Wednesday, February 11, 2004

ATTACK ON PC SCHOOLS IN AUSTRALIA NOW BIPARTISAN

Political correctness in Australian schools seems to be similar to what is taught in U.S. and U.K. schools but it is under attack in Australia. Christopher Pearson notes that both Australia's conservative Federal government and the Federal leader of Australia's major Leftist party (Latham) are agreed that the PC rot in the schools must be stopped. I understand that Pearson has declared his own homosexuality so his remarks on that subject are hardly "homophobic". Some excerpts:

"PAMELA Bone, an associate editor of The Age, artlessly encapsulated the education debate last week. "State schools are not so much politically correct, as John Howard charges, as ideologically sound." It is a classic example of a distinction without a difference. Still, Bone ploughed on. "So are most private schools, for that matter. But it's an ideology to which - one would think! - not even the Prime Minister could object" - of caring, sharing and self-esteem.

This is reminiscent of the early 1990s when the political correctness brigade would all but deny the existence of the phenomenon and say that they were simply being "good mannered". Note how, by implication, anyone who didn't follow their example was at best boorish. The coerciveness of this strategy, a self-serving tautological loop, plainly wasn't apparent to all but the slyest of its practitioners. They really thought that all civilised people either shared their world view or would in time come around to doing so. It reminded me at the time of William Blake's line about "the mind-forged manacles" of man....

Peter West, head of the research group on men and families at the University of Western Sydney, wrote last week in praise of Mark Latham's plans to educate and support parents experiencing difficulties. He says that the web of authority that children and boys especially need has been weakened. "Parents can't provide authoritative parenting. Schools are wary of saying the wrong thing. My teacher/education students are terrified about saying almost anything but the blandest praise about Aborigines or immigrants, for fear that someone might attack them." If only the curriculum were less transfixed by noble savages living in peace with one another and mystical harmony with the land. If some teachers at least believed in authoritative plain speaking as thoroughly as, say, Noel Pearson, without fear of being labelled racists, how much more productive a national conversation we'd be able to have.

There is abundant further evidence that PC (or, since the term's been over-used, what might for convenience sake be called coercive groupthink) is more than just the stuff of right-wing fantasy. Parents, whatever their political allegiances, ought to reflect on the Australian Education Union's policy pronouncements on sexuality. Take, for example, the union's rejection of "the assumption that heterosexual sex and relationships are 'natural' or 'normal"'. Would you want your or anyone else's sons and daughters to be exposed to teachers who shared their union's view and preached it?

It's possible to hold and demonstrate non-discriminatory attitudes towards what Peter Berger called "the erotic minorities" without questioning the naturalness of the majority and ordinary procreation. Likewise, it's possible, and indeed perfectly legitimate, to argue in schoolrooms about the necessity or propriety of waging war on Iraq. But was it proper of the Victorian branch of the AEU to advise teachers "to suspend normal classroom instruction to read a statement to their classes and present or undertake a peace activity"?

The imagination cringes at what a peace activity might be -- holding hands while gathered around a few candles, perhaps, or singing John Lennon's Imagine. At any rate I suspect most parents would prefer debate and some attempt at balance rather than proselytising from teachers. However, when the Victorian branch urged teachers to "come into the city after school to a rally outside the State Library", plainly groupthink pressure was being applied to them as well as their students.

One welcome aspect of the Latham ascendancy is a likely greater convergence between the major parties on education. The Opposition Leader's attitude towards the teachers' unions has been nothing if not forthright: "The greatest obstacle to progress in this state's schools is the leadership of the NSW Teachers Federation. It is a serial offender when it comes to opposing high standards, basic skills and accountability. It has tried to obstruct every effort by the Carr Government to move in this direction. The federation is locked in a time warp, practising the education beliefs of the 1970s."

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