IQ test comeback for Australian university admissions

IQ tests always were a good way of circumventing social disadvantage and were promoted as such by Leftist psychologists (such as Sir Cyril Burt) for many years -- until the low average IQ of blacks made the tests politically incorrect. The new test is not of course called an IQ test but it amounts to the same thing. The new test is designed as a predictor of academic performance and predicting academic performance is what IQ tests do best

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY will offer places to some school-leavers using a combination of the students' HSC results and other tests - and at least five other universities may follow in a sign of their lack of confidence in the present admissions system. Macquarie's vice-chancellor, Steven Schwartz, has railed against using a single entry mark as the sole determinant of a student's ability because it is unforgiving of students who have experienced hardship in their final year or attended disadvantaged schools. The university will allow students who did not qualify on the basis of their university admissions index to sit a supplementary aptitude test, known as uniTEST, the results of which will be considered, along with their HSC results and an application letter, in a pilot initially limited to a few faculties.

"If you look at the data, you will find that ... the kids who go to private schools, the kids who have private tutoring, they're the ones who get high UAIs," Professor Schwartz said. "And the likelihood is, there might be kids who might be smart enough, but because they don't go to those schools don't get high enough UAIs." But there would still be a minimum UAI, he said.

UniTEST was developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research and the University of Cambridge and is already being used by the Australian National University, Monash and seven British universities. It assesses problem-solving, comprehension and reasoning skills.

Six Australian universities, including Macquarie, had expressed interest in piloting the test since the Federal Government announced funding for a national year 12 aptitude test in the May budget, said Deirdre Jackson, the director of assessment services at the Australian Council for Educational Research. "I think everyone's been aware of it as a concern, that there's a group of students who for one reason or another have the skills to go to university but don't, and they're often the ones who go back at a later date as mature-age students."

Professor Schwartz, who chaired a British taskforce on university admissions while he was vice-chancellor of Brunel University in London, said research showed 5 per cent of students who did not do well in their A levels - the British equivalent of the HSC - scored highly in the uniTEST. "And they're the interesting ones, because if you only [selected students on] the UAI, they wouldn't even be on the radar."

Several universities already accept students with university entrance scores lower than their official cut-off marks if they have done well in subjects relevant to their course, including the University of NSW, which will formalise the practice for 2008 entrants in a scheme called HSC Plus. The ANU, which tried uniTEST for the first time this year, plans to use it again next year because the pass rate of students who came in via that method was "quite good", said the university's registrar, Tim Beckett.

Andrew Stanton, the managing director of the Universities Admissions Centre, which manages the university admissions index, said he had no problem with universities using supplementary measures in choosing who to admit, but he rejected the idea that the UAI had been devalued. The vice-chancellors' body Universities Australia decided last month to commission a study on equity and access to university for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Legal scrutiny of postmodernism

John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, the two Queensland University of Technology academics suspended for their criticism of the project, have lodged a complaint about their treatment with the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. They argue that QUT punished them because of their political opposition to post-modernism, the ideology they see behind the PhD project. Political opinion is one of few grounds for discrimination prohibited by federal law. "They say that the most recent and disturbing expression of this theory is that you can laugh at the disabled," their solicitor, Susan Moriarty, told the HES. "Our case is very strong."

Adam McBeth, deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, said there was "very little (case law) on what's political and what's not. "I don't know that you could point to anti-post modernism as a political movement, it's probably at best a cultural idea. "It's certainly arguable and it would be interesting to see it run."

HREOC is expected to call QUT managers to a conciliation meeting with Dr MacLennan and Dr Hookham. A date for this has yet to be set. If the meeting fails to resolve the complaint the academics have the option of litigating the human rights point in the Federal Court. They already have on foot a separate court challenge limited to the fairness of the procedure leading to their suspension. QUT said it was aware of the HREOC complaint but would not comment while there was litigation.

The Hookham-MacLennan complaint to HREOC quotes from their article published in April by the HES under the headline Philistines of relativism at the gates. "When we say it is morally wrong to laugh at the afflicted, our colleagues seem indifferent to the truth of this statement. Presumably, for them, it is just our `narrative'," their HES article says. "They can take this position because in the post-modern world there are no theories, no knowledge and no truth; there are only narratives, fictional stories, all told with bias. "(But) if we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally, if we are to teach our students how to live, how to act in an ethical fashion and how to make progressive and powerful art, then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false."

The QUT position is that Hookham's and MacLennan's criticism of the PhD student Michael Noonan went beyond civil academic discourse. The university's code of conduct says differences of opinion must be met with rational debate, not vilification or bullying, and forbids behaviour that "may be distressing, offensive or humiliating".

Mr Noonan says his reality TV-style film project -- given the go-ahead by QUT under the changed title Laughing with the disabled -- is an attempt to give the disabled a voice. Its stars are two young intellectually disabled men. Mr Noonan points out that he has ethics approval for the project as well as the support of the men, their families and guardians, and the disability organisation Spectrum.

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The Only Time White is All Right

Post lifted from Gates of Vienna. See the original for links

Australian television is running a series of ads on domestic violence called "Violence Against Women: Australia says no!" These commercials are funded by the Australian government to address a serious issue - some guys beat up on women they profess to care about.

Every culture attempts to find ways to channel aggression constructively. Australia is no different. However, according to The Age, only white men have a predilection for violence against women. If you look at the VAW website and peruse the pages of an "Australian government initiative" you'll make a fascinating discovery: no other ethnic group suffers from this problem. All of the "brown people" have been airbrushed out of the picture.

As The Age points out, Down Under is a multicultural utopia. Thus you won't find Lebanese, Nigerian, Vietnamese, or aboriginal aggressors. Just those rotten old white guys who like to beat up their women when the occasion arises:

Strangely, though, while the website says that all these examples are "based on people's real-life experiences", police and hospital records don't pick up this shocking truth: that marauding Caucasian brutes are the real problem. But then, the cops and medical folk aren't peeing their pants in terror at losing votes in those delicate multicultural seats. Mind you, the website does say that the "people in the photographs used in this booklet are models". It just doesn't say they are white models.

Having done crisis counseling with women ranging in age from fourteen to eighty-two, I can tell you that this is a bunch of horse manure. Men of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities are capable of violence against one another, against their wives, against their parents, and against their children. In the Western world white men can't jump; however, they sure can hit. And don't forget, the same thing holds true for some women: they think it is legitimate to use violence in order to achieve their ends.

First we emasculate men, and then we accuse them of being "too" aggressive. It's no wonder some of them have anger management problems. This is the perfect recipe for making someone crazy: put them in a double bind and then criticize them for not being able to get out of it. According to Kermit the Frog's lament, it's not easy being green. And sometimes, especially for men, it's downright hell being white.





US cops say get tough on hoons

CALIFORNIA police are urging their Australian counterparts to embrace a zero tolerance policy against illegal street car racing and crush the cars of offenders. Officers from specialist squads dedicated to busting street hoons said tougher measures including seizing cars, night curfews for minors, increasing fines and arresting drivers and spectators had significantly reduced the number of illegal race meetings and lowered the death toll. Police departments across southern California, where the culture of illegal street racing has been prevalent for decades, have the toughest policies in the country and crush dozens of cars each month - often in front of their distraught owners.

Rialto police department traffic superintendent Chris Heiss said Australian police should crush the hotted-up vehicles to send a strong message to offenders, who are usually young males. "This is what makes them stop - when you destroy their cars," Corporal Heiss told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "They spend up to $US30,000 making modifications on their vehicles and that loss is overwhelming for them - they are not going to do it again. "These young kids are scraping their money together to put into their main asset and some of them break down when they see their car being crushed."

Over the weekend, 185 people and 85 cars were detained by California's Drag-Net Regional Task Force at a morning race meeting in a deserted street in Ontario, a small industrial city of about 160,000 people. Police arrested 10 people on suspicion of illegal racing, impounded 16 cars and charged 18 people for illegally modifying their emission systems. Offenders face fines of $3000 when they front court and will likely lose their licences for at least six months.

During the operation - which came after a five-week investigation - police charged 171 people at the scene for being spectators at a street race, which is a crime in Ontario punishable by a $120 fine. Drag-Net Task Force spokesman Corporal Jeff Higbee said Australian authorities should increase penalties and the number of officers dedicated to the issue if they hoped to deter offenders from street racing. "They need to take a zero tolerance approach," he said.

The task force - comprising police officers from 12 southern California counties - was launched in July 2005. Corporal Higbee said the death toll from street racing in Ontario county had significantly dropped since the task force was formed. Seven people died in street racing in the county in 2004, six in 2005 and one last year. None had died this year. But Corporal Higbee said US authorities still had a long way to go to curb the problem, with 15 people killed in street races in southern California between the start of March and end of June this year. Among those killed was a 10-year-old boy who hit by a piece of debris while on a walk with his parents in suburban Florence when two cars collided nearby. And a woman in a wheelchair was hit by a car driven by a 16-year-old.

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