TEACHERS FOR THE THE KNOWLEDGE NATION.(Australian facetiae)(Brief Article)

WARNINGS from Australian deans of education at the nation faces a worrying shortage of teachers have been echoed by the Institute of Australian Educational Policy, the independent Ghasthurst-based "think tank" attached to Manning Clark University.

"It's not just that the teachers are going to be in short supply, it's that too many of the inadequate number being trained are allowed to specialise in the wrong subjects, says the institute's research officer, Dr Gorgona Preshil. "Teachers who want to go off and waste their time and the public's money on anglocentric dead-white-male courses like so-called English Literature and History should be forcibly redirected to subjects for which there is a perceived need in the Australian educational marketplace."

Dr Preshil identifies a number of "key subjects" for which teacher recruitment needs to be "instantly quadrupled". They include Creative Bush Dance, Reconciliation Studies, Queer Identity (Theory and Prat.) and Republican Civics. "It seems to us intolerable that in one and the same school where you'll find courses in these and other essential elements of training kids to be citizens of Australia unavailable because of lack of teachers, you'll find teachers down the corridor brainwashing their classes with the cultural baggage of a decayed outmoded society like French or pre-Eminen music. Even so-called Australian History is a waste of time unless its starting point is the Australian revolution of 1975."

Not that the institute is opposed to the humanities--"but let's make them relevant," says Dr Preshil. "Languages, for instance. We should have compulsory courses in Wurrundjeri or Nowannabridji and other true languages of pre-invasion Australia. We should be teaching people to speak them in preference to English which, let's face it, is an alien import. Language is an important tool in multicultural studies too, but some of the minority groups in our community find their language disgracefully neglected in school curricula. Terra del Fuegan, for example. How many people know there is a thriving Terra del Fuegan community in ...