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March 2, 2010
Finally a national curriculum in maths, science, history and English from kindergarten to year 10.The argument is that Australia should have one curriculum for school students, rather than the eight different arrangements that exist at the moment. It's a persuasive argument and the reform is long overdue.
The rhetoric is that this world class national curriculum is critical to maintaining Australia's productivity and quality of life. This set of educational goals and actions aims to better prepare young people for their participation in a changing and increasingly globalised world. Though it places Aboriginal and Asian ways of seeing the world into almost every subject, this is a ''back to basics'' approach with an emphasis on grammar and phonics on spelling, on sounding out letters, on counting, on adding up, on taking away.
Despite the three cross-curriculum dimensions of Indigenous history and culture, Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia and sustainability the "Australian Curriculum" is hardly an education revolution in a digital world, information society, and a visual world. The back to basics rhetoric is at odds with the 10 general capabilities of literacy, numeracy, information communication technology, thinking skills, ethical behaviour, creativity, self-management, teamwork, intercultural understanding and social competence.
Though history is the current area of controversy ---is it black armband, white blindfold or balanced view of history?--it does develop a comprehensive history of Australia that includes the histories of First Australians, colonisation of Australia and its subsequent effects upon all groups of people, Australian government, Australia’s place within the British Empire, Australia’s place within the Asia-Pacific region and immigration to Australia.
However, the back to basic building blocks don't give much space to critical thinking in the sense of developing the knowledge and skills to be active and informed citizens who know how to think critically about contemporary issues of public concern. History is not the same as economics, the other social sciences, or ethics. Why should sustainability be taught in history?
This is not a world-class curriculum.
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Do we now have a national curriculum as well as the states and territories still having their own education departments, each with their own curriculum and assessment bodies? Will there be a simple directive that "every Australian student will undertake a national Curriculum?
At this stage, however, none of the states or territories appear to have made a commitment that the National Curriculum will replace the existing curricula for English, Maths, History and Science.They have agreed, in principle, to support a National Curriculum, but it’s very unclear how far they will go to implement it.