The Fraudulent Marketing of Academia.
By John R Brodie. J.P.
Senior Justice of the Peace.
www.brodiespeaking.org.au
john@brodiespeaking.org.au
Mankind has a long history of willful destruction, seen in almost every aspect of life. The meaning of the old cliché “if it aint broke don’t fix it” is ignored, as we constantly mess with the balance of things, creating one mess after another. This article highlights our capacity in the most delusional manner for willful destruction.
Australian society enjoyed a reasonably balanced, respectful coexistence, prior to the mid 1970’s. Then, an “army” of academic experimentalists, hell-bent on creating a “free society” invaded us and our orderly way of life was shattered. It heralded the most sustained period of social vandalism in history, still fiercely pursued today. It grew in extent and plunged us into chaos, forsaking the age-old necessities like preventive management controls.
Much of this invasiveness was aimed at parenting. Child abuse, prior to the 1970’s, was the excuse for wide-ranging changes. Discipline became a dirty word and a smacked bottom a prosecutable offence. Parenting was once about responsibility and obligation, but this socially destructive era not only excused parental irresponsibility but added to it by paying ill equipped children to have babies. The process was then compounded further by the creation of the Anti-Discrimination Act that blatantly outlawed respect for social standards.
Why is an Act, denying us the right to protect ourselves from those who would do us harm not challenged Constitutionally? The destructive capacity of the Anti-Discrimination Mob, the way in which bureaucratic performance can be corrupted, together with just one example of the fraudulent marketing of academia – is seen in the demise of the Queensland Justice of the Peace Commission.
Maintaining dignity, integrity, and respect for the Commission was all-important and upheld for generations, rewarded by community respect. Proposed holders of the commission had to be nominated by two respected community elders, recognized for their moral responsibility and ethics. The community regarded those holding the Commission as people of integrity.
Then in the 1990’s the Anti-Discrimination Mob stepped in. They decreed that nominating people to the Commission on the basis of ethics was discriminatory. Anyone should be able to be a J P, just by their own desire. And it came to pass that the historic dignity, respect and the quality of service formally provided by the Commission was plunged into the gutter.
When this anti-discrimination “declaration” was handed down, many holding the Commission petitioned the Justice Department pointing out the ramifications of such a disgraceful act. “The standard of service will plummet,” we said. “The department will be inundated with complaints.” It was of no joy that our predictions were right.
The department’s answer was to create a new division of the commission--a CD or Commissioner of Declaration. Those holding a CD would do nothing but witness signatures. We reasonably thought that those of “dubious behaviour” would be channelled into this new direction. This was not the case either, so the departmental answer failed to raised the standard of service.
Their next “solution” was to produce a Journal explaining the obligations of the JP Magistrate, the JP, and the CD. Then the department decided that all those “of the new era” would all do a TAFE course and again we thought that this would weed out the sheep from the goats. No sooner had the TAFE course been announced than another decree said that everyone could take into the examination room the journal and look up the answers. No one would fail.
As a final insult to those who with distinction ethically supported the commission for years, those who did the JP course and cheated in the exam were given the title “JP Qualified.” This advertises our contempt to decency standards. As predicted, the ranks of the commission are now filled with arrogance, belligerence and unethical performance, provoking a tsunami of complaints to the Injustice Department. We are constantly giving rights to those in the wrong, at the expense of the rights of those in the right and glorifying bad behaviour.
Many Collage courses today are run on the same basis as the JP course. No one fails. If you pay the money to do the course, it comes with a guaranteed “qualification.” How much does this corrupt the value of “qualification.” Life Coaches are one such example. Some are not long out of high school, scarcely experiencing much beyond the wearing of nappies. How can they knowingly advise people on life’s traumas and have the audacity to charge money for it?
The quality of our coexistence is constant torn down at dreadful cost. It is not just monetarily but also the full spectrum of human tragedy – and the shocking loss of our security and freedom, as increasing violence inundates our streets. Once again, it is bad behaviour that has the freedom while those of decency are forced to lock themselves up.
It was insane to think a “free society” achievable, because it too comes with conditions attached. A free society can only exist, when it is supported by very high social standards across the board, based on the essentials of discipline, obedience and respect. It is the high level of social education that reduces the need for rules and regulations providing the freedom by which to cohabitate peacefully. Western society has never achieved that.
The same ill-advised policy was adopted, giving children equal rights, with no alignment to responsibility. It made a mockery of integrity of rights, as kids misuse the “power” as yet another means of exercising selfishness. Radicalism was once again added to the equation, when kids were given the right to “divorce” their parents or sue them for nothing more than the just imposition of discipline. This whole scenario feeds the appalling street kids problem.
The abuse of parents by kids is at a frightening level and growing. School teachers add to this, advising kids that they do not have to accept the restrictions of discipline training. Teachers often acting on a one-sided story from children penalise mothers. Those affected most are Asian mothers raised in a disciplined culture being penalized here. Today, the abuse of mothers by children is greater that the abuse of women by partners. Abuse injury is today the biggest health problem facing women and at crisis level in kids.
This academic plunge into social experimentation, at not time took into account “the laws” of human nature. No educated regard was given to ramifications or consequences. The end result, instead of trying to correct at least some of the wrongs has been to compound them further. Bureaucratic interventionism, domination and control over the community is appalling.
Today, discipline, obedience and respect are hard to find, despite the fact that together they provide the very foundation to the quality of our community coexistence. What is apparent today is the lack of discipline, self-control, obedience and respect. Selfishness was also declared a “right” and “me, my, mine, I want, give me, I demand” creating a hostile breeding ground for anti-social behaviour. The natural consequence is an explosive growth in abuse, violence and contempt for authority, resulting in a constant drift from the peaceful coexistence that we crave.
The expanding abuse of women crisis is also fed by the inability of parents to teach children the value of love and affection. This is more apparent in boys who treat love and affection more as a convenience, something to turn on and off to suite selfishness. If this is the case, we are deliberately raising males, ill equipped for partnership. It is little wonder that abuse of women is on the rise and with it increasing male hostility towards their children. Inability to cope is very apparent in the last two generations.
Social education has plunged, with no focus on solution, because it does not have corporate support. Money talks! The gross inconsistency is that as social behaviour standards decline, so too does the full spectrum of performance in the workplace. Attitude, ethics, devotion and dedication have all taken a dive. Abuse and irresponsibility have risen to an alarming extent. It is costing business enterprise a multi-billion dollar loss each year. Ethical service is had to find in business today and rogues, cheat and con men thrive!
Academia as a corporate product, on the other hand, has been marketed way beyond ethical limits, so much so that it too has caused considerable, unchallenged damage. The notion is nonsense that academia provides graduates with the structure in which to house their life, occupation or anything else. Academia merely provides the foundation, upon which graduates must build the structure, through their capacity to convert the years of theory gathering into a practical application, based on ABILITY. If they do not have the ability to achieve this, their “qualification” has diminished value. (They probably end up in bureaucracy).
Academia was always intended, as a support structure to ability driven experience – and ethically ability driven experience must lead. In contrast we have for decades crammed academia in through the front door of business enterprise and pushed out the ability driven experience. To compound this, graduates so wrongly conditioned, demand a place three parts up the management ladder, instead of starting well down and climbing up, based on ability.
It treats with contempt a process that keeps businesses functioning – preventive management. Many “juniors” in the decision-making process act on nothing but experimentation not experience. One of the most basic necessities in a decision making process is a well practiced understanding of consequence – and that only comes from years of experience, dealing with the ever changing conditions day to day, in the world of reality. No two situations are ever the same but to the untrained eye may appear the same. There is no room for ignorance.
Another fundamental in good administration, so blatantly overlooked is resource management. This too is very much experienced based, enhanced by necessities such as instinct and empathy, also products of considerable experience. A focus on “the big picture” is another essential in good management but this has been seriously impaired by specialization. We are producing “experts” on small and smaller aspects of the big picture and seriously reducing those with over-all capable.
Academia has been marketed for years as a be-all-end-all concept in its own right. Academic education and social education are equal partners by necessity. Discipline, obedience and respect form the foundation to the reliability of our performance in all that we do, in sport, personally, occupationally and academically. Academia is just one part of a much bigger equation and, like everything else, needs to be kept in balance.
Ability driven experience was for generations recognized as a reliable qualification. It was the legal profession’s pedantic focus on written law and its need to visually define “qualification” that put an end to the valuable contribution of ability driven experience. As A result, Australia huge, aging population, loaded to the hilt with ability and experience has become our greatest, wasted resource.
This legal profession’s imposition on us, together with the “single-minded” marketing of academia has been very much to our detriment. We have been “conditioned” to accept it. Television interview are loaded with academics, constantly reducing our “troubled way of life” to mathematics – graphs, percentages, trends and laboratory tests. We are starved for experienced explanation from the coalface of life, where the rest of us live.
One example of the damage of specialization is perhaps evident in family court judgments. Academics have advised that “children need their daddies” and judges, apparently oblivious to the consequences, have regularly given custody rights to known abusers. This seems to be a case of academic single-mindedness. Many “experienced” people have for years been objecting to these judgments, based on the “fact” that we are staring at an abuse injury crisis in kids, apparently overlooked by academics.
Quite apart from this, these courtroom judgments raise a horrifying challenge. If judges knowingly give kids to abusers and the kids are abused – are the judges not guilty of a crime? What is the definition of aiding and abetting in a felony?
The legal profession gives support to the down hill slide and the legal system is constantly modified to cater to it. Why would the legal profession try to raise standards, when their income is largely based on bad behaviour? Bureaucracy has also “capitalized” on this. One department after another now makes money from the increasing bad behaviour in the community. The seniority of government ministers is determined by the size of their departments. The plunge in social standards has seen a mushrooming of staff numbers. Where is the incentive to raise standards?
To enhance this destructive trend, social vandalism has exploded to include an entire generation of rule worshiping, control freaks. Instead of an intelligent focus on raising parenting standards to better educate children, the focus is on community control by regulation. It has imposed upon us today a level of bureaucratic domination unparalleled in history. It is so bad in some Shires that you almost need a license to get out of bed in the morning. It is a sickening imposition on our freedom and right function.
So much for a free society! This is what happens when we try and create structures, when the design has no structural quality to it. We are pushed in the opposite direction – with blind disregard. This is the product of academic experimentalism, virtually being given a free hand to manipulate and destroy the natural conditions fundamental to maintaining an orderly community way of life. This is what is happening too often in business management.
Our social crisis benefits few in the community. Even those in the wrong beat up on their own quality of life, as well as that of others. Those hurt most financially day to day are those engaged in business. Those most hurt financially across the board are the taxpayers who foot the annual “bad behaviour bill” to pay for governments to sit on the fence, assisting us to slide even further backwards. Those hurting most are Australian’s who suffer the human misery.
The insulting notion imposed by conditioning that you cannot know anything, unless you have donated your bum to a university for several years, has done irreparable damage. It defrauds the legitimacy of being self-taught, learning how to comprehend by observation and research, cultivating increasing skill in logic and lateral thinking and the skills acquired by constantly having to deal successfully with the ever changing conditions, incessantly imposed day-to-day on all of our endeavours.
At no time in history have we gone so much out of our way to trash our quality of life. When do we, as a nation, wake up to ourselves? When will corporate and private enterprise – for its own financial benefit and greater workplace efficiency – stimulate a focus on solution?
If no one stands up, it will never happen.