Kevin Donnelly: Ideologues at school

Kevin Donnelly: Ideologues at school

19aug05

IMAGINE the outcry if a conservative think tank, such as the H.R. Nicholls Society, set up an internet site for schools and offered students a $200 prize for the best essay extolling the virtues of the free market. Imagine the outrage if a teachers' organisation then promoted the website and the essay competition to schools, lauding it as something that teachers should incorporate in their lessons.

The response would be one of concern about special-interest groups pushing their agenda on unsuspecting students. Recall the outrage of the Carr Labor Government in NSW in 2003 when federal Employment Advocate Jonathan Hamberger wrote to school principals asking them to inform students about Australian Workplace Agreements. According to then state education minister Andrew Refshauge, the attempt to inform students about employment contracts was "completely inappropriate". The federal Office of the Employment Advocate was told to butt out.

One wonders whether the Iemma Government and NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt will respond in the same way to the ACTU and Australian Education Union's attempts to enter schools?

The AEU sent an email to teachers across Australia headed "ACTU National Competition for Students -- Win $200". Some weeks ago, the winners of the competition were announced and their essays are posted on the ACTU website, www.worksite. actu.asn.au. The email described the competition as follows: "To enter, students must tell us in 300 words or less what makes a job fair and fun for them and why, as well as their ideas to amke [sic] jobs fairer and more fun."

The AEU extolled the virtues of the ACTU website, saying: "Worksite for Schools continues to be a valuable resource for younger people about the world of work. Worksite is a terrifice [sic] source of information about the workforce, providing statistics, encouraging debate, creativity and analysis."

Welcome to the double standards of political correctness. It is outrageous for the OEA to inform schools about the increasing reality of the Australian workforce: individual contracts. But it's perfectly fine for the ACTU and the AEU to publicise their one-sided (and increasingly outdated) view of industrial relations.

Take a look at the ACTU-sponsored website. Under the section Personality Profiles, students are introduced to trade union and ALP worthies such as Bob Hawke, Sharan Burrow and Greg Combet. That the list is biased towards trade union and Labor stalwarts is to be expected. Yet there is no attempt to balance the list by including other notable figures, such as leading economic dries Bert Kelly, Hugh Morgan and Peter Costello, who represent an alternative view.

Similarly, on examining Fact Sheets, students are again presented with a jaundiced view. On reading about the Ansett collapse in 2001, the impression is that the union movement guaranteed worker entitlements; there are no details about the federal Government's Special Employees Entitlement Scheme. Given the Howard Government's planned changes to the industrial relations system, it is obvious the subject is highly contentious and politically sensitive.

It should be no surprise, given that the ACTU is funding the website, that students are told that the present system works well and that the federal Government has no reason to change the system whatsoever. The website quotes ACTU secretary Combet: "There is no need to change this system. It works well and strikes a balance between reasonable increases for workers and economic factors." Never mind any counterarguments.

In the aftermath of last October's federal election, Wayne Sawyer, an editor of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English journal English in Australia, lamented that, because the Howard Government was re-elected, English teachers had clearly failed to teach critical literacy. According to Sawyer, the teacher's role, instead of being disinterested, is to teach students about the failures of a Coalition government in an effort to ensure that students, as future voters, do not vote conservative.

Alas, this most recent example of PC bias involving the ACTU and the AEU proves that the ideological stance taken by Sawyer is not isolated. Such incidents also demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Left: while the OEA is attacked for approaching schools, the ACTU and the AEU are given free rein.

Kevin Donnelly, a former adviser to federal Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews, is author of Why Our Schools are Failing (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004).

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