Variously neoliberalism- and racism- based Educational Apartheid in Australia has a huge impact on who has access to university courses. For what can be done about this at the secondary school (high school) level see Gideon Polya, “37 Ways Of Tackling Australian Educational Apartheid And Social Inequity”, Countercurrents, 22 May, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya220513.htm - an analysis that concludes: “Educational Apartheid is not confined to Australia . It is widespread throughout the world (see "Educational Apartheid": https://sites.google.com/site/educationalapartheid/ ) . More money for education is useful but in the absence of equitable funding great things can be achieved through good will, imagination and expertise. The adult world is failing to address the worsening climate crisis and it seems now inevitable that we will be bequeathing a severely damaged and threatened world to our children and grandchildren (e.g. see “Are we doomed”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed ; Gideon Polya, “ Doha climate change inaction. Only 5 years left to act”, MWC News, 9 December 2102: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/23373-gideonpolya-climate-change.html ; and “2011 climate change course”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course ). The least we could do is to educate the next generations to enable them to best deal with the mess we have left behind. Voters should insist that all education should be free and good.”
Dr Gideon Polya ( BSc Hons, University of Tasmania, 1966; PhD, Flinders University of South Australia, 1969; Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, La Trobe University, 2003 ) taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). See also "Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home and “Gideon Polya Writing”: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ . When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .