Our past and our future.  In the background is an extensive new church primary school built in Branxton.  It is very large as this is a growth area probably and kids will be bused in.
Pictured is part of the existing old school which is quite reasonable. Easy come easy go.
 They say gains and losses are only on paper. A few weeks ago, it would have been possible to cover the cost of once in a lifetime indulgences with this weeks write down. Instead I count my blessings!

Book Week characters have transformed the school playground and a fun day is ahead.
As a tradition, Book Week can continue when ebooks become the norm.

A wonderful group of teachers at a school event.  Today, state school teachers went on strike for the day.  Their flexible dress code can't be at issue!

Easing the scarcity, book sellers are opening a store once again at Westfields Kotara. Unleash....Books and Education ....has two stores in Miranda and is an independent bookseller.  

Another shop, Lorna Jane will replace Colarado. 

Words and meaning.  Don't know for how long, but colourful, proper school lingo is about incursions, which decoded is associated with the host of education-as-fun stunts that business operates to sell to schools. 

Macquarie lists Incursion: 1. a hostile entrance into or invasions of a place or territory, especially one of sudden character; raid; attack.  2.  a harmful inroad.   3.  a running in: the incursion of sea-water. 

The new Hunter Theatre at the Hunter School of Performing Arts Broadmeadow. 

TAFE Hunter Street Campus Art School on a quiet weekend.

The hype that surrounds English language learning is well established and is embraced far and wide at any cost. Paradoxically, benign cities, such as Christchurch, NZ and Sendai in Japan have met with disaster and risk involving English Language Schools, students and teachers (many from the English speaking world) to say nothing of the wider untold disaster. 

Ex-post office, Hunter Street, Newcastle has become a gallery: Front Room Gallery, next door to TAFE Hunter Street Art Centre for budding artists.
The post office shop is in Markettown shopping centre.

Caption: This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, "Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare." So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemloyed, lazy, can't speak English and have no clue who their Daddy's (sic) are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care. So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify. My dogs get their first cheques on Friday.........Damn, this is a great country!

At the risk of spoiling any humour, contemporary literacy education might lead us to take another look at the above put-down of welfare recipients. But a model that uses critical literacy like this is under attack as a postmodern fad.
Just like England and America before us, literacy education is debated, often in our newspapers, and a very readable book by Ilana Snyder enlightens us about the prevailing politics and ideology which are hugh. But, tell it to the teachers and the experts. Also, where has my sense of humour gone?

The Literacy Wars  Why teaching children to read and write is a battleground in Australia. Ilana Snyder. Allen & Unwin 2008.

Hunter River with East Maitland and or Tenambit in the distance.

These figures were published and outline fees for local primary church or private school  (for round five to twelve years of age) with four terms per 'school year'.
Tuition Fees per term: 1 child: $308. 2 children: $539. 3 children: $693. per term.
Resource Fee per term: Kinder: $88. Year 1: $88. Year2: $88. Year 3: $94. Year 4: $94. Year 5: $82. Year 6.$82.
Technology Fee per term: $20 per family.
Diocesan & Family School Building Levy per term: $173 per family.
Further to this,  a big discount is quoted for some of these fees if paid in a single annual amount. The more affulent reap those discounts.
I believe the policy is that a child is not turned away if the total fees are beyond the ability to pay, but I don't know about the latest policy.  And parents are reminded that a fee clearance has been requested by the high schools for children in Year 6.
Private schools are fee paying schools and I imagine the fees are much higher at some other private schools.
Government funding is also provided to private schools which have increased in number. The privatisation of education is the trend but hugh support is also important for State school education.

 Newcastle was lashed by gales but little Ranga was on the new look election campaign today in Newcastle with photo opportunites: 1 Simply blown away by the view from Braye park.

2 sharing our local dilemma over the fate of our old fig trees.

 3.Gratified by a nation building project at Newcastle Grammar School, The Junction.

 Reflection of the real Julia Gillard, Prime Minister, leaving ABC studios, Newcastle and a handfull of protestors.

Education Revolution. A new state school building rises on a construction site and stimulates employment etc.

Federal government made recent inputs into education, health ,home insulation and others- at arms length. What is its valid role? And it takes a giant nationwide apparatus for that role.
We don't want to be dependent on their latest passion - education this year. Frigidity when it comes to global warming non-policy. 
Of course, our electioneering leaders are personally very diligent - at whatever it is they do.

Elioth Gruner. Spring Frost 1916 Emu Plains. Art Gallery of NSW 

Lower photo: School children at the gallery. What do they think? I first saw this painting at the gallery when I was a youngster and have been pleased and reassured to discover it again.

 

Wooden poles. Getting down to bedrock, pile driving, footings, yes, this is about building construction. No less than two poles, probably, one after the other, are hammered down a long way to reach bedrock. The area near The Junction was a swamp, they say, and I seem to recall it was once said a river estuary was in the vicinity in ancient times.
 Another school building. Is it part of the program called 'building the eduction revolution' which is a big investment from the Australian government and is for economic stimulus and job creation in the construction industry.

 The property has the ubiquitous black fence, they are all the same all over the place, so the fencing industry is the best industry to be in, for fences are the answer to everything. Are they a waste of the stimulus funds? At the weekend sadly I heard about another breakin at a school and I bet the school is well fenced.

Sainthood is powering ahead for Mary MacKillop and will be a first for this country.
In North Sydney, a chapel with her tomb has become a centre dedicated to her cause. A pink rose bearing her name was among the merchandising in an area set aside for a museum, cafe and shop.
Another glimps into the life of the Sisters of Saint Joseph is lighthearted and depicts them as a musical trio.

In the Hunter valley, the 'brown' sisters of Saint Joseph (of Mary MacKillop) were probably less numerous than the Lochinvar Sisters of Saint Joseph who had grown along different lines from after their shared beginnings as I understand.

Did the 'brown' sisters run schools that were achievement 'driven' which I heard was very important in some schools. Achievement and high expectations are hard wired in many people but it is not an aspect that I recall about my schooling and hence continue to find it a confusing issue.

The entrance to the Museum and facilities.

Bio: Marriage for an ex-Newcastle young woman means two celebrations here and in the US.
This bride studied at Newcastle University and her ability with the Japanese language led to her employment in Japan and then in the USA where she met her husband to be. They have settled in Australia and look forward to a cross-cultural future. The photo with shade maintains some privacy.

The Great Hall at the University of Newcastle was open for business at the weekend. Academic and cultural events are seen in this centre opened in 1973 and built as a result of a public appeal. A tapestry adorns the wall and a pipe organ is both ornamental and is a fitting instrument for symbolic rituals.
I entered the hall. What was blazoned across the stage? Keep Watching the Ministry.....that you fulfill it.
Very apt but this line is from the Scriptures.
Had Art, Science and Religion been transformed into a meta-trinity? Packaged into an educational commodity of great potential. The names of subjects crossed my mind. Towards Nirvana and Capital Raising; The Tao of Management, Gender studies and the Papacy; Symbolic Order and Opus Dei; Extatic Levitation and Civil Engineering. I had vaguely heard of the end of history or was it.... the end of knowledge?
I realized the hall was full of chatty folk and children who were eating their packed lunches. No, this was really a church conference using the hall and taking their lunch break.

Ella Kazoo is an outlandish lass with wonderful unruly hair and simply refuses to do anything with it. In this likeable story the words She and Her are repeated in the way that is found in children's books which have a clever agenda that stress certain words.
A little child who hasn't sorted out the words she and her would often say: Her is playing with her doll. Or so I've noticed.

A look at this story book shows how much we take for granted and how it is not easy to sort out all the words we use. The clues must be scarce for a child....eg

Ella Kazoo will not brush her locks
She stashes the brush in the draw with her socks
....She yells and she stomps and she gets in a tizz....
...her mother has called her a cunning wee fox....

However, a child doesn't need lessons and, I understand, they learn to speak automatically provided they are stimulated by hearing others speak. Chomsky has provided theories to explain the underlying magic. Reading and speech are not one and the same but these picture books must be good at enriching the learning experience.

One day when the child is old they may discover that she and he are subject pronouns while her and his are object or possessive prounouns or possessive determiners and some other points that can't be explained.

Ella Kazoo will not brush her hair. Lothian Books. Published by Hatchette Livre Australia P/L. 2006.

On a corner of the park in Lambton the citizens are blessed with flowers and with books in a branch of the City Library.

School playground one day, market day the next. The Junction Public School has begun a market on Saturday mornings, once a month, I believe.
The school was known as the Junction Demonstration School but was not one for political activists; the Teachers' College was once nearby.

Newcastle East.
In some climes, today is National Grammar Day and vital information is given here.
The Australian newspaper has been good for a stir lately about the English curriculum and has provoked some narrow one-eyed views or so they seem to my commonsense approach.