Tough question. Is Howard the first leader of a Western country to draw a line in the sand against the encroachments of Political Correctness. Wait for the howls of outrage and accusations of racism.
Parents are moving their children out of government schools because the state system is "too politically correct and too values-neutral", according to Prime Minister John Howard. His comment on the schools funding debate comes at the beginning of an election year in which the Government is planning to introduce legislation expected to inject tens of billions of dollars into the coffers of private schools, while Labor campaigns to strengthen the public system.
| We've got the same waltz going on here... |
When The Age interviewed Mr Howard at the weekend, he said the growth of private school enrolments partly resulted from parents being frustrated with the lack of traditional values in public schools and an "incredibly antiseptic view taken about a whole range of things". From 1999 to 2002, the number of full-time students attending non-government schools jumped more than 20 per cent, compared with a 1 per cent increase in government school enrolments. "Some schools think you offend people by having nativity plays," Mr Howard said. "I think that it’s a reflection of the extent to which political correctness overtook this country, particularly through the teaching unions, which I think are a bit out of step. People are looking increasingly to send their kids to independent schools for a combination of reasons. For some of them, it’s to do with the values-driven thing; they feel that government schools have become too politically correct and too values-neutral. It used not to be the case. I’m a public schoolboy myself, my wife and I both went to state schools, we sent our children to state schools at a primary level."
| Sounds like the very same problem we've got. If you're going to have schools supported by the people of Australia, you should be teaching from an Australia point of view, rather than from a "value-neutral" standpoint. Here, the slack is taken up by parochial schools, mostly Catholic. The rot's creeping in among them, too, just a little more slowly. First teachers got away from teaching facts — "What difference did it make if Hastings was fought in 1066 or 1068?" Instead, they were going teach the kiddies "to think." By my antiquated way of looking at it, "thinking" involves stringing facts together. With no facts to work from, or only fuzzy facts, thought processes become muddled. Once the tought processes became muddled, we expected less and less from the kids, while at the same time buying the spurious idea that they're "little adults." They're not; at best, they're adults in training. But I'm not an "educator." What the hell do I know? (Other than how to read and write, that is. And when and where the Battle of Hastings was fought. And why. And a few other non-essentials...) |
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