Tensions between the government and the university sector ran high in 2018, with the government cutting funding to student places and research and a big push back from universities.
Education minister Dan Tehan wants research grants to articulate how the research would further the national interests of Australia.
Lukas Coch/AAP
A few days have now passed since we learnt that in 2017 the former Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham, secretly rejected 11 grants recommended by the Australian Research Council. Naturally…
Countries such as England and Canada have adopted more progressive approaches to inclusive sex education than Australia has.
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Sex, sexuality, respectful relationships, and gender all need to be discussed in schools as a measure to combat discrimination against LGBTQ people, rising rates of STIs and violence against women.
Politicians meddling in the history curriculum is nothing new, and it holds back progress in how history is taught.
Peter Rae/AAP
Australia has been having the same disagreement about what and how history should be taught. We need to move on and listen to the evidence so our children have the best history education possible.
Anzac Day, a celebration of the Anzac soldiers, pictured, has become a contentious issue in the “history wars”.
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The most popular history courses taught in Australian universities are still broad courses focused on significant historical events and periods, contrary to the recent IPA report.
What’s the meme war all about?
Star Wars Memes/Facebook
The term “meme” was coined in 1976. Today, these cultural artefacts have gone viral, and are redrawing the boundaries of acceptable political discourse.
Visitors take in Cameron Robbins’ Field Lines at Dark Mofo at the Museum of Old and New Art.
Mona/Remi Chauvin
Many great artists died in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul Cox, Shirley Hazzard. It was a year of creative foment and as always, intense debate about the importance of the arts to a thriving, democratic society.
Having worked as a journalism and media studies academic in the United Kingdom for the best part of 25 years, one of the things that surprised me on coming to Australia was the state of near-open warfare…
Today’s young Australians are the smiling symbols of the embrace of multicultural identity, the nation’s defining moment.
Flickr/DIBP Images, Faces of Australia
The culture wars that dominated the narrative during John Howard’s prime ministership have returned with the ascension of his self-described “political love child”, Tony Abbott. While Abbott is sometimes…
Education minister Christopher Pyne has announced a review of the national curriculum, citing a need to remove its ‘partisan bias’.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Education minister Christopher Pyne has announced a sweeping review of Australia’s national curriculum to weed out a supposed “partisan bias” in what’s taught in Australia’s classrooms. Announcing the…