Cannon fodder of the culture wars

The result? Traditional fairytales such as Jack and the Beanstalk and children's classics such as The Magic Far Away Tree are criticised for presenting boys as masculine and physically assertive and for failing to show girls in dominant positions.

The English classroom was once a place to learn how to read and write. In the edubabble much loved by teacher educators such as Wayne Martino, this more traditional approach is considered obsolete and, as an alternative, the English classroom must be "conceptualised as a sociopolitical site where alternative reading positions can be made available to students outside of an oppressive male-female dualistic hierarchy - outside of an oppressive phallocentric signifying system for making meaning".

In line with the PC approach to curriculum, the AATE also argues that competitive assessment is inequitable and socially unjust, and that testing and failing students in areas such as literacy is bad for their self-esteem. Given that the AATE has promoted such failed fads as whole language, it is understandable why the association refused to accept the results of the 1996 national survey that showed 27 per cent of Year 3 and 29 per cent of Year 5 students failed to reach the minimum standard in reading.

In the words of a past president of the AATE, Margaret Gill, all is well in Australia's classrooms and the concern about standards is simply a "manufactured crisis". A federally funded survey of Australian parents carried out in 1997 discovered that 60 per cent of those interviewed did not believe that teachers were professional enough or well enough trained to teach about politics without bias. Judged by the actions of professional associations such as the AATE, it appears that they are correct.