From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 17 April

Is Australia so intellectually superior we can afford to summarily dismiss tertiary qualifications from another country’s learning institutions?

THE numeracy and literacy rates in Australia are not, by a longshot, the envy of the world. By our own admission, 2020, in Australia, about 44 per cent of adults read at literacy level 1 to 2 (a low level); 38 per cent of adults read at level 3; and about 15 per cent read at level 4 to 5 (the highest level).

People at a reading level 1, read at a primary school equivalent level. They can understand short sentences.

The figures indicate nearly half our population could be classified as functioning illiterates. That is, by any standard of intellectual reckoning, a national disgrace. Clearly, the system is not working. It could be argued it wasn’t ‘broke’ but we had to fiddle, simply for the sake of fiddling, and now we are reaping the whirlwind.

The laxity of classes, to the detriment of the three Rs, has weakened the system – exacerbated by social media and text messaging. The language has been bastardised. Puzzlingly, history is now called Australian studies. The question is obvious: Why?

A Melbourne taxi driver explained how, before he escaped from Tehran in what was then Persia, he was a senior maths master in a major secondary school having graduated from the University of Tehran. For whatever reason, the Australian system did not recognise his teaching qualifications, which is too stupid to contemplate. Mathematical theories are a constant wherever you might be in the world. The square on the hypotenuse does not vary. Nine times eight is 72; so, too, are four times 18. Applying a different set of numbers we still arrive at the same answer, if you take the point!

The woman who worked in the Toorak Road laundromat washing and ironing other people’s clothes was a Russian national. Before she and her husband escaped communism, and came to make their home in Australia, they graduated from the Moscow State University. Both were aeronautical engineers.

The recent story of the Afghani trauma surgeon who operated during the recent pointless conflict, and now lives in Australia, is too sad. Aged 38, he is here without his family and faces a bleak future. Despite indisputable hero status in his own country, his qualifications are not recognised in Australia.

It is estimated a team of medicos would take about a year to check on his standard of training and skill.

Given Australia’s litany of medical training judgement errors which have come to pass in recent times, it is right and proper they should check, stringently; however, we should remember: there are many surgeons and doctors in other parts of the world who are as qualified as any working in this country. In some instances, even more so.

We do not have a monopoly on the best ideas; nor are we the best academically trained. Australia has lots of mediocre GPs who are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the brightest medical minds in the world!

Thank God, theatres are starting to open again!

Impresario, John Frost, has announced his Broadway production of Hairspray, for which he won a Tony Award, will open at the Regent Theatre, 22 August, starring Todd McKenney, Rhonda Burchmore, Rob Mills, Asabi Goodman and Shane Jacobson.

John Frost saw the first workshop production starring Matthew Morrison and Harvey Fierstein. Impressed, he invested heavily to secure the Australian rights. The Broadway production won eight Tony Awards from thirteen nominations.

Roland can be heard with Brett Macdonald on Monday at 10.45am on 3BA and contacted, regardless of your literacy level, via [email protected].