Rupert Murdoch's Fourth Boyer Lecture: Fortune Favours the Smart. (November 24, 2008)

More or less annually media giant Rupert Murdoch bags the Australian education sector. This year he has used his fourth Boyer Lecture to round on public primary and secondary education.

Make no mistake Mr Murdoch is almost always on the mark in his criticisms, unfortunately the man, while in a position to proactively do something constructive, contents himself with condemnation but remains or returns to his US redoubt. This despite his reference to a well known friend noted for his initiative:

My friend Bill Gates has made it one of his missions to help reform-minded school officials raise the standards at public schools. He is also supporting new models like charter schools that will provide alternatives to the one-size-fits-all model of the 19th century. And other corporate leaders are backing specific kinds of education, such as science and maths and computers.

Mr Murdoch dismissed matters of science and mathematics with: "We can argue over whether our better schools are as focused as they should be on mathematics and science. But it is inarguable that our lesser schools are leaving far too many children innumerate, illiterate, and ignorant of our history. These are the people whose future I am most concerned about. For these boys and girls to rise in society—and have a fair go at the opportunities you and I take for granted—a basic education is essential."

And there appears to be a punitive mindset in contrast to that of his friend, the Harvard dropout. Mr Murdoch's approach?

In my view, things will not really improve until we begin setting much higher expectations-for our students, for our teachers, and for our schools. At the very least, setting higher standards means we ought to demand as much quality and performance from those who run our schools as we do from those who provide us with our morning cup of coffee. And then we ought to hold these schools accountable when they fail.

Repeatedly through his lecture Mr Murdoch returns to the punitory approach leaving aside the matter of attracting individuals of outstanding quality to teaching in the public school sector and retaining them.

And of prime importance: "As business leaders, we know how unprepared too many young people are for the working world," and it is this aspect of his lecture that the mass media have fastened on.

In fairness Mr Murdoch does mention support with which he is involved. In referring to News Corporation sponsorship: "I have two key criteria for education programs that News Corporation supports: schools must be focused on achievement. And they cannot make excuses for why some students are supposedly poor scholars."

Then more specifically he notes:

[W]e support a leadership academy designed to train new principals, the fund for public schools, which allows the private sector to support innovative ways to expand options for schoolchildren, and new visions for public schools, whose goal is to graduate at least 80 per cent of our students in four years so they are prepared for college and work. Yet I believe we have barely scratched the surface.

         Another school we support in New York is the Eagle Academy for Young Men. This is a charter school. Although charters are public schools, charters have more freedom than traditional American public schools. They are also directly accountable to the people who run it. The Eagle Academy for Young Men is boys-only. And it was started up by a group of concerned African-American men who are simply unwilling to allow the next generation of African-American boys to be written off by the country's public schools.

Surely it's past time that the Australian born head of the planet's most powerful media empire put a significant accumulation of that power to constructive work for Australian public education.

So far he appears to be tossing brickbats and farthings.