Big Chalk and the Shrinking of Young Minds Andrew Gutmann
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2021/05/big-chalk-and-the-shrinking-of-young-minds/
The headline on the front page of today’s Australian (May 1, paywalled) doesn’t mince words, ‘A nation of cretins: class revamp fail’, the report beneath it detailing what the pedagogic poobahs of the post-modern education Establishment wish to do to the national curriculum and, mercifully, that state and federal education ministers aren’t keen on the proposed emphasis on what might be termed the Three As — Aborigines, Alarmism, Activism.
The Australian quotes University of Queensland emeritus professor Kenneth Wiltshire as calling for the abolition of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, whose proposed ‘reforms’ were released this week for public comment. According to Wiltshire, “We will create a nation of cretins awash in a world where they have no understanding of the history of civilisation, human thought, human philosophy, values or principles.”
Misery, they say, loves company, but there is scant comfort in knowing that Australia’s schools are not alone in promoting the fashionable and politically correct memes of the day at the expense of genuine learning. In New York, the rot became too much for one father, Andrew Gutmann, to tolerate. Reproduced below, his open letter to the board of Manhattan’s Brearley School, where tuition runs to around $50,000 a year. Switch the proper nouns and he might well be writing of Australia’s educational malaise and the long-marchers of Big Chalk who are perpetrating it. — rf
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