"Humboldt, the founder of classical liberalism, his view was that education is a matter of laying out a string along which the child will develop, but in its own way."

Did he also advocate the teaching of grammar and the appropriate use of metaphor? Because that sentence could certainly use some.

If you're going to advocate changes in teaching, the first step is to make sure your own education has worked. Otherwise you become just another horrible example of all the things that a good education should be trying to avoid.

"Our natural environment is in ruinous or near-ruinous condition."

That's a pretty good indicator of a failed education right there.

G'day Jon J,
While your criticism may be reasonable, your aim is a little off. If you'd followed the link provided, you would have seen the excerpt was a direct quote from a dialogue between Chomsky and David Barsamian.
Blame Chomsky, not Tranter.
I'm afraid I was a little disappointed with this article, inasmuch as the contents didn't (IMHO) entirely live up to the expectations elicited from the title.
While I might agree with the paragraph “Our natural environment is in ruinous or near-ruinous condition...” I could hardly describe it as ideologically neutral.
Going on the title, I expected to read at least something about the advantages of diversity.
With a whole world full of diverse systems, it shouldn't be necessary to rely on ideology or theory. We should be able to simply observe the various systems objectively and see what works best. I quite like the look of the Finnish system, personally.
Single states should be able to adopt the system they think is most suitable, and other states can monitor and adopt the most effective.
Of course, even greater diversity could be achieved if if existing shires -or historical Koori nations- were states or nations in their own right...
Humans will not be free until they can freely move a minimal distance to join societies they feel comfortable with.

Daer Mr Pyne (re: "He said the national history curriculum played down the "non-Labor side of our history", despite the Coalition governing for two-thirds of the past 60 years.) Chris, that's because most historically significant social change over the last 60 years has been driven by Labour. Apart from the GST I can't actually think of many major changes implemented by Liberal/National Government. Anti-discrimination, Medicare, expansion of higher education, superannuation, redirecting Australia's foreign policy toward Asia, tariff reform, floating the exchange rate, banking sector reform, family law reform,land rights/Mabo, immediate post-war migration policy...the sorts of big social and economic changes you might study in a modern history course at high school we can "thank" Labour for. It doesn't matter whether you agree/disagree with the policies (I certainly don't agree with all of them) - that's not the point - its just that if we were to study the major (historically note-worthy) achievements of Liberal/Country/National Party government there actually wouldn't be much to study. This is not a criticism of conservative government in Australia it's just that - hell - they're conservative and by definition they don't go in for big social change. Oh wait, that's right,they did get us into the Vietnam War, oh yeah and Iraq and Afghanistan. That should be in a modern history course, of course. And, of course, they were the ones to start using Commonwealth money to fund private schools. But Chris, getting the budget back into balance and turning IR policy back a few decades is not really going to fill a history course my old chum. maybe if you don't stuff up Disability Care reform your party might get a para or two in the ACARA curriculum in the future.

Well, have to agree with bondi tram!
And can only add, that the new senate election in the west in around three-four months?
Is likely to be a referendum on the current govt, their performance, and just how many non-core promises will have to be broken following "the Audit", and the par for the course, blame and or kudos shifting?
Rhrosty.

There is no such thing as an ideology free educational curriculum. Anyone who pretends that there is such a thing has their head up their butt.

If you look at how "education" works in society it is really a kind of corporate propaganda industry. Conventional "education" is put to the service of political and social results of one kind or another that are all bound up with economics, corporate life, and government institutions.
It is all simply propaganda that produces the next generation of social and political participants in a programmed life dictated by governments, corporations and "religious" institutions. Its principal purpose is to train a robotized work force. This was certainly what old school "education" was about, and it is the kind of "education" that the one-dimensional hollow men with their heads stuffed full of straw at the IPA advocate.

No right or comprehensive transformation of life is promoted in the kind of "education" that the IPA advocates. Indeed it is designed to fit into the corporate world view as described by Malvina Reynolds in her classic song Litte Boxes (made out of ticky-tacky), and by Noam Chomsky (manufacturing consent), Henry Giroux and our own Sharon Beder in her various books. In This Little Kiddy Went To Market Sharon describes the powerful corporate forces that have been working behind the scene to accomplish the project to corporatise "education".

Meanwhile why not check out the work of Diane Ravitch in the USA especially via her truth-telling book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger To American Public Schooling.

The most important thing to be done to the education system is to wrench it out of the hands of the feminists, who have gained control of it. They have continued to dumb down all technical subjects, & eliminate any testing of students understand & ability at the end of their schooling, hence universities having to run remedial math classes for science students.

Until we get back to testing students comprehension & ability in a subject in closed book examinations, our standards will continue to plummet, compared to Asian standards.

Getting rid of all the environmental propaganda, & teaching some real science would help, but is unlikely until the feminists have been banished.