In which the Riddster and Dame Slap take to the stage, with a cameo appearance by Dashing Donners ...

 

The pond agonised about how to work in the quote "We are Athens. They are Rome. We will prevail", a sentiment currently doing the rounds in elbows-up Canada, and gave up, defeated.

The reptiles might be part of an empire, but at best it's faux Roman, a minor sword and sandal show, but as the election results indicated, inclined to impotence down under. It's only real work now is done by its US branch ...and that's more the work of slave than empire, diligently sucking the toes and caressing the feet of King Donald I.

The pond also never thought it would get around to copying out the line JD Vance is the Republican party’s Honky Tonk Man.

But there it was in Jonathan V. Last's JD Vance and the Honky Tonk Man, Why MAGA's thirstiest try-hard (probably) won't get the brass ring.

If Honky Tonk Man means nothing to you, chances are you weren't around for the glory days of pro wrestling.

The pond is content just to just note that there's a lot to be said for Last comparing the klown karnival in the White House to kayfabe routines. It's a lot closer than Rome, excepting the likes of Caligula and Nero and some later ones like the Caracalla brothers.

On the upside, these are excellent distractions from Sven Teske being determinedly gloomy in The Conversation in Earth is heading for 2.7°C warming this century. We may avoid the worst climate scenarios – but the outlook is still dire.

But it's Wednesday, and so the pond should retreat from general reading to herpetology studies ...

Nothing to see there, and what a relief that the reptiles ran with unrealised gains tax as the lead fear and loathing item. 

The pond had tucked away a note from a member of the Nine Kelly gang, in case there was another bout of super hysteria, but will use it anyway. 

It came in Albanese should consider what he might come to regret (archive link):

...Unfortunately, the Coalition is not the only part of the political class guilty of unreflective haste. The amount of attention being given to Labor’s superannuation changes by some parts of the media is astounding given how small its impact is. The attempts to make this an important question of principle are frankly embarrassing. The tax isn’t indexed? Income tax isn’t indexed. We should never tax unrealised gains? We already do. This isn’t to say it can’t be calmly discussed or even changed. Just that the arguments are wildly, pompously overblown.
Again, this affects a tiny group of people. The best argument the scaremongers have is that in three decades, one in 10 taxpayers will be affected.
This is important, because governments should be able to do things based on a reasonable discussion of how many people will lose out, not based on scare campaigns by self-interested parties trying to convince everybody they will lose out one day.

And that's why the pond is done and dusted with sundry reptile tax and super campaigns.

"Some parts of the media" is of course code for the lizard Oz, but given the amount of hysteria and deep anxiety on view in the AFR, it also embraces sections of the Nine media. 

The pond has no idea why journalists feel compelled not to name names, as the pond wandered off to the extreme far right to see who was top of the world, ma ...

Ah, the Riddster... haven't heard from him for a long time, but what a relief to be reminded that he still knows how to sound like an abject idiot.

The pond half-expected a standard bout of "how lovely is the reef, how wrong is climate science" as a way of putting that pesky Teske chap in his place ...

How wrong was the pond ...

... and yet what a relief, because the reptiles clocked Bob Katter for chancellor? Harvard shows it’s time for new leaders on our campuses, It’s time to shake up the governing bodies of Australian campuses to better reflect local communities as a mere three minute read. 

The pond could knock that over in a doddle, especially as the reptiles alerted their hive mind to the content of those illustrations, Donald Trump’s move on Harvard is a wake-up call for our universities.

Take it away Riddster ...

The fight between President Donald Trump and Harvard University raises the question of how bad universities must be before governments should act. This question is even more important for Australian universities, which are largely funded by government. Where is the balance between an independent university system and the right of the government to control how our taxes are spent?
Trump has recently withdrawn the right of Harvard to host foreign students after previously suspending government funds for research. His administration cited Harvard’s racist and sexist hiring and enrolment policies (diversity, equity and inclusion), and rampant anti-Semitism.

Strange, the pond thought it was all about a personal feud ... you know ...

Put it another way ... Barron Trump’s Alleged Ivy League Rejections Spark Policy Firestorm from President Trump:

As President Donald Trump begins the second year of his return to the White House, a curious and highly personal controversy is quietly fueling one of his most aggressive policy crusades to date: the defunding of America’s elite universities. At the center of the storm is his youngest son, Barron Trump, and a series of persistent online claims that he was denied admission to multiple Ivy League institutions.
While no official documentation has confirmed or denied the alleged rejections, the rumor mill surrounding Barron’s college plans has gained serious traction—and appears to be colliding directly with federal education policy under President Trump’s renewed administration.
From NYU to National Headlines
Earlier this month, the Associated Press confirmed that 18-year-old Barron Trump would attend New York University’s Stern School of Business this fall source. While NYU is one of the top business programs in the country, its selection raised eyebrows, given Barron’s public profile and the Trump family’s historic emphasis on prestige.
Within days, social media platforms erupted with claims—none officially verified—that Barron had applied to Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton, only to be rejected. Political commentators, pro-Trump influencers, and conspiracy theorists quickly coalesced around a narrative: that these elite institutions deliberately turned away the president’s son in a politically motivated act of defiance.
President Trump’s Retaliatory Proposal
Whether or not the rumors are true, President Trump wasted no time escalating the issue from gossip to governance. In a fiery speech delivered from the White House Rose Garden, he proposed redirecting $3 billion in federal funding away from Ivy League universities, singling out Harvard by name. The money, he said, would instead be funneled into trade schools, vocational programs, and “patriotic American institutions.”
    “This isn’t about one school. This is about a broken system. These Ivy League schools are filled with radicals, antisemitism, and open hatred of American values,” President Trump declared. “Why are we subsidizing failure? Why are we rewarding hate?”

Rewarding hate? 

Always with the projection, because there's never been a better or more determined hater and hate monger, but back to the Riddster being very silly, and perhaps a tad bitter about his own fate ...

But the list of university crimes is far longer than this, and Harvard is little worse than most Australian universities. Consider the following incomplete list of additional grievances.
Visa scamming using the lure of permanent residency to encourage overseas student enrolments; grossly misrepresenting the economic benefits of overseas students by exaggerating how much they spend while in Australia; rampant cheating even before the advent of AI; gross over-representation of academics of left-wing, or far-left, political persuasion; staggering inefficiency, with over half of university staff being administrators; engaging in kangaroo court disciplinary procedures against students who may fall short of woke ideals; accepting students with inadequate prerequisites, failing them, and putting them into debt with no degree.

Ah, kangaroo courts. It still lingers and the pond notes the mention of "woke".

The reptiles decided to interrupt with a burst of unlovely meter maid Rita ... Sky News host Rita Panahi says Harvard University is in a “world of pain” as US President Donald Trump pushes to revoke the college’s right to enrol international students. Last week, a US judge blocked the Trump Administration from barring foreign students from Harvard. “The Trump Administration is not letting up on holding the college responsible for its discriminatory practice, for its tolerance of antisemitism on its campus,” Ms Panahi said.

Back to the Riddster ranting, or trying to troll ...

The most important grievance – enforcing a ruthless woke ideology – is most dangerous in teacher education degrees. 

Sorry, that's the second mention. The pond had hoped to let it slide, but the pond is under contractual obligation - whenever that word appears, the pond must feature this ...

Back to the hapless Riddster, doing his best to sound like a fuckhead and still clearly feeling the pain ... (and no bonus marks for guessing that "zealots" would also be trotted out, though sadly the Riddster wasn't up to "the long march through the institutions" and so settled for indoctrination) ...

Students must survive up to five years of indoctrination. This means new schoolteachers either have an incredibly high threshold to pain, and can endure years of woke lectures, or are fully signed-up, far-left zealots. They go on to teach our children. Could anything be more damaging to society?
So far, aside from Trump, there has been no attempt to rectify the failing university system in the Anglosphere. There are a couple of things that can be done easily. The first is to take the crucial teacher education role away from universities and set up new teacher training institutions. Start again – outside the universities.
The second is more fundamental. The solution lies in the composition of the university councils, which state governments can influence. University councils are like the boards of directors of companies. In the end, it is these councils that are responsible for the woeful situation at universities.
Many universities are set up under specific Acts of a state parliament – especially the newer universities. For example, most Queensland universities fall under their own Act of parliament, which dictates how the council will be selected. The government has the ability to select many of those who sit on the councils, and could change the Act in order to stack the councils with people of an appropriate disposition.
A state government could experiment with reform by changing the councils of a couple of universities. I would suggest starting with James Cook University, my alma mater, in North Queensland.

Ah, so it is personal and now to get very silly, with a classic form of IPA trolling ...

This is an area where more than 75 per cent of people voted no to the racist voice, but we have a university that behaves as if it serves the inner city.
Let us have some true diversity – a university that has a different philosophical bent, driven by a board empowered to hold the senior management of the university to account.
So, who would be the chancellor, the head of the council? Traditionally, chancellors are usually pedestrian ex-politicians, judges or diplomats. But a North Queensland university, which is going to be different, needs a different sort of chancellor. Let us have some fun – why not Bob Katter? He is more in tune with North Queensland than most council members, and even ticks some diversity boxes. The only Lebanese-descended chancellor who owns a large gun.

Just to reinforce the comedy, the reptiles slipped in a couple of snaps ... Bob Katter. Picture: Brendan Radke, Noel Pearson. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

It takes considerable skill to do a decent, dinkum troll, and alas and alack, the Riddster isn't up to much, reaching peak risibility by reaching into the closet, and dusting the moths off, and dragging out 95 year old Blainers...while with a commendably straight face purporting to be "completely serious":

And, being completely serious, why not invite the heads of QCoal and Bowen Coking Coal to join the council? To support the agricultural industries in the north, we could have the chair of one of the sugar-growing organisations. And to further help the mining industry upon which North Queensland relies, invite geologist and climate realist Ian Plimer.
Warren Mundine and Geoffrey Blainey could challenge the extreme ideology in the humanities departments. So would Noel Pearson, who hails from near Cooktown, and has annoyed more university education “experts” than anybody. The arguments in the council chamber about the pros and cons of the voice would finally put some genuine intellectual spark back into university life.
Perhaps some of this is a joke. But is there not a place for just one of the 30-odd universities in this country to pursue the interests of its region? Just one that partially reflects the views of a long-suffering sensible majority? Just one to break away from the sameness of the others?
And it can be done quite easily. Stack the university councils. That’s something Trump cannot do to Harvard.
Peter Ridd is an adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Oh dear, is there some reward for having to struggle through what passes for an attempt at IPA humour?

Here,  have a Golding as a reward for making it to the end, with the 'toon featuring a host of potential chancellors ...

That circus metaphor never gets tired.

Speaking of Noel Pearson, his name also intruded on Dame Slap's rant of the day ...

The header: Culture wars? The Left knows how to fight those battles too, Noel Pearson is right on reforming our kids’ education but wrong on the ‘obsession’ with culture wars.

The caption: Noel Pearson. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

The 'click heels' clause: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The reptiles assured the pond it was an onerous five minute read, and the first thing the pond must note is an epic fail by Dame Slap.

Not a single mention of "woke" or some kind of "zealotry". 

Sheesh, must the hard yards be left to the Riddster?

In pursuit of the kind of even-handed, impartial reporting the ABC is statutorily required to undertake but rarely does, this newspaper last weekend gave considerable space to controversial views put by Professor Clare Wright at the Sydney Writers Festival. The professor of history at La Trobe University has for many years complained about the way we, as a nation, teach and commemorate our history.
In particular, Wright dislikes what she regards as an overemphasis on the Anzac story at the expense of what is known as the frontier wars. Wright is quite capable of the odd incendiary remark. When she told her audience at the festival there was “a kind of brainwashing” about being told that “Australia’s true national identity, and the birth of the nation happened at Gallipoli”, she would have had her inner-city audience politely putting down their chai lattes to applaud.
Many others, who don’t attend such festivals, might have been offended. However, as this newspaper editorialised on Saturday, “fair enough; history is always contested ground and Professor Wright has a case to make”.
It would be a fine thing if the magnanimity of our editorial writers were shared more widely. The ability to disagree yet give the opposing view both space and respect is something seen too rarely, especially on the left.

How singularly benign, how wonderfully tolerant, how deeply magnanimous, and to show how serious the reptiles were, they slipped in a snap of the villainess ... La Trobe University History Professor Clare Wright. Picture: Susan Papazian

On with the incredibly tolerant, all encompassing, veritably Whitmanesque Dame Slap

While Wright is free to lob her grenades, too often those who politely return serve are viewed as the perpetrators of some kind of “history war” raging in Australia. There is no war. Simply a debate, heated at times, but still, we are dealing with ideas. As esteemed historian Geoffrey Blainey said in 2015: “Controversy, not war, will continue for a long time to come. It is in the nature of history and of most intellectual activities, and the more so in a nation where the main strands of history – ­Aboriginal and European – are utterly different.”
There is something Trumpian about those on the left who brand defenders of mainstream views as warriors – be it history warriors or culture warriors. It is not unlike Donald Trump labelling Ukraine as the cause of its war with Russia.

Sorry, was there a hint of disenchantment in that mention of "Trumpian" and even a hint that one of his many lies might be ... a lie.

Say what, Dame Slap is attempting a revisionist take on King Donald? 

Sorry, whenever Dame Slap seems to forget her devotion, her excitement, her cultural warrior bloodlust, the pond is contractually obligated to run ...

Back to a disapproving cluck from the MAGA cap wearer about Trumpian behaviour ...

History is not the only battleground that could do with less Trumpian behaviour. 

Uh huh...

And now back into Dame Slap's bubble, though perhaps without the MAGA cap as TACO Trump scores bigly ...

Sadly, education is another field full of unnecessarily adversarial behaviour. One expects big political fights about taxation, energy, industrial relations, indeed, about Australia’s place in the world. But why on Earth is education infected with kneejerk political responses? If we could extract the politics from the debates, sound education reform would have happened long ago.
I raise this after reading Noel Pearson’s otherwise sensible piece at the weekend about reforming the national curriculum, and other parts of the education system.
There is, one hopes, much agreement – even if it is a long time coming – that returning to basics is exactly what is needed in Australian classrooms. The evidence is in. Our children are doing poorly compared to their peers in other countries. Our children have suffered for too long because politics has infected debates about how best to teach children to read, and how to add, subtract and multiply. These foundational skills can set a child up for a life of learning and achievement, through their years from primary to high school – and beyond. Who doesn’t want this for the current and future generations of Australian children?
But it was disappointing to see Pearson take a silly potshot at me. “Her obsession with culture wars means she attributes too much to the ‘cross-curriculum priorities’ mandated by the Australian Curriculum,” he wrote. “In the scheme of things that are problems with the national curriculum, this is trivial.”

Say what? That's it? That's the "potshot" that got Dame Slap all hot and bothered?

A prize maroon blathering "back to basics" ... and it's "trivial" that offends her?

Trust a narcissist to get sore... 

It was just one mention and best read in context:

...Remember the enthusiasm for “feedback” that the Grattan Institute banged the drum on? And “targeted teaching”?
These are not bad in themselves but they are diversions from what must be the real focus: effective teaching. Grattan came late to explicit instruction and still has no idea about Direct Instruction.
Mona Mourshed was the genius behind McKinsey’s 2010 playbook for school system improvement. Clare should bring the brain of this Egyptian-American based in Washington to bear on the most difficult aspect of the Australian context: the ragtag collection of systems and subsystems that make up Australian schools.
No one knows more about how the international evidence on school systems improvement interplays with context. Her lackeys at McKinsey should provide pro bono support, because she makes them shine.
My dream team would be Mourshed and the former chief executive of schools in the Canberra-Goulburn Catholic Diocese, the engineer turned school reform champion, Ross Fox. Fox led a revolution in this subsystem of 58 Catholic schools, centred on effective teaching. He achieved a step change in subsystem performance within the time-frame evidenced by Mourshed: five years.
It was Mourshed who first made clear in a 2007 McKinsey report that there was only one lever for school and system improvement: effective instruction. This is what lifts schools. Every thing we do must support the goal of improving instruction.
Fox has left Canberra-Goulburn. I fear for the progress they made. I know how easily ignorance or malignity can unravel progress. But it means he’s available if you want someone to drive a playbook, Minister Clare. Mourshed is the brains though, she wrote the playbook.
Which brings me to a last diversion. Janet Albrechtsen is right to focus on the role of curriculum but her focus is off. Her obsession with culture wars means she attributes too much to the “cross-curriculum priorities” mandated by the Australian Curriculum. In the scheme of things that are problems with the national curriculum, this is trivial.
Tudge was similarly diverted by cultural issues. In fact Liberal governments had 10 years to fix whatever problems they say they have with the curriculum. Didn’t Kevin Donnelly and others undertake reviews on their behalf at verious (sic, as the lizard Oz tries to outdo the Graudian) times?
Of more substantial concern is the parlous comparison between the standards mandated by the Australian Curriculum and curriculums in other countries. Jensen’s 2023 benchmarking report sets out a terrible comparison of Australia’s expectations of science learning against other countries. Australia has the lowest expectations, far below the US, Singapore and Britain. If the same applied to other subjects then this is a major problem for Australia.
What you teach is intimately linked to how you teach. We have to fix the how of pedagogy and the what of curriculum in order to improve instruction. Let’s see, we wasted the first 20 years. I’m sure we can waste another two decades doing the same thing. We should expect the same results.
Noel Pearson is founder of the Cape York Partnership, director of Good to Great Schools Australia and a director of Fortescue.

Sad really, to see Noel still lurking in the hive mind, and getting into tiffs with Dame Slap.

Of course it's all in code. You have to read Dame Slap regularly to realise that she spends a goodly amount of time bashing difficult, uppity blacks, and perhaps that's why Noel was feeling a tad miffed.

Onwards, and ever downwards, and there seems to be a lot more IPA in the lizard Oz these days (whatever happened to Dame Slap's short stint there?)...and so it came to pass that again unlovely meter maid Rita did the AV distraction honours, IPA school program director Colleen Harkin has called out the "political activism" she claims is rife within Australia's mathematics curriculum. Speaking to Sky News host Rita Panahi, Ms Harkin highlighted the stark contrast between Australia’s approach and that of Singapore, which has one of the top-ranked educational systems in the world. “The political activism within the curriculum is rife and that's how we end up with a document that is unwieldy and unusable and the amount of extra work that it puts on teachers is extraordinary,” Ms Harkin told Sky News host Rita Panahi.

Around this point, the pond began to wonder just how much time Dame Slap had spent in an actual classroom ...

The pond suspects not much ...

Pearson has every right – and a responsibility as a trailblazing reformer of education – to challenge me if I get things wrong. That is very different from misrepresenting me. I made it clear that the problems with the curriculum are “far deeper” than the shallow imposition of cross-curriculum priorities in the national curriculum. But placing basket weaving in a maths class to satisfy misguided “cross-curriculum priorities” does scream how bad things are.
There is no more important priority than learning how to read, write and do maths. Australian children are doing poorly in all three areas because educators have shown little interest, over decades, in evidence-based teaching methods. The deeply flawed national curriculum is just the canary in the coalmine. If the curriculum does not focus on the basics, the path to success is a more difficult one for children.
Some of the problems were exposed by Pearson: the Gonski review was a waste of time because it was about money, not teaching skills. Dollars won’t teach kids how to read; well-trained teachers will do that. So, don’t we want to find, and implement, the methods that work? This is a no-brainer.
Just because we disagreed vehemently over the voice – which was, after all, a political project – should not mean that Pearson and I cannot agree on evidence-based teaching.

A political project? Talk about being obsessed with the culture wars ... talk about being an aged culture warrior and starting to feel her age and getting snippy about it ...

I am no more obsessed with “culture wars” than Pearson. I want every Australian child to benefit from a rich and robust teaching culture in our schools – if they can’t read and add up from an early age, the odds are against them.
Ever since I started writing, I have been subjected to this hoary old technique. To diminish those of us who challenge and test so-called progressive ideas, we are labelled culture warriors. If you push back against the left’s censorship, you are labelled a cultural warrior. If you are concerned about cancel culture, you’re a culture warrior. If you challenge the left’s takeover of education, you are labelled a cultural warrior. If you disagree with radical trans activism, you are a culture warrior.
The motivation is plain as day, to taint what opponents say. Better still, if only we would shut up so that the poorly named “progressives” can have their way on whatever cultural front they happen to be fighting that day.
The left has been playing that game for years. Pearson should be bigger than joining in that racket.

It is, of course, projection. Dame Slap has been playing the game for years. That's how she earns her living, that's how she scored handy board positions ...

An essential ingredient is no self-awareness and no sense of shame ...

I can look after myself. But throwing gratuitous potshots won’t help people of good faith, right across the political spectrum, work together for the ultimate good of improving how and what children are taught.
To that end, may I suggest that Labor Education Minister Jason Clare (and Pearson) read an upcoming paper called “Academic and cultural orphans: the legacy of policy reforms in Australian school education”, by Dr Deidre Clary, Dr Kevin Donnelly and Dr Fiona Mueller.

Hang on, hang on, there's an unexpected treat, a mention of Dashing Donners. 

Now there's another old pond favourite, sadly long ago sent into exile by the lizard Oz reptiles. He went off to the tabloids where he flourishes, assiduously promoting his output on X and with his very own eponymous website ...

Forget the X, savour the meaty goodness ...

The pond's already done the "woke" routine, so have another example of Donners ...

Splendid stuff, and so spending a moment with Dame Slap hasn't been a complete waste of time ...

And so to a few last words from the aging culture warrior as she tries to inject life into yet another think tank, newly minted for your pleasure ...

The paper is produced by the Page Research Centre, a not-for-profit organisation with a focus on regional and rural Australia. It is loosely aligned with the National Party. Some will agree, some will disagree, with the proposals. But let’s put petty politics aside; any disagreement should be based on the merits, rather than on the messenger. The paper, to be released next month, calls for an overhaul of education that is squarely driven by evidence, by teachers and principals – rather than the same bodies and vested interests that have overseen decades of educational failure.
When critics focus on who is talking, rather than what they are saying, they may be more prone to misrepresent what is being put forward. And patently, that gets us nowhere. Given what is at stake, it’s high time that enmities and politics be set aside.

Set aside enmities and politics? Nah, it's in her blood ...and her scribbling ... and just because she's realised the Cantaloupe Caligula is an inveterate liar still lands us in nowheresville.

And now as the Voice has been mentioned, time to close with a relevant Wilcox...