Culture wars fizzle out in national curriculum review
By Jewel TopsfieldOct. 12, 2014, 11:36 p.m.
When right-wing ideologue Kevin Donnelly was appointed to co-chair a review of the national curriculum many braced themselves for a re-ignition of the culture wars.
When right-wing ideologue Kevin Donnelly was appointed to co-chair a review of the national curriculum many braced themselves for a reignition of the culture wars.
This was a man, after all, who complained that in English "literary classics are on the same footing as SMS messages, graffiti and movie posters", who had called for the Bible to be taught in state schools and who said many parents would consider the sexual practices of gays "decidedly unnatural".
"The cultural left has taken the long march through the education system and enforced its biased, ideological world view on schools," Donnelly once opined.
Academics frothed at the mouth at his appointment: more than 170 educators signed an open letter of protest to Education Minister Christopher Pyne.
All the signs pointed to politically motivated curriculum carnage. "It will be like a small atom bomb going off," one curriculum specialist predicted in the Good Weekend.
But the response to the review has been somewhat miraculous: there is broad consensus.
The review echoes the plaints of teachers, principals and parents across the country that the curriculum - especially in primary school - is ridiculously overcrowded.
It says the national curriculum is "manifestly deficient" in its accommodation of the needs of students with a disability.
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Culture wars fizzle out in national curriculum review