(Hat tip to BlawBlaw)
The forward-thinking and right-thinking Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard has moved to bring an end to a ridiculous lack of plain old Australian HISTORY classes, which have apparently been replaced by leftist propaganda. Gosh nothing like that has happened here. MUCH.
Some there are calling what what’s now being taught —lessons designed by politically correct educators who have hijacked history, presenting Australia’s past through a filter of Marxist, feminist and Green interpretations.
No, these are not things that I said although I understand the confusion.
Australia vows to remove political correctness from school curriculum
BY M A R K C H I P P E R F I E L D
The Daily Telegraph
[via the National Post Electronic edition]SYDNEY
Two centuries after he dropped anchor in Botany Bay, Captain James Cook has sailed into a political storm in Australia, the country he put on the map.Once honoured as an Australian hero, the 18th-century English navigator has been sidelined — even vilified — in recent decades in a nation embarrassed by its bloody colonial past and the cruel treatment of its indigenous population.
But the Australian government vowed yesterday to reverse the tide of political correctness that had swept Capt. Cook, who claimed Australia for the British Crown in 1770, and other European “colonizers” from the national school curriculum.
Julie Bishop, the federal Education Minister, announced there would be a radical overhaul in how history is taught in Australian schools, which will see a return to the narrative form of history, free of political interpretation.
“Every schoolchild should know when and why Capt. James Cook sailed along the east coast of Australia, who was our first prime minister, why we were involved in two world wars and how federation came about,” she said.
Ms. Bishop accused politically correct educators of hijacking history, presenting Australia’s past through a filter of Marxist, feminist and Green interpretations.
“There is too much indoctrination and not enough pivotal facts and dates,” she said.
[…] In some parts of the country history is no longer taught as a separate subject but has been absorbed into a broader social studies program. In Western Australia, for example, history is part of a program called “Time, Continuity and Change,” while in South Australia it is part of the society and environment studies unit.
Mr. Howard believes history should once again be a compulsory part of the syllabus for at least some of the time a child is at school.
He is well-known for his love of British institutions, especially cricket, the monarchy and the Westminster system of government. He recently told a radio audience that schoolchildren should have “some understanding” of British and European history, the Enlightenment and the influence of Christianity on Western civilization.
[…]
A similar article is also available at The Australian.
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