[English] Howard launches Donnelly

[Scott Bulfin]

Forgive me folks, but after throwing up all over my letterman sweater  
and copy of Dumb and Dumber, I did a quick linguistic analysis of  
this 'advertisement' late last night. A good one for the kids perhaps?

Standards (9)

Choice (7)

Parents (7)

Commonsense (3)

fads (3)

testing (3)

accountability (2)

robbing children (2)

unabashed supporter (2)



Speeches

08 February 2007

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
  THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
DUMBING DOWN BY KEVIN DONNELLY BOOK LAUNCH,
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA


E&OE…

Thank you very much Sandy, Kevin Donnelly, Julie Bishop, my other  
parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to  
accept the invitation to launch this book, both because I’ve greatly  
respected the author as an individual and I’ve greatly admired his  
persistent campaign for high basic standards (1) in Australia’s  
education system. For too long, the education debate has focussed  
exclusively on inputs and quality, on money spent on student-teacher  
ratios and the like. And this was the territory staked out and  
defended fiercely by education producer groups, by the state  
education bureaucracies, curriculum designers and the teacher unions.  
Now, as a government, we will yield to nobody in defending our record  
so far as the provision of resources to education is concerned. But  
the point that Kevin has made and the point I make today has been,  
and continues to be, to open up the education debate and to focus it  
more squarely onto quality. And our great challenge as a nation is to  
improve the quality of Australia’s education system.

The high ground of school reform in Australia centres on three key  
areas. Greater choice (1) and accountability (1), higher standards  
(2) and greater national consistency. And when you have 80,000 school  
students a year moving from one part of the country to the other, to  
use the language of the young, the need for nationally consistent  
curricula is indeed a no brainer; and those three things are the  
foundations of a quality education system.

And it’s into this realm of education quality that Kevin  
Donnelly’s work – and Dumbing Down is the latest example - has  
been a beacon of commonsense, exposing many of the fads (1) and  
politically-correct fashions that have found their way into  
Australian schools.

Kevin Donnelly’s book makes a very big point about the danger of so- 
called ‘progressive’ theories and education fads (2). Where Big  
Brother or a text message jostles with Shakespeare and classical  
literature for a place in the English curriculum, we are robbing  
children (1) of their cultural heritage.

By obfuscating the need for teachers to impart (1) specific knowledge  
and for rigorous testing (1) of student achievement, we are robbing  
children (2), especially disadvantaged children, of the one proven  
path to individual achievement and social mobility. And by denying  
parents clear statements of their child’s performance in the  
classroom we are letting new-age fads (3) get in the way of genuine  
accountability (2).

As I said in my speech at the 50th anniversary of Quadrant last year,  
few debates are as vital as those over education, whether it be in  
upholding basic standards (3) on literacy and numeracy, promoting  
diversity and choice (2) or challenging the incomprehensible sludge  
that can find its way into some curriculum material.

I am an unabashed supporter of choice (3) for parents. As many of you  
know, I am a product of the government education system in New South  
Wales and I express my gratitude to the quality of that system when I  
attending school in Sydney, for imparting (2), I hope, a strong basic  
education to me. I believe therefore in a strong, well-funded and  
academically rigorous government school system.

Yet I am a staunch defender of the right of parents to send their  
child to a non-government school and to have the government support  
them in that choice (4).

Choice (5) has intrinsic value in a free society, especially in an  
area like education where we are dealing with the most important  
decision parents have to make about their child’s future.

I am also an unabashed supporter of what Kevin Donnelly calls a  
‘conservative approach to curriculum’ – competitive  
examinations, teacher-directed lessons and the importance of academic  
disciplines.

I make no apologies for the fact that under my government the  
Commonwealth has played a role in pushing the states and territories  
on to higher ground on issues like standards (4), testing (2) and  
plain English report cards in our schools.

High standards (5) can only be achieved if teachers have clear road  
maps as to the knowledge and concepts to impart. Formal competitive  
examinations are essential to assessing what a child has learned.

And there is something both deadening and saccharine in curriculum  
documents where History is replaced by ‘Time, Continuity and  
Change’ and Geography now becomes ‘Place, Space and Environment’.

Experiments like ‘Outcomes-Based Education’, as Kevin Donnelly not  
only argues, not only short-change parents and children, they also  
put unjustified demands on teachers, with jargon-ridden curriculum  
statements leaving teachers overwhelmed when it comes to what must be  
taught and what standards (6) of student achievement are expected.

I would commend to all of you Kevin’s work on the way in which the  
teaching of English has been allowed in some cases to drift into a  
relativist wasteland, where students are asked to deconstruct texts  
using politically-correct theories in contrast with the traditional  
view that great literature has something profound to say about the  
human condition.

In tackling these issues, often against the grain of self-proclaimed  
education ‘experts’, Kevin Donnelly displays both great courage  
and a tough-minded determination to defend the higher purposes of  
education, especially in carrying forward the best of the Western  
cultural tradition.

There is, of course, a degree of irony in some recent comments about  
the need for an education revolution in Australia, given the sorts of  
ideological agenda that Kevin Donnelly explores in his book.

The key point is this – the Labor Party, leg-roped as it is to its  
allies in the teacher unions is very much a ‘Johnny-come-lately’  
to the cause of commonsense education reform in support of parental  
choice (6), higher standards (7) and sound curricula.

It was this Government’s Schools Policy in 1996 – opposed by  
Labor – which really opened up choice (7) for Australian parents by  
facilitating the huge expansion in low-fee independent schools.

It was David Kemp more than anyone else who campaigned to put testing  
(3) of basic literacy and numeracy on the national agenda. It was  
Brendan Nelson who fought to ensure that Australian parents are given  
plain English report cards and now Julie Bishop is taking forward a  
new wave of school reforms in the areas of national consistency,  
higher curriculum standards, principal autonomy and teacher quality.

Our goal is simple. We don’t want uniformity, but we do want nation- 
wide high standards (8) in schools to ensure every Australian student  
receives the best possible foundation in core subjects.

Let me again in conclusion congratulate Kevin Donnelly on what is a  
very thoughtful and important contribution to the debate on the  
Australian education system. I wish the book well, I thank Kevin  
Donnelly for his persistent advocacy of commonsense and standards (8)  
in Australian education, it’s a great cause and he deserves our  
admiration and respect for engaging so energetically in it. Thank you.

[Ends]




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