The world is divided. Both the left and right believe that they other obtains more advantage from the other. It begs the question, how does each see a perfect world and their relationship with it.?
Local Liberal MP Tim Smith who is the local shadow (read right wing Liberal) Minister for Education, came out with a somewhat Betsy DeVoss explainer that the Left are leaving an indelible mark on our children by causing them to think of their impact on the future rather than in his view, that they should be taught our cultural place in history.
So who is right? While I agree in part of Smith’s view, he seems to limit it to Australia’s short term history, the part where the rich white men with their slightly less than white, left wing convict laborers came in and took charge of the place and started to shape it in their own fashion in complete disregard of the local inhabitants. If we are to look at our cultural history, I am a fervent believer that it should encompass the fifty odd thousand years that man has lived on this fair continent and not just the last, although important, two hundred years.
Apart from that, it is difficult to glean a cogent argument from Smith’s discourse other than elitism. My own recollections of English classes was an emphasis on Clear Thinking, a rather simple task as I recall and one of the lessons I took away from my youth. Perhaps his view is aligned with his seemingly more recent exclusive public school education that may have had a stronger emphasis on limited cultural values pertaining to the elite rather than the amorphous balance of cultures and views that is representative of the wider community.
His penultimate paragraph however seems to dismiss all of his earlier postulating where he finally suggests our schools should “.. focus on equipping our school leavers with the skills to think critically for themselves and make up their own minds about our most pressing political, social and economic issues.”
I believe that is what they are proposing to do and instilling antiquated historical values does not necessarily figure a large part of that.