Education in Australia

I've spoken out about this issue a few times, but here goes again.

Why hasn't fathers4equality and other men's and fathers' groups taken a public position on the education issue?
I cannot think of anything that is more important for children in the world today.

fathers4equality and other groups make a great deal of rhetoric about being concerned for the well-being of children, and how precious these children are, but not one word about ensuring the children of Australia are well-educated.

There is a subtle message in the new Optus broadband ad on TV, where the son asks from the back seat why the Great Wall of China was built.

The message is simple: Don't ask your pig-headed ignorant father questions like that unless you want to be embarrassed in school.

The same actor previously portrayed a father as a leech, running next door to use a neighbor's broadband connection, but too selfish to pay for broadband in his own home. Because using the neighbor's broadband is too inconvenient -- The neighbor is practicing on his tuba! -- the father seems to promise he'll get broadband at home.

But the subsequent ads illustrate he hasn't kept his promises...

The latest ad shows the same father riding in a combie van with another father and their children. He seems very resentful that the other father can look up the words to "I've been everywhere, man" on his mobile broadband.
Overall, this guy is portrayed as the average Australian father. It's effective.

The facts don't support the impressions though, since 65% of Australian households on the Internet are on some form of broadband. But that fact isn't given in the ads.

Even more subtle is the underlying message that the average Australian father resents education, and would prefer his children remain uneducated -- as he was forced to do.
This sort of thing may have been true 20 years ago. At best, it is a humorous truism today.

The problem is not just that such an ad is insulting -- to fathers and to the nation.
It is that no one has actively opposed it.

There are intelligent educated fathers who work hard to ensure their children have the best education possible because they know how important a good education wil be in the future.
But no one would ever know from the silence of the men's and family groups.

Will this be another area where fathers' groups surrender the leadership to feminists?

From the article:

"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will call today for a common national curriculum, claiming leftwing ideologists in State governments have hijacked what is being taught in schools, with some themes coming straight from Chairman Mao.

She says State governments have failed to protect the interests of young Australians from trendy educational fads, forcing the community to turn to the Federal Government to take action.

In an explosive speech, she will ask why standards have slipped so far that we have gone from teaching Latin in Year 12 to teaching remedial English in first-year University. "

I have no idea where Julie Bishop's ideas are about domestic violence and family law, but I can tell you where the Maoist influence in the public education process comes from.

As many have noted here and around the world, the victim feminists and radical feminists take a great deal of the rhetoric from early 20th century communism.