What are we teaching in our schools?

I’m in favour of bringing up young people as fiercely independent thinkers, but the climate change rally attended by striking school students shows they’ve been brainwashed by teachers, writes Peta Credlin.

If you think that Australian schools have become hotbeds for juvenile political activism, Friday’s school strike suggests that you’re right.

Seriously, what are we teaching in our schools?

If our students learnt more history, they’d know that coal drove the industrial revolution, that ultimately created the cars, the appliances and the IT — as well as the medical innovations — that have made them the most pampered and privileged generation in human history.

If our schoolchildren learnt more economics, they’d know that coal and gas are among our biggest exports and that it doesn’t make sense to regard them as evil here at home while exporting them for use overseas. If there was more economics and less activism, they’d also know that if we don’t have exports, we can’t pay for all the imported consumer goods like the smart phones that so many of them seem to spend their lives on. And without exports propping up our bottom line, they will inherit our $600 billion debt with no viable means to pay it off.

Signs protesting coal show students are not learning enough about economics at school. Picture: AAP/Dan Himbrechts

If our students learnt more science, they’d know that Australia accounts for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions and that nothing we do here will make any difference, given that all the big emitters — like China, India and the United States — are not reducing emissions, at best, most remain business as usual. If they learnt more science they might even ask if we really want cheap power and low emissions, why are we ruling out nuclear power, or the new High Efficiency Low Emissions coal fired stations?

If our school students learnt more philosophy, they’d know that the beginning of wisdom is to observe, and to question and not to adopt climate change as some sort of substitute religion, or to allow themselves to be used, by leftie teachers, as human shields in a political fight against the Morrison government.

I’m all in favour of bringing up our young people as fiercely independent thinkers, but that must be done at the same time as giving them a good grounding in literacy, numeracy and the basic principles of science; an appreciation of the history that’s made us who and what we are; and of the great books that contain the best human understandings.

If they want to become activists, after all of that, that’s their right in a free country. But what we don’t need, and should never have, is this brainwashing by teachers who are not committed to their real job of shaping big minds and brave spirits, preferring instead to churn out graduates with shallow intellects and the character of lemmings.

Do parents even know what’s being taught?