Australian Politics
The achievements of Captain James Cook are a story for the ages
This year, on 29 April, it was 253 years since Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay. Despite the obvious significance of that day, it barely, if ever, rates a mention.
Thanks to the collapse of our education system, many Australians think Cook was part of the First Fleet that arrived eighteen years later, on January 26. Many therefore erroneously associate Cook with Australia Day.
Despite this astonishing manifestation of popular ignorance, our education system does almost nothing to rectify these common misunderstandings.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the statutory authority with responsibility for developing and implementing the National Curriculum, apparently agrees that the study of our nation’s history is important, even mandating it for Year 9 students. Despite this requirement, a name search of the National Curriculum for ‘Captain Cook’ generates just one result – for year four students. And that’s after students have already been indoctrinated with the concept of ‘invasion’ in grade three.
Captain James Cook’s contribution to civilisation cannot be underestimated. He was beyond question one of the greatest navigators in history, a self-taught product of the Enlightenment, and a naval officer whose concern for his crew saw him complete hazardous voyages without losing a single man to scurvy. A brilliant cartographer, many of his maps were still being reliably used in the 20th century.
Significantly, Cook displayed a genuine and generous concern for the Indigenous peoples he encountered in the lands that would eventually be known as Australia and New Zealand, and in the islands of the South Pacific.
History is rarely pretty. And there is, invariably, two, if not more, sides to every story or event. But why has our National Curriculum not even attempted to tell the full story of Cook and his times? Why aren’t our students provided with the facts that would enable them to reach their own, informed conclusions?
In more recent times, particularly around the time of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ marches, Cook has been vilified as a racist coloniser. The activists throwing paint on his statues do so out of total ignorance. Cook was no coloniser. He was not even an advocate of colonisation. He had been dead nine years by the time the First Fleet arrived on our shores in 1788.
But how dare we let facts get in the way of a good anti-Western civilisation narrative! And certainly don’t let them inform our National Curriculum.
Ideologically driven, the National Curriculum’s churlish omission of the substantial achievements of Cook does our children a profound disservice, denying them the opportunity to learn about one of the most significant figures in our nation’s and our region’s history. It would be funny if it were not so serious.
History matters. An education system that provides students with balanced, comprehensive, and accurate information about our past is paramount. How can we intelligently consider current affairs if we have no clue about how we got here?
The arrival of the British in 1788, just four days before the arrival of French vessels, another inconvenient fact omitted by the National Curriculum, led inevitably to significant achievements and terrible atrocities. Students should learn it all.
The study of how our history, including presently unfashionable developments, such as parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, should be a core feature of the National Curriculum.
Australia is still a lucky country – but it didn’t start with luck. It started with a very smart and brave man. The rich, prosperous, and generous nation we are today would not exist but for Captain James Cook. At the very least, we owe him this recognition and an informed assessment of his achievements.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/the-achievements-of-captain-james-cook-are-a-story-for-the-ages
More on Cook here:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/hero-or-villain-the-plot-to-cancel-captain-cook/
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Economists and property experts warn against Labor’s push to beef-up renters’ rights
Economists, property groups and housing experts are warning Labor’s push to beef-up renters’ rights will distort the housing market, discourage investment and worsen an ongoing supply crunch.
State and territory housing ministers will meet this week to develop policy options to help renters, with Anthony Albanese flagging a potential to regulate the size and frequency of rent increases.
Economist Saul Eslake said reforms could dissuade investment into the housing market if serious restrictions were applied, such as preventing landlords from increasing rents by an amount less than inflation or obliging them to keep rents fixed for more than a year.
The former ANZ chief economist said the push was a Band-Aid solution that covered up a fundamental problem in the housing market of a mismatch between demand and supply.
“Depending on how serious and restrictive any proposed regulations turn out to be, there will be disincentive at the market,” Mr Eslake said.
“It may be at the margin but it may be more significant if the restrictions are more onerous and could have an impact on the supply of housing.”
Economic adviser for Judo Bank, Warren Hogan, warned against governments artificially capping rent increases, arguing they would “fundamentally change the investment market and jeopardise future supply of housing in this country”.
He said reducing the frequency of rent increases may help renters and the market, but warned artificial rent caps would scare off investment with the “very real risk” that investors would not be able to make an economic return to cover their capital investment.
“We now have to get to the heart of the problem which is demand and supply rather than trying to do a patchwork of policy solutions with a whole bunch of unintended consequences which undermine the medium to long term performance of the economy,” Mr Hogan said.
The Weekend Australian revealed thousands of mum-and-dad landlords were selling rental properties in response to state Labor governments’ strengthening of renter protections and increasing interest rates.
Centre for Independent Studies chief economist Peter Tulip said increased renter protections would worsen a shortfall in the housing market, with mum-and-dad investors more hesitant to invest in property amid rising interest rates and a changing regulatory environment.
“The rental market is incredibly tight and the signs are that it’s going to get much tighter, partly because we have very little supply and we are having a big increase in demand because of migration,” Mr Tulip said.
The federal government on Sunday announced a major expansion in eligibility for its first-home guarantee, its regional equivalent and the family home guarantee ahead of the May 9 budget, with friends, siblings or parents and children able to access government funding across the three schemes from July 1.
Opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar said the Coalition would not support a move to further distort the housing market or lower housing supply but would wait to see more detail before taking a position.
“With Labor opening the floodgates to 650,000 migrants over the next two years and no plan to house them, younger Australians renting or hoping to buy will undoubtedly pay the price,” Mr Sukkar said.
Financial and housing market analyst Pete Wargent said landlords were being discouraged from investing in housing under a changing regulatory environment which was creating uncertainty.
Real Estate Institute of Australia chief executive Hayden Groves said investors were being crunched by high stamp duty costs, increasing land taxes, and predicted further reforms to renters rights.
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High school pass marks lowered to under 50 per cent
Struggling Year 12 students who fail exams and assignments are still passing maths and English subjects, as state curriculum bodies push down pass marks to below 50 per cent.
In results that raise questions about teaching and syllabus standards, fresh “grade boundary” data from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) shows that Year 12 students scored a “C” pass-mark in specialist maths with an overall mark of 47 out of 100 last year.
In maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths.
In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100.
And Victoria’s “score ranges’’ for coursework units and written exams for each subject in 2021 reveal students could pass some of the final Year 12 science, maths and English exams despite getting two out of three questions wrong.
Teacher shortages are being blamed for the poor results, as schools struggle to find enough teachers with university qualifications in the hard-to-staff maths and science subjects.
Up to 40 per cent of Australian maths students are being taught by teachers who did not specialise in the subject during their four-year education degree at university.
Senior maths and science academics and teachers warned yesterday that too many students are leaving Year 12 without the necessary maths skills, blaming both teaching standards and the curriculum.
Professor Jennifer Stow, an eminent researcher at the University of Queensland’s Institute of Molecular Bioscience, said she was “hugely concerned’’ about falling standards among high school maths graduates and criticised “what is being taught and how it’s being taught’’.
“I think students aren’t being taught enough basics in maths to give them a good underpinning to build upon at a higher education level,’’ she said. “Assignments don’t teach them formulae or maths rules or how to do calculations – they are being assessed on assignments that anyone can mark. They should be drilled on maths rules and formulae, and shown the way to do things.’’
Maths teacher Dr Stephen Norton, who spent 15 years teaching mathematics to trainee teachers at Griffith University before returning to the classroom this year, said many students were finishing primary school without knowing their times tables, long division and multiplication, or fractions. “When they get to high school they’re cactus,’’ he said.
“The biggest problem in secondary school is you get a whole bunch of kids coming to school in Grade 7 with the knowledge of Grade 4 or 5.
Education Minister Jason Clare says children and students aren’t as ready for school or university as they used to…
“For some of them, if you ask, ‘What’s seven multiplied by six?’ they can’t do it.
“They don’t know how to multiply, they haven’t been taught long division and they can’t add or multiply fractions.’’
Dr Norton said high school teachers were required to teach to a detailed curriculum so quickly that they did not have time to help students catch up on basic concepts.
“If you’ve got a struggling kid, or a kid who hasn’t quite got it, they will fall behind quite quickly,’’ he said.
Dr Norton said the best way to improve students’ maths results would be to ensure primary school teachers are given more training to teach the subject. “The primary school teachers are so poorly prepared by universities,’’ he said.
Queensland is the only state to publish subject-level grade boundaries, which show that in maths methods, a prerequisite for engineering, the pass mark for Year 12 last year was 45 out of 100 – the same as for base-level general maths. In physics, students needed just 49 marks per cent to pass, while English students passed the subject with just 41 marks out of 100. In biology, the lowest pass mark for a C grade was 48, while in chemistry it was 50, and 44 in modern history.
In Victoria in 2021, the pass mark for the final written exam in biology was 108 out of a possible 240 marks – an effective pass mark of 45 per cent.
In chemistry, the lowest score for a C mark was 78 out of 240 – a pass mark of 32 per cent.
Maths methods had a pass score of 50 out of 160 in the mathematical methods exam, revealing that students answered just one in three questions correctly.
In specialist maths, the pass rate for the written exam was 35 out of 80 marks, meaning students could pass despite failing 56 per cent of the questions.
In the English exam, the lowest score was 26 out of 60 marks – a 40 per cent pass rate.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority did not respond to The Australian’s requests for comment.
A QCAA spokesman said that a grade of C “matches the objectives of the course and is considered ‘satisfactory’.’’
“Every year we look at the achievement of students to determine the grade boundaries,’’ he said. “This involves the QCAA and expert teachers looking at student performance across their range of assessments in every subject to determine cut-offs that align to each reporting standard on a 100-point scale.
“If the range for a C in a subject is 45-64 marks, it is because the student work that received marks in this range demonstrated the attributes of a C standard as described in the syllabus.
Dr Kevin Donnelly, a senior English teacher, curriculum writer and academic who reviewed the national curriculum in 2014, said Australia set a “low bar’’ for education. “We’ve lowered the bar to create a false picture of how well our students are doing and it breeds complacency,’’ he said.
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A shocking miscarriage of justice in another "recoveed memory" case
A prosecutor was so concerned about the “problematic” nature of torture and abuse allegations a young woman had made against her father that the police brief was sent to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions to be reviewed.
The review was requested after a forensic analysis raised questions about a diary the young woman said she had kept as a 14 year-old, recording her father torturing her with tools and raping her repeatedly.
Police determined that the father was actually overseas on days when diary entries described him abusing his daughter on the family property.
A forensic document expert also determined that handwritten entries up to five days apart had been written at the same time.
But the DPP went ahead with the case, and the young woman’s parents were convicted on 86 counts of abuse and sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
The Australian’s Shadow Of Doubt podcast is investigating the parents’ claim that the case against them was based on their daughter’s unreliable false memories, which she recovered during several years of psychiatric treatment.
The couple’s daughter revealed the existence of the diary to police more than a year after she first made allegations of sexual assault against her father. The diary contained multiple entries she said she had written as a 14 year-old, recording her father torturing her with tools and sexually assaulting her in a shed next to the family home.
The diary also recorded her burying the tools on the property, and observing her father angrily searching for them one weekend.
But police determined that she was not at home that weekend, because she had been competing in an interstate sports competition.
Other diary entries detailed her father abusing her in the shed on multiple days when his immigration records showed he was overseas.
The diary also recorded the daughter’s participation in several sports competitions, but the dates were wrong by up to two months.
Police subsequently raided the couple’s rural property and found rusty tools buried in locations where the daughter told police she had hidden them years earlier.
Eight months after the raid, the prosecutor in charge of the case wrote a report to the Director of Public Prosecutions requesting a review of the evidence.
She told the lawyer representing the accused mother that aspects of the case were problematic, but she was not seeking to have it ‘no-billed’.
The father was subsequently charged with more than a hundred counts of abuse extending over 13 years.
The Australian has chosen not to name the family or identify dates on which events happened.
The father was convicted in the NSW District Court and sentenced to 48 years in prison, the longest jail term for child abuse ever imposed in Australia. The mother is serving a 16-year sentence.
They have both engaged lawyers to apply for a judicial review of their convictions, arguing that crucial evidence was never presented at their trial.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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