Primary school too vague?

Federal education minister Brendan Nelson is backing a report by education consultant Kevin Donnelly, which suggests primary school curriculum is "vague" and lacks "rigour". Nelson claims that any parent who loves their child must be concerned about this "lack of rigour". The argument stems from a wider debate over teaching methodology. Nelson and cohorts want a return to good old fashioned teaching, of drumming facts into young minds until they stick, whilst the modern system promotes looking more at the outcomes rather than the input.

Victorian Education Minister Lynne Kosky said a national syllabus was "a stupid idea". "If achieving results which are good outcomes for children is new wave, then I'm happy to be new wave," she said. "The rote learning and set curriculum was part of a past era … where students either kept up or they left."

And while we're here; Fiona Wood, Australian of the Year, has spoken out against teaching intelligent deisgn (which Brendan Nelson is a proponent of);

"From an educational point of view, we need to embrace difference . . . and to teach religious education I think has to be broad spectrum and multicultural," said Dr Wood, who heads the Royal Perth Hospital burns unit. "I think to teach evolution as science is appropriate and I think if we can increase the passion for science and increase the excitement of science and increase the debate, then you can teach it wherever you like."