Saturday, October 10, 2009

Wrong end of the blog stick - failure to communicate

If you're after a good example of miscommunication, you need look no further than my previous blog entry about 'Brand Australia' and the comments that follow. Was it a cultural exchange gone wrong or outright blame-mongering or worse xenophobia? I hope it was the former because while I admit my diatribe can be a little abstract, I'm not one to blatantly offend - my interpersonal communication skills are generally better than that. It's up to you but I would explain further by adding that my comments regarding a group of international students and the situation faced by them in Australia recently - where students were left high and dry by private training organisations offering cheap and quick qualifications when it went belly-up - were not directed at international students undertaking university education or vocational education and training provided by Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) Registered Training Organisations (RTO) such as TAFE. I found another blog entry on the same subject but arguably better expressed than mine - Malcolm King explains further in On Line Opinion.