Classroom creed

Radicalised teachers are dragging identity politics into the classroom by rewarding student essays that reflect their own ideological views. By Mark Lopez.

In November−December 2019, I attended a conference of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE). These conferences are considered to be a form of professional development for teachers where teacher-presenters provide workshops/seminars instructing other teachers, providing them with ideas they can take back to their classrooms. At a session I attended, the teacher-presenter, feeling she was among like-minded people, declared:‘I’m a raging leftie. I make no secret of it’. She also confessed that: ‘I lose sleep over the political landscape.’  

This conference came after the Australian Labor Party lost the ‘unlosable election’ in May 2019, an outcome that had shocked and dismayed other teacher-presenters as well as this one. They were hoping for a change of government.  She was not happy with the current situation. She declared: ‘I found my students have been quite right-leaning, quite to my dismay. So, I am inclined to speak truth to stupid: So, why do you hate Julia Gillard?’ This teacher-presenter, who later told us she is part of an organised group of feminist educators, suggested that she wanted to have an influence on her students’ perspectives: ‘So, when my students do vote, it’s a good vote’. To her, this would be so ‘Australia will be saved!’ Part of her solution involved instructing her students to watch news and current affairs programmes on the ABC. 

In a seminar that was supposed to be about instructing teachers on how to teach students how to analyse an argument, what this teacher-presenter was passionate about instead was influencing the ideology of her students rather than focusing on helping them to analyse with precision, reason soundly, and express themselves effectively in sentences that correctly employ a capital letter and a full stop. Listening to this lecture, I paused in my note-taking and looked around. There was not a murmur of criticism from the teachers present. If there was dissent (and I wished there was) it was undetectable. All the interactions at that seminar between this teacher-presenter and the teachers present were agreeable. 

Examples of these kinds of overt ideological biases are not difficult to find in the education system in the politically correct era. However, more commonly, this ideological bias takes subtler forms, such as by being frequently evident in the teacher’s biased choice of learning materials, for example, by using a picture of President Donald Trump, who is detested by many on the politically correct Left for challenging the orthodoxies of political correctness, as a stimulus for classroom discussion and for essay writing. The students are expected to be critical of him. 

Something else that is common among teachers is their frequent jests made at the expense of politicians and commentators on the Right, such as the former Liberal Party leaders John Howard and Tony Abbott, and the conservative columnist Andrew Bolt. In addition, the Herald Sun newspaper, which features several conservative columnists, including Andrew Bolt, and which is willing to criticise politically correct policies and politicians on its front pages and in its editorials, is almost universally derided by teachers as a newspaper for the ‘uneducated’. Meanwhile, the politically correct newspapers, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, and The Guardian, are acclaimed as aiming higher and catering to educated readers. This ideological bias in the classroom, whether it is overt or subtle, shuts off the possibility of considering, for example, whether Donald Trump, John Howard, Tony Abbott or Andrew Bolt could have something worthy to say, as millions of Australians outside of the school system believe they do. 

The beliefs of several large sections of the Australian public (which collectively constitute the majority) are overlooked or do not get a fair hearing in high school classrooms. This is despite the fact that these Australians are paying for this education system through their taxes and some are paying even more for it in school fees. This situation may be fine for those politically correct, left-wing parents who want their children to be taught in a manner that reflects these beliefs, but is it fair to the other families? Notably, it is not just the families that support various positions on the Right whose views are not represented or respected. There are many families that are of the Left that are quite happy for their children to be presented with a range of views, seeing this as both democratic and educational.  They too have been disrespected. 

And apart from the issue of fairness, what about the impact of this ideological bias academically?  This almost universal politically correct, left-wing bias in high schools severely restricts the scope of scholarship and inquiry. It is anti-academic and anti-intellectual. It restricts the topics for consideration and the possibilities for analytical thinking or reasoning. It also precludes any attempt by an educator to encourage the valuable scholarly discipline of attempting to achieve the highest degree of objectivity that is potentially possible when conducting research and analysis. These worthy academic qualities are difficult and challenging, but they are what an education system should be teaching. Put simply, that is what an education system is for. 

Arguably, the politically correct high school falls considerably short of being an appropriately scholarly environment for the pursuit of knowledge. The intolerance of the politically correct Left towards ideas other than their own has limited the subject matter that can be taught, learned or explored in high school. This intolerance has also inhibited the ways topics relevant to political correctness can be discussed or analysed. This ideological bias has also impacted significantly on assessment by influencing what is rewarded or not rewarded. What is routinely praised and rewarded in high school is student work that expresses opinions that reflect the ideological bias of the vast majority of teachers. Biased assessment that favours what is politically correct and left-wing is one of the defining features of this education system.  

Dr Mark Lopez is an author and education consultant based in Melbourne. This is an extract from his recently published critique of the education system since the introduction of the Australian Curriculum: School Sucks: A Report on the State of Education in the Politically Correct Era, Connor Court, 2020. Click here to buy the book.