Don’t get me wrong, I do like a good Christmas lunch. I can also appreciate why an Audi is indeed better than a Kia and that some people can’t afford either.
Of course everyone has a choice, yet some people clearly have more choices than others at this festive time. I’m making this judgmental assessment based on the steady stream of end of year Instabrags food-shots as teachers in private schools knock off for 2012. Yes I’m totally jealous and jaded.
I actually don’t care about their lunch, I’ve become generally immune to analysing photos of people’s lunches to be honest, but I do find it deeply symbolic of the reality-gap facing “national curriculum”. ACARA (who I assume had an amazing lunch and probably a party) tout this bringing greater equity and social inclusion. I’m measuring the digital divide in Intabrags from now on as all other measures seem equally ridiculous.
Clearly private education is traveling first class still – and yes I’m sure parents are paying blah blah, but it seems pictorially evident that private schools are not exactly suffering the kind of hammering in DEC and TAFE of late. This isn’t the fault of those teachers I know in private schools, it’s a bit of a general social fail that everyone is somehow impacted by in some way.
I’ve spent some time this week trying to source 20 devices for indigenous sight-impaired students in remote NT. No money, no funding and not much free-love from the multi-billion dollar educational technology engine either. As much as I love the collegial nature of social media, clearly it’s now visually showing me a huge gap between public and private, city and rural. I could support a hundred students just off the bin-scraps.
There is no ‘gap’ of course. I’m wrong and delusional. This has been endlessly argued as false in the media and radio as familiar spokesmen from [insert rich school we all know] who, argue points which prove this is all a myth on 702ABC.
However, it’s a bit harder to swallow when a seafood-buffet shot appears on 4 media layers. Burp.
I wonder just how many public school provided end of year lunches I’ll see in a few weeks?
Post your end of year school lunch here, we can vote for the most popular.
Playable 
The Digital and Economic Divide is alive and thriving all over the world. For the most part, I think that your assessment is correct, especially from what I know of private schools in Australia. In general, private schools can be categorized as having the means and ways and public schools are eating whatever slop the government decides to throw in the trough. However, I have also experienced the opposite in both India and the USA, although I would be quick to point out that it’s very much the anomaly.
Sorry, I’ve totally bagged the education industry and have no end of year lunch to share. Perhaps, I’ll snap a photo at the soup kitchen this week.
A potential backer for your project contacted me over the weekend. He is on the board of my local Bendigo Bank branch near Darwin.
He would like to know what you actually need. You can contact him directly on Twitter @DrIainWaller
Thanks Shane