QLD: Govt interferes in school curriculum with course bans
By Steve Gray01 Jan 2009 12:01 AM
Eds: Embargoed until 0001 (AEDT) on Thursday, January 1, 2009
BRISBANE, Jan 1 AAP - Queensland cabinet documents released on Thursday under the 30-year rule show a Bjelke-Petersen government at its peak in 1978, willing to take on Canberra and impose its conservative philosophy on Queensland.
Moderate social studies programs were thrown out of Queensland schools; about 2,000 people were arrested for defying a ban on street marches; cabinet ruled against recognition of World Environment Day; and the autocratic premier ignored the advice of a government minister and department to site the Tarong power station in his own electorate.
Thus, in 1978, in an act of political interference in the school curriculum, he chased the moderate syllabuses, Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) and Social Education Materials Project (SEMP) from the state's classrooms, claiming they were social engineering.
MACOS was developed in the US for Year 6 children.
The education minister at the time, Val Bird, said it had widespread support from parents and teachers, and was successful elsewhere in Australia.
SEMP was sunk by an oral submission to cabinet by the premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
It had been developed by the national curriculum development centre in broad consultation with educationalists and departments nation-wide.
After some dithering, cabinet decided SEMP was not appropriate for Queensland high schools.
The premier and his wife Florence - who was later to serve as a senator - were under the sway of radical conservative Rona Joyner and her colleagues in the Society To Outlaw Pornography (STOP) and the Committee Against Regressive Education (CARE).
STOP and CARE would be the death knell for SEMP and MACOS.
Ms Joyner regarded the Bible as the single repository of truth and law, and wrote that: "A school cannot serve two masters. It cannot serve the God of the Bible and the god of the humanist, which is human reason".
She famously had a "death list" of more than 100 works of literature she wanted banned, including To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Under Milk Wood and Fahrenheit 451.
Ms Joyner sent each member of the cabinet extracts taken out of context from the SEMP course and, in response, cabinet - as it had done with MACOS - convened during the parliamentary recess.
The advice of national and state educational bodies was overruled and SEMP was banned from the state's high schools.
The cabinet, concerned by what students were reading, also considered a textbook review committee, but backed away from the proposal, deciding to offer guidelines to school principals instead.
Finally, the premier pushed through cabinet a proposal to establish a parliamentary committee, "to examine the philosophical framework for education in the state", it read.
"In terms of the moral concepts to be taught for a stable and progressive community and the fundamental skills that children should acquire to fit them for a productive, satisfying and effective place in society."
In other words, to raise children in the image of the National Party and its premier.
