It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Australia’s education bureaucrats must be barking mad.
For the past few decades, Australia’s international education rankings have steadily fallen. In line with demands by education bureaucrats and teachers’ unions, governments of both persuasions have poured more and more money into a woker and woker curriculum, while traditional teaching methods have been thrown aside in favour of fashionable education theories.
So what does the latest curriculum review recommend? Even more wokeness and fashionable theories.
The study of the humanities will be scaled back significantly, while Indigenous histories, cultures and perspectives will be given greater prominence in a new national school curriculum that seeks to improve declining student performance[…]
In English, texts by Indigenous authors will be promoted, however, in a blow to advocates of phonics, the curriculum will continue to promote whole language practices for teaching reading, despite several states recently adopting a more structured, evidence-backed approach.
Home schooling is looking better and better.
Remember learning your times tables by rote and “sounding out” difficult words? Oh, you poor deluded fool: that’s not “modern” enough. All that ever did was make Australia a world-leader in maths and literacy. Education theory has “progressed” beyond that.
The proposed curriculum revisions, to be published on Thursday, also reveal a shift towards problem solving in mathematics and inquiry learning in science amid a push to have students move beyond the recall of facts to applying their knowledge to “real world situations”.
Primary students will no longer study world navigators and explorers, significant dates and sites, or celebrations and commemorations as humanities content is reduced after complaints teachers had been “overwhelmed”.
I mean, they hardly had time to fit in gender theory and Critical Race Theory, let alone try and get little E’bon’ni’ee’ee to spell “climate” right on her placard for next week’s strike.
In Year 7 history, the Investigating the Ancient Past topic, which examines events across Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome, India, China and the Maya, is to be removed and replaced by Deep Time History of Australia focusing on Indigenous history spanning back 60,000 years.
Relationships and sex education also gets a makeover, with more explicit guidance on the teaching of consent in the wake of widespread community concern about rates of sexual assault and harassment, particularly among young people.
So, yet more fashionable garbage pandering to confected media hysteria campaigns, and even more brow-beating of kids with paeans to a Stone Age culture. I mean, what really can be taught about “indigenous history spanning back 60,000 years” that can’t be covered in a single class? “Wandered over a land-bridge. Killed off the megafauna. Invented a bent stick.” Done.
I’m sure that summary would send an education bureaucrat into a screaming mee-mee, but, let’s face it, Aboriginal culture was (and is) incredibly conservative. To borrow a phrase used to describe Ancient Egyptian culture, it was 60,000 years of “feet up, minds in neutral”. Just without the pyramids.
Speaking of minds in neutral.
Australia, once a top-10 nation in maths, has fallen to 29th place, while reading and science scores have also taken a hit. In reading, Australia was once ranked in the top five, and most recently ranked in 16th place.
All thanks to exactly the sort of fashionable garbage the curriculum authority is heaping up higher, and higher again. To get an idea of how airily out-of-touch these credentialled idiots really are, consider the following statement from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority chief David de Carvalho:
Mr de Carvalho, who writes about the review in The Australian today, said the curriculum was “already world-class”.
The Australian
The results say otherwise.
The only people who are more out of their minds than these education bureaucrats are the conservative politicians who let them get away with this bullshit.
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