Education experts attempt to introduce social engineering by stealth

While Australian students fall ever further behind, education experts are attempting to introduce social engineering by stealth writes Kevin Donnelly.

• Australian Association for the Teaching of English wants more students to read LGBTIQ literature
• Labor embarrassingly left out ‘Q’ in LGBTIQ, forcing a scramble to amend policy

Anyone doubting the success of the cultural-left’s long march through the education system to ­enforce its radical ideology in areas like gender and sexuality need go no further than the current edition of English in Australia.

Dr Kevin Donnelly. Picture: David Geraghty

The journal is published by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English which is the peak professional body for English teachers across the nation, including NSW, and responsible for profes­sional development and providing guidance and resources to classroom teachers.

The journal’s cover is painted in the rainbow colours of the flag much loved by those involved in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and with the title “Love in English” there’s no doubt what the message is.

Given Australia’s abysmal performance in the Progress in Inter­national Reading Literacy Study test (PIRLS) where we are ranked below 20 other countries and the fact students are going backwards or flat­lining in the NAPLAN tests, parents might expect the focus to be on ­improving reading and writing skills.

Not so.

The current edition of English in Australia features a rainbow-coloured cover

The result of last year’s same-sex marriage survey is lauded as a “watershed moment in Australian history” and teachers are told they “must take a renewed interest in questions of gender and sexuality”.

The educators reading the journal are also told the endorsement of same-sex marriage was “overwhelming”, even though approximately 40 per cent of those survey replied ‘no’, and that they now have a responsibility to normalise non-heteronormative views about gender and sexuality.

With titles like ‘On Teaching Queer Indigenous Literatures’, ‘Queer Pedagogies and the Univer­sity English Classroom’ and ‘LGBTIQ+ Representations and ­Social Justice Principles’ it’s clear the journal endorses radical gender and sexuality theories.

One of the papers investigates the texts set for the national curriculum’s senior school English course and concludes those responsible are guilty of normalising hetero­sexuality.

The texts chosen unfairly privilege “heterosexual and cisgender identities as the norms against which to define the other”.

As such the texts are guilty of ­promoting heteronormativity, a situation leading to the “institutional ­reproduction of cultural norms: ­heterosexual stereotypes, heterosexual privilege; the normalising of ­heterosexuality”.

Notwithstanding that 98 per cent of Australians self-identify as women or men and some 40 per cent of those surveyed opposed same-sex marriage the paper’s authors argue the English curriculum must be ­transformed to recognise “diverse sexualities” and a “queer-inclusive curriculum”. Instead of acknowledging the views of the 40 per cent ­opposing same-sex marriage the journal also argues the role of the English classroom is to “make visible positive representations of diverse genders and sexualities” in order to normalise LGBTIQ+ lifestyles.

The English classroom is to “make visible positive representations of diverse genders and sexualities”. Picture: Quentin Jones

And for those not immersed in queer theory the explanation is provided that the plus at the end of the label LGBTIQ+ “signifies that these bounded labels are fluid and not exhaustive; they do not capture the complexities of time and place. It also works to include other/future nonconforming identities”.

And even though the AATE might be expected to uphold the rules of grammar it succumbs to the politically correct approach by abolishing ‘he and she’ on the basis that “Their, they, them are used as alternatives to gendered pronouns”.

What parents and the public have to realise is that in today’s classroom English teachers are being pressured to become new-age warriors of the cultural-left and political correctness is the dominant ideology.

Based on the Marxist Paulo ­Freire’s concept of critical literacy the belief is that teaching English is no longer about the formal rules of grammar, written expression and clear thinking. Instead teachers are told students must be taught how to deconstruct and critique texts in terms of power relationships.

According to Freire learning to read must be empowering and liberating and directed at challenging the status quo.

The true purpose of education is to allow students “to perceive themselves in dialectical relationship with their social reality (and) to assume an increasingly critical attitude toward the world and so to transform it”.

As well as English as a subject being politicised the definition of literature has also fallen victim to the political correctness movement.

Instead of being limited to those poems, plays, novels and short ­stories that reveal something enduring and profound about human ­nature everything is now considered worthy of inclusion.

Graffiti, multi-model texts, student’s own writing, posters, comics and text messaging are considered worthy of study and when classic literature is included instead of ­focusing on its aesthetic and moral value it is analysed in terms of gender, ethnicity and class.

It’s also clear that whereas ­teachers should be impartial today’s approach is more about indoctrinating students and ensuring issues are evaluated according to what the ­cultural-left considers politically ­correct. And in relation to gender and sexuality this means using the ­English classroom to promote and normalise radical theories of gender and sexuality and to critique and undermine what the overwhelming majority of Australians consider ­normal.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of How Political Correctness Is Destroying Education (Wilkinson Publishing).