Pyne: yes, but there’s more to Australian history than the massacres

So I hear that Christopher “Yes, he’s seriously the federal Minister for Education” Pyne has a new plan to revise the National Curriculum. “Teachers like certainty”, he said, as he declared that everything they’d been preparing would now be torn apart by two totally random guys who are going to, with a small amount of admin support, perform a comprehensive review of the curriculum that took years to develop, in four months. I guess they’ll be working weekends.

Chris reckons that, despite all the places where it does just that, the curriculum “has not sold or talked about the benefits of western civilisation in our society”:

It’s very important the curriculum is balanced in its approach to that. It’s very important the truth be told in our history. So, yes, the truth of the way we’ve treated Indigenous Australians should be told in our curriculum. But also the truth about the benefits of Western civilisation should be taught in our curriculum. And I think that there is some fair criticism that the curriculum is balanced one way rather than the other.

I’m totally with Chris. Like most Australians, I remember spending most of my time at school learning about Australian historical atrocities – like this one I drove past on Friday on my way back from Narrandera that I’m sure you, as an educated Australian, know all about:

Oh, not Poison Waterholes Creek again!

And yet nobody ever focused on the key achievements of Western Civilization, like the rule of law. Imagine what would happen if young Australians grow up not understanding the importance of fundamental protections our civilisation took hundreds of years to develop, like the right to not be imprisoned without a fair trial? Imagine what a government made up of such a generation might do.

Thank goodness Chris recognises the danger.