Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I notice people on the other side shaking their heads. As the Head of the School of Humanities at the ANU, Dr Simon Haines, said, we should ‘make it a literature course, not a disguised political science course’. There are places for political science. Literature should be about studying literature, science should be about studying science and history should be about studying history, not de facto ways of introducing ideological preconceptions.

We see it too often. In February last year, as reported in the Australian, we had Wayne Sawyer, the President of the New South Wales English Teachers Association, blaming the teaching profession for allowing the re-election of the Howard government because they had not been so ideologically effective as to prevent people voting for the Howard government. Then in 2004, at an Australian Education Union conference, we had a principal of a senior Western Australian high school arguing that the new three Rs in education ought to be reconciliation, refugees and republic. Those things might be commendable, but that is not the main reason parents send their children to school. The three Rs that parents want to see are reading, writing and arithmetic, and they want to see the focus on those fundamentals.

There are a multitude of other examples that could be cited. The point is this: the focus must be on academic rigour, not on political correctness. The focus must be on building knowledge and skills, not on promoting ideological agendas. Thirdly, we need to ensure that we are rewarding adequately those teachers who are doing their best in commitment and effort in teaching our young people. (Time expired)

See this speech in context