The State of our Education System
OVERVIEW:
Starting at the foundation years, students are proactively taught to become activists. From the earliest grades, the education system teaches young Australians there is a climate emergency so great their lives are in imminent danger. It inculcates an insidious culture of collective guilt of our history. It teaches students to be ashamed of being Australian. And if that does not make them anxious enough, it also teaches them gender fluidity under the guise of ‘safety’. The Curriculum presents these ideologies exaggerated to the point of absurdity, instilling fear and anxiety.
These ‘learnings’ are omnipresent, weaselling their way throughout the entire Curriculum from kindergarten to year 12 and in every subject. And it is all presented as fact, void of interrogation, rigour, balance or alternative.
It is often called the ‘woke cloak’ and it shrouds the entire education system.
With its obsessive focus on identity politics, critical race theory, and green ideologies, our education system is moulding our children into barely literate social justice warriors and, in so doing, denies them the skills they need to survive, let alone compete, in the modern world.
The National Curriculum explicitly states cross-curriculum priorities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders History and Cultures, and Sustainability (which encompasses climate, ‘diversity, equity inclusion’ etc) and is “designed to raise student awareness about informed action to create a more environmentally and socially just world”. Subject after subject, year after year, children as young as four are openly called on to become activists.
The National Curriculum is forthright in advocating unchallenged objectives including the priority promotion of ‘global citizenship’ and ‘global climate governance’ as superior to national citizenship, and national sovereignty is dismissed.
Climate Alarmism, Inter-generational oppressor guilt and DEI is de rigueur. A very heavy weight is placed on the shoulders of the young.
In the last 20 years, despite increased spending ($716 billion from 2012 to 2022), our results have gone backwards. Today, the average 15-year-old is about sixteen months behind where the average 15-year-old was twenty years ago. And our students are four years behind our neighbours Singapore in maths and more than 2 years behind in Literacy.
2023 NAPLAN results reveal over a third of the nations year nine students are not meeting expected minimum standard in literacy and numeracy.
There is exponential increase in mental health issues and overwhelming demand for psychological counselling.
University teacher training is also fundamentally compromised, where political activism is prioritised with scant regard to the philosophical understandings of the purpose of education.
SOME GENERAL EXAMPLES
NAP-CC tests Year 6 and Year 10 students and examines their understanding of the Australian democracy and system of governance, the rights and obligations of citizens and the social values that underpin Australian society.
2019 (latest results) show only 38 per cent of Year 10 students were ‘at’ or above the proficient standard:
They cannot really explain the significance of Anzac Day and relate Anzac Day to Australian national pride.
They cannot satisfactorily identify the importance of democracies for citizens to engage with issues.
They cannot satisfactorily recognise the principles that are at the heart of our democratic system and identify their historical origins.
(they can describe ways of protesting!)
A survey that accompanied the NAC-PP test showed that the major concerns of students were ‘problems affecting Australia, particularly pollution, climate change and water shortages’ and there was ‘widespread agreement about the value of taking civic action’.
There is widespread use of material that encourages for example students to not stand for the national anthem
2023 NAPLAN
One-third of all Year 9 students across the nation failed to meet expected proficiency standards in numeracy, reading, and writing.(that’s about 100,000 15 year-olds)
PISA (Programme for International Students Assessment)
DEI and CRITICAL RACE THEORY
You might hear from the defenders of the National Curriculum ‘you will find no mention of Critical Race Theory in the National Curriculum’. An investigation conducted by an independent investigative reporting outfit Project Veritas has revealed how Critical Race Theory is sneaked into American curricula through the more innocuous sounding term ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ or DEI – and it is done quite purposefully. [Read here]
Admittedly, this is an American investigation, but if you look for how often the terms ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ appears in Australia’s National Curriculum. The answer: 330 times!
Australian parents should demand a thorough investigation into what exactly is being taught in the name of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ to Australian students. And if it turns out, it is just another way of dividing Australians in the name of race, gender and other attributes, they should demand it be removed.
MENTAL HEALTH
Relentless emphasis on climate change, and the constant catastrophising, has led to increased anxiety among students. Reports indicate that many young Australians feel a deep sense of despair and are experiencing feelings of fear and helplessness. Many students feel overwhelmed and depressed, and the teachers who message the material are ill-equipped to manage the consequences of their actions – their students’ anxiety.
In 2021, The Lancet surveyed 10,000 people aged 16–25 years in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the US; 1000 participants per country). It claims to be the biggest survey of its kind. Eighty-four per cent of respondents said they were at least moderately worried about climate change, with 59 per cent very or extremely worried. More than 50 per cent reported each of the following emotions: sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45 per cent of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. Seventy-five per cent said they think the future is frightening. Many of those questioned perceive that they have no future, and that humanity is doomed. Four out of ten are hesitant to have children. The authors of the report say environmental fears are “profoundly affecting huge numbers of young people” and that they were moved by the scale of distress.
(In England, a 2020 survey from the Royal College of Psychiatrists found over half (57 per cent) of child and adolescent psychiatrists surveyed were seeing children and young people distressed about the climate crisis and the state of the environment. A Daily Telegraph poll in 2023 found that more than half of teenagers surveyed believe the world “may end in their lifetime” because of climate change)
CONSEQUENCES OF A STUDENT LED AND ACTIVIST CURRICULUM?
School principals are experiencing worsening levels of physical violence, threats and bullying, according to a long-running national survey measuring wellbeing among school leaders. Forty-eight per cent of the 2,300 principals who took part in the Australian Catholic University's (ACU) annual principal safety survey, reported experiencing or witnessing physical violence, and about 54 per cent were threatened with violence.
The most recent OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked our classrooms 71st out of 80 for classroom discipline.
KINDERGARTENS
Early Learning Framework – Belonging, Being and Becoming, is mandatory for early childhood learning centres. Diversity, Inclusion and Equity are mentioned 149 times, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Reconciliation are mentioned 96 times, while “Mother”, “Father” and “Parents” not mentioned even once.
Materials recommended by the federal government’s childcare regulator, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, contains the following:
That childcare centres should be “safe spaces” and that “Early childhood is a critical time for children to begin understanding and exploring gender.”
Children to perform a daily Acknowledgment of Country, and for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags to be displayed in all settings.
Childcare centres should reconsider “education spaces, which focuses on acknowledging colonisation and its continued impacts, while seeking to disrupt and reconceptualise colonial understandings.”
ATSI
In any school year, students observe thirteen different Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture ‘name-days’, and several weeks dedicated to ATSI issues. This is in addition to the ‘cross curriculum priority’ in the National Curriculum that mandates the embedding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture into every subject at every year level. This divisive ‘dripping tap’ lasts all year, every year of a child’s schooling (and there is almost zero positive recognition of the value of our western heritage or celebration of a one Australia).
Daily AtoC is the norm.
Here’s an example of one school in suburbs of Melbourne where the children are forced to recite every morning:
“We acknowledge and honour the Wurundjeri Woi Wurringpeople of the land of the Kulan nation, the original owners of the spaces that we live, learn and play on.
We are sorry for damaging your culture and taking your land.
We are sorry for what was done to you and your people.
We promise to look after and respect the kind, waterways, skies plants and animals of this country, and we are grateful to share this land in harmony.
We look forward to a bright future of friendship and kindness.”
In other words, these students are explicitly taught Australia is not one nation. They are taught to pay homage to people because of the colour of their skin and heritage, not because of the quality of their character. The students are taught they are guests in their own country and are occupying stolen land. The students are taught they are responsible for implied heinous but unspecified crimes they themselves did not commit and that they are inter-generational oppressors who must grovelingly apologise in perpetuity.
The promotion of division and permanently apologising for the contested actions of others of hundreds of years ago is the ‘bread and butter’ of the national curriculum.
Children as young as five forced to say ‘Sorry for the Stolen Children’ (several variations of this activity is done across the nation. Children colour in the hand in the tri-colours of the flag, write ‘Sorry for the Stolen children” (even preps have to copy that) and display it.
(There is now articulated concern from children as young as 4 years that they too might be “stolen” from their parents.)
Sample exam question:
