The Age of Indoctrination

By Barry Rubin

A reader of my articles on the fourth grade sends me this article from Australia about the proposed new curriculum for that country's schools in the ninth grade. According to the government's spokesman on education, that is the Labour party not conservatives, the plan is a terrible one:

''While there are 118 references in the document to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people and culture, there is one reference to Parliament, none to 'Westminster' [the British parliament from which Australia takes the basis of its law and democracy] and none to the Magna Carta,'' he said.

''Grade nines will consider the personal stories of Aboriginal people and examine massacres and 'indigenous displacement' without any reference to the benefit to our country of our European heritage and the sacrifice of our forebears to build a nation."

As I've noted the way to manage perception that studies in the past were too slanted in one direction is not to make them totally slanted in the opposite direction but to have a reasonable balance.