Extract from The Guardian website:
Christopher Pyne's curriculum review is but one engagement in a proliferation culture wars that provide very handy cover
- Lenore Taylor, political editor
- theguardian.com,
The fog of the culture wars is getting so thick it’s obscuring the facts. Which is, of course, the point.
Christopher Pyne is the latest to thunder in, surprising no one with the announcement that Dr Kevin Donnelly will be one of two experts to conduct a review of the national curriculum.
Pyne’s statement was full of emotive generalisations difficult to disagree with – for example that his policy will “put students first” – as well as deliberate provocations to his opponents in this well-rehearsed debate – like the charge that the current curriculum does not “recognise the legacy of western civilisation”.
Pyne also insisted that his appointment of Donnelly aimed to “take politics out of the issue”, an interesting contention given views Donnelly has aired in his work as a columnist and author, including an attack on the idea that curricula should "enhance understanding and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people" because “many parents would consider the sexual practices of GLBT people unnatural and that most parents would prefer their children to form a relationship with somebody of the opposite sex”.
Predictably, critics shot back that it was all an ideological assault on our children’s education.
And so for the moment the war will rage, blunderbusses firing generalised assertions at 10 paces, Twitter ablaze.
But, as UK education minister Michael Gove discovered, politically inspired curricula wars can quickly turn to routs when they come into contact with facts.
Western civilisation certainly seems to get a reasonable airing in the history curriculum for the primary years on the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority website.
And when Donnelly and his co-reviewer Professor Ken Wiltshire make their recommendations they will be scrutinised by teachers and state governments and experts with reference to both facts and balance. They’ll also have to pass muster with parents, who generally prefer their kids to be taught things that are coherent, useful, interesting and true.
Tony Abbott added to the new year’s proliferation of wars by coming right out and declaring a “war” on people smugglers – justifying his government’s virtual information blackout about what the navy is doing at sea with the argument that is essential to deny information to an “enemy” violating Australia’s sovereignty, and describing as mere “idle curiosity” the idea that Australians might want to know how his policy is being implemented.
The Coalition, of course, had a very different attitude to providing information to the “enemy” when in opposition - advertising the arrival numbers provided by the then government on a huge mobile billboard and updating it on a daily basis.
But even in “war” time the facts eventually get out - through the scrutiny of non government organisations and parliament, the observations of journalists and service providers on the ground and the accounts of the asylum seekers themselves.
The voters will be able to decide whether the policy goal of ‘stopping the boats’ justifies the means and the misery. And as the boats slow attention will inevitably move to the asylum seekers in detention - on Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru - the fact that it remains unclear what will happen to them, even if they are found to be refugees, and the human cost of the many years it is taking for them to get to that point.
As John Howard discovered, as the boat arrivals slowed and the information about human consequences tricked into the public consciousness, pressure mounted until he was forced to water down his policies.
Even climate change, ostensibly a discussion about science, has been on faux-war footing for so long we seem to have lost sight of what we are arguing about.
Tony Abbott is now declaring that his review of the renewable energy target will have the primary aim of ensuring it does not add to electricity prices.
But the whole point of a renewable energy target was to subsidise renewables, which remained more expensive than coal, so that they would be ready and operating once the cost difference with coal fired power was levelled out by the carbon price.
Now the government intends to have no carbon price, and no penalty or policy to force any change in the way Australia generates power. And, despite having said it would keep the RET, now insists the policy must be judged by a criteria it will obviously fail.
Adding to the urgency of keeping power prices down, Abbott contends, is the fact that major manufacturers are closing, or teetering on the edge - even though the manufacturers know the carbon price is about to end, the RET adds at most 2% to the average power bill, most energy-intensive manufacturers are largely exempt from it anyway and the thing many of them are really concerned about is the coalition’s own decision not to offer ongoing government assistance.
A good culture war full of shouty generalisations can provide a government with very handy cover.
Sure we want low power bills, of course we should have “sovereignty” over our borders and what parent wouldn’t cheer for an education system that puts kids “first”.
It all sounds easy and obvious, until we start to weigh slightly lower bills against the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions a different way, or not reducing them at all, an education system that presents a single political world view or the consequences of an asylum policy that leaves traumatised people in long term detention.
It’s easy to yell over someone who’s yelling back. It’s much harder to argue against scrutiny based on facts and real comparisons.
Christopher Pyne is the latest to thunder in, surprising no one with the announcement that Dr Kevin Donnelly will be one of two experts to conduct a review of the national curriculum.
Pyne’s statement was full of emotive generalisations difficult to disagree with – for example that his policy will “put students first” – as well as deliberate provocations to his opponents in this well-rehearsed debate – like the charge that the current curriculum does not “recognise the legacy of western civilisation”.
Pyne also insisted that his appointment of Donnelly aimed to “take politics out of the issue”, an interesting contention given views Donnelly has aired in his work as a columnist and author, including an attack on the idea that curricula should "enhance understanding and acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people" because “many parents would consider the sexual practices of GLBT people unnatural and that most parents would prefer their children to form a relationship with somebody of the opposite sex”.
Predictably, critics shot back that it was all an ideological assault on our children’s education.
And so for the moment the war will rage, blunderbusses firing generalised assertions at 10 paces, Twitter ablaze.
But, as UK education minister Michael Gove discovered, politically inspired curricula wars can quickly turn to routs when they come into contact with facts.
Western civilisation certainly seems to get a reasonable airing in the history curriculum for the primary years on the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority website.
And when Donnelly and his co-reviewer Professor Ken Wiltshire make their recommendations they will be scrutinised by teachers and state governments and experts with reference to both facts and balance. They’ll also have to pass muster with parents, who generally prefer their kids to be taught things that are coherent, useful, interesting and true.
Tony Abbott added to the new year’s proliferation of wars by coming right out and declaring a “war” on people smugglers – justifying his government’s virtual information blackout about what the navy is doing at sea with the argument that is essential to deny information to an “enemy” violating Australia’s sovereignty, and describing as mere “idle curiosity” the idea that Australians might want to know how his policy is being implemented.
The Coalition, of course, had a very different attitude to providing information to the “enemy” when in opposition - advertising the arrival numbers provided by the then government on a huge mobile billboard and updating it on a daily basis.
But even in “war” time the facts eventually get out - through the scrutiny of non government organisations and parliament, the observations of journalists and service providers on the ground and the accounts of the asylum seekers themselves.
The voters will be able to decide whether the policy goal of ‘stopping the boats’ justifies the means and the misery. And as the boats slow attention will inevitably move to the asylum seekers in detention - on Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru - the fact that it remains unclear what will happen to them, even if they are found to be refugees, and the human cost of the many years it is taking for them to get to that point.
As John Howard discovered, as the boat arrivals slowed and the information about human consequences tricked into the public consciousness, pressure mounted until he was forced to water down his policies.
Even climate change, ostensibly a discussion about science, has been on faux-war footing for so long we seem to have lost sight of what we are arguing about.
Tony Abbott is now declaring that his review of the renewable energy target will have the primary aim of ensuring it does not add to electricity prices.
But the whole point of a renewable energy target was to subsidise renewables, which remained more expensive than coal, so that they would be ready and operating once the cost difference with coal fired power was levelled out by the carbon price.
Now the government intends to have no carbon price, and no penalty or policy to force any change in the way Australia generates power. And, despite having said it would keep the RET, now insists the policy must be judged by a criteria it will obviously fail.
Adding to the urgency of keeping power prices down, Abbott contends, is the fact that major manufacturers are closing, or teetering on the edge - even though the manufacturers know the carbon price is about to end, the RET adds at most 2% to the average power bill, most energy-intensive manufacturers are largely exempt from it anyway and the thing many of them are really concerned about is the coalition’s own decision not to offer ongoing government assistance.
A good culture war full of shouty generalisations can provide a government with very handy cover.
Sure we want low power bills, of course we should have “sovereignty” over our borders and what parent wouldn’t cheer for an education system that puts kids “first”.
It all sounds easy and obvious, until we start to weigh slightly lower bills against the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions a different way, or not reducing them at all, an education system that presents a single political world view or the consequences of an asylum policy that leaves traumatised people in long term detention.
It’s easy to yell over someone who’s yelling back. It’s much harder to argue against scrutiny based on facts and real comparisons.
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