Friday, March 20, 2009

Greetings Housos, we have come to train you!


One of the joys of unemployment at DH's age and level of infirmity is that you get to do a lot of fun courses to prepare you for jobs that you are unlikely to get because of age and disability discrimination.

Thus it is that DH found herself shoe-horned into a Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assessment.

The objectives are to:
  • round up a bunch of people with some native talent for teaching
  • teach them to gibber in incomprehensible bureaucratese
  • discipline them into course-delivery robots
  • turn them loose to replicate
And it takes 8 agonising days!

Why can't they learn from Dr Who. One blast of the electron gun, and your brain is rehoused in a shiny new cyberman outfit.

Tramp tramp tramp. Target Learning Objective. Obliterate independent thought. Deliver Learning Outcome. Tramp tramp tramp. Evaluate Performance Criteria.
Obliterate obliterate obliterate. Objective accomplished.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Only eight days!! I wish I was so lucky. I'm upgrading my Cert IV to the new version and at this rate, it will take me months to find all the "evidence" to meet the "criteria". Where did all this bureaucratic-speak
come from? Just wish I had Bob Hawke's gift with florid language right now.

onya said...

Ran across your work, (oops ) via a {"job network" outcomes} google.... Go figure, and they say the blogosphere doesn't do irony....

I was hoping I'd find a blog of an honest centrelink/ job network insider who's documented the scams whereby they and their centrelink insourcing bosses ( yes therese I mean you) have been raking in the moolah for doing aproximately zip during times of high employment, money for jam, what. Getting the long term unemployed back in the saddle, that's different, they're not so good at that. I'm getting clues to the jargon from a UK parliament document ("The maximum amount a provider can receive for a Flex 3 client is A$9200"....

This course you're doing ... someone's making a quid out of you going through it.. who gets the money, TAFE? a private firm? Any idea how much you are worth to them in that sense? What do they actually do for the money?

And the 64,000 question.... what, in a workplace sense, do you propose to be training anyone in? I can see you'd be top shelf material for a survival consultant to the hordes of economic bubble bunnies about to get a rude awakening about life on a fixed and minimalist income , but how does that fit in with workplace training?
I haven't read all your blog, but I will, so if the answer's there, that in part time real life you have a highly skilled vocation/ career happening and that's what the workplace training is pointed at, then sorry about getting the impression that DH'ism is your true calling.
You've certainly improved my day, and it's only 8 am. Taa, Onya.

DH said...

Enjoyed your comment too. DH is highly skilled but is disadvantaged in the job market through having been a carer. SHe tends to apply for jobs in government or NGO's and they couldn't be more sensitive to her plight as a carer, or more admiring of her character in being able to overcome the almost insurmountable barriers to achieve all that she has, but unfortunately, time is money, there is always some young thing who doesn't have her patchy employment record, and did just this very job last week, who waltzes away with the job.

Andrew Elder said...

Hope you've made your mark with your Cert IV - consider TAFE and some of the private providers offering training to those in the caring professions. Traning is one of those professions where you only need to know the jargon in order to get around it.