Popularity: 2
Vote:   | A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn? |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Although we love the idea of choice - our culture almost worships it - we seek refuge in the familiar and the comfortable. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | And yet religion, in all its forms, offers consolation, inspiration and fulfilment to billions of people around the world. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | But many researchers operate as if it is their responsibility to demonstrate that video violence has a direct effect on the behaviour of young children, because that will help to explain why society is becoming more violent. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | But the rule seems to be that the bigger and more life-changing the decision, the less it will seem like a decision at all. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | But what will we make of the well-documented studies of cities whose rates of violent crime fell when TV was introduced? |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | But why would it be a tragedy if high-order literacy became a skill acquired and nurtured by some, and not others? |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Despite the availability of cheap and effective contraception, it looks as if we are not as careful in our decisions about reproduction as all the talk of family planning might suggest. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Even more worrying is the violence we do to our personal relationships when we let media consume time we might otherwise spend with each other. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Far more people have enjoyed Jane Austen's work on television than will ever read her books. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Frankly, I'm more worried about the violence we do to ourselves and our children by allowing the media to create an expectation of instant gratification. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | How have we managed to dodge the rather obvious point that happiness only makes sense by contrast with sadness - or perhaps with tedium - and that uncertainty, the very essence of imperfection, is our default position? |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I wish we didn't have to own up to a policy deliberately designed to inflict suffering on people who have already been traumatised in the countries from which they've fled. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I'm all in favour of parents monitoring the rubbish their children watch on a video screen, but the evidence for this presumed link between media violence and a violent world is actually counter-intuitive: violence in societies such as ours is declining, as media violence increases. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I'm in total sympathy with Dick Smith's sentiments; I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | In the US, the rate of violent crime has been in sustained decline for 10 years. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Indeed, in the present climate of mistrust of institutions, many people who yearn for a more meaningful and fulfilling life would regard the church as an unlikely place to go for guidance. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Is it possible that literacy standards are falling because young Australians are growing up in a culture in which they can be entertained and informed, and in which they can communicate effectively, without having to master any but the most rudimentary literacy skills? |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | It seems inevitable that the magic of the written word will fade. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Let's not assume that if it's praiseworthy or beautiful, it's Australian, and if it's blameworthy or ugly, it's un-Australian. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Like everyone else on the planet, Australians are a mixture of good and bad, noble and shameful, exemplary and slippery. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | No one welcomes chaos, but why crave stability and predictability? |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | On average, Australians watch more than three hours of television a day, compared with 12 minutes a day spent by the average couple talking to each other. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Perhaps it's the people whose lives have taken sudden new twists - people who have learned to embrace the creative possibilities of change - who stand the best chance of penetrating life's mysteries. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Reading is a huge effort for many people, a bore for others, and, believe it or not, many people prefer watching TV. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Recounting their histories, people often sound like interested bystanders to their own lives. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | So let's not get carried away by hubris: Australians are no better than anyone else when it comes to occupation of the moral high ground. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates? |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Some researchers sensibly suggest that rather than worrying too much about which programs our children are watching, we should concentrate on trying to reduce the total amount of time they spend in front of the screen. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | That doesn't mean literacy will die out, but it does mean a growing minority of people who don't need to read and write will lose the skill, rather as my facility with quadratic equations has faded through neglect. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The question is, will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system, or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture? |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | The tragedy of Christianity is that such luminous ideals have too often been swept aside by the political, economic and cultural imperatives of institutional religion with its emphasis on hierarchy, power and self-protection. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | The underlying message of the Lancet article is that if you want to understand aggressive behaviour in children, look to the social and emotional environment in which they are growing up, and the values they bring to the viewing experience. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Yet reading is usually presented as an inherently virtuous activity that should be encouraged for its own sake. |