Kevin Donnelly: Minions denigrate penetrating legacy of the West

It is hardly surprising that the Australian National University’s National Tertiary Education Union branch president, Matthew King, has attacked the university’s decision to establish a Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

According to King, as cited in the Campus Morning Mail yesterday, the centre is guilty of promoting “a narrow, radically con­servative program” promulgating the “alleged superiority of Western culture and civilisation”.

Kevin Donnelly: Our 21st century tragedy - how the west was lost

Douglas Murray argues in The Strange Death of Europe that ­“Europe is committing suicide”, as proven by the mass immigration of thousands of young Islamic men and the failure by many ­within academia, the media and politics to acknowledge and ­defend the unique strengths and benefits of Western civilisation on which Europe is based.

Such is the dire nature of events, Murray concludes: “By the end of the lifespans of most of the people currently alive, Europe will no longer be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home.”

Kevin Donnelly: Barbarians at the door after the left’s long march

The Institute of Public Affairs’ forensic analysis of how history is now taught in our universities proves, once again, that the cultural left now controls the academy. And as I argued in Why Our Schools Are Failing, the left’s long march has been ongoing for years.

University humanities departments once were committed to a liberal view of education, one described by TS Eliot as involving the “preservation of learning, the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom”.

Kevin Donnelly: Wear it Purple Day and other cultural-left moves sending us puce

Given the re-emergence of the Safe Schools program, a NSW primary school putting on a Stolen Generations play where children dress as nuns and victimise Aboriginal children, and the Australian Education Union’s campaign to promote the LGBTI Wear it Purple Day, there’s no doubt that the cultural left now dominates our education system.

The overwhelming majority of parents send their children to school to learn the basics, to socialise with other students and to acquire the knowledge and skills to be good citizens and to be better prepared for further study or the workforce.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Christian values remain at heart of our culture

There’s no doubt the ABC when falsely accusing Christian men of being more prone to family violence is guilty of a cultural-left bias. And it’s not just the ABC that’s running a secular campaign against Christianity.

Read the Fairfax Press and the impression is that paedophilia mainly involves Catholic priests (ignored is that most children are abused by family or relatives), that Catholic schools don’t deserve government funding and that there’s no place for Christianity in public debates on issues such as abortion and euthanasia.

Kevin Donnelly: We should not tolerate the intolerable

Proven by the latest bizarre ­example, where Muslim students do not have to shake hands with females, it’s clear that education’s politically correct embrace of ­diversity and difference — the new code for multiculturalism — reigns supreme.

As reported in yesterday’s The Australian, school officials at Sydney’s Hurstville Boys Campus, based on a literal interpretation of a hadith, told Muslim students that it was permissible to refuse to greet females in the customary way.

Kevin Donnelly: Canadians can learn from Australia about advantages of choice

Canada’s Fraser Institute is investigating the world’s education systems to identify and analyse the qualities and characteristics that can be used to strengthen and improve the nation’s province-based education systems.

As Australia and Canada are both federal systems with two levels of government, it makes sense to look at Australia and learn from our experience, especially given the similarities in our history, economy and the multicultural nature of our societies.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: How Swede it is - a good education

Given Australian students are going backwards in the inter national TIMSS and PISA tests, where we are now out performed by more than 20 countries including Kazakhstan, England, the United States, Slovenia and Portugal, something must be done.

One approach is to remove the dead hand of bureaucracy and adopt a market-driven model. Around the world, cutting-edge reform involves giving parents financial help to choose where their children go to school, and schools are given the freedom to manage themselves.

Kevin Donnelly: Don’t undermine the West, celebrate it

US academic Samuel P. Huntington, after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, argued that the new global conflict would be between cultures when he said: “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”

Based on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic State’s reign of terror in Africa and the Middle East and in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Melbourne and Sydney, it’s clear how prescient Huntington was.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: We are a Christian nation under threat

A 17-year-old charged with planning an attack involving home made bombs in Melbourne; an Islamic school in Adelaide sacking a moderate teacher, scrapping its music program and putting a stop to singing of the national anthem; and an Islamic school allegedly banning girls from running.

A Muslim-organised meeting at Melbourne University where women are segregated from men, a video in Sydney where children are seen shouting anti-American slogans, and the Lindt café siege.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Private school tuition trumps SES status

One of the perennial questions parents face, when deciding where to send their children to school, is whether government or non-government schools achieve the best results. Given the financial commitment involved it is only natural to ask which school sector achieves the strongest outcomes.

Judged by recent comment pieces in the Fairfax Press like 'No academic advantage in private schooling' and 'Public, private schools give same results, 30 studies show' it appears that the evidence is clear.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Traditional forms of teaching make a welcome comeback

WHO would have thought? Based on research detailed in a recent report entitled What Works Best, the NSW Education Department and Education Minister Adrian Piccoli have identified what constitutes ­effective classroom teaching and learning.

Apparently, teachers need to teach, students need a clear understanding of what is expected, classrooms need a disciplined, focused environment and there needs to be a rigorous curriculum embodying high standards.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Why we should embrace school autonomy

With schools returning this week, the usual debates have already started about the respective merits of government and non-government schools and the best way to make Australian students more competitive given unsatisfactory results in international literacy and numeracy tests. But equally if not more important is the fact that over the next 12 months the Federal Government plans to review the roles and responsibilities of the Commonwealth, states and territories when it comes to managing schools.

As noted in Issues Paper 4 - Roles and Responsibilities in Education, released just before Christmas, the hope is to identify the best way to balance accountability, subsidiarity, equity, efficiency, effectiveness and fiscal sustainability across Australia's education systems and schools.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: ‘Chalk and talk’ teaching might be the best way after all

Seventy teachers from the UK were sent to Shanghai to study classroom methods to investigate why Chinese students perform so well. Upon their return, the teachers reported that much of China’s success came from teaching methods the UK has been moving away from for the past 40 years.

The Chinese favour a “chalk and talk” approach, whereas countries such as the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand have been moving away from this direct form of teaching to a more collaborative form of learning where students take greater control.

Given China’s success in international tests such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, it seems we have been misguided in abandoning the traditional, teacher-directed method of learning where the teacher spends more time standing at the front of the class, directing learning and controlling classroom activities.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Funding no education fix

A prevailing myth of Australia’s left-leaning education establishment is that increased funding of government schools leads to improved educational outcomes.

Analysis of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment international tests across the past 14 years, however, shows increasing expenditure is not the solution.

The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2000, analysing results for 25 countries, including high-performing nations such as Japan and South Korea, concludes: “There seems to be neither a strong nor a consistent relationship between the volume of resources invested nationally and student outcomes.”

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: A common education curriculum

Should all schools, whether government, Catholic or independent, be forced to follow a centrally designed and monitored curriculum? And should this central curriculum be imposed upon schools regardless of the ability, interests and motivation of their students or the character, needs and aspirations of the communities they serve?

These questions are more than just academic, given recent moves to give schools greater autonomy while mandating a centrally designed curriculum. This is illustrated by the Western Australian Independent Public Schools initiative and by states imposing their own curriculum like Victoria’s AusVELS and the NSW syllabuses.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: How to teach what it means to be Australian

Celebrating diversity is only feasible when there is a willingness to commit to the values and beliefs that underpin and sustain tolerance. Now that Islamic State terrorism has arrived on our soil it's time to ask the question: what does it mean to be Australian?

There's no denying that during the 1950s and 1960s the prevailing mood was nationalistic and pro-British.  When I was at school, for example, every Monday morning at assembly we neatly lined up in rows, saluted the flag and sang God save the Queen. With our hands on our hearts children would then recite the oath of allegiance and promise to "cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law". The world map on the back of our workbooks was covered in red, proving that the sun never set on the British Commonwealth.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Letting kids set the standard is far more likely to hinder than help

Stewart Riddle’s bizarre claim that improving the literacy levels of indigenous children, espec­ially in remote communit­ies, might not be a good thing should not surprise. Ever since English sociologist Basil Bernstein in the early 1970s described working-class children’s speech as “restricted” and the speech of middle-class children as ‘‘elaborated’’, teacher educators have disagreed over what it means to be literate and how literacy should be taught.

One approach, represented by Riddle’s argument that there are multiple definitions of literacy as definitions change over time and differ across cultures, is that the language children bring to the classroom must be valued in preference to teaching Standard English.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: The aim must be a sensible, teacher-friendly curriculum

In establishing the review of the national curriculum, the Abbott government is fulfilling an election promise and, as someone who has been intimately involved in curriculum development and debates over more than 30 years, it is a privilege to be involved.

The curriculum, along with teacher quality, parenting, student motivation and ability, and a school's culture and ethos, is one of the most significant factors influencing learning outcomes. As such, it is vital that whatever curriculum is mandated by governments across Australia is academically rigorous, teacher friendly, free of bias and educationally sound.

Kevin Donnelly from Australia: Lifting student achievement

Forget the argument that non-government schools are no different to government schools in terms of outcomes – Catholic schools in particular have high completion rates and are better able to help disadvantaged students do better than otherwise might be expected.

It’s Year 12 examination time and while there are many other indicators of a student’s success at school – including sporting achievements and developing personal life skills – there’s no doubt that Year 12 results are high on the list.