The process of developing an Australian national curriculum has begun

Kevin Donnelly

THE National Numeracy Review report, while good in parts, repeats many of the mistakes associated with recent approaches to teaching mathematics.

Recommending that mathematics should be taught across the curriculum on the basis that all teachers are maths teachers is a mistake. Just remember the failed experiment represented by all teachers teaching English.

Endorsing the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers standards as a framework for professional development in mathematics is also a concern. The AAMT standards fail to detail the essential content associated with the subject, and primary teachers, in particular, need a more detailed road map of what to teach.

Wanting to make mathematics more relevant to the world of the student, and so-called real world applications, ignores the fact that there is much about the subject that is foreign and without immediate application. Sometimes, education requires learning for its own sake.

The mathematics report does serve a vital role.

Like the recent debate about NSW students leaving school without learning about the Holocaust, the report raises the question of how the proposed national curriculum will be developed and what subjects such as mathematics and history will look like.

As the first step in developing a national curriculum, states and territories have this year embedded in their various curriculum documents what are termed "statements of learning". These are described as the "knowledge, skills, understandings and capacities that all students in Australia should have the opportunity to learn".

Within the civics and citizenship statements of learning, under the heading Historical Perspectives, there is a list of what students should be taught at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

The first thing to note on reading Historical Perspectives is that the statements are so vague and generalised that it is impossible to know to what they refer. On reading the way history is dealt with, it is obvious that the writers think that Australia's British ancestry, the debt we owe to Western civilisation and our Judeo-Christian heritage is secondary to celebrating cultural diversity and learning about indigenous society, culture and history.

One searches in vain for any mention of the debt we owe to ancient Greece and Rome, the Magna Carta and the Westminster form of government. The rise of secular humanism represented by the Renaissance and the Reformation is also ignored.

Kevin Donnelly is the director of Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down.

Monday

July 14th, 2008

Kevin Donnelly

Columnist

Education News

The process of developing an Australian national curriculum has begun

Hot Topics