What’s being taught in the classroom is a subject that always makes a striking come-back. This year, media reports covered the hackneyed relationship between religion and science and their respective theories on evolution, also known as the debate over “Intelligent Design”. While the feud between secularism and religion dates back to the 18th century Enlightenment period, the underlying and matter in the context of education is the relatively modern phenomenon of political correctness. This reminds me of that whole media frenzy covering the English HSC syllabus last year (“Friends, Romans, Marxists”). The media took a very clear-cut stance, disputing the relevance of postmodernism in the classroom. I can’t seem to find the article, but I remember some journalist drawing that famous comparison between Shakespeare and Star Wars (my gut-feeling tells me that must have been Miranda Devine). I remember asking myself why no one spoke of the relevance of Shakespeare – a string of opinion pieces just kept on bickering about the irrelevance of postmodern thought. This was the issue in 2004.
Whenever political correctness gets appraised, the link to education and its culture seems inevitable– whether the syllabus of the classroom or the thought police coming to get you at universities. In the last few days, the mainstream media – both domestically and internationally – has produced an enormous amount of news on intelligent design, sparked by the recent US judgment that found in favor of a no-intelligent-design scheme in classrooms (Search). Politically and legally, its basis was the deep-seated Establishment clause of the US Constitution which guarantees the separation of church and state. However, not far from sight, the judgment furthers, naturalizes and renders concrete the idea of a politically correct and secular culture in classrooms. It’s today become some sort of classroom doctrine.
By googling Miranda, I came across her opinion on PC (as expected) and found this (as expected) (“A toxic twist in the learning curve”):
The creed of political and cultural correctness has poisoned our school system … Today, four competing ideologies hold sway: “Critical theory [and post-modernism], a degenerated form of Marxism, [emphasising] the social context of knowledge”; a social justice approach dwelling on “disadvantaged” groups, such as women, minority ethnic groups, homosexuals and Aborigines; a vocational approach; and the “relics of traditional liberal-humanist values”. Postmodern relativism so influences the curriculum we cannot rank a work of art based on artistic value because that would be “elitist”, writes Dr Barry Spurr, senior lecturer in English literature at Sydney University. Thus King Lear is no better than Ginger Meggs, and Bush Tucker Man videos are as much a syllabus “text” as The Grapes of Wrath. But in the Standard HSC English course, “not one poet from the entire 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is to be found”.
There are instances, however, which prove that political correctness can go mad. The quintessential controversy in recent times was the banning of the “Hijab” in schools (“Head scarf row erupts in France”). Political correctness has managed to overshadow religion to such an extent that the sheer idea of a right to religion, especially in a country that boasts “libterté, egalité, fraternité,” simply does not exist in schools. Amongst the many religious symbols that exist, the Hijab was singled out because critics believed it to be a “political statement”. This further reinforces the politically correct mindset washing over public education sector. Political correctness promises tolerance, but it can likewise stifle the renowned academic thought process. (Click here to see the reporting of the Australian counterpart: “Respecting Hijab”).
In fact, political correctness could even accommodate the entire VSU debate. Indeed, most universities worship a left-wing agenda, so should political correctness step in to make sure the biased tradition is made viewpoint neutral. Such a process has (again) crossed the line by stifling political speech and activity in its entirety, instead of injecting neutrality into the system. So here we have a new and fresh politically correct take overriding the good ol’ politically correct custom at universities!? Some sense please.
