What is happening to TAFE in Australia is a tragedy as highlighted by Kathleen Sneddon (BMG 20.7.16). On ya, Kathleen!
I note despairingly the dwindling number of student cars parked at Wentworth Falls TAFE every time my train chugs past the campus. It’s a sad sight.
My TAFE memories flood back - of great courses, great teachers and camaraderie and fellowship with fellow students and the universally respected teachers. I have unbounded admiration for good teachers. My father taught all his life and retired as a grammar school headmaster at age 70.
Let me illustrate how good TAFE is by my own career experience.
I was suddenly finished as CEO of my own middle size group of companies so I started a gardening business at age 60. I found that to construct in a client garden you needed licences; otherwise (if caught) the Department of Fair Trading would get you. So I enrolled at Ryde TAFE’s School of Horticulture. I was the oldest-ever graduate of the Landscape Construction trade course for apprentices. But I was also constructing water streams and fountains so I had to get a water plumbing licence via Meadowbank TAFE. And to get the necessary skills I did short courses in concreting, stone masonry and bricklaying at three other TAFEs which specialised in these trades; I also employed the teachers at times when top skills were required.
At 85 I did computer certificate courses at Wentworth Falls TAFE. Old people will lose touch with life if they can’t email friends, download music, get info, stay with it.
Finally let me endorse TAFE by saying that every sentence the teachers uttered was well worth listening to. I can’t say that about the universities I attended in Australia and London where I graduated in arts, science and engineering at graduate degree or higher levels. I rest my case.
