The dangerous endgame of ‘equity’ propaganda in schools

RADICAL ideology has become embedded in education under the guise of ‘equity’. It’s an attack on language exposed by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson for its totalitarian roots and deadly trajectory, writes Miranda Devine.

IT doesn’t matter how many parents say they don’t want gender fluidity taught to their children, or how many doctors warn of the dangers.

It doesn’t matter that the federal government has stopped funding Safe Schools, or that the NSW government has explicitly banned it.

The propaganda is now embedded, as part of the cultural Marxist infiltration of education from pre-school through university, which was sneakily turbo-charged by Julia Gillard a decade ago under the radical “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals”.

Take, for instance, the NSW Teachers’ Federation “equity themed” “Gaby Baby” seminars for teachers next week to promote the myth that biological sex and gender identity are “two very different things”.

Teachers must attend such seminars to attain “professional development” points now required to keep their accreditation.

The Gayby Baby seminar satisfies section 4.1.2 (supporting “inclusivity” in a “safe learning environment”) of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

And when you start going down the rabbit hole of who sets these standards, lo and behold, you find Gillard.

The document on which everything in Australian education is based is the 2008 “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals”. It was drafted by then federal education minister Gillard and the rest of the nation’s education ministers at a time when every state and territory except WA was Labor.

It is radical quasi-religious ideology couched in the compassionate language of “equity”, “diversity” and “inclusion”. It proclaims: “the central role of education in building a democratic, equitable and just society … a socially cohesive society that respects and appreciates cultural, social and religious diversity … work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments.” Its edict against discrimination based on “sexual orientation” explains the proliferation of Safe Schools type programs.

But its core requirement is for “not only equality of opportunity but also more equitable outcomes.”

That line that should send a shiver up the spine of anyone who understands the blood-soaked consequences of “equitable outcomes” in the 20th Century

All schools in Australia must comply with the Melbourne Declaration, which is full of exhortations to “equity”, “diversity” and “inclusion” but nothing substantial on literacy and numeracy. In the decade since the Declaration, Australian students have plummeted in international rankings. No wonder, because it is an ideological manifesto, not an educational blueprint.

This unholy trinity of “equity”, “inclusion” and “diversity” sounds benign, but it is the very DNA of cultural Marxism. Everything bad flows from it, identity politics, language codes, political correctness, you name it.

The DNA has embedded itself in every preschool, school and university, every quango, every teacher accreditation, every CV of every ambitious executive, every human resources department of every corporation.

It’s why Qantas employees can’t say “mum and dad”, why Catholic Santa Sabina school proselytises Islam and endorses gender theory, why preschools push “Harmony Day”. It’s why trainee teachers at UTS are taught lies about gender fluidity before anything about how to teach reading.

It’s why our language increasingly is clouded by Orwellian newspeak.

To understand the murderous trajectory, just listen to the brilliant YouTube interview former Nationals leader John Anderson did recently with visiting Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Peterson advises parents that “as soon as teachers talk to their children about diversity, inclusivity and equity that they suggest to their children that they leave the class because they’re no longer in the educational realm, they’re in the indoctrination realm … It sounds very radical to suggest your children leave the class but I think we’re at that point.”

When you see these concepts “emerge as a network of meaning you know that you’re in the presence of this pernicious postmodern, neo-Marxist doctrine that’s fundamentally ideological at its core.”

The initial wedge was equality of opportunity and “now it’s equality of outcome, that’s equity, which is the ultimate in terrible ideas … a preposterous murderous doctrine masquerading in sheep’s clothing”.

The lesson of the 20th century is that an “equity” ideology, combining “careless compassion” and resentment, stacks up “millions of corpses”.

Take the “Dekulakization” of the Soviet Union in 1929—1932 when millions of the most productive peasants or “kulaks” and their families were deemed class enemies.

These were “a few agriculturalists who … are raising almost all the food, they’re a minority in every village because the hyper-productive successful are always a minority … and then the Communist intellectuals show up and tell the people who aren’t doing so well … ‘You know those guys that are doing so much better than you? They actually stole all of that from you and you’re morally obligated to go take it back’.

“So after [getting drunk] and I’ve got my cruel buddies with me and we’re all resentful right to the core because we’ve wasted our miserable lives and now we have the opportunity to go down the street to our wealthy neighbours’ house and to rape his daughters and we can do it in the name of good, well, that’s a story you can market!

“And that happened everywhere in the Soviet Union, so they wiped out the kulaks and then six million Ukrainians starved to death.”

And now, because the Left has never faced up to the failure of Communism last century, we are poised to repeat history with a mutant new form of the ideology.