UPDATE 19 August 2021
The Government has told ACARA, the Curriculum Authority in Australia, to re-write the draft curriculum. We thank Minister Tudge for listening to the criticism, including from myself, on what was an obviously deficient draft curriculum
This follows One Nation’s motions in the Senate criticising the de-emphasis of our Judaeo-Christian heritage and the inclusion of critical race theory in the draft curriculum.
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Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority must rewrite draft curriculum: Alan Tudge
From Rebecca Urban | The Australian
Education Minister Alan Tudge says the board of the country’s schooling authority must substantially rewrite its draft national curriculum, warning he will not endorse the proposed document amid concern student outcomes would be harmed.
Writing to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s acting chairman Norm Hart, Mr Tudge criticised the proposal for supporting “ideology over evidence” and presenting an “overly negative view” of the nation in the study of history and civics.
In the letter, seen by The Australian, Mr Tudge urged the board to seriously consider recent feedback from education experts, who have flagged concerns that the proposed changes amounted to a weakening of learning standards.
“Some of these groups, such as Australia’s peak mathematics association, believe that the current draft will take Australian kids backwards,” he wrote. “If the current draft is simply tweaked, it will not be supported. It needs fundamental changes.”
The warning comes as the ACARA board meets on Thursday and Friday to discuss feedback to the highly anticipated update of the Australian Curriculum – an important document laying out what students are expected to learn across the mandated subject areas of English, maths, science, the arts, humanities, health and physical education and languages.
The curriculum also seeks to cover general capabilities, or skills, such as critical and creative thinking, as well as ensure young people develop an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Its release in April, however, sparked a torrent of criticism, including from high-profile historians, academics and reading specialists.
Among the most scathing criticism was from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, whose membership spans leading universities, government agencies and industry, which called for any ongoing review of the maths curriculum to be halted pending further consultation.
The institute was particularly critical of a proposed push towards having students learn maths by engaging in open-ended problem-solving activities, noting that “mastery of mathematical approaches is needed before student problem-solving can be effective”.
Under way for more than a year, ACARA’s curriculum review was launched in the wake of Australia’s declining performance on the OECD’s PISA, which has shown that Australian students have gone backwards in reading, maths and science over the past 20 years.
According to Mr Tudge, the curriculum should seek to be ambitious on students’ learning outcomes and should prioritise evidence-based practices, particularly in reading and maths.
“However, to my great frustration, evidence-based practices have not been consistently embedded in your current draft,” he said. “There is still too much emphasis on whole-language learning of reading and insufficient emphasis on phonics.
“Thirty years ago, determining the best way to teach reading may have been a legitimate debate, but it is not now. The evidence is crystal clear … that the teaching of phonics is vital.”
The minister also urged the ACARA board to re-examine the draft history and civics curriculum to ensure that it provided a balanced teaching of Australia’s liberal democracy that has made the nation attractive to millions of migrants.
“Your draft, however, diminishes Australia’s western, liberal, and democratic values,” Mr Tudge said. “The overarching impression from the curriculum is that the main feature of western civilisation is slavery, imperialism and colonisation.
“Important historical events are removed or reframed, such as the emphasis on invasion theory over Australia Day. Even Anzac Day is presented as a contested idea, rather than the most sacred of all days where we honour the millions of men and women who have served in war, and the 100,000 who gave their lives for our freedom.”
Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Tudge said the education system had “been shaken in the last 18 months … in ways we had never imagined”.
“I believe that the best way to serve the interests of our young people now is to seize every opportunity to lift educational standards,” he said.
“The draft of the Australian Curriculum is such an opportunity.”
Remember what critical race theory is? It says that the whole of our society is infected with racism and it only helps whites, that you can only succeed if you’re white and if you’re anything else you can’t succeed which is a shocking message.
Transcript
[Paul Murray] Let’s talk to one of the Senators who was in the chamber for that nonsense in and around coal but I want to talk more so about his success in being able to get the Senate to agree to keep critical race theory, the crazy stuff all about teaching white people to hate themselves including the video we showed you a bit earlier in it day. Malcolm Roberts is the One Nation Senator from here in beautiful Queensland. Lovely to be here and I’m sure you would prefer to be in Gladstone rather than Canberra now mate but alas that’s the gig you have. Tell us how important was this vote and what message does it send about critical race theory in the national school curriculum?
[Malcolm Roberts] Let’s help everyone to understand what critical race theory is. It says that – it claims that everything, every aspect, the whole of our society is infected with racism and it only helps whites so what it does is it says that you can only succeed if you’re white and if you’re anything else you can’t succeed which is a shocking message but what it also does is infects all whites – kids in particular – with guilt and shame. What they’re doing, Paul — with guilt and shame, and what they’re doing is using critical race theory to indoctrinate our kids, telling them what to think not how to think and that is what’s so damaging about it. Our kids are our productive capacity in the future and they’re killing off our productive capacity.
[Paul Murray] It is extraordinary to me that a country that has been able to achieve so much including in a multiracial fashion has been able to be the story of immigration from all over the world has been one of the great successes of Australia yet for some reason reason all of the people who want to sit in the modernity is only possible because of the great rise of the West who want to use their position in the power structure of the West to somehow say there is something fundamentally wrong with the system that pay their wages or think something like critical race theory is worth implementing via their jobs.
[Malcolm Roberts] You just nailed it. At the core of this it is about control and reveals an extremely arrogant approach. These people who are pushing this nonsense, they don’t want to get into parliament and go through the work of being elected, putting their policies and their ideas under scrutiny. They just want to get in through the back door and then they want to use their power over innocent kids. I mean, there’s nothing more shameful than that. They don’t want to have any scrutiny. They just want to work through the back door ideology. What they use, Paul, as you know, is they use shaming language to silence any dissent because if you go against it, mate, you’re a racist and there’s nothing worse than calling someone a racist and that’s what they do. It is all about control and getting control of the future of our kids. Don’t go through parliament, fight to change and enact laws, just bypass it all and indoctrinate the kids. It’s frightening stuff.
[Paul Murray] Thank goodness you are there to fight it and congrats on getting the Senate to see sense on this stuff. Well done and it is one of the many reasons I’m glad you and Pauline are in the parliament.
