rudd wrote in one of his articles in The Monthly that the resistance hero and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the most influential of his teachers. The Prime minister wrote:

"In his 'Letters from Prison', Bonhoeffer wrote, reflecting in part on the deportation of the Jews, that 'We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the reviled - in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.' Bonhoeffer's political theology is therefore one of a dissenting church that speaks truth to the state, and does so by giving voice to the voiceless. Its domain is the village, not the interior life of the chapel. Its core principle is to stand in defence of the defenceless, or, in Bonhoeffer's terms, of those who are 'below'".

I believe that the above quote is relevant given the commercialisation of TAFE and what it means for those who are "below". It is also very apt given the downgrading of Teacher's professionalism and vocational nobility to that of a trainer who works for a private provider existing solely for profit and trains people to be better cogs for the Machine, rather than citizens for a society.

It also provokes another question in my heart - why did DET - TAFE NSW get rid of the Equity Units?

PUBLIC EDUCATION is the Golden Door for opportunity and the Lamps at the front of that Golden Door are Teachers. I will dare say it out loud now: FREE - PUBLIC EDUCATION. If poor countries can do it, so can rich countries like ours.

TAFE TA members had a chance to have a kerbside chat with the Premier when he attended a fund raiser at Caves Beach on Friday ( http://save-tafe-now.blogspot.com/).

I told him that one of the products of the commercialisation of TAFE was that the people of the Hunter region no longer had the opportunity to learn a language other than English.

So here we are in a global economy and the people of Newcastle cannot study Chinese or Japanese or any other language because it was decided in 2007 that it would be "more efficient" if a Commercial Course "Languages for Travellers " was offered. Well, what happened? The following year student numbers fell and in 2009 - not one course ran except for Auslan.

You said in your reply to me that you are responsible for taxpayers' monies and that is why you have to ensure that an efficient and cost effective service is provided to the tax payers of NSW.

You and your SES cohort are busy "streamlining your operations to provide a more efficient service", so efficient that it costs nothing because you don't provide it. Now,that's strategic... why bother providing it if Private Providers do so? Yeh, like those who rip off the "huddled masses" from overseas in those private vocational colleges.

Your SES status only exists because the Liberal Government's Premier, Nick Greiner and Education Minister, Terry Metherill all those years ago, worshipped at the altar of Economic Rationalism, whose High Priestess at the time was Margaret Thatcher - yes, the one who said that there was no such thing as society - only individuals. They infected the State Public Service with "corporatism" and "managerialism" by creating the SES, by transplanting a structure and ethos from ... the likes of MacQuarie Bank etc.

So, if there is this great sense of duty to the tax payer, can you please tell me howhaving so many failed restructures over the years has saved money?

Tell me how changing from TAFE Regions to TAFE Networks (with brand new off campus offices in the early 1990's) with their individual logos and branding, then to Institutes of TAFE and Institutes of Technology....all the new new signage, new stationery, new offices for the SES officers, new positions for the new Institute Managers....how doing all this, is cost effective?

Then we had the restructure to Institutes of Technology and Institutes of TAFE with a call to create separate regional Institute identities with their own "Brand Name" and logo. Hunter Institute's looked like the Hunter Water Board's logo.

Then it was decided that all Institutes were TAFE and that all that was needed was a super duper brand name for all of them....yes, TAFE NSW. Duh!

Meanwhile the Marketing and Public Relations Departments of TAFE Institutes increase in status, with upgraded positions and budgets to match...how is this cost effective?

How is restructuring TAFE every couple of years an efficient use of tax payers' money?

How is giving you and the other SES a bonus an efficient use of tax payers' money?

How many courses could TAFE run for those "below", for the "huddling masses" standing outside the Golden Door with your and the SES bonus?

So, I ask you, has anyone done a cost benefit analysis of the SES and the various restructures / realignments that have occurred over the last 20 years? I don't think so.

You cut courses, provide "Centres of Excellence" so that country people have to travel very long distances to do courses of their choice rather than at their local college; renovate SES offices and provide them with air conditioning and to top it all off, give your TAFE teachers a 20% reduction in real pay for a 1.5% "increase"...all in the name of
responsible governance and ensuring tax payers monies are used wisely??

What blows me away is that you do not consider the huge social capital cost in all this. It is as if Dollar Signs have been placed over your and the SES eyes and everything is seen filtered through them.

How you and your SES have got away with this for so long I can't understand. The only thing I can put it down to is that you are all somehow hypnotised by a Corporate Mindset which has Reality Tunnels dug into another realm of values where those from "below" don't count as much as those from "above".

Bob Dylan said so long ago,

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".

In case you haven't noticed, the world has changed since last September, 2008 with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. The "Greed is Good" brigade and the bonus enriched CEOs have had their day. There is something in the air and we are living in a time of transition. The Prime Minister's quote I used above is part of the change in sensibility we are all witnessing in the Western World.

Please explain why it is necessary now to corporatise and commercialise our wonderful TAFE system. You owe it to your Teachers and all staff who work in Department of Education and Training to give us the underpinnings of your vision, since you are our leader.

You also owe your Teachers an acknowledgement of the hard work we do and the extra hours we put in our work because of our sense of professionalism by giving us back our work conditions. The NSW Government can do so and I ask you to ask your political masters to ignore the IRC decision and for us to start all over again.

When you get a chance you should also read the article by Jane Caro who is the co-author of "The Stupid Country: How Australia Is Dismantling Public Education". She outlines some great rules to attract people to the teaching profession. Check it out and you will see that what you are doing is exactly the opposite.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/teacher-who-spurns-fame-the-re\al-idol-20091102-htcr.html


One more thing, can you please answer my questions in plain English?

regards

steve g


Hunter Institute TAFE TA Peace Officer