I'm experiencing some form of disconnect here - maybe there are differences between the States, between public and private, religious or secular, but I don't recognize my local school here at all.

>>Unfortunately all my attempts at seeing the school's curriculum for my daughter have failed to date<<

Maybe it is because it just the local public school, but I can walk in at any time (after the usual courtesies of course) and sit at the back of the classroom and listen. What I have invariably found is that the teachers are hard-working, conscientious, caring and dedicated - and, I would suggest, badly underpaid for the responsibilities we place on them. They are also good-humoured when dealing with parents, but above all are desperately concerned for the welfare and progress of the children.

I couldn't even guess at their political leanings from their demeanour in the classroom. So the rather colourful picture painted in previous posts is a complete mystery to me. There may be some value in finding out why there is such a wide disparity in standards of conduct.

Not be shown the curriculum? If I get any of them started on the topic, they don't stop.

Kevin,
With $80 billion spent on welfare, out of the $100 billion in personal income tax collected, we may be closer to that “unthinkable”, than you think.

Pericles,
This is at a moderately large state high school.

At primary school, it was very different, where basically the students were being taught what I was taught many years ago. Very little has changed. I used to be invited by a female teacher to sit in her class while she taught, and to help out. This was because there were hardly any adult males at the school. They used to invite men from the local cricket team, RSL, local companies, anywhere to get adult males into the school.

However it is totally different at the high school, where I found that they don’t want the parents to ask too many questions. I think that the course material changes so often, that the teachers don’t really understand it themselves, and some of it is just so ridiculous that they don’t want to talk about it, particularly with a parent of a student.

Wayne Sawyer's point, as Kevin D has subsequently acknowledged in his postings, is that critical examination of the language used by politicians has a place on the English curriculum. Let's be clear about this; as an academic working in the field of English curriculum, Sawyer did not advocate that teachers should tell their students to vote Labor. Rather he asked teachers to question the influence critical literacy has gained in English over the last decade on the basis that we have a government that can be complicit in the introduction of balaclaved men and alsation dogs on the waterfront and call it 'work place reform', that can - against all advice - persist with the fiction that children 'were thrown overboard',that desperate people fleeing civil war in countries where Australia does not have official representation are 'queue jumpers'; that vilifies asylum seekers as 'illegals' but then ends up having to allow the vast majority refugee status as their claims are subsequently found to be legitimate; that finds it is possible to avoid admitting a lie by distinguishing between 'core' and 'non-core' promises.

These constitute abuses of the English language and compel serious thought as to how we see and wish to project ourselves as a people and as a nation. The party political issue is secondary to one of 'truth' in public life and the 'values' of the nation.

Contrary to what has been suggested in many psotings about this issue, at the heart of Sawyer's argument is the need to look at two sides of an issue. As an editor, he was expressing a personal opinion - as he is fully entitled to do - in which he made clear that he is troubled by recent developments in Australia. His point was that issues such as those I have identified above have been, for a variety of complex reasons, subsumed by the good news around interest rates and employment, as well as the government's initiatives in the area of border security. Sawyer's point is a serious and compelling one: is a state of affairs in which one type of story (ie government triumphilism) dominates public discourse one that is ultimately in the best interests of the nation? This goes well beyond party politics.

Let me throw back to Kevin Donnelly and Minister Nelson the erroneoeus suggestion that Sawyer does not want to, and moreover does not want Australian students to, look at two sides of the issue. Which of these, taken from Sawyer's editorial, did not occur: government support for Patrick's introduction of balaclav'd security guards and dogs on the wharves? the distinction between a 'core' and 'non-core' promise? the suggestion that children were thrown overboard when advice had not been provided that would confirm this? involvment in Iraq on the grounds, against the advice of weapons inspectors, that there existed WMDs, and that the war had nothing to do with regime change?

To shift away from the thrust of Sawyer's series of probing rhetorical questions about these questions in his editorial in order to trumpet government achievements in the areas of employment, interest rates and border security, as Kevin Donnelly and the Minister have done, does not constitute opening up two sides of a debate. To the contrary, it is a deliberate attempt to down play or silence the substance of Sawyer's argument.

The Australian public is caught between a rock and a hard place. Of course most of the public can see through the misinformation (including lies, indoctrination etc) of the coalition, however the other parties at the last election were not offering anything of substance. A lot of rhetoric, but no substance.

“I will lead this great nation. I will be the best politician ever. I will make this country really, really great” etc. This type of rhetoric was about all the public was receiving from the opposition parties. That and mentoring programs for boys, and two free books to read to the children at night.

So the public choose the rock for another three years. Might be different next time if Howard remains attached to Bush, and the neocons begin to ratchet up their obvious attempts at taking over the US, and many other countries. I have heard that even Bill Gates is presently taking his money out of America, and investing it elsewhere

I find it ironic that in Sawyer's editorial he refers to the Howard Government as 'Stalinist', while stating we should make critical literacy more 'direct and deliberate'. This is, perhaps, another way of saying our students would be subjected to propaganda, destroying the very democratic rights that Sawyer seems to be crusading for.
It is also strange that Sawyer sees critical literacy as failing in this country merely because the Howard Government has been re-elected. I suppose there is no chance the Liberals were voted for by the vast majority of Australia for any legitimate reasons? Sawyer ignores common sense on this issue.