History wars: the men behind the national school curriculum review

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/the-men-behind-the-school-curriculum-review

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<strong>Kevin Donnelly</strong>

Kevin Donnelly heads the Education Standards Institute which is owned by the K Donnelly Family Trust, according to a search of the institute’s ABN. He has written on education for the Drum, the Australian and the Conversation, among others, and has argued the current curriculum is taught through an “Indigenous, Asian and environmental” perspective.

He has also railed against what he sees as the promotion to students of “alternative sexuality and gender lifestyles”. In a piece for the now-defunct the Punch in 2010, he warned about the impact of voting Green in the Victorian state election.

“Government and other faith-based schools will also be made to teach a curriculum that positively discriminates in favour of gays, lesbians, transgender and intersex persons,” he said.

Donnelly was chief of staff for Kevin Andrews when he was shadow education minister and in the 1990s worked for tobacco company Philip Morris on developing an educational program for school children (also mentioned in this research paper) with the company’s backing.

The program was called “I’ve Got the Power” and taught children about making responsible decisions by themselves. Choices about cigarette smoking were included in the pack as part of things they should say no to, but the health dangers of tobacco were not mentioned. The pack was not labelled as being produced by a tobacco company.

Donnelly defended the program, saying it was only financed by Philip Morris and that the company had no control over what went into the packs.

"Philip Morris is genuinely interested in putting a quality program into schools to empower people, but they have been criticised. In reality, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't when they should be congratulated,” he told the New Zealand Herald in 1999.

Donnelly wants to bring a more “Judeo-Christian” approach to history teaching and has previously written that at every year level teachers must incorporate Australian indigenous histories and cultures into an “overwhelming” number of topics.

“Add the fact that students must be taught ‘intercultural understanding’, with its focus on diversity and difference, and are told to value their own cultures and the cultures, languages and beliefs of others, and it's clear that the underlying philosophy is cultural relativism,” he wrote in the Australian earlier this year.

Donnelly also believes studies of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the Ottoman empire, Renaissance Italy, the Vikings and medieval Europe should be compulsory.

When he was asked by a Crikey journalist on Friday if he was a member of the Liberal party, Donnelly replied that the question was not relevant.

Ken Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a Queensland-based academic who has also written for the Australian and used a column in the newspaper earlier this year to label the implementation of the Gonski funding model by the Gillard government “a national disgrace”.

Wiltshire oversaw a review of Queensland’s education curriculum in the 1990s under the Labor premier Wayne Goss who agreed to implement 95% of the recommendations, though Wiltshire accuses former prime minister and Goss chief of staff at the time, Kevin Rudd, of sabotaging the plan.

“It is unfortunate that Kevin Rudd has little credibility when it comes to education,” he wrote.

“When the Goss government commissioned the review of the Queensland school curriculum and agreed to more than 95% of its recommendations, Rudd took no interest in the implementation and allowed many of the initiatives to be sabotaged.”

He added: “Indeed his own gargantuan Office of Cabinet tried to sink many of the recommendations from the beginning, based on personal biases and ideology.”

Wiltshire is a supporter of the Gonski blueprint of funding and in the same piece before the election wrote that he hoped Tony Abbott would implement it if he won government.

In 2010 he argued for the independents to side with Abbott in creating a minority government, saying it would be the wish of the majority of people in their individual electorates and if the Greens aligned with Labor it would create backdoor deals.

“Through this back door Labor would be able to introduce the Greens' priorities on gay marriage, softer border protection, and heftier mining taxes and so on,” he said.

He ended the piece: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Wiltshire is the JD Story professor of public administration at the University of Queensland business school.

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