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Satire site The Babylon Bee is having a field day as students across the Western world are being effectively forced into home-schooling. “Majority Of Homeschoolers Arrive At College Woefully Unprepared For Gender Studies” quipped one headline. Another related that pubic school teachers were worried that “Homeschooling Is Making Kids More Stupider”.
But the Bee’s best direct hit was this: “Teachers Urge Government To Reopen Schools Before Students Learn To Think For Themselves”.
Many parents have long been concerned that public education is being rapidly overtaken by blatant left-wing ideological education. The furore over “Safe Schools” is just one example. Another is the “history wars”.
Parents of Australian students forced to stay at home are beginning to see for themselves just what sort of stuff their children are being fed. As some are realising, educators are taking Orwell’s dictum that “who controls the past controls the future” as an instruction rather than a warning.
High school students will be learning about ‘Survival Day’ rather than Australia Day during newly implemented politically-correct homeschool lessons.
The lessons have been set by Queensland Education for parents to complete with their children while doing distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
Cue panic among education bureaucrats. After all, this indoctrination is supposed to take place in the secure confines of the classroom, where it stays their little secret.
An English task aimed at Year Eight students asks them to analyse a news article written by The Koori Mail with the headline ‘Groups set for Survival Day'[…]
‘Note that ‘Survival Day’ refers to the public holiday often referred to as ‘Australia Day’,’ the lesson sheet says[…]
Students are told the news article includes a ‘credible and factual account of events’ while scolding other news media ‘in terms of their reliability, credibility and accuracy’.
If we’re going to emphasise accuracy and facts, it would be accurate and factual to note that “Australia Day” is, in fact, our officially gazetted national day. To slight it by using scare quotes and as merely “often referred to” is certainly not credible. Nor is pushing political opinions as “credible facts”.
Opposition leader Deb Frecklington called on the Queensland Labor government to ‘get back to basics’ rather than indoctrinate students[…]
‘The education system needs to get back to basics of English, maths and science rather than pushing ideological agendas. You don’t have to tear down Australia Day to recognise achievements and history of indigenous Australians.’
Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said the lesson was about interpreting the validity of content and evaluating credible sources, which is a part of ‘politics and life in general’.
‘It seems Ms Frecklington has failed to identify the bias in this exercise and subsequently flunked week one of Year 8 English,’ she said.
On the contrary, Frecklington has pinpointed the bias with discomfiting accuracy. In fact, the lesson doesn’t give the students a choice of interpreting bias for themselves. With authoritarian arrogance it arbitrarily dictates which sources students are allowed to find credible.
As One Nation’s Mark Latham notes, this is all part of attempts “to rewrite our nation’s history,” by people who “seem ashamed of who we are and how we got here”.
Parents have suspected this for a long time. Now, almost accidentally, they’re getting to see it for themselves.
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