Category: World

Why Teaching Canonical Texts Still Matters

November 7, 2018 | by | 0 Comments
Though the literary canon has fallen out of favour with many teachers, introducing it to students is still a valuable and worthwhile exercise. In one of the first tutorials for my Secondary English class at university, back when I was beginning a Master of Teaching degree a year and a half ago, the topic of […] Read more

The Walled Cities of Academia Damage Young Academics

May 13, 2018 | by | 0 Comments
The world of academia is supposed to provide the tools through which academics enlighten, develop, and improve the world. However, is that always the case? By Kyrie Mason In a discussion with psychologist Jordan Peterson, art critic Camille Paglia briefly mentions a woman who wrote to her describing how she had been scoffed out of […] Read more

The Missed Opportunity of Gonski 2.0

May 1, 2018 | by | 0 Comments
The Gonski 2.0 report is a missed opportunity which doubles down on what has caused declining achievement standards in Australian education. On Monday morning in Australia, the much-anticipated Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools was released to the public. More commonly referred to as Gonski 2.0, the second iteration of the report on education […] Read more

A Critical Examination of Calls for a ’21st-Century Education’

March 12, 2018 | by | 0 Comments
Education reformers often argue the need for ’21st-century education.’ Do their calls for an education revolution stand up to scrutiny? The issue of education reform is ever-present when the topic of education is mentioned. It is often argued that the current school system, and by extension school curricula, are outdated and not fit for the […] Read more

Is Australia’s Literacy Education Failing Its Children?

February 20, 2018 | by | 2 Comments
Despite ever-increasing investment in education, Australia’s literacy rates are not improving and are falling behind those of other nations. Why is this so? The gradual decline in literacy standards in Australian schools has garnered much attention in recent years. Despite standardised testing in the form of NAPLAN as well as ever-increasing sums of money being […] Read more

A Plea for a Return to a More Humane Understanding of the Humanities

June 15, 2017 | by | 3 Comments
Politicisation I’ve often heard people argue a moral case for the inclusion of gender theory, ‘critical race’ theory and other forms of theory influenced by postmodern streams of thought on college syllabuses for the humanities. If you are sceptical about such theories, I am sometimes told, you must be sexist, racist or transphobic. This is […] Read more

In Conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili (Part 1)

March 1, 2017 | by | 0 Comments
Professor Jameel Sadik “Jim” Al-Khalili OBE is a British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: One longstanding phenomena in the dissemination of pseudoscience and non-science into the popular culture is the deliberate construction […] Read more