Posted on 07/08/2006 11:25:32 AM PDT by wagglebee
CANBERRA, July 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Australian federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has announced the government’s plan to end the marxist-inspired history curriculum that has been standard fare in Australian schools. Bishop said she will press the states and territories to adopt “traditional Australian history” along the lines of that adopted in New South Wales by former premier Bob Carr.
The Australian reports that the government is planning on forcing the issue, saying that refusal would mean the change would be included in the next funding agreement.
Bishop said, “I want to work with the states on this. I want them to come along with me in a renaissance in the teaching of Australian history.”
The change in curriculum would mean a “narrative” approach that would focus on learning dates and names and events of history, instead of cultural analysis that many have criticized for a heavy leftist bias.
New South Wales premier Bob Carr told the Australian that he was willing to help with the re-orientation back to traditional history and national identity in schools. "I'm happy to talk about it anywhere," Mr Carr said yesterday. "I support any initiative to have history rescued and taught as a distinct discipline and to relegate cultural studies."
"Australian history has fallen victim to a crowded curriculum that has squashed it together with other social and environmental studies," Ms Bishop said. "I intend to consider ways the federal Government can encourage state education authorities to make teaching of Australian history a critical part of the syllabus."
Bishop believes that the re-routing of history into the more subjective material of courses on “social and environmental studies,” has left children without sufficient national identity. She said students had a right to learn the history of their own country as that would make them more informed citizens.
"I think school systems have become afraid of teaching Australian history for fear of saying something that isn't politically correct," she told ABC Radio.
I have to say, I'm stunned.
Can we hire her?
That was the point.
WTG Aussies! The only way we can accomplish this, is to get rid of the leftist teachers unions.
Well, this is very good news...
Three cheers for the Aussies! A great ally in WW2, a great ally against our present day plague of subversive Marxists.
My hair is practically standing on end.
Holy Cow.
I'm moving to Australia. Now I have a good excuse. Plus I have lots of friends there :)
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
Australia to Rid School History Lessons of Politically Correct Marxist Revisionism
This is a wonderful development, now if American schools would only follow suit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be included in or removed from the MORAL ABSOLUTES PINGLIST, please FReepMail wagglebee.
God bless and keep the John Howard administration.
We need to set that in motion here.
Don't break out the champagne just yet. Australia is also becoming more restrictive towards homeschooling.
http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Australia/200212050.asp
Personally, I don't care so much what government schools teach so long as parents are freely able to opt out of sending their children there. So while this is a bit of good news, I'd be a lot happier if this were in conjunction with a push to expand the right to homeschool in Australia.
"Separation of school and state is what's needed. Get the freaking fedgov out of the education business altogether. Not even state control, just local, the smaller the better. The education bureaucracy is so entrenched that I think nothing less than an earthquake will dislodge it."
The only thing that will change the situation is if parents in significant numbers opt out of sending their children to the government schools. And I'm not sure even that will work.
We keep on tinkering around the edges and spending huge amounts of money on ways to "fix" the government schools, while avoiding the idea that perhaps the government schools have outlived their usefulness in a knowledge based economy. The problem, though, is that many parents tend to look at the government schools as a form of subsidized daycare.
It's up to the parents to DEMAND it.
You seen this???
"Death to the Zinnfidels!"
Agree with you. Wish American schools would do the same. But oh my, there would be a lot of unemeployment in the education system. Hehehehehehehehe!!! Sounds like a winner.
Good on ya mates.
Subsidized day care. And factories to churn out the kinds of workers (sic) and docile taxpayers and consumers that TPTB desire and need to carry on. I remember when Clinton was either running the first time or had just gotten elected, I read in the Sacramento Bee (a loathesome newspaper) that his education secretary proposed mandatory 12 hour a say schooling for ages 6 months through 18.*
Clinton also had some plan in which business would tell the fedgov what kinds of jobs they'd need in some years so students could be stuffed into the proper shaped holes.
Brave New World.
*I mentioned this on FR a couple of years ago and someone remembered reading that article.
Now if American schools would just do the same thing.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The only way you will see a return to traditional education and values is to begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education.
It is past time that government K-12 schools were eliminated.
I can imagine neighborhoods or small towns organizing schools and hiring teachers. But anything larger than that, nope.
But unless/until something radically changes society, it ain't going to happen. It's too far gone.
Oh yes, I've seen it. I help make it happen. I am a history teacher, and I'm one of the many people that the Minister has consulted over this.
Teaching in an elite independent school, we've been fairly isolated from the extremes of the current position, but what's happened in state schools is quite hideous. Sixteen year old children who know there was a World War II - but haven't worked out there was a World War I...
Keep Charging on Mate! Now if we can just clean our state run schools up too.
Given how little people seem to learn from history, I'm surprised that we bother to teach it anymore.
Come over here. Need a place to stay? ;-)
Seriously, why is it that history teachers are pretty much the only sane ones at the secondary level?
I think the Public School Monopoly can only be changed from within, sadly.
That's what DesertCoyote (daughter) is studying to be. Wants to teach 4th - 5th Grade and really teach them History, Geographay, Social Studies, Civics, English, Math, and Science not PC Pablum.
I briefly thought about going back and finishing my History degree (I have a minor) and teaching certification, but chickened out because I'm now working and living a reasonably-comfortable life and don't need the tuition debt.
A High School captivated US History class (say, 11th grade) can go a LONG way in shaping the future of this nation. You don't even need to be ideological, just passionate. My college mentor was not a prof in my major, but an Associate Professor in History who kept egging me on.
God Bless 'em All.
A little while later they were talking about the Polish Solidarity Movement in Gdansk Poland so I told her that that was not Poland and Poles it was Germans. She trots back the next day to school to dutifully report the new information. The teacher calls me to come to school to discuss interference so I go. I ask him to pull down a map and record on a piece of paper the Latitude and Longitude for Gdansk then ask him to pull down a map of eastern Europe for 1938 and find Frei Stat Danzig then compare the LAT/LONG.
I came home smiling.
I think the Public School Monopoly can only be changed from within, sadly.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Government schools can not be reformed from the inside or outside. There is only one solution: We must begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education.
In the meantime, wise parents will homeschool or privately school their children. They will organize themselves and other voters and they will go to the polls and vote NO to government school money, and YES to representatives favoring privatization.
Government schools need two things: Students and money. It is time we starved them of both.
I can imagine neighborhoods or small towns organizing schools and hiring teachers. But anything larger than that, nope.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I would agree with this only if they did not have the government power to take tax money from neighbors who were not using their school.
Schools should be paid for by the users and anyone else who wants to VOLUNTEER money. And do away with ALL - ALL - ALL fedgov rules, regulations, standards, and the like.
But it's FUBAR.
Yeah. Isn't it great?
Long overdue!
Oh gosh, yes.
One of my best teachers...
I attended one of Australia's top private schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s - Vietnam War era, and we had a teacher - he was actually the school chaplain as well - who we all knew was a die hard leftie. He was anti-Vietnam, and used to march against the war, and we all knew this, but it never came into his classroom. What came out in the class was his love of knowledge, and his love of thinking.
Anyway, final year of school, and I was seriously considering joining the Army or the Navy, and I went around to all my teachers who I trusted to ask their advice. All of them told me to go for it, and I came to this man last because I thought he'd tell me not to - a pacifist who was opposed to the war, a socialist. I thought I knew what he'd say.
He surprised me though - he told me the military was a good career, it was a tradition of service to country and cause, and that he thought I'd do well there, and get a lot out of it. Not what I was expecting at all - and I made that pretty obvious.
And he saw it, and he spoke to me. And he asked me if I thought he would have said something different and I said I did. And though I can't remember his exact words, what he said next has really stuck with me.
"Lad... I'm your teacher and that means my primary job is to teach you how to decide for yourself what you believe and what you want to do with your life. I don't hide what I believe from you, but I'm not here to tell you that you should agree with me. Being a good teacher means teaching kids so that they can decide things for themselves. I'd be a very bad teacher if every student I taught came out of my classes believing the same things I believe. That's not the job."
As a teacher myself today, I try to live up to that man in everything I teach - and though I come at my teaching from almost exactly the opposite direction he did, I hope that on the important things I learned what is right from him.
I don't conceal my political beliefs from my students. If they come up in class, I will tell them what I think - but it will always be "This is what I think - now you decide what you think."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.