Australia’s education system slammed for being too politically correct

An education expert says society has changed too much from the days when you used to make fun of people from other cultures.

“How do you confuse an Irishman? Put him in front of two shovels and ask him to take his pick.”

Dr Kevin Donnelly says it’s acceptable for him to make that joke because he has Irish heritage.

The academic then went on to make a joke about Italians during the launch of his new book How Political Correctness is Destroying Education and Your Child’s Future on Tuesday to make a point about how society has changed.

“We used to have jokes about different ethnic groups,” he said.

“No one had heard of multiculturalism … in the 50s and 60s we were all equal, we were all proud of who we were. How times have changed.”

Dr Donnelly, whose book addresses how political correctness has undermined and weakened Australia’s education system, said they used to have cultural nicknames for one another growing up in Broadmeadows in Victoria and no one was offended.

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Dr Kevin Donnelly launching his new book with former prime minister Tony Abbott and radio broadcaster Alan Jones on Tuesday. Picture: Ben Rushton/AAP

Ronan McDonald, when he was director of the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies, wrote that the Irish joke was loved by northern English comedians in the 1970s “but “driven underground by killjoys and lefties in the 80s and 90s.

He said that was along with jokes “about Blacks, ‘Pakis’ and Jews. Or so we thought”.

“It would appear that jokes about stupid and drunken Irishmen live on in Australia and not just in underground clubs in Hicksville, but at the highest political level,” he wrote for The Conversation.

He said back then in 2011, Tony Abbott, in a speech to his Liberal Party colleagues brought the house down with the quip, “This government’s a bit like the Irishman who lost ten pounds betting on the Grand National and then lost 20 pounds on the action replay”.

Funnily enough, Mr Abbott helped launch Dr Donnelly’s book in Sydney alongside controversial broadcaster Alan Jones.

Professor McDonald wrote much derided PC had succeeded in making us more mannerly and polite to each other, with old-fashioned virtues you would expect conservative politicians to approve.

“Nonetheless, one needs to be careful about being too puritanical about comedy,” he said.

“It does not lend itself to hard and fast principles, not least because it relishes transgression, puncturing social taboos and hypocrisies.

Mr Jones said children should be taught Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

“The thrill of misbehaving that we relished as children finds its adult equivalent in saying forbidden things. The laugh often comes from the ‘I can’t believe he just said that’ feeling.”

Dr Donnelly and others who have commended his book argue political correctness is an insidious cancer in our education system and the scourge of our era from the cultural left’s attack on our children.

The education expert argues that “instead of an academically rigorous curriculum, subjects have been dumbed down and taught through a politically correct prism involving Asian, indigenous and environmental perspectives”.

He said that Aboriginal science was being introduced into the curriculum was “astounding” and not celebrating western culture was a recipe for disaster.

Mr Jones said education today was a long way removed from what it used to be.

“Where did it go off the rails,” he said.

“At the end of the day, the losers are the kids. I’m surprised parents aren’t marching in the streets.”