Harry Quick (Franklin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, the headline in the Australian is ‘Dum-Dum-Dum Down’. As a former teacher, I am appalled at what is happening in the education system in Western Australia. ‘Dum-Dum-Dum Down’ is about Western Australia’s new music curriculum. This music curriculum is being overseen by a drama teacher who does not play a musical instrument and believes turntables and computers are musical instruments. The article states:

Music education is the latest casualty of Western Australia’s misguided foray into the world of outcomes-based education. The state’s new music curriculum will no longer require students to learn to play an instrument, and rap songs backed by downloaded music will be considered perfectly acceptable come exam time.

Quite rightly, music teachers are absolutely aghast, wondering what the heck is going on. To me, the whole issue of outcome based education, where failure is not part of an education process, is totally incomprehensible—where people are able to achieve at their own pace, there is no examination and failure is not an option. As a teacher of 23 years, it is totally beyond me. The introduction to the music curriculum, which is being designed, states:

Music plays an important part in the life of people the world over. It brings people together through a natural form of communication by providing a means of expressing ideas and emotion. It combines words, sounds and movements which enhance the meaning of life in world cultures. Music has unique aspects which give expression to human experiences and understandings that cross cultural and societal boundaries.

What the hell does that mean? It is absolute claptrap. We are now having courses designed by curriculum departments, which, to me, are absolutely useless. The article goes on to say:

Under the proposed new curriculum, physics students will be asked to debate the ethics airbags, while chemistry students will discuss the cosmetic industry.

We are talking about skills shortages in Australia. We are importing people from overseas, yet the minister for education in Western Australia was totally unaware that students in the new course could pass without playing a musical instrument. What sort of education ministers have we got in this country, and where the hell is our education system going?