by KEVIN DONNELLY – NSW Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes, while reflecting on the Morrison Government’s defeat in May, has warned that too many young voters had been influenced by “an education system run by Marxists”.
There’s no doubt the popularity of The Greens and the so-called Teal independents was especially strong among voters under the age of 24 and voters with higher levels of education.
- Instead of being objective and impartial, knowledge is seen as a social construct employed to indoctrinate students.
- The school curriculum is dominated by the cultural-Left.
- University faculties now preach a rainbow alliance of “liberating” ideologies.
There’s also no doubt since the late 60s and early 70s Australia’s education system has been infiltrated and dominated by the neo-Marxist inspired cultural Left.
Despite the ALP’s education minister Jason Clare describing Senator Hughes’ comments to the Sydney Institute as “just crazy” the reality is those in control and dominating Australia’s schools and universities have given up any pretence of being impartial, balanced and objective.
CRITICAL
As detailed in the chapters on school and tertiary education published in Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, Australia’s education system has long been captured by neo-Marxist inspired critical theory and cultural-Left ideology dedicated to overthrowing the status quo.
A commitment to a liberal education dealing with what TS Eliot describes as “the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom” has long been jettisoned in favour of using education to overthrow capitalism and undermine Western societies denounced as Eurocentric, racist and misogynistic.
The school curriculum, in areas like climate change, gender and sexuality, multiculturalism and indigenous studies, is dominated by the cultural-Left.
Generations of students have left school convinced about the impending apocalypse caused by man-made global warming, that gender and sexuality are social constructs and Western civilisation is riven with structural sexism, racism and xenophobia.
In her 1983 speech to the Fabian Society Joan Kirner, one-time education minister and premier of Victoria, argued education must be reshaped as “part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system”.
University faculties now preach a rainbow alliance of liberating ideologies ranging from deconstructionism and postmodernism to radical gender, feminist, queer and post-colonial theories.
Trigger warnings, safe spaces and diversity guidelines based on identity politics and victimhood abound.
Such is the destructive impact of cultural-Left ideology on universities, the ANU’s Pierre Ryckmans in his 1996 Boyer Lectures argued universities have long since been deprived of their “spiritual means of operation”.
Ryckmans concludes the “main problem is not so much that the university as Western civilisation knew it, is now virtually dead, but that its death has hardly registered”.
For those who have read the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels it should not surprise the cultural-Left has long since targeted education as a key institution in its long march to overthrow capitalism.
STRUGGLES
Central to the manifesto is the conviction “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”.
Capitalist society subjugates and exploits workers and the aim of communism is to overthrow capitalism and achieve a socialist utopia where conflict disappears and all are free.
Marxists argue, instead of education and culture being inherently beneficial or worthwhile, capitalist society and the bourgeoisie use both as instruments to enforce their domination and control. Given its impact on workers, culture is condemned as “a mere training to act as a machine”.
Marx and Engels argue concepts like culture, freedom and the law are “but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and your bourgeois property” and communism’s goal is “to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class”.
While published in 1848 the manifesto continues to have a profound impact on schools and universities in Western societies like Australia.
Drawing on Louis Althusser’s concept of the ideological State apparatus, where education is employed to impose capitalist hegemony, the argument is curriculum must be radically reshaped.
Instead of being objective and impartial and dealing with wisdom and truth, knowledge is seen as a social construct employed by the elites to indoctrinate students and future citizens to accept as normal what is inherently unjust and inequitable.
BATTLE
Sine the late 70s the Australian Education Union has argued students must be taught Australian society is characterised by inequality and injustice and teachers must decide whose side they are on in the battle against oppression.
The Australian Association for the Teaching of English, instead of formal grammar and syntax and enduring literary works, champions critical literacy based on the works of the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire.
An approach where literary works are deconstructed and critiqued in terms of power relationships and students are conditioned to be new-age, cultural warriors.PC
“Marxists rule Australian education”
…and who has allowed them to do that, if not weak-kneed and cowardly politicians in any number of so-called Liberal governments at levels both State and Federal?
Politicians, citizens who other citizens voted for to represent them and act in the best interested of the people they represent.
An old fashioned concept disappearing as the years pass by.
The Abbott led Coalition formed Federal Government in September 2013, during that election campaign the Coalition promised they would support Labor’s “Gonski” State Education Grants that Labor had budgeted to finance in their 2013/14 financial year budget but only for the current year and forward estimate years following, and thereafter Gonski grants would be subject to changes based on a plan to negotiate with the State Governments for a return to teaching the basic subjects: “back to basics in education”.
When Treasurer Hockey commissioned an independent audit of Labor’s 2013/14 Budget the report revealed that Labor had made no provision to fund their budget expenditure commitment, or their NDIS commitment, and had under-estimated their cumulative budget deficit including the current account deficit. The Abbott Government was forced to raise the debt ceiling to $500 billion including a reserve, Labor therefore left a debt liability exceeding $400 billion after their budget commitments were funded by the Abbott Government.
It should also be remembered that Labor failed to raise the debt ceiling for 2012/13 financial year but continued borrowing and spending borrowed monies.
I understand that when the Abbott Government was discussing back to basics implementation with State Governments it was revealed that many teachers, notably younger teachers, had not been trained to teach the basic subjects and would need to be trained before back to basics could be taught again.
The last I heard about back to basics teaching was from Premier Berejiklian about two years ago when she announced that back to basics subjects would soon be taught again in NSW.
Another concern was raised via Sky News in recent months alleging that public school teachers have been teaching climate change propaganda using professionally produced material including videos supplied by international climate activist groups free of charge, apply on line.
So indoctrinating children with climate hoax politics propaganda is ignored by State Departments of Education, and Ministers for Education?
Climate hoax (IPCC flawed modelling data for example that PM Abbott referred to as “crap” resulting in activists accusing him of denying climate change, which he clearly did not. We sceptics understand that climate and weather are natural and nothing humans can do will have a major impact on Earth Cycles.
“Marxists rule Australian education” – why have the majority of people we elected to represent us in our parliaments not stopped these social engineering activities?