All lives matter – time for more parents to start home schooling

Albert Facey’s autobiographical tome A Fortunate Life would become required national reading in Years 7, 8 or 9 as part of the Australian Curriculum in a proposal floated by the KAP to prevent the further “woke” ideological indoctrination of today’s youth. 

The draft changes to Australian’s national education doctrine were revealed last week and have led to heated debate.

The new national plan, which must be signed off on by the state and territory governments, effectually cancels any positive mention of Judeo-Christian tradition and frames the birth of modern Australia as an inhumane, colonial conquest that has led to continued Indigenous dispossession and oppression.

KAP leader Robbie Katter warns the new national educational doctrine is anti-Christian, promotes a false portrayal of Australia’s early history and fosters Islam

Islam is mentioned in the new curriculum eight times, but Christianity just five. Liberalism, the West’s defining ideological principle since the 17th century, is hardly mentioned at all.[1]

However the KAP said there was one quick fix that would create some balance – introducing Albert Facey’s poignant, and quintessentially Australian, book.

KAP Leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter said few youth of today would be able imagine the hardship the author, born in 1894 in Melbourne, had faced and overcome in his life.

Albert Facey’s father died when he was two, then his mother deserted him. He started work aged eight and being denied an education, grew up illiterate but later taught himself to read and write. [2]

He survived Gallipoli but lost two of his brothers there and suffered terrible pain because of injuries he sustained. He married and had a family, but one of his sons died in World War II.

Despite all this, the retired pig and poultry farmer decided to term his life story A Fortunate Life when he sat down at his kitchen table to write it in the early 1970s.

Mr Katter said contemporary Australia was so far removed from the reality of lives like Albert Facey’s, even though he was around until just a few decades ago. 

“Mr Facey’s book is one I read when I was young and something I have revisited over the years – it is an incredible story and a very good lesson on perspective that many of us could do with these days,” he said.

“History is not for those who have an ideological agenda, and it is not there to be twisted to indoctrinate our kids – it is for remembering in all its complexities and learning from.

“Young Australians are being perpetually taught to be ashamed for simply existing, whether the topic is climate change and their involvement, racism or some other systemic inequality – they are being falsely led to believe the world has never been in a worse state and it’s all their fault.”

Mr Katter said Albert Facey was a self-described “Labor man” who believed the party stood on the side of the workers.

“I am not sure what he would think of the Labor party we have today,” he said. 

The KAP believes the book should become mandatory reading for English students in Years 7,8 or 9 – while the book is sometimes currently used in schools, it is not mandatory.

The Australian National Curriculum serves as a framework for all Australian educators and students, but the new draft curriculum has been publicly criticised for being ideological and abstract. Further it proposes to delay teaching primary school kids core maths concepts, and places a greater focus on sex and relationship education in the early school years. 

[1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/how-the-west-was-airbrushed-from-history/news-story/9eedf4d5fbe09bf83c7355b0a6b6dc1c

[2] https://journey-and-destination.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-fortunate-life-by-ab-facey-1894-1982.html