by REBECCA ZHU – CONSERVATIVE Australians must join the culture wars if they’re to push back against radical race and gender theories taught in classrooms, warns the Institute of Public Affairs’ Bella d’Abrera.
In an address to CPAC Australia this week, Dr d’Abrera said Australians should learn from the recent Virginian State election and push back on Leftist ideology.
- Classrooms are a battleground. This is why we need to fight.
- Young Australians are being “prematurely propelled” into the world of activism.
- Parents need to stop being surprised that younger generations are ashamed of Australia.
“I want to make Australia’s education great again,” she said. “Classrooms are a battleground. This is why we need to fight.”
Dr d’Abrera said parents need to stop being surprised that younger generations were ashamed of Australia considering what they were repeatedly being taught at school.
EVIL
“Children are impressionable and if you tell them over and over again that this country is evil, they’re going to believe you,” she said.
According to a poll commissioned by the IPA, if Australia was in the same position as Ukraine, just 32 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would stay and fight, while 40 per cent said they would leave the country.
“If Prime Minister Albanese and his government were truly interested in what he called fair dinkum history – they’d stop lying by omission and start teaching some positive aspects of Australian history to children,” she said.
“Explain to them how, when the first settlers came to Australia, they brought with them the ethics of Christianity, in particular the notion of the sovereignty and accountability – accountability of the individual.”
Dr D’Abrera, who is the director of the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation program, said all history should be taught, not just select segments.
“Nobody’s suggesting that they should be ignored or covered up but focusing children’s minds entirely on the mistakes of the past … is detrimental to their development and the development of the future of this country,” she said.
In the State of Victoria, the Respectful Relationships Program teaches kids as young as four to think about their gender identity and challenge gender norms.
“They’re getting full blown radical gender theory. They’re being told gender is a social construct,” she said.
“They hate men. They hate the family. They hate the family structure. They want the State to be in control of the child.
CONTROL
“And at the moment, the State is in control of the child.”
As a result of this radical agenda, young Australians are being “prematurely propelled” into the world of activism without full knowledge of any of the issues at hand or the basic skills to “save the world”.
“And when I say basic skills, they’re not being taught how to read, write, or add up, they’re not been taught the basics,” Dr d’Abrera said.
She called on conservatives to get involved in pushing back ideology in the classroom and bring back the focus on teaching literacy and numeracy.
“It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty in the cultural wars. Conservatives have been quiet for far too long,” she said. “Everyone goes ‘yes, it’s a problem’ then walks away, and the problem gets even worse.”
Since the turn of the century, education standards in Australia have been plummeting in “both absolute terms and relative to other countries,” despite a 38 per cent increase in education funding during the past decade, former Education Minister Alan Tudge said in 2021.
In the early 2000s, Australia ranked 4th internationally in reading, 8th in science, and 11th in mathematics. But by 2018, those rankings have dropped to 16th, 17th and 29th, respectively.
“We’re breeding a future of people who cannot read and write,” Dr d’Abrera said.
FAILED
A recent interim report, published in September by the Productivity Commission, found that between five and nine per cent of Australians repeatedly failed to reach the minimum standards in literacy and numeracy each year.
It noted that many students who are struggling to keep up fall outside of the “priority equity cohorts” – students who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; live in regional, rural, and remote locations; have a disability; or are from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.
“While students from priority equity cohorts are disproportionately represented among students who have fallen behind national minimum standards, most underperforming students do not belong to these cohorts,” the report said.PC
‘“We’re breading [sic] a future of people who cannot read and write,” Dr d’Abrera said.’
I guess they’ll have to get by on crumbs then…
Discussions on Sky News regional have exposed teachers in NSW public schools using climate hoax material provided free of charge by international climate hoax politics activists to teach students during school hours. The propaganda material was described as being of high quality. Apparently the teaching is done without permission from the State Department of Education. There are other subjects taught without permission, and obviously cuts into the available hours students have at school for approved education.
Why is the Minister for Education not putting a stop to this, no intestinal fortitude or woke?
When the Opposition led by Tony Abbott promised to continue Labor’s Budget 2013/14 commitment to the States to fund education with “Gonski” education grants the Opposition also said they would only honour Labor’s commitment for current account period and forward estimates if elected to government.
After that and in between time negotiations would be held to reach agreement for a “return to basics”in education, but they soon learnt that there were not enough teachers qualified to teach those subjects and a retraining programme was necessary.
The last I read was a comment from now former NSW Premier Berejiklian that NSW Education was ready to go back to teaching basic subjects.
With due regard for the substantial budget expenditure Gonski education grants to the states represents it must be noted that Labor first listed Gonski for financial year 2013/14 in their Budget but made no provision to pay for it, obviously realising that the Abbott led Opposition was in a very good position to win the September 2013 election, having defeated Labor at the 2010 election forcing them to negotiate a minority alliance government.
Labor also listed the NDIS in the same budget and also made no provision to pay for that expensive commitment with the states. Accordingly, as the Abbott Government Treasurer Hockey announced when an independent audit of the Labor Budget had been completed to fund Gonski and NDIS more debt was required, so add that debt to what Labor created after November 2007 when they inherited zero debt from the Howard Government and Labor is responsible for over $400 billion of the current account debt, and the $1 billion Labor constantly talk about is the forward estimate of future debt. And now Labor are responsible for any additional borrowing and additional debt.