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parallels between ideologies present in the English curriculum and those in the SOSE
curriculum. Key players in this debate included academics, teachers, regular history/culture
wars commentators and politicians with the general public playing a significant role through
letters to the editor. In addition to this debate attracting widespread responses from traditional
print media, the emerging electronic media of personal blogs and wikis also featured and
were used as a way for the general public to express views on this topic. See, for example,
Ambit Gambit (n.d.) and Online Opinion (n.d.) for a variety of responses to this issue. A brief
overview of the debate as it unfolded is included in this section, highlighting the significant
shifts that occurred over a very short period of time, as reported in The Australian from
February 9, 2005.
Particular aspects of Sawyer’s editorial that were the subject of controversy include:
We’re told that the government was re-elected by the young. If so, a fair proportion
of that group by now must have graduated from a ‘critical’ education...What does it
mean for us and our ability to create a questioning, critical generation that that kind
of language gets itself re-elected?
‘Non-core promise’ has passed into colloquialism and all the generations that
ever studied English have apparently bought it...What does that mean for us and our
ability to create questioning, critical citizens? We went to war in Iraq after the
weapons inspectors told us there were no WMDs –and then were fed the absolutely
laughable proposition that going into Iraq has made us safer from terrorism. So, what
does that mean for us and our ability to create questioning, critical, analytical
citizens? We knew the truth about Iraq before the election. Did our former students
just not care? We knew before the election that ‘children overboard’ was a crock,
but, as it was yesterday’s news, did they not care about that either?...Has English
failed not only to create critical generations, but also failed to create humane ones?
(Sawyer, 2004, p. 3)
When this was editorial was picked up by The Australian a few months later, it was reported
that:
Radicalised teacher who preach politics to pupils did their professions a “great
disservice” and were driving parents out of the public system.
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