There can be little doubt that the creators of the Studies of Society and Environment syllabus find capitalism and consumerism very distasteful. This much is clear from their presentation of the "key values" that form part of the "rationale" for the new syllabus for Years 1 to 10 in Queensland schools.
The SOSE syllabus stresses the need for "relationships between people and environments that have a regard for the spiritual dimension of life", and the importance of challenging "the inequalities inherent in social institutions and structures", to enable children to "deconstruct dominant views of society". It says nothing about the value of creating and maintaining a vibrant and competitive economy.
Indeed, you can bet that the gentle souls from the Queensland School Curriculum Council who penned this unctuous prose become quite distressed when they contemplate the vast array of goods and services that a modern economy can produce and distribute.
They must shudder when they think of the damage all this economic activity does to the spiritual qualities of those who are involved in it, or the havoc that it wreaks on our fragile natural environment. Instead of making people realise that true fulfilment comes from hugging trees in an old growth forest, or attending a branch meeting of the Greens or Australian Democrats, our capitalist culture distracts them from criticising the terrible wrongs of our society.
But the irony is that the SOSE syllabus is itself an expression of the supermarket mentality its creators seem to despise, the notion that all the things you want and that make you feel good can be jumbled up in the great shopping trolley of life without any rhyme or reason, and without any trade-offs.
Reading the syllabus materials, there is no indication that its designers realise that there might be any serious inconsistencies amongst the "key values" they have outlined -- such as attacking discrimination on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion, race, age and half a dozen other named grounds, while also celebrating cultural diversity in a world full of cultures whose "key values" involve just such discriminations.
It is a syllabus without a coherent and rigorous intellectual framework, just a series of disjointed dollops intended to keep the children amused as well as to indulge the muddled political and social beliefs of its designers. Students will complete the SOSE "learning area" with a trolley full of mainly politically correct names and organisations -- a box of trade unions, an economy pack of Eddie Mabo, a barrel of Mao Zedong, a big stick of Greenpeace and a Michelangelo postcard. But they will have little idea of how these might fit into the broader scheme of things.
And the documentation for the SOSE syllabus is a mixture of breathtakingly vacuous bumf -- "students bring to Studies of Society and Environment their understandings about what it means to be young at this time" -- and extravagant promises of the kind more commonly associated with the marketing of toiletries. Just as Brand X toothpaste is supposed to transform your mouth into the human equivalent of a sparkling mountain spring, so 10 years of SOSE is designed to make children into "lifelong learners".
Such wonderful creatures are not just people with an interest in the world around them who are always keen to enhance their education. That would be too ordinary; a bit like buying the house-brand toothpaste. In the brave new Queensland that is being engineered for your children a "lifelong learner" is all the following:
- a knowledgeable person with deep understanding;
- a complex thinker;
- a creative person;
- an active investigator;
- an effective communicator;
- a participant in an interdependent world; and
- a reflective and self-directed learner.
But if you think the new SOSE syllabus will actually create people with these marvellous qualities, then you probably believe that the supermarket's new $24.99 jar of beauty cream with the magical herbal ingredients will make you physically irresistible.
Of course, there is one major difference between the supermarket where you purchase your groceries and the kind that the Curriculum Council is running. Your local merchant doesn't really care what goes into your shopping trolley; macrobiotic tofu or a carton of cigarettes, it is all the same to him as long as he makes a profit.
Not so with the SOSE crowd. They are selling only a carefully selected range of products, especially chosen to make children feel that their own society is pretty rotten.
But the soft leftist ideology that informs the SOSE syllabus is only part of the child abuse that the Education Department is inflicting on Queensland, and arguably even the lesser part.
After all, if children are given the sound intellectual grounding that seems necessary for instilling a love of learning, they can usually slough off their teachers' political propaganda as they grow up and come into contact with information and ideas that were not offered to them at school. As they mature they also tend to look more critically at many of the things they were never encouraged to question. If this was not the case, my own generation would all be monarchists calling for the restoration of the British Empire.
The real sin of the SOSE syllabus is that it will not provide students with the cumulative and properly structured intellectual frameworks and knowledge necessary for comprehending how the world works and how it developed into its present form. And it makes no attempt to foster the shared common culture and basic understandings which are necessary for the continuing vitality of Australia's liberal democratic institutions.
So despite the impressive sounding "learning outcomes" it promises, it will not give rise to large numbers of well-informed and independently minded citizens. Intentionally or otherwise, it is a syllabus for producing mentally apathetic consumers who will always be vulnerable to the gaudy marketing campaigns of political and cultural elites and their relish for rewriting history to suit contemporary agendas. No wonder these elites are so keen on it.
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