Curriculum pushes radical racial theory

Parents have overwhelmingly rejected moves to bring divisive identity politics into classrooms as concern grows over critical race theory.

Institute of Public Affairs director Bella d'Abrera. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Parents have overwhelmingly rejected moves to bring divisive identity politics into classrooms as concern grows that a proposed new national curriculum will embed critical race theory into Australian schooling.

Polling conducted for the Institute of Public Affairs by marker research firm Dynata shows widespread condemnation of recent incidents where school boys were shamed over their sex or skin colour, with more than 80 per cent of respondents saying that schools should not endorse such sentiments.

More than two-third of 1121 respondents disagreed that schools should teach students that Australia was “a racist country”, while 85 per cent wanted school to teach that Australians were equal, “regardless of their skin colour, race, or religious beliefs”.

The backlash comes as the think-tank has highlighted the growing influence of critical race theory on the draft curriculum, including dozens of history and civics and citizenship topics preoccupied with the oppression, discrimination and struggles of Indigenous Australians.

Born out of the US, critical race theory is an academic framework for analysing the intersection of race and power that has coined terms such as “systemic racism” and “white privilege”.

IPA director Bella d’Abrera said there were signs that critical race theory were already creeping into schools, such as the recent case of Victoria’s Parkdale Secondary College where a visiting social worker labelled boys who were white and Christian as “oppressors”, however the draft curriculum threatened to “brainwash children … to hate Australia”.

“Australians are rightly saying no to critical race theory – they are egalitarian and do not support divisive ideologies in the classroom,” said Dr d’Abrera. “Unfortunately, however, critical race theory and identity politics are very much present in the radical new national curriculum.

“The study of Indigenous history is important, but the radical curriculum not only embeds it across every learning area, but it also teaches [a] discredited … version of Indigenous history into Australian classrooms.”

Released last month, the draft history curriculum presents the arrival of the First Fleet as an “invasion” for the first time and replaces references to “Aboriginal” and “Indigenous” with “First Nations Australians” or “Australian First Nations Peoples”.

Suggested activities for secondary school history include studying “the impact of invasion, colonisation and dispossession of lands by Europeans on the First Nations Peoples of Australia, such as frontier warfare, genocide, removal from land” as well as analysing “different historical interpretations and debates about the colonial and settler societies, such as contested terms, including ‘colonisation’, ‘settlement’ and ‘invasion’”.

A new topic slated for civics and citizenship will delve into “the effectiveness of the Australian justice system in achieving equality of access, equity of outcomes, procedural fairness … particularly for First Nations Australians”.

Students would be encouraged to investigate “barriers” to equality of access to justice, such as education, gender, race or ethnicity, “especially for First Nations Australians”.

Dr d’Abrera criticised the entire premise as “wrong”, pointing out that all Australians “already enjoy full legal equality”.

“This is reversing the 1967 referendum which brought Australians together,” she said. “It is embedding racial divisions and sewing resentment in society.”

Historian Keith Windschuttle has also added his voice to criticisms of the draft curriculum. In an article for Quadrant he said the document “reads like a wishlist straight from the Green Left Weekly”.

“It endorses every one of the major claims currently being made by left-wing climate warriors, LGBTI advocates and Indigenous activists,” he said.

“In fact, it is not a curriculum that teaches history at all. It is an exercise in the indoctrination of identity politics.”