Universities caned over ‘woke’ degrees for trainee teachers

Just 10 weeks of a four-year degree are dedicated to teaching literacy and numeracy, the first national uni degree audit reveals.

South Australian educators on strike march to the steps of Parliament House. Picture: NCA NewsWIRE / Emma Brasier

Universities are indoctrinating trainee teachers in “wokeness and political activism’’, with only 10 weeks of a four-year degree dedicated to teaching children literacy and numeracy, the first national audit of education degrees reveals.

The Institute of Public Affairs has analysed 3713 teaching subjects in education degrees offered by 37 Australian universities. One-third of all subjects relate to what the IPA describes as “woke” ­theories of identity politics, decolonisation and social justice.

Just one in 10 subjects relate to teaching children how to read, write and learn mathematics.

Bella d’Abrera, the director of IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, said only 218 subjects covered the teaching of mathematics, 43 subjects involved phonics-based reading instruction, and 37 subjects covered grammar skills.

She blamed the “woke’’ training of teachers for the failure of one in three Australian students to meet basic standards of literacy and numeracy in this year’s ­NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) test.

“Instead of being taught how to master core academic curriculum such as reading, writing, mathematics, history and science, prospective teachers are being trained by university experts to be experts in critical social justice, identity politics, and sustainability,’’ she said. “We are setting Australian students up for failure by spending so little time teaching our teachers core literacy and numeracy skills, while university courses focus on woke issues and activism.

“The system is clearly failing both trainee teachers, as well as the students they go on to teach, and it is in urgent need of reform.’’

The IPA audit found that university teaching degrees included 1169 subjects in “critical social justice’’, compared to 371 subjects that instructed how to teach literacy and numeracy skills.

The University of Canberra offers a unit in Indigenous education that criticises the way “anthropocentrism’’ promotes economic prosperity.

“It is well evidenced that social and ecological wellness in Australia has been in accelerating decline since contact where colonial processes and Western perspectives have elevated rational, analytical ways of knowing and robust anthropocentrism, most recently to prioritise individualism, economic prosperity and global competitiveness,’’ the unit description states.

Macquarie University offers a study unit on “rethinking Indigenous education’’ that introduces trainee teachers to “radical thinking and alternative models of ­education … Students will engage with Indigenous and black scholarship that envisions the abolition and replacement of existing models and practices of settler colonial education,’’ it states.

Monash University’s Masters in Education and Social Justice instructs post-graduate teachers to “theorise social justice … The unit aims to develop in you a strong grasp of the concept of ‘cognitive justice’, and the associated notions of ‘epistemic’ and ‘epistemological’ justice”.

A teachers’ march in 2022. Picture: John Grainger

Student teachers at Monash also learn to teach mathematics through a “social justice” lens.

At Victoria University, students who want to learn how to teach children of different backgrounds are required to use a “critical pedagogy framework to challenge dominant discourses that perpetuate notions of privilege, power and oppression’’.

Federal, state and territory education ministers have ordered universities to change their education degrees by mandating that new teachers are trained to teach children English and mathematics, and to manage classroom behaviour but universities will not be required to teach the core content until the end of 2025.

Dr d’Abrera said Australian teaching degrees had “replaced core skills and knowledge with woke ideology and political activism’’. As a result, teacher training is “woke and notoriously lacking in evidence-based preparation for the realities of the classroom’’.