The Liberal-Murdoch Coalition Launches a Culture War Against the Liberal-Murdoch Coalition

UPDATE (03/02/25)

Bita has followed up with an editorial (M,P). It is basically the same article but with more sanctimony and still without a hint of remorse or self-reflection. Bita’s new piece also includes quotes from Alan “Commie Hunter” Finkel, which adds to the charm, and also from John Sweller, which at least pleased Greg Ashman.

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What does one do when a lordly Liberal twit and a stenographic Murdoch reporter join forces to have a go at the clownish ACARA curriculum and its silly Indigenous priority stuff? Whose side do you take? Or, do you just give up, join Team Musk and wait for the next ship to Mars?

A couple days ago, The Australian‘s Natasha Bita had a report (M,P):

Bita’s report was a free kick to the Federal Liberal Party, beginning,

The federal opposition has compiled an eye-opening analysis of the “ideological’’ national school curriculum …

Bita never links to or provides any details of this eye-opening compilation, which we were unable to locate but which cannot be anything new. Nonetheless, the Indigenous mathematics stuff in the Australian Curriculum is by and large absurd, so of course it is trivial for Bita to point to the absurdity. Which we’ll get to, but first things first.

The star of Bita’s show trial is Sarah Henderson, who is the Shadow Minister for Education and who has an Arrogance Quotient of 3.2, amongst the highest ever recorded.¹ As quoted by Bita, Henderson begins,

Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson criticised the national curriculum as “unwieldy and ideological’’.

Just months from the federal election, she said a Coalition government would “get back to basics by focusing on evidence-based teaching which prioritises reading, writing, maths and science’’.

So, if it were not already obvious, the Liberals and Natasha Bita are engaged in a campaign stunt, a comforting dish of “back to basics” with a heavy topping of culture war. And fair enough. The Australian Curriculum is a shambles, absurdly bloated with all manner of nonsense and with barely a hint of the very necessary basics. So, yes, let’s have a proper go at the culprits. Beginning with the Liberals and Natasha Bita.

It was the loathsome Morrison government and, in particular, the truly moronic Stuart Robert who gifted us this godawful curriculum. And it was Natasha “send it and I will print it” Bita who then cheered it all in. The title of Bita’s triumphant Pravda piece? Believe it or not,

 Back to basics in new schools curriculum 

Bita’s was one of the stupidest articles ever written on Australian mathematics education, which is a hell of an achievement. And now it is Bita giving a free kick to the very same idiots who gave us this garbage curriculum, in order to attack their own garbage curriculum. Education reporters: you can’t live with ’em, you can’t put ’em on an iceberg.

Given the absurdity of the Liberal-Murdoch coalition attacking the Liberal-Murdoch coalition while pretending otherwise,² there is not too much purpose in digging into Bita’s article. In the main, Bita, via Henderson, presents truly idiotic ATSI elaborations and then chants “ideological” every second paragraph. Apart from the universal absurdity of Bita’s article, however, there are specific absurdities that should be noted.

The other prong to Bita’s article is the unwieldiness of the Australian Curriculum, both as a document and as a curriculum to be taught. No argument from us on either score, of course. Unfortunately, Bita brings in the President of the Australian Government Primary Principals Association to make the point:

… president Pat Murphy said the latest Version 9 of the curriculum was “significantly better’’ than the previous one ….

No, mate, you’re wrong. The previous curriculum was appalling, but the replacement is way worse, and we have the universal acquiescence, if not active support, of maths ed groups to thank for this. If AGGPA ever said a bad word about the Australian curriculum when it actually mattered, we have been unable to locate it. And if they didn’t say a bad word then maybe they could have the good grace to shut up now.

As for bashing the Indigenous stuff, again, it is very difficult to argue. Remarkably, Bita makes it possible. She begins broadly,

At least one priority theme affects more than half of all the content taught from foundation to year 10, across all subjects except languages.

The curriculum offers 2451 lesson suggestions – known as “elaborations’’ – to support the cross-curriculum priorities, with three-quarters of them relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture.

This is all manipulative nonsense.

The “priority theme” at issue here is the ATSI stuff, particularly as it appears in the elaborations of the content descriptors. We haven’t checked, but it is likely that Bita-Henderson are correct, that the ATSI-aimed elaborations dominate those of the other two priorities. Because who cares about Asia or the collapsing environment.

The second sentence above is clumsy, but presumably the claim is that three-quarters of (“except languages”?) priority-aimed elaborations are ATSI-aimed. Maybe that is true, but who cares? The Australian Mathematics Curriculum, for example, contains about 130 ATSI elaborations, out of a total of a thousand or so. The overwhelming majority of mathematics elaborations having nothing to do with any of the three priorities.

The proper comparison is the number of ATSI elaborations to the total number of elaborations. As such, the second sentence above, if not utterly false, is repugnantly deceitful.

As for the first sentence, presumably the solid claim is that half the total content descriptors in non-language subjects contain at least one ATSI elaboration. If true, that is far from good, but it is way overstating the case to say the ATSI priority “affects” half the parent content descriptors.

For better or worse,³ the curriculum elaborations are optional and a school or teacher can completely ignore any elaboration that strikes them as silly. Which Bita notes, quoting an ACARA spokesman, but only thirty-four paragraphs later and long after her-Henderson’s boogie man nonsense has done its work.

Finally, to the ATSI elaborations that Bita-Henderson chose to colour the article. In the main these elaborations are silly or worse, deserving of the ridicule that Henderson-Bita planned for them to receive. But not all ATSI elaborations are particularly bad, and some are sensible and good.

One of the elaborations that Henderson-Bita chose to put up for ridicule involves the Foundation Number stream:

quantify and compare collections to at least 20 using counting and explain or demonstrate reasoning (AC9MFN03)

using body-tallying that involves body parts and one-to-one correspondence from counting systems of First Nations Peoples of Australia, to count to 20

While the Australian Curriculum was still in unapproved draft form, I ran a competition for blog readers to identify and to argue for the best ATSI elaboration. Nobody took the competition at all seriously but I was serious, and I specifically had in mind the elaboration above on body-tallying as possibly the best. It is a very good elaboration.

We’re talking here about Foundation kids. It is natural and historical and valuable and fun for five year olds to learn body-tallying as a means of counting. Is it necessary? No, of course not. But it is a very good thing to offer. But of course Henderson and Bita are too occupied with their culture war crap to contemplate any of this.

Have Henderson and Bita done enough to have me barracking for ACARA and ATSI maths? No, that is never gonna happen. But these two self-satisfied clowns have made life on Earth even less sane. They have me now regularly checking Musk’s flight schedule.

 

1) A person’s Arrogance Quotient is their self-perceived IQ divided by their actual IQ. 

2) Bita notes, twice, that the current curriculum belongs to the Liberal-National coalition, but not in a loud manner or in a manner addressing the fundamental absurdity of Henderson’s attack and Bita’s own article. 

3) It can be worse. The concepts of highest common factor and lowest common multiple, for example, only ever appear in “optional” elaborations. There is not a single mention of either in the mandatory content descriptors.