While the LNP election campaign was ineffective and amateurish one positive was the slogan ‘education, not indoctrination’. As countless parents and students understand the school curriculum has long since fallen to cultural-left Woke ideology.
One example involves the Marxist-inspired gender fluidity program Safe Schools that tell children boys can be girls and girls can be boys and that they, and not parents, have the power to decide where they sit on the LGBTQ+ diversity spectrum.
A second example involves Cool.org (formally Cool Australia) – an organisation that provides lesson plans and resources to schools committed to ‘shifting the dial on social, environmental, and economic issues by upskilling teachers to embed real-world concepts into their core subject areas’.
If all of the material and lesson plans were balanced and impartial there would be no issue but, as argued by Quadrant’s Tony Thomas in, Green Kid is a Programmed Kid, time and time again the material pushes a deep-green perspective characterised by what is, in my opinion, climate alarmism and misleading information.
One example of Cool.org’s resources are the seven units published before the recent federal election designed to counter what is described as misinformation. Teachers were told to share the resources with ‘all the schools and educators you know to strengthen our democracy’.
In one of the seven units titled Powering the Narrative: Clean Energy in Media students are asked to ‘develop their critical thinking skills by analysing online content to identify accurate misinformation and disinformation about clean energy’.
One of the resources provided is an article from the left-leaning Guardian titled Greens to call Murdoch executives before Senate inquiry into greenwashing.
In the article, a politician says, ‘We will look to call Murdoch media executives before our Greenwashing inquiry in the new year to explain their disregard for basic journalistic ethics and their longstanding campaign against climate science.’
A second unit titled Fuelling Facts, Busting Myths created with the help of Boundless Earth (an organisation committed to a decarbonised world) asks students to make a short video about clean energy and ‘discuss way to share it with the broader community’.
When justifying why teachers should use the lesson reference is made to the UN Sustainable Development Goal stating, ‘all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development’.
One of the resources provided for students is a video of a Goulburn farmer involved in establishing a community-based solar farm where students are told the ‘community is farming fairness powered by the Goulburn sun’.
The farmer says wind turbines are good for the local economy, the transition to renewables should be immediate and there is no place for fossil fuels. At one stage the farmer is asked is it better to use ‘cheaper and safer renewables now or delaying with old polluting fossil fuels and using expensive dangerous nuclear energy’?
In a third unit titled Science over Scepticism students are asked to ‘examine Australia’s clean energy policies, assessing their effectiveness and considering how advocacy can support or enhance policy outcomes’.
Once again, students are presented with a video where the women interviewed praises wind farms, describing them as ‘beautiful and majestic’. After being asked about the issue of noise she states the ‘noise is fine’. Students are then presented with a worksheet with a list of suggested strategies to overcome community hostility to wind farms.
The remaining four units of work, as expected, instead of promoting critical thinking and independent analysis lack objectivity. The unit dealing with deciding whether a source is credible or not, for example, tells students the UN can be trusted as it relies on expert advice and is committed to affordable clean energy in order to ensure world peace.
While there are examples where Cool.org presents material questioning clean energy, for example admitting wind turbines and solar farms can result in ‘environmental consequences that are sometimes overlooked’, overall, the units and resources are one-sided.
Such is Cool.org’s success those responsible boast, ‘Cool has supported 3.2 million students through free teaching resources and online professional development for our 200,000 educator and parent/carer members.’ Teachers are overworked and exhausted and it stands to reason why there would be a large take-up.
In Why Our Schools Are Failing, I argued the cultural-left was intent on capturing the school curriculum to indoctrinate students with its ideology. 21 years later it’s clear how successful the left’s long march has been.
Instead of education being impartial and balanced teachers act as activists indoctrinating students with their Woke beliefs. Examples include radical gender theory, climate change alarmism, a black armband view of Australian history, and post-colonial theory where Western culture is condemned as racist and oppressive.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is the author of Wake Up To Woke: It’s Time, Australia
