...teaching, and it was a shock. The stifling essay topics seemed to be carefully designed to close off certain avenues of enquiry, giving a glimpse of life under a totalitarian regime where thought and language are everywhere controlled by the dead hand of political theory. But worse than that was the sense that a deliberate, systematic dismantling of the past was taking place within education, which taken to its logical conclusion would eventually cut young people off from the possibility of understanding their own cultural inheritance in any depth. I suddenly understood how civilisations fall, how dark ages happen: Western culture seemed to be unravelling before my eyes.

That sort of visceral reaction is not uncommon--others I have spoken to have experienced something similar when first confronted with the full implications of postmodern theory. But the real challenge has been to move beyond the anger, and beyond a blind, instinctive clinging to the past. What is most needed is constructive debate that will lead to the evolution of something fresh out of that same cultural inheritance that will speak to the present generation of school students.

In recent years there have been many signs that the tide is turning, and one of these is that the debate has moved squarely into the public arena: the windows are open and the light is being shone on the more lunatic areas of the school curriculum. The quality of discussion in the press is noticeably higher lately, particularly in the Australian, which is taking a strong editorial stand on education, and even the Prime Minister weighs in regularly on the subject. There have been a number of events such as the recent federal conference on history teaching, which resulted in a cautious optimism that the...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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