The disputed curriculum.(Education)(education and commonly held values)

We offer little general guidance about the relative value of different areas of the curriculum apart from a broad injunction concerning literacy and numeracy. We are, characteristically of this point in cultural history, almost unable to make distinctions of value.

--Bruce Wilson, CEO, Curriculum Corporation, May 2002

MUCH CURRENT discussion on education centres on the curriculum and its standards. We encounter allegations and denials of shonky standards or ideological indoctrination. Newspapers run investigative articles at frequent intervals; for instance, in August 2004 the Sydney Morning Herald published a five-day evaluation of the drift in enrolments from government towards independent schools. The annual Year 12 examinations provide a recurrent excuse to scrutinise the content of the curriculum and the performance of the candidates.

Politicians do not hesitate to comment on the curriculum, an area once considered outside their competence. They float and then abandon proposals for reform.

In the 1950s and 1960s money, especially more Commonwealth money, was a popular remedy for the "crisis in education". Nowadays federal politicians are prone to locate the crisis in a variety of areas: the social or moral values fostered in schools, the levels of literacy they achieve, the quality of the teachers. It is widely recognised that even if all the money demanded suddenly became available a crisis would still exist.

The Australian recently reported that a "senior education adviser" in New South Wales had blamed "the education profession" for the re-election of the Coalition government; their former pupils had voted for John Howard. Wayne Sawyer, president of the New South Wales English Teachers Association, former chairman of the New South Wales Board of Studies English Curriculum Committee, and Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney, complained in an editorial in the journal English in Australia that teachers had failed to encourage critical thought. Their former pupils knew the truth about Iraq before the election, but they seemed not to care:

 
   Has English failed not only to create critical 
   generations, but also failed to create humane ones? 
   What does it mean for us and our ability to create a 
   questioning, critical generation that 
   those who brought us balaclava'd 
   security guards, alsatians and Patrick's 
   Stevedoring could declare themselves 
   the representatives of the workers and be supported 
   by the electorate?