There’s no doubt that political correctness has undermined and weakened Australia’s education system and made it almost impossible for teachers and schools to fulfil their roles as key guardians of our children’s education and the nation’s future. Dr Kevin Donnelly follows his highly acclaimed and bestselling How Political Correctness is Destroying Australia with this thoughtful collection of previously published articles exploring education in Australia today and how, looking forward, we can raise standards and improve outcomes.
Instead of an academically rigorous curriculum subjects have been dumbed down and taught through a politically correct prism involving Asian, indigenous and environmental perspectives. Schools are being pressured to give priority to radical gender and sexuality programs, like Safe Schools, where gender is fluid and limitless. Teachers are described as facilitators and guides. Fads like whole language, chil-centred and inquiry-based learning, open classrooms and restricting learning to what is immediately relevant dominate our classrooms. Schools are suffering from a command and control approach to education where they are strangled by red tape and an inflexible bureaucracy that imposes a one size-fits-all regime.
Notwithstanding the difficulties and challenges faced by Australia’s education system there is a way forward, Donnelly proposes in this book. While the curriculum must be forward looking and innovative it must also recognise the contributions of the past.
Dr Kevin Donnelly AM is a staunch defender of the strengths and benefits of Western civilisation and our Judeo-Christian heritage and is one of Australia’s leading conservative commentators and authors. Opinion pieces have been published in all of Australia’s mainstream print and digital media, including: the Australian, the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph, the Courier Mail, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and Newsweekly. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and Director of the Education Standards Institute. He is the author of How Political Correctness is Destroying Australia (2018).
