Teachers unions' policy is not helping to address falling education standards

The AEU's 2001 and 1995 policies on the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people also display a decidedly PC approach. Not only does the union argue that such groups have the right to teach sex education in schools, it also states that what is taught must "be positive in its approach" and "enhance understanding and acceptance" of such groups.

A second reason why many parents prefer non-government schools is that government schools are being forced to adopt state-sponsored, politically correct curriculums. The way history, geography and literature are now taught offers a clear example.

Instead of celebrating what we have achieved as a nation or recognising the benefits of Australia's Anglo-Celtic, Western tradition, students are taught that all cultures should be equally valued. Instead of acknowledging the benefits of the market and the way science has saved millions, students are taught about the extinction of species, the destruction of the ozone layer and global warming.

Some years ago, Bill Hannan, the bureaucrat responsible for the Keating national curriculum, said such an approach represented "a subject for satire" and "a case of political correctness gone wild". On reading the present Queensland curriculum for the study of society and environment, it appears little has changed.

In tune with postmodern theory, students are told that "knowledge is always tentative", that they should "deconstruct dominant views of society" and "critique the socially constructed elements of text".

Forgotten is the moral and aesthetic value of education. The purpose of education, instead of celebrating positive things, is to show "how privilege and marginalisation are created and sustained in society" and "how the consumer of a text may have been marginalised by authors".

English teaching is also a victim of the PC movement. Not only do we now have literacy tests that fail to correct students for faulty grammar, punctuation and spelling, but traditional approaches to literature are condemned as "eurocentric, patriarchal and bourgeois".

In such an environment, it's no wonder parents want to send their children to private schools.