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English (AATE) used an editorial of the Association’s journal, English in Australia, to
promote his personal political views related to the attempt by conservative politicians to
create a binary of ‘common sense’ and ‘ideological’ curriculum. Specifically, he wrote:
Our current students face a relentless barrage of shock-jocks, media barons,
advertising and corporate greed masquerading as common sense. Of course the
overtly critical-ethical from teachers will be labeled ‘ideological’, while the overtly
political from the media barons, the corporate and the Liberals in ‘neutral’. Does
this mean becoming smarter in representing ourselves? Does it mean having to have
a deliberate and conscious ethical and critical agenda? (2004, p. 8, emphasis added)
Other educators and education researchers link the appeal of ‘common sense’, ‘back to basic’
and ‘ideological neutral’ education to neo-conservatives (from all major political parties, not
solely the traditionally conservative), and identify instances of this discourse operating in
school curriculum. This is particularly the case when discussing the proposed Australian
national curriculum, as an editorial from The Australian asserted:
…while the proposal may put the teachers unions offside, it represents a dose of
common sense on an issue of long-term national importance. There is no good
reason for a country of 20 million people to host eight separate state and territory
educational systems, each developing their own syllabuses…Giving the federal
government central control of the nation's curriculum would also serve to increase
accountability and transparency… (Editorial: The advantages of a national approach,
2007, para. 1)
In the context of the history/culture wars, Parkes identifies discourses of commonsense in
History curriculum as being almost like an ideology in and of itself, advocated by neoconservatives
such as Blainey, Donnelly and Howard. Parkes writes, in a similar view to that
expressed by Sawyer, “what is common…is the accusation that new historiography is
politically motivated and ideologically laden, while the critic’s own version of history is ‘just
the facts’” (2007, p. 389). The impact of the neo-conservative agenda in pushing a
‘commonsense’ approach to curriculum cannot be underestimated and fits with aims to
reproduce conservative dominant discourses in schooling. Hodge and Kress write of this type
of politicking representation as:
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